Csdirectory com Weekly Bible Study Resources — May 16 22, 2011

Weekly Bible Study Resources

For study related to the Bible Lesson May 16 - 22, 2011

“And taking him away from the crowd by himself, he put his fingers into his ears and spitting grasped his tongue and looking up to heaven he sighed and says to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ which is [in translation] ‘Be opened.’²⁹

“And immediately his ears were opened and what was binding his tongue was loosened and he was speaking correctly.

“And he insisted to them that they should speak to no one. But the more he was insisting the more by far they were proclaiming [it]. And they were wondering extremely, saying, ‘He’s done all [things] well, he makes both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.’”

29. Whether ephphatha represents a Hebrew or an Aramaic word has been disputed (ABD, II, 551). ABD decides in favor of Aramaic.

30. Other uses of spit: Mark 8:22-26; John 9:6-7. Referring to the healing in Mark 8, Eddy says Jesus’ spitting “expressed contempt for the belief of material eyes as having any power to see,” and interprets his grasping the man as “the putting forth of power” (Miscellaneous Writings, pp.170-171). For the healing in John see also note 60. Howard Clark Kee in ABD, IV, 663-664, rejects the idea that the use of spit and the laying on of hands were medical practices.

Spitting as an expression of contempt was institutionalized in the ceremony of halizah prescribed in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. Most references to spit in the Talmud are to halizah. Nedarim, 66b (IX, 6), however, has a story of interest also in connection with the matter of vows using the word “korban”: “A man once said to his wife, ‘Konam [a substitute for “korban”] that you benefit not from me until you expectorate on R. Simeon b. Gamaliel.’” Apparently he forced his wife to do what he did not dare to do himself. (R. Simeon forgave her.)

Most of the other references to spit or saliva in the Talmud are to circumstances in which it is “unclean.” Spitting was forbidden in the temple, for instance. Spit is mentioned as an eye salve in Shabbath, 108b (XIV, 2). There is also an undated “tradition” recorded by an anonymous commentator to the effect that some spit had medicinal value and some did not (Baba Bathra, 126b [VIII, 5]).

Montefiore (p. 28) notes a story in Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah, 16d (I, 4), about a contemporary of R. Simeon mentioned above. A man whose wife stayed out too late listening to a sermon by R. Meir (second century A.D.) told her he would not forgive her until she spit in the preacher’s eye. R. Meir pretended to be suffering in one of his eyes, asked her to spit in it seven times as would be required to heal the difficulty, and told her to report to her husband that she had spit once as he had demanded. We should note that R. Meir thereby prevented her from feeling that she had somehow unwillingly expressed contempt for him.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who was perhaps twenty years older than Jesus, and is a major source of information about Roman medicine, mentions spit only as a cure for pimples (De Medicina, V.28.18B). He does not mention it in his lengthy discussion of diseases of the eyes and their cures.

Pliny the elder, A.D. 23-79, gives the full Roman pharmacopoeia in his Natural History. In XXVIII.vii.36, as translated in the Loeb edition, he says that it is “the custom in using any remedy (in omnia medicina), of spitting on the ground (despuere) three times by way of ritual (precatione), thus increasing its efficacy.” He adds (38) that the daily use of saliva as an eye ointment prevents ophthalmia (lippitudine).

In A.D. 69 Vespasian healed a blind (or partially blind) man by spitting in his eyes, a miracle that was accepted as evidence of divine support for his claim to be emperor. The event comes to us from Tacitus’ Histories, 4.81, Suetonius’ Vespasian, 7, and Dio Cassius’ Roman History, Epitome of Book LXV, 66.8.1, together with another healing caused by the pressure of Vespasian’s foot.

The student of the Gospels finds himself right at home with the problems posed by these historians, no two of which agree together exactly. Tacitus, who gives the most details, says that his information came from eyewitnesses and that, Vespasian’s dynasty having passed away, they had nothing to gain by lying. He says that the first man was partially blind, the other had a dislocated hand, that both said the god Serapis had told them how the healings were to be performed, and that Vespasian first consulted physicians as to whether a man could perform the healings. The physicians said that the disabilities were not extreme, that Vespasian would get the credit if healings resulted, and that the patients would get the blame (for their credulity) if not. After the healings, says Tacitus (5.82), Vespasian visited the temple of Serapis, where he had a vision of a man named Basilides, whose name he thought significant since it means “King’s son.”

Suetonius, who probably relied on written sources alone for his version of the story, says that the vision of Basilides came before the healings, that the first man was blind (luminibus orbatus), the second lame, and that Serapis had appeared to them in dreams. Although he agrees that Vespasian had to be induced to attempt the cures he says nothing about a consultation with physicians.

Dio says nothing about the vision of Basilides or about any hesitation on Vespasian’s part, he says that the first man was blind (tuphlos), the second had an unsound hand, and that they had had dream visions of how to be healed. Dio may be combining and summarizing the narratives of Tacitus and Suetonius, but since this part of his history has survived only in an epitome by Xiphilinus the omissions and differences from the others may not be original.

Articles on spit in Bible dictionaries and books on Jewish magic confidently affirm that spitting was a part of exorcism, but I can find no evidence that this was true in Jesus’ day. The Greek magical papyri contain only one reference to spit, in a manuscript of the fourth century A.D. (see The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1986], p. 29). The Talmud has only one statement about spit that might possibly refer to exorcism: R. Johanan b. Nappaha (second-third centuries A.D.) said R. Akiba’s prohibition of the use of God’s name in healing applied only when the healer also spit (for Akiba see Sanhedrin, 90a [XI,1]; for ben Nappaha see Sheb’uoth, 15b [II,1], and Soncino edition p. 75, n. 15, for more information).

The Greek Magical Papyri does not include every known and relevant document. The Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in the Claremont Graduate School will publish others, and has begun to do so: see Marvin W. Meyer, Rossi’s “Gnostic” Tractate, Occasional Papers no. 13 of the Institute [1988]. Rossi’s tractate says nothing about spit.

Lucian in his Menippus, 7, tells of a Babylonian magician who spit in his face three times for twenty-nine days running, but this was to prepare him for a visit to the underworld, not to heal him. Also, the Menippus was written after A.D. 150 or so and Lucian was a satirical monologist, not to be trusted in details any more than in his claim to have passed through Hades. Betz thinks more highly of Lucian than I do; see his Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament, Berlin: Academie-Verlag, 1961.

The usual documentation for spitting to drive out or protect against demons comes from the Middle Ages. It would appear, then, that such spitting was introduced into magic by those who copied the externals of Jesus’ practice. Luke in Acts 8:4-19 tells us that in the very earliest days of the church a magician sought to buy one of the spiritual powers exercised by the Christians.

This footnote is perhaps the place to mention Apollonius of Tyana, who was born approximately when Jesus was but lived for about a century. His life was written by Philostratus about A.D. 217, and there was another biography by Moeragenes written something less than 100 years earlier. About A.D. 300 a certain Hierocles wrote that Apollonius was the equal of Jesus, as we learn from Eusebius in his Treatise . . . Against The Life of Apollonius . . . by Philostratus (included in the Loeb edition of Philostratus, trans. F. C. Conybeare, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [1969], I, 483-605). Apollonius was a Pythagorean philosopher who began to practice medicine in the temple of Aesculapius in the town of Aegae and who traveled as far as India and Egypt to enlarge his knowledge. He observed Brahman methods of healing, and a few of his own healings are recorded. None of his methods bears any resemblance to Jesus’, where both are described, but there are two parallels of interest.

In the one account we have of Apollonius’ exorcising a demon, he told his audience they would know it had gone out because they would see it knock over a statue by a door as it left (Philostratus, IV, xx). Perhaps the man with the legion asked (for it was really he who asked, not the demons) that the demons might go into the pigs so that he would know that they had left him; they were, after all, not tormenting him at the moment (Matthew 8:28-34 = Mark 5:1-20 = Luke 8:26-39). Josephus tells of an exorcist named Eleazar whose methods of procedure were more like Apollonius’ than Jesus’ were (Antiq., 8.2.5 [VIII, 46-48]).

At another time Apollonius stopped the funeral procession of a young woman in Rome and restored her to life (Philostratus IV, xlv; the fact that Philostratus was undecided as to whether Apollonius might have detected her breath in the cold air at the time is not to the point). Jesus similarly stopped the funeral procession of a young man at Nain (Luke 7:11-17). The accounts are strikingly parallel in details, Apollonius touched the woman and said something secretly (prosapsamenos autês kai ti aphanôs epeipôn), but neither gives any further indication of how the healings were managed, without which the parallel has no necessary significance.

Morton Smith has devoted a volume, Jesus the Magician, San Francisco: Harper & Row [1978], to setting out the foregoing evidence, which, as I have pointed out, is hardly relevant to Jesus. One can go further. Let us suppose for a moment that magicians healed by suggestion, hypnosis or the patients’ faith. Let us also suppose that Jesus healed in the same way. If the parallel makes him a magician, it makes psychiatrists and faith healers magicians also. He himself remarked, “If I throw out demons by Beelzebul, by what [means] do your sons throw [them] out?” (Matthew 12:27 = Luke 11:19). Actually the names do not matter. What does matter is that Jesus did not heal by suggestion, hypnosis, or the faith of his patients. He healed by a full understanding of God’s nature and universe, and if people happened to heal themselves by faith he confirmed their healings by his understanding.
SECTION VI – B20 (Matt 9:27-30)
A Deaf and Tongue-Tied Man Healed
Mark 7:32-37

Continuing with Mark alone: “And they bring a deaf and tongue-tied man to him and call on him to place [his] hand on him.²⁸

“And taking him away from the crowd by himself, he put his fingers into his ears and spitting grasped his tongue and looking up to heaven he sighed and says to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ which is [in translation] ‘Be opened.’²⁹

“And immediately his ears were opened and what was binding his tongue was loosened and he was speaking correctly.

“And he insisted to them that they should speak to no one. But the more he was insisting the more by far they were proclaiming [it]. And they were wondering extremely, saying, ‘He’s done all [things] well, he makes both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.’”

29. Whether ephphatha represents a Hebrew or an Aramaic word has been disputed (ABD, II, 551). ABD decides in favor of Aramaic.

30. Other uses of spit: Mark 8:22-26; John 9:6-7. Referring to the healing in Mark 8, Eddy says Jesus’ spitting “expressed contempt for the belief of material eyes as having any power to see,” and interprets his grasping the man as “the putting forth of power” (Miscellaneous Writings, pp.170-171). For the healing in John see also note 60. Howard Clark Kee in ABD, IV, 663-664, rejects the idea that the use of spit and the laying on of hands were medical practices.

Spitting as an expression of contempt was institutionalized in the ceremony of halizah prescribed in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. Most references to spit in the Talmud are to halizah. Nedarim, 66b (IX, 6), however, has a story of interest also in connection with the matter of vows using the word “korban”: “A man once said to his wife, ‘Konam [a substitute for “korban”] that you benefit not from me until you expectorate on R. Simeon b. Gamaliel.’” Apparently he forced his wife to do what he did not dare to do himself. (R. Simeon forgave her.)

Most of the other references to spit or saliva in the Talmud are to circumstances in which it is “unclean.” Spitting was forbidden in the temple, for instance. Spit is mentioned as an eye salve in Shabbath, 108b (XIV, 2). There is also an undated “tradition” recorded by an anonymous commentator to the effect that some spit had medicinal value and some did not (Baba Bathra, 126b [VIII, 5]).

Montefiore (p. 28) notes a story in Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah, 16d (I, 4), about a contemporary of R. Simeon mentioned above. A man whose wife stayed out too late listening to a sermon by R. Meir (second century A.D.) told her he would not forgive her until she spit in the preacher’s eye. R. Meir pretended to be suffering in one of his eyes, asked her to spit in it seven times as would be required to heal the difficulty, and told her to report to her husband that she had spit once as he had demanded. We should note that R. Meir thereby prevented her from feeling that she had somehow unwillingly expressed contempt for him.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who was perhaps twenty years older than Jesus, and is a major source of information about Roman medicine, mentions spit only as a cure for pimples (De Medicina, V.28.18B). He does not mention it in his lengthy discussion of diseases of the eyes and their cures.

Pliny the elder, A.D. 23-79, gives the full Roman pharmacopoeia in his Natural History. In XXVIII.vii.36, as translated in the Loeb edition, he says that it is “the custom in using any remedy (in omnia medicina), of spitting on the ground (despuere) three times by way of ritual (precatione), thus increasing its efficacy.” He adds (38) that the daily use of saliva as an eye ointment prevents ophthalmia (lippitudine).

In A.D. 69 Vespasian healed a blind (or partially blind) man by spitting in his eyes, a miracle that was accepted as evidence of divine support for his claim to be emperor. The event comes to us from Tacitus’ Histories, 4.81, Suetonius’ Vespasian, 7, and Dio Cassius’ Roman History, Epitome of Book LXV, 66.8.1, together with another healing caused by the pressure of Vespasian’s foot.

The student of the Gospels finds himself right at home with the problems posed by these historians, no two of which agree together exactly. Tacitus, who gives the most details, says that his information came from eyewitnesses and that, Vespasian’s dynasty having passed away, they had nothing to gain by lying. He says that the first man was partially blind, the other had a dislocated hand, that both said the god Serapis had told them how the healings were to be performed, and that Vespasian first consulted physicians as to whether a man could perform the healings. The physicians said that the disabilities were not extreme, that Vespasian would get the credit if healings resulted, and that the patients would get the blame (for their credulity) if not. After the healings, says Tacitus (5.82), Vespasian visited the temple of Serapis, where he had a vision of a man named Basilides, whose name he thought significant since it means “King’s son.”

Suetonius, who probably relied on written sources alone for his version of the story, says that the vision of Basilides came before the healings, that the first man was blind (luminibus orbatus), the second lame, and that Serapis had appeared to them in dreams. Although he agrees that Vespasian had to be induced to attempt the cures he says nothing about a consultation with physicians.

Dio says nothing about the vision of Basilides or about any hesitation on Vespasian’s part, he says that the first man was blind (tuphlos), the second had an unsound hand, and that they had had dream visions of how to be healed. Dio may be combining and summarizing the narratives of Tacitus and Suetonius, but since this part of his history has survived only in an epitome by Xiphilinus the omissions and differences from the others may not be original.

Articles on spit in Bible dictionaries and books on Jewish magic confidently affirm that spitting was a part of exorcism, but I can find no evidence that this was true in Jesus’ day. The Greek magical papyri contain only one reference to spit, in a manuscript of the fourth century A.D. (see The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells, ed. Hans Dieter Betz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1986], p. 29). The Talmud has only one statement about spit that might possibly refer to exorcism: R. Johanan b. Nappaha (second-third centuries A.D.) said R. Akiba’s prohibition of the use of God’s name in healing applied only when the healer also spit (for Akiba see Sanhedrin, 90a [XI,1]; for ben Nappaha see Sheb’uoth, 15b [II,1], and Soncino edition p. 75, n. 15, for more information).

The Greek Magical Papyri does not include every known and relevant document. The Coptic Magical Texts Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in the Claremont Graduate School will publish others, and has begun to do so: see Marvin W. Meyer, Rossi’s “Gnostic” Tractate, Occasional Papers no. 13 of the Institute [1988]. Rossi’s tractate says nothing about spit.

Lucian in his Menippus, 7, tells of a Babylonian magician who spit in his face three times for twenty-nine days running, but this was to prepare him for a visit to the underworld, not to heal him. Also, the Menippus was written after A.D. 150 or so and Lucian was a satirical monologist, not to be trusted in details any more than in his claim to have passed through Hades. Betz thinks more highly of Lucian than I do; see his Lukian von Samosata und das Neue Testament, Berlin: Academie-Verlag, 1961.

The usual documentation for spitting to drive out or protect against demons comes from the Middle Ages. It would appear, then, that such spitting was introduced into magic by those who copied the externals of Jesus’ practice. Luke in Acts 8:4-19 tells us that in the very earliest days of the church a magician sought to buy one of the spiritual powers exercised by the Christians.

This footnote is perhaps the place to mention Apollonius of Tyana, who was born approximately when Jesus was but lived for about a century. His life was written by Philostratus about A.D. 217, and there was another biography by Moeragenes written something less than 100 years earlier. About A.D. 300 a certain Hierocles wrote that Apollonius was the equal of Jesus, as we learn from Eusebius in his Treatise . . . Against The Life of Apollonius . . . by Philostratus (included in the Loeb edition of Philostratus, trans. F. C. Conybeare, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [1969], I, 483-605). Apollonius was a Pythagorean philosopher who began to practice medicine in the temple of Aesculapius in the town of Aegae and who traveled as far as India and Egypt to enlarge his knowledge. He observed Brahman methods of healing, and a few of his own healings are recorded. None of his methods bears any resemblance to Jesus’, where both are described, but there are two parallels of interest.

In the one account we have of Apollonius’ exorcising a demon, he told his audience they would know it had gone out because they would see it knock over a statue by a door as it left (Philostratus, IV, xx). Perhaps the man with the legion asked (for it was really he who asked, not the demons) that the demons might go into the pigs so that he would know that they had left him; they were, after all, not tormenting him at the moment (Matthew 8:28-34 = Mark 5:1-20 = Luke 8:26-39). Josephus tells of an exorcist named Eleazar whose methods of procedure were more like Apollonius’ than Jesus’ were (Antiq., 8.2.5 [VIII, 46-48]).

At another time Apollonius stopped the funeral procession of a young woman in Rome and restored her to life (Philostratus IV, xlv; the fact that Philostratus was undecided as to whether Apollonius might have detected her breath in the cold air at the time is not to the point). Jesus similarly stopped the funeral procession of a young man at Nain (Luke 7:11-17). The accounts are strikingly parallel in details, Apollonius touched the woman and said something secretly (prosapsamenos autês kai ti aphanôs epeipôn), but neither gives any further indication of how the healings were managed, without which the parallel has no necessary significance.

Morton Smith has devoted a volume, Jesus the Magician, San Francisco: Harper & Row [1978], to setting out the foregoing evidence, which, as I have pointed out, is hardly relevant to Jesus. One can go further. Let us suppose for a moment that magicians healed by suggestion, hypnosis or the patients’ faith. Let us also suppose that Jesus healed in the same way. If the parallel makes him a magician, it makes psychiatrists and faith healers magicians also. He himself remarked, “If I throw out demons by Beelzebul, by what [means] do your sons throw [them] out?” (Matthew 12:27 = Luke 11:19). Actually the names do not matter. What does matter is that Jesus did not heal by suggestion, hypnosis, or the faith of his patients. He healed by a full understanding of God’s nature and universe, and if people happened to heal themselves by faith he confirmed their healings by his understanding.


SECTION VII – B21 (Luke 11:34,36)
Two Blind Men and a Dumb Man Healed
Matthew 9:27-34

Continuing with Matthew. “And after Jesus passes on from there [Jairus’ house] two blind men followed him, saying with loud voices, ‘Have mercy on us, descendant of David.’

“And when he went into [his own] house the blind men came to him, and Jesus says to them, ‘Do you trust that I’m able to do this?’ [Will you take an active part in the healing?]

“They say to him, ‘Yes, Lord,’

“Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘In conformity with your trust let it be for you,’ and their eyes were opened.²⁰³

“And Jesus spoke sternly to them, saying, ‘See that no one knows it,’ but they went out and spread his fame in all that land.

“And as they are going out, you see, [people] brought to him a man [who is] dumb [because] he is possessed by a demon. And when the demon was thrown out, the dumb man spoke.

“And the crowds wondered, saying, ‘It was never seen thus in Israel.’

“But the Pharisees were saying, ‘He throws out demons by the ruler of the demons.’”

203. The verb I have translated “touched” I have usually translated “grasped,” but that translation seems inappropriate here. The word is usually translated “touched” in other places as well, but I believe people did not just touch Jesus and his clothes but grasped them, and that he did not normally just touch people but grasped them (even their tongues) in a reassuring way.

204. Blind and dumb: Matthew 12:22 = Luke 11:14. Deaf-mute: Mark 7:32-35.