I.
MAGICAL TECHNIQUE: TOUCH AND THE TRANSFERENCE
OF JESUS’ δύναμις
IN THE GOSPELS
Therapeutic touch was an important method of healing in antiquity and the
sick would often seek contact with powerful individuals from whom it was
believed their touch alone would suffice to bring about a cure. The touch of a
powerful miracle worker even had the potential to resurrect the dead; for
example, Philostratus reports that Apollonius of Tyana stopped the funeral
procession of a young bride, touched her, spoke inaudibly to her and she
immediately came back to life.[1] In the Old
Testament, Elijah and Elisha are depicted as resurrecting a boy by stretching
themselves full length on his corpse (in 1 Kings 17:21 and 2 Kings 4:34
respectively). Even contact with the saintly dead was thought to heal and
Augustine demonstrates this in the story of a blind man whose sight was
restored when he touched the remains of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius
with his handkerchief.[2]
‘conceptions of the mana type are so frequent and so widespread that
we should ask ourselves if we are not confronted with a permanent and universal
form of thought.’
Various attempts have been made by
anthropologists to explain the mystical mechanics behind touch as a method of
transferring mana. Most studies have made a direct, or indirect, appeal to the
laws of sympathetic magic by asserting that energy is transmitted according to
the law of extended personality (in which contact with a person allows the
patient to share in his power) or the Frazerian theory of ‘magical contagion’.
All three Synoptic authors mention touch as a
method used by Jesus to heal the sick. For example, Jesus heals Peter’s
mother-in-law in Mark’s Gospel by taking her by the hand and lifting her up
(Mk. 1:31) and he also touches the leper when healing him (Mk. 1:41).[4]
By portraying Jesus as able to heal the sick through contact alone, did the
Gospel writers presume that Jesus’ healing power had a mana-like quality? There
is evidence which suggests that mana was considered to be an active source of
miracle-working power during Jesus’ lifetime and a magical or mana-like
interpretation is certainly implied on occasions in the Gospels in which this
healing power appears to be unavailable (Mk. 6:5[5])
or Jesus experiences fluctuations or intermittency in the presence of his power.
For example, Lk. 5:17 tells us ‘the power of the Lord was present (ἠν) for him to heal’, which in turn suggests
that there were other occasions when it was not present. An example of this
apparent loss or absence of power is found in Mk. 5:30//Lk. 8:46 and this
passage provides valuable evidence that Jesus’ healing power had an independent
nature and, most importantly, that this healing power had mana-like
properties.
II.
THE WOMAN WITH A HAEMORRHAGE (MK. 5:25-34//MT. 9:18-22//LK. 8:43-48)
The magical overtones present in the story of the
woman with a haemorrhage confirm that there is a impersonal, mana-like power at
work in Jesus’ ministry. All three Synoptic accounts state that the woman who
approaches Jesus to be healed has been suffering with her illness for twelve
years (Mk. 5: 25//Mt. 9: 20//Lk. 8:43) and the cluster of aorist participles in
the Markan version conveys the sense that the woman has been seeking healing
for some time (Mk. 5:25-27). The woman’s motivation to approach Jesus is
revealed in the evangelists’ descriptions of her inner thoughts; she believes
that if she can simply touch Jesus’ clothing then she will be healed (Mk.
5:28//Mt. 9:21). When the woman touches Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, the healing
power reacts immediately (εὐθύς) and
Jesus only becomes aware that a healing has taken place after the event and
when he senses that ‘power had gone forth from him’ (τὴν ἐξ αὐτου δύναμιν ἐξελθουσαν, Mk. 5:30). Not only is
Jesus unaware that he has transmitted healing power, but he remains unaware
afterwards as to who touched him (‘who touched my garments?’, Mk. 5:30). The
statement ‘someone touched me’ in Lk. 8:46 may well indicate that the author of
Luke preferred to associate the transferral of healing power with Jesus’ physical
body rather than his clothes, particularly since there are other occasions in
which the author of Luke is uncomfortable with the transmission of power
through Jesus’ clothes. For example, although the observation that healing
power could be received by simply touching Jesus’ clothes is made even more
unequivocal in Mk. 6:56//Mt. 14:36 (‘they besought him that they might touch
even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well’), the
author of Luke simply reduces this contact to ‘the crowd sought to touch him’
(Lk. 6:19).
Transference of Jesus’ healing power through his
clothes and, most importantly, without his knowledge, suggests that his healing
power behaves automatically, independently and more like the ancient concept of
mana. Perhaps in an attempt to correct a manistic interpretation of the
potency of Jesus’ healing power, all three evangelists stress the importance of
faith and/or add a blessing from Jesus that is required in order for the
healing to take full effect, thereby suggesting that the healing power was
transferred at the will of Jesus. The author of Mark detracts from an
automatic, manistic transference of power and stresses that faith was the active
element which allowed the healing to take place (‘your faith has made you
well’, ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, Mk.
5:34). Similarly, the author of Matthew preserves the woman’s touch but
includes a blessing given by Jesus before the healing can take place,
effectively shifting the emphasis from the act of touching to the initial faith
of the woman (Mt. 9:22). We will come to address the importance of the faith of
the woman in this passage in Chapter 13, but for the time being it is
important to observe that faith is not an important factor in the Lukan version
of this story (Lk. 8:40-56) since there is no mention that the woman believes
that she will be healed by touching Jesus and the healing is almost
accidental.
Some commentators reject an automatic, mana-like
interpretation of Jesus’ healing powers in this passage and prefer instead to
highlight the relationship between Jesus’ δύναμις
and the Holy Spirit. The attribution of Jesus’ miracle-working
capabilities to the Holy Spirit is a particularly Lukan idea and it is within
Luke’s Gospel that we often find the terms δύναμις
and πνευμα used
interchangeably, as well as the ‘power of the Lord’ (δύναμις κυρίου e.g. Lk. 5:17) and the ‘power of the spirit’ (δυνάμει τοιυ πνεύματος, e.g. Lk. 4:14). The
author of Luke also has the crowds attribute Jesus’ healings to God (cf. Lk.
5:25-26; 7:16; 9:43; 13:13, 17:15; 18:43). However, although most scholars
would agree that the author of Luke makes an explicit association between δύναμις and God or the Holy Spirit, some
individuals disagree and argue that Luke does not regard the Spirit as an agent
of Jesus’ miracles.
Since God’s spirit is represented in the Old
Testament as a power that would be temporarily bestowed upon people to allow
them to perform a miracle, then a spiritual source could account for the
apparent intermittency in Jesus’ healing power.[6] However,
accounting for the fluctuations in Jesus’ δύναμις
on the basis of its reliance on a selective bequest from God is a theory
that is contradicted by Jesus’ ability to transmit this power to the disciples
(Mt. 10:1//Mk. 6:7-13//Lk. 9:1). Furthermore, it is difficult to situate the
Holy Spirit within this pericope with the aim of excluding a mana-like
understanding of Jesus’ healing power as the Spirit is noticeably absent in all
three Synoptic accounts. All three Synoptic authors agree that there are no
prayers or imprecations asking the Spirit to perform the healing and it
is not subsequently accredited with the miracle when Jesus discovers that the
healing has occurred.
Some attempts have been made to explain the
apparent absence of God or the Holy Spirit throughout this account. The most
frequent explanation is that Jesus is to be understood as a charismatic healer
and therefore he is not required to make a request. Nevertheless, by excluding
an appeal to a spiritual third-party and implying that Jesus’ healing power is an
in-dwelling energy that is held within himself, all three Synoptic authors
portray Jesus as a miracle-worker who is performing his miracles through
possession of a personal power. If the reader of the Gospels is to understand
that Jesus’ in-dwelling, numinous power is a mana-like energy, then we can
disconnect this particular healing from any divinely appointed power source and
situate it firmly within the realms of magic. However, if we must accept that
Jesus’ healing power derives from a spiritual source in this instance, then we
must also permit the possibility that this spiritual power is owned by Jesus within
himself.
Many scholars have found it difficult to account
for Jesus’ apparent role as a possessor of spiritual power in Mk. 5:25-34 and
parallels. However, by identifying Jesus’ possession of a spiritual power and
emphasising his jurisdiction over how it is applied, we are firmly laying the
foundations of spiritual magic. Although compounding strata of Christian
tradition has ensured that an inclination towards a Lukan connection between
Jesus’ du,namij and the Holy Spirit
remains the default option for the majority of modern readers of the Gospels, a
divine source of Jesus’ healing power would not have been the primary option
for a first-century audience. The early reader would certainly have been
familiar with the ancient worldview which maintained that the environment was
filled with an abundance of demons, angels, souls of the dead and numerous
other invisible, spiritual powers that could be manipulated, most often through
magical means, to achieve similar miraculous results as those accredited to
Jesus in the Gospels. Since the magicians of antiquity often had no need to
appeal to these spirits in order to obtain a miracle as the spirits, or even
the gods, were restrained, or bound, in such a way that they would simply
perform the miracle on request, the reader operating within this spiritual
environment may have presumed that Jesus had possession of a spiritual power
source in the same way that magicians and mediums in antiquity had possession
of a spirit.
With the spectre of the Holy Spirit lingering in
the background of many of the healing accounts in the Gospels and Jesus’
opponents also recognising a spiritual power at work in his miracles, it is
necessary to shift our attention from an examination of techniques of natural
magic and consider whether there is evidence in the Gospels which suggests that
Jesus was practicing a form of spiritual magic. However, before we make
any rash judgements regarding Jesus’ magical manipulation of his spiritual
powers in the Gospels, we must engage with the theory that the relationship
between Jesus and his spiritual power-source is to be understood as passive
spirit-possession, or ‘possession by’ a spirit.
Extract from Helen Ingram (2007) Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels, PhD, The University of Birmingham, UK.
BACK TO: MAGICAL MATERIALS
[1]
Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 4. 45.
[2]
Augustine, Confessions, 9. 7. 16.
[3]
C. Lévi-Strauss, ‘Introduction a l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss’ in Marcel
Mauss, Sociologie et Anthropologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1950) pp. xliii. For a thorough investigation into the theory of mana,
see M. Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. Robert Brain (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) pp. 108 – 121. See also Walter Grundmann,
‘du,namai / du,namij', TDNT vol 2, pp. 287-91.
[4]
For the ‘laying on of hands’ as a method of healing within the Gospels,
see Mk. 1:41; 6:5; 16:18;
Mt. 20:34; Lk 4:40.
[5]
Although in this particular instance Jesus appears to refuse to perform a
miracle since it is required for spectacle only. Similarly, Eunapius reveals in
his Lives of the Sophists that Iamblichus refused to do a miracle when
asked by one of his disciples since he thought that it was ‘irreverent to the
gods’ (Eunapius, The Lives of the Sophists, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright,
The Loeb Classical Library, (London, 1921) p. 369).
[6]
For example, in Judges 14:6 the Spirit of God comes upon Samson to endow
him with great strength.
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