THE LIFE OF JESUS. CHAPTER IX. SUnd-rf Book Number .WMJBM^ ..^..H^ss^aUloM^ Number: ,4-1071 W MIRACLES OP JESUS. This edition is printed on a liisili-qualitv. acid-free paper tluil meets specification reuuiremcnts for fine book paper referred § 91. JESUS CONSIDEKED AS A \VOEKEE OF MIRACLES. THAT the, Jewish people in the time,of Jesus expected miracles from the Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses and the greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the national legend attributed miracles of all kinds: by later Jewish writings it is rendered probable ;* by our gospels, certain. When Jesus on one occasion had (without natural means) cured a blind and dumb demoniac, the people were hereby led to ask: Is not this the son of David? (Matt. xii. 23,) a proof that a miraculous power of healing was regarded as an attribute of the Messiah. John the Baptist, on hearing of the works of Jesus, (;-P7«), sent to him with the inquiry, Art thou he that should come, (<-'p,W£l'°?) ? Jesus, in proof of the affirmative, merely appealed again to his miracles (Matt. xi. 2 ff. parall). At the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated by Jesus in Jerusalem, many of the people believed on him, saying, in justification of their faith, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these ivhich this man hath done (John vii. 31)? But not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the Messiah should work miracles in general,-the particular kinds of miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in * See tlie passages quoted, Introil. g 14, notes !), 10, to which may be added 4 Esdr. xiii. 50, (Faliric. Cod. pseudepigr. V. T. ii. p. 280,) and Sohar Exod. fol. iii. col. 12, (Schottgen, boras, ii. p. 541, also in liertholilt's Christol. \ 33, note 1.) 452 THE IJFE OP JESUS. accordance with Old Testament types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17): the same was expected, as the rabbins explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings Yi.): the Messiah also was to open the eyes of the "blind. By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been, raised (1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv.) : hence to the Messiah also power over death could not be wanting.* Among the prophecies, Isai. xxxv. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this portion of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times: Then, shall the eyes of the Hind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These words, it is true, stand in Isaiah in a figurative connexion, but they were early understood literally, as is evident from the circumstance that Jesus describes his miracles to the messengers of John (Matt. xi. 5) with an obvious allusion to this prophetic passage. Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when, according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38; xvi. 1. parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him ; when, after the violent expulsion, of the traders and money-changers from the Temple, the Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an assumption of authority (John ii. 18); and when the people in the synagogue of Capernaum, on his requiring faith in himself as the sent of God, made it a condition of this faith that he should show them a sign (John vi. 30). According to the Gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by his cotcmporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of the evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles; not only did his disciples after his death especially call to their own remembrance and to that of the Jews the dvvdfieic (miracles) ar/asla (signs') and -ripa-a (wonders) wrought by him (Acts ii. 22 ; comp. Luke xxiv. 19): but the people also were, even during his life, so well satisfied with this aspect of his character that many believed on linn in consequence (John ii. 23; comp. vi. 2), contrasted him with the Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed that he would not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 31). The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately after important miracles, e. g., after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii. 38 ; and after the feeding of the live thousand, John vi. 30. This position indeed creates a difficulty, for how the Jews could deny to these two acts the character of proper signs it is not easy to understand; the power of expelling demons, in particular, being rated very highly (Luke x. 17). The sign de- MIKACtES OP JESUS. 453 rnanded on these two occasions must therefore be more precisely defined according to Luke xi. 16 (comp. Matt. xvi. 1; Mark viii. 11), as a sign from heaven, or^eiov tf ovpavov, and we must understand it to be the specifically messianic siyn of the Son of Man in heaven, OTjuelov rov viov rov di'Oowrrov iv rw ovpavu (Matt. xxiv. 30). It however it be preferred to sever the connexion between these demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that Jesus may have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile Pharisees, who had not happened to be eye-witnesses of any of them, may still have desired to see one for themselves. That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses to comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself prove that lie might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other cases, when they appeared to him to be more seasonable. When in relation to the demand of the Pharisees, Mark viii. 12, he declares that there shall be no sign given to this generation, ry yevep ravrrj, or Matt. xii. 39 f.; xvi. 4; Luke xi. 29 f., that there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, it would appear that by this generation yevea, which in Matthew and Luke he characterizes as evil and adulterates, he could only mean the Pharisaic part of his cotemporaries who were hostile to him, and that he intended to declare, that to these should be granted either no sign at all, or merely the sign of Jonas, that is, as he interprets it in Matthew, the miracle of his resurrection, or as modern expositors think, the impressive manifestation of his person and teaching. But if we take the words ov 6oOi}aeT™™.A* 4',,iu, ,,,;+u +i,~ f.,^ *i-* :- -n,~ 454 THE LIFE OF JESUS. preaching and epistles of the apostles, a couple of general notices exceptcd (Acts ii. 22; x. 38 f.), the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown, and everything is built on his resurrection: on which the remark may be ventured that it could neither have been so unexpected nor could it have formed so definite an epoch, if Jesus had previously raised more than one dead person, and had wrought the most transcendent miracles of all kinds. This then is the question: Ought we, on account of the evangelical narratives of miracles, to explain away that expression of Jesus, or doubt is authenticity; or ought we not, rather, on the strength of that declaration, and the silence of the apostolic writings, to become distrustful of the numerous histories of miracles in the Gospels ? This can only be decided by a close examination of these narratives, among which, for a reason that will be obvious hereafter, we give the precedence to the expulsions of demons. § 92. THE DEMOJIIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY. AViHLE in the fourth gospel, the expressions tfcwfidwov e%etv to have a demon, and daipovi^onsvoc;, being a demoniac, appear nowhere except in the accusations of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to fiaiveoOai, to be mad (via. 48 f.; x. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30 ; Matt. xi. 18): the synoptists may be said to represent demoniacs as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. When they describe the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, they give the demoniacs daiftowfo/ievouc* a prominent place among the sufferers whom Jesus healed (Matt. iv. 24; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a chief part (Matt. viii. 16 f. ; Mark i. 39; iii. 11 f.; Luke vi. 18). The power to cast out devils is before any thing else imparted by Jesus to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15; vi. 7 ; Luke ix. 1), who to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13). Besides these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea of their peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at Capernaum is given by the evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark i. 23 ff.; Luke iv. 33 ft'.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of the self-consciousness, causing the possessed individuals to speak in the person of the demon, which appears also in other demoniacs, as for example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. parall.); on the other hand, spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This spasmodic state has, in the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt. xvii. 14 fT. parall.), reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, often in dangerous places, cries, gnashing * That the G&i]viy Matthew are only a particular >-- -*• .i.-----:.,......,1,,,^ ,m!»iodt/ finm.jLrwl to be governed by the changes of the moon, MIEACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 455 of the teeth, and foaming, are known symptoms of that malady. The other aspect of the demoniacal state, namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amounts in the demoniac of Gadara, by whose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of these evil spirits, speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with attacks of maniacal fury against himself and others, f Moreover, not only the insane and epileptic, but the dumb (Matt. ix. 32; Auke xi. 14; Matt. xii. 22, the dumb demoniac is also Hind) ancFthose suffering from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke xiii. 11 ff.), are by the evangelists designated more or less precisely as demoniacs. The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the gospels and shared by their authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit (daipoviov, nvevjia dtcdOapror') or several, have taken possession of them (hence their condition is described by the expressions daifioviov, K%EIV, dcupovi-£ea6ai, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak through their organs, (thus Matt. viii. 31, 01 daijj,ov£(; irapeKa^ovv avrov Aeycwrec,) and put their limbs in motion at pleasure, (thus Mark ix. 20, ~o -rrvevpa landpa^ev av~bv^ until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from the patient (t-ff/MAAsiv, ^ep^eadai). According to the representation of the evangelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true that when, as a means of liberating the possessed, lie addresses the demons within them (as in Mark ix. 25; Matt. viii. 32; Luke iv. 35), we might with PaulusJ regard this as a mode of entering into the fixed idea of these more or less insane persons, it being the part of a psychical physician, if he would produce any effect, to accommodate himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be convinced of its groundlessness. But this is not all; Jesus, even in his private conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks repeatedly on a supposition of its truth; as e. g. in Matt. x. 8, where he gives the commission, Oast out devils; in Luke x. 18 ff.; and especially in Matt. xvii. 21, parall., where lie says, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. Again, in a purely theoretical discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate circle of his disciples, Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea of his cotemporarics of the departure of the unclean spirit, his wandering in the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43 ft.). With these facts before us, the attempt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, such as Wiuer,§ to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on demonical possession, but merely accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer examination of the last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought of a mere accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators have sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by * Compare the passages of ancient physicians, ap. Winer, bibl. Realworterbueh. 1. 456 THE LIFE' OF JESUS. ~xv\j interpreting it figuratively, or even as a parable,* in every explanation of which (if we set aside 'such as that given l>y Olshausenf after Galmct,) the essential idea is, that superficial conversion to the cause of .Jesus is followed by a relapse into aggravated sin. J But, I would fain know, what justifies us in abandoning the literal interpretation of this discourse V In the propositions themselves there is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable by the general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else presents moral relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions: on the contrary, whenever he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil spirits, (;. g. in Matt. xvii. 21, he evidently intends to be understood literally. But does the context favour a figurative interpretation ? Luke (xi. 24 ft.) places the discourse in question after the defence of Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out devils by Beelzebub: a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have seen, but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak literally-of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the above accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of a sign, together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the application, Even so sfirdl.it lie also unto this wicked generation. This addition, it is true, gives the discourse a figurative application to the moral and religions condition of his co-temporaries, but only thus: Jesus intended the foregoing description of the expelled and returning demon literally, though he made a secondary use of this event as an image of the moral condition of his cotemporaries. At any rate Luke, who has not the same addition, gives the discourse of Jesus, to use the expression of Paulus, as a warning against demoniacal relapses. That the majority of theologians in the present day, without decided support on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction to Luke, advocate the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears to be founded in an aversion to ascribe to Jesus so strongly developed a demonology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not to be avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In Matt. xii. 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the devil, in a manner which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely figurative; but above all, the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18--20, is of such a nature as to compel even Paulus, who is generally so fond of lending to the hallowed personages of primitive Christian history the views of the present age, to admit that the kingdom of Satan was not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he believed in actual demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus here speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who themselves, according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his * Gratz, Comm. z. Matth. S. Gli>. f B. Comm. 1, S. 42-1. According to this, tha -1-*~" trt tin* .lavish tjeonle, who before the exile were possessed by the devil in ' •'•- + Tlma Fritzsche, MIEACLES OF JESUS----DEMONIACS. 457 words are not to be explained - as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their belief that the spirits are subject unto them, and describes their capability of curing the malady in question, as a power over the power of the cnsmjjj^ In answer also to the repugnance of those with whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal possession is inconsistent, to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theologian justly observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false idea, prevalent among his cotemporaries, if it happen to lie out of his peculiar sphere of thought, f Some light is thrown on the evangelical conception of the demoniacs, by the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less cotemporary. The general, idea that evil spirits had influence on men, producing melancholy, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among the GreelcsJ as well as the Hebrews : § but the more distinct idea that evil spirits entered into the human body and took possession of its members was not developed until a considerably later period, and was a consequence of the dissemination of the oriental, particularly the Persian pncuinatology among both Hebrews and Greeks. j| Hence we find in Joscplms the expressions Saifibvia rot? $&aiv eiadvofieva^ eyKaOe&neva** (demons entering into the living, settling themselves there), and the same ideas in Lucianff and Pliilostratus.JJ Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated in the gospels, except that they belong to the household of Satan (Mafr. xii. 26 ft', parall.), whence the acts of one of them are directly ascribed to Satan (Luke xiii. 16.). But from «Josephtts,§§ Justin MartyrJIJ] and Pliilostratus,T1" with whom rabbinical writings agree,*** we learn that these demons were the disembodied souls of wicked men ; and modern theologians have not scrupled to attribute this opinion on their origin to the New Testament also.ftt Justin *_Exeg. Hand!,. 2, S. T.flG. f t't sup, I. B. S. 483, 2, S. 90. } Hence the words tei/tovav. Ko.noSa.tu.tn.-iiv were used as synonymous with ,«£vlay,toAa)'. fiaivec^ai. Hippocrates had to combat the opinion that epilepsy was the cft'ect of demonical influence. Vid. Wet-ftein, S. 282 If § Let the reader compare the fT!!T> fiXlS !"!"") Fill, which made Saul melancholy, * T 1 •• •• T T ' •* ' 1 Sam. xvi. 14. Its influence on Saul is expressed by -iCl^sa || Vid. Creuzer, Sym-lolik. 8. S. CO f.; Baur, Apollonius von Tynna and Christus, S. 144. ^f Bell. jud. vii. vi. S. ** Antiq. vi. xi. 2. On the state of Saul. ft Philopseud. 1C. §§ Vitie S^f;;^ « ^^^^^^'^^^^^ ±rlSf L" 458 THE LIFE OP JESUS. and;the Rabbins move nearly particularize, as spirits that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who -allied themselves to the daughters of men: the rabbins further add the souls of these who perished in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel ;* and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for according to them also, these souls of the giants having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies.t As, however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it;+ while Jo-sephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, aud of the great criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only engendered by the union of the Graico-roman culture with the Hebraic : the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like,-all names for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. Now, the combination of these Gratco-roman ideas with the above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to have been the source of the demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of the later rabbins: but it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to the New Testament. Rather, as this Grgecised form of the doctrine in question is nowhere positively put forth by the evangelical writers, while on the contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household of Satan: there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from the unu;;_vedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the synop- even were it implied, is totally different from that of demonical possession. Here it would lie a good spirit who had entered into a prophet for the strengthening of his powers, as according to a Inter Jewish idea the soul of Seth. was united to that of Moses, and again the souls of .Moses and Aaron to that of Samuel (Eisenmenger. tit sup.); but from this it n-AiiM w Tin means follow, that it was possible for wieiud spirits to enter into the living. J- IT.,.,,;, ,.;;; 1 rt f . ix. 9 f. J Oat. MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 459 tical "-ospels on all otnW subjects (apart from Christian modifications): namely, that we must attribute to them the pure and original Jewish conception of the doctrine of demons. It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the authority of Jesus and the evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, especially since the time of .Sender,* in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes, to the prejudices of that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, insanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence: and the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the knowledge of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of facts and analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions naturally; partly that the contradiction, involved in the idea of demoniacal possession, is beginning to be at least dimly perceived. For,-apart from the difficulties which the notion of the existence of a devil and demons entails,-whatever theory may be held as to the relation between the self-consciousness and the bodily organs, it remains absolutely inconceivable how the union between the two could be so far dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an entrance, thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place. Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with enlightened eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones, there results the contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural causes, must in the time of Jesus have been caused supcr-naturally. In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions of one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the New Testament, Olsliausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both that all states of the kind in question ^liavc now a natural cause, and that they had in the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause. With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? We answer, they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as their conductor feee his Commentfitlo de davnoni'icis quorum in Ar. T.Jit mentio, and his minute consideration of demonical cases. So early as the time of Origen, physicians gave natural explanations of the state of those supposed to be possessed. Orig. in Matlh. xvii. 15. 460 THE LIFK OP JESUS. aou would very properly endeavour to set them right: whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those inmates would not bo at all affected. With respect to the time of Jesus, this theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even "by the Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference in their origin: for example, one who had become insane through an organic disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of the tongue, was not looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause of whose condition was more or less psychical. Of such a distinction in the time of Jesus, Olshausen is manifestly bound to give us instances. Whence could the Jews of that age have acquired their knowledge of the latent natural causes of these conditions-whence the criterion by which to distinguish an insanity or imbecility originating in a malformation of the brain, from one purely psychical V Was not their observation limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest character? The nature of their •. i.~ 4.1,•..„ . 4-1,p sts,to Of an epileptic with his sud- l'ui^v v~j - phenomena, and those of the coarsest ciiaraeici ; jm^ ,„....._ . distinctions scorns to be this: the state of an epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his delirium, especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea respecting himself he speaks in the person of another, seems to point to an external influence which governs him ; and consequently, so soon as the belief in demoniacal possession existed among the people, all such states were referred to this cause, as we find them to be in the New Testament: whereas in dumbness and gouty contraction or lameness, the influence of an external power is less decidedly indicated, so that these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a possessing demon, at another not so. Of the former case we find an example in the dumb persons already mentioned, Matt. ix. 82; xii. 22, and in the woman who was bowed down, Luke xiii. 11; of the latter, in the man v~ho was deaf and luid an impediment in his speech, Mark vii. 32 ff., and in the many paralytics mentioned in the gospels. The decision for the one opinion or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then the Jews, and with them the evangelists, referred the two chief classes of these conditions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modem science, the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural. Bui the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted mediation between the Judaical dcmonology of the New Testament and the intelligence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on his own mind-an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of personal demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the present age, endeavours to resolve the host of demons, - T,,..4-nv««v.t nvn. regarded as distinct individuals, 1 i MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 461 stance, which indjd sends forth from itself separate powers, not, however to subsiW as independent individuals, but to return as accidents into the unity of the substance. This cast of thought we have already observed in the opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it appears still more decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons-are too repugnant, and as Olshausen himself expresses it,* the comprehension of two subjects in one individual is too inconceivable, to rind a ready acceptation. Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a kingdom of evil and darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince is given to it, its demons are understood to be mere effluxes, and operations, by which the evil principle manifests itself. But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen's opinion concerning demons is this: it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ ;^hence he understands the question, What is thy name? (Mark v. 9.) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to the man,t plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the right answer-the one expected by Jesus. If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen's opinion, impersonal powders, that which guides them and determines their various functions is the, law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation to the kingdom of light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally, the closer must be the connexion between him and the kingdom of evil, and the closest conceivable connexion-the entrance of the power of darkness into the personality of the man, i. e. possession-must always occur in the most wicked. But historically this is not so: the demoniacs in the gospels appear to be sinners only in the sense that all sick persons need forgiveness of sins; and the greatest sinners (Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The common opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is true that this opinion also, as we find for instance in the Clementine Homilies, firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects himself to the ingress of the demon ;J but here there is yet scope for the individual will ot the demon, who often, from motives not to be calculated, passes by the worst, and holds in chase the less wicked. § On the contrary, it the demons are considered, as by Olshausen, to be the actions of the power of evil in its relation to the power of goodness; this relation being regulated by laws, every thing arbitrary and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs that theologian some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to his theory the pos- * S. 295 f. f S. 302, after (he example of Taulus, exeg. Handbucli, 1. B. S. 474. } Homil. viii. 1'J. | Thus Asmodeus chooses Sara and her husband as olijects of torment and destruction, not because either the former or the latter v.-pn- nnrti..,ii.,.•!.- ™;..i,n,i i...' 462 THE LIFE OP JESUS. sessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from the apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position that the state of demonical possession does not appear in those who entirely give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal unity of disposition, hut only in those in whom there exists a struggle against sin.* In that case, however, the above state, being reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must appear far move frequently ; every violent inward struggle must manifest itself under this form, and especially those who ultimately give themselves up ~i ™,,at "hpfore arriving at this point, pass through a period of ~' - 44,01-nfove adds a physical * MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 463 to evil must, oeiore um,,,.^ ... conflict, that is of possession. Olshausen therefore f the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the nervous system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that the state which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its proper source, is thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that therefore the argument defeats its own object ? Hence Olshauscn. quickly turns away from this side of the question, and lingers on the comparison of the <5a£fiow£6/j,evf (demoniac) with the irovTjpbg (icickect); whereas he ought rather to compare the former with the epileptic and insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be thrown on the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the ground of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders the discussion concerning the demoniacs, one of the most useless which Olshausen's work contains.t Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New Testament conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern ideas ;-let us rather, in relation to this subject, understand the statements of the New Testament as simply as they are given, without allowing our investigations to be restricted by the ideas therein presented, which belonged to the age and nation of its writers.£ The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have been the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady-was not supposed to be, as in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such as an impure fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a self-conscious being; hence it was treated, not mechanically or chemically, but logically, i. e. by words. The demon was enjoined to depart; and to give effect to this injunction, it was coupled with the names of beings who were believed to have power over demons. Hence the main instrument against demoniacal pos- * « 994. t It fills S. 289-298. J I have endeavoured to present helps towards 5- ~'ioaMnn in several essays, which are now incorpo- -!.,. ^.unnambuUsmus, session was conjuration,* either in the name of God, or of angels, UK of some other potent being, e. g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 18), with certain forms which were said to be derived from Solomon,! In addition to this, certain roots,}: stones, § fumigations and amulets || were used, in obedience to traditions likewise believed to have been handed down from Solomon. Now as the cause of the malady was not seldom really a psychical one, or at least one lying in the nervous system, which may be acted on to an incalculable extent by moral instrumentality, this psychological treatment was not altogether illusory; for by exciting in the patient the belief that the demon by which he was possessed, could not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it might often effect the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that the Jewish exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 27). But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and without the appliance of any further means, he expelled the demons by his word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the gospels inform us, we are now about to examine. § 93. CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMON'S BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY. AMONG- the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three first gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are especially remarkable : the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, that of the Gadarcnes possessed by a multitude of demons, and lastly, that of the lunatic whom the disciples were unable to cure. In John, the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle performed by Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; but in Mark (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 ft'.) the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum has this position. Jesus had produced a deep impression by his teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac who was present, cried out in the character of the demon that possesed him, that lie would have nothing to do with him, that he knew him to be the Messiah who was come to destroy them-the demons ; whereupon Jesus commanded the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which happened amid cries and convulsions on the part of the demoniac, and to the great astonishment of the people at the power thus exhibited by Jesus. Here we might, with rationalistic commentators, represent the case to ourselves thus: the demoniac, during a lucid interval, entered the synagogue, was impressed by the powerful discourse of Jesus, and overhearing one of the audience speak of him as the Messiah, was seized with the idea, that the unclean spirit by which he was * See the passage quoted from Lucian, page 457, note (ft). f Joseph. Antiq. viii. t Joseph, ut sup. | Gittin, f. Ixvii. 2. || Justin. Mart. dial. c. Tryph. Ixxxv. 464 THE LIFE OF JESUS. •4D* possessed, could not maintain itself in the presence of the holy Messiah ; whence he fell into a paroxysm, and expressed his awe of Jesus in the character of the demon. When Jesus perceived this, what was more natural than that he should make use of the man's persuasion of his power, and command the demon to come out of him, thus laying hold of the maniac by his fixed idea; which, according to the laws of mental hygiene, might very probably have a favourable effect. It is under this view that Paulus regards the occasion as that on which the thought of using his messianic fame as a means of curing such sufferers, first occurred to Jesus.* But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon speaking through the man evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, in the words, old a ae -if d K. r. X., not as information casually imparted by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature. Further, when Jesus cries, Hold thy peace! he refers to what the demon had just uttered concerning his mes-siahship; for it is related of Jesus that he suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him (Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 41), or because they made him knowrii (Mark iii. 12.). If then Jesus believed that by enjoining silence on the demon he could hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, he must have been of opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something of it from the people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might learn it from the demoniac ; and this accords with the fact, that at the time of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the evangelists place the occurrence, no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah. If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the Messiah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into his service the preteruaturaHy heightened activity of the nervous system, which, in demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the prescntient power, and produces a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such a man might very well discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the whole realm of spirits. The evangelical narrative, it is true, does not ascribe that knowledge to a power of the patient, but of the demon dwelling within him, and this is the only view consistent with the Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, in order to overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (d-oAtaat fyiac, comp. 1 John iii. 8; Luke x. 18 f.)[ and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of tire (Matt. xxv. 41; llev. xx. 10.) :J it followed of course that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them.§ This, how- * Exeg. Handb. i. (i. S. 422 ; L. J. 1, a, S. 128. + Bibl. Coimn. i. '2U(5. % Comp. Bevtholdt, Cliristol. Jud. §§ 36-11. \ According - •• - ._: a t, iwtlmldt. n, 185.) Satan recognizes in the MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 465 ever, might be deducted, as an admixture of the opinion of the narrator, without damage to the rest of the narrative; but it must first be granted admissible to ascribe so extensive a prescntient power to demoniacal subjects. Now, as it is in the highest degree improbable that a nervous patient, however intensely excited, should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when he was not believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by himself; and as on the other hand this recognition of the .Messiah bv the demon so entirely agrees with the popularvideas ;-we must conjecture that on this point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with historical truth, but has been attuned to those ideas.* There was the more inducement to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on the part oi the demons would redound to his glory. As when adults disowned him, praise was prepared for him out of the mouth of babes (Matt. xxi. 16.)-1-as he was convinced that if men were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke xix. 40.): so it must appear fitting, that when his people whom he came to save would not acknowledge him, he should have the involuntary homage of demons, whose testimony, since they had only ruin to expect from him, must be.impartial, and from their higher spiritual nature, was to be relied on. In the above history of the-cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the simplest kind; the cure of the possessed Gadarencs on the contrary (Matt. viii. 28 if.; Mark v. 1 ff. ; Luke via. 26 if.) is a very complex one, for in this instance we have, together with several divergencies of the evangelists, instead of one demon, many, and instead of a simple departure of these demons, their entrance into a herd of swine. After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore, Jesus meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among the tombs,f and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself | and other,?; according to Matthew, there were two. It is astonishing how Ions harmonists have resorted to miserable expedients, such as that Mark and Luke mention only one because he was particularly distinguished by wildness, or Matthew two, because he included the attendant who guarded the maniac,§ rather than admit an essential difference between the two narratives. Since this step lias been gained, the preference has been given to the state- In spexe- 7. * Paulus. L. J, 1, a, . MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 467 meets u«. According to Matthew, the possessed, when they see Jesus, cry: What have we to do with theef Art thou come to torment us /-according to Luke, the demoniac falls at the teet ot Jesus and says beseechingly, Torment me not; and lastly, according to Mark, he runs from a distance to meet Jesus, falls at his feet and adjures him by God not to torment him. Thus we have again a climax: in Matthew, the demoniac, striken with terror, deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus ; in Luke, he accosts Jesus, when arrived, as a suppliant; in Mark, he eagerly runs to meet Jesus, while yet at a distance. Those commentators who here take Mark's narrative as the standard one, are obliged themselves to admit, that the hastening of a demoniac towards Jesus whom he all the while dreaded, is somewhat of a contradiction; and they endeavour to relieve themselves of the difficulty, by the supposition that the man set oft' to meet Jesus in a lucid moment, when he wished to be freed from the demon, but being heated by running,* or excited by the words of Jesus, f he fell into the paroxysm in which, assuming the character of the demon, he entreated that the expulsion might be suspended. But in the closely consecutive phrases of Mark, Seeing-he ran-and -icorshijrped-and cried--and said ISuv-'iSpatte-nal TrpoaeitvvTjae-nai, Kpd^ag-eiTre, there is no trace of a change in the state of the demoniac, and the improbability of his representation subsists, for one really possessed, if he had recognised the Messiah .at a distance, would have anxiously avoided, rather than have approached him ; and even setting this aside, it is impossible that one who believed himself to be possessed by a demon inimical to God, should adjure Jesus by God, as Mark makes the demoniac do.J If then his narrative cannot be the original one, that of Luke which is only so far the simpler that it docs not represent the demoniac as running towards Jesus and adjuring him, is too closely allied to it to be regarded as the nearest to the fact. That of Matthew is without doubt the purest, for the terror-stricken question, Art thou come to destroy us before the time ? is better suited to a demon, who, as the enemy of the Messiah's kingdom, could expect no forbearance from the Messiah, than the entreaty for clemency in Mark and Luke; though Philostratus, in a narrative which might be regarded as an imitation of this evangelical one, has chosen the latter form.§ From the course of the narratives hitherto, it would appear that the demons, in this as in the first narrative, addressed Jesus in the manner described, before anything occurred on his part; yet the two intermediate evangelists go on to state, that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. When did Jesus do this? The most natural answer would be: before the * Katiirliche Gescliichtc, 2, 174, f Paulus, exeg. Ilanclb., 1, S. 473 ; Olshausen, 8, 301', | Tliis even Failing S. -174, and Olsliaus™, S.'iiO:-!, find surprising. § It is tha narrative of tins manner in which Apollonius of Tyana unmasked a demon reninusaX vitt 468 THE LIFE OF JESUS. man spoke to him. Now in Luke the address of the demoniac is so closely connected with the word -xpoa£-eaE, lie fell down, and then again with dvaKpd^ag, having cried out, that it seems necessary to place the command of Jesus before the cry and the prostration, and hence to consider it as their cause. Yet Luke himself rather gives the mere sight of Jesus as the caxi.se of those demonstrations on the part of the demoniac, so that his representation leaves us in perplexity as to where the command of Jesus should find its place. The case is still worse in Mark, for here a similar dependence of the successive phrases thrusts back the command of Jesus even before the word tdpape, ke ran, so that we should have to imagine rather strangely that Jesus cried to the demon, t-^eWe, Come out, from a distance. Thus the two intermediate evangelists are in an error with regard either to the consecutive particulars that precede the command or to the command itself, and our only question is, where may the error be most probably presumed to lie? Here Schleiermachcr himself admits, that if in the original narrative an antecedent command of Jesus had been spoken of, it would have been given in its proper place, before the prayer of the demons, and as a quotation of the precise words of Jesus; whereas the supplementary manner in which it is actually inserted, with its abbreviated and indirect form (in Luke; Mark changes it after his usual style, into a direct address), is a strong foundation for the opinion that it is an explanatory addition furnished by the narrator from his own conjecture.* And it is an extremely awkward addition, for it obliges the reader to recast his conception of the entire scene. At first the pith of the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognised and supplicated Jesus ; but the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his command in the first instance. To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put by Jesus to the demon: What is thy name? In reply, a multitude of demons make known their presence, and give as their name, Legion. Of this episode Matthew has nothing. In the above addition we have found a supplementary explanation of the former part of the narrative: what if this question and answer were an anticipatory introduction to the sequel, and likewise the spontaneous production of the legend or the narrator1/ Let us examine the reasons that render it probable: the wish immediately expressed by the demons to enter the herd of swine, does not in Matthew pro-suppose a multitude of demons in cacii of the two * Tit. snp, S. 1-8. When, however, lie accounts fur this in. or.'cct supplement of Luke's by supposing that his informant, being engaged in the vessel, had remained behind, and thus had missed the commencement of ttie scene ^'ith tile demoniac, this is too l.>i,^n,-f,rl .in exercise of ingenuity, and pre-supposes th.! antiquated opinion, that tlieie \va3 " ' '-'.-•:........I'd,,, c,,,.t< wlueli MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 469 possessed, since we cannot know whether the Hebrews were not able to believe that even two demons only could possess a whole herd of swine: but a later writer might well think it requisite to make the number of the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, what a herd is in relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in relation to men, and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman legion, which term in Matt. xxvi. b'A, is applied to angels, as here to demons. But without further considering this more precise estimate of the evangelists, we must pronounce it inconceivable that several demons had set up their habitation in one individual. _ For even if we had attained so fur as to conceive how one demon by a subjection of the human consciousness could possess himself of a human organization, imagination would still fail us to conceive that many personal demons could at once possess one man. For as possession means nothing else, than that the demon constitutes himself the subject of the consciousness, and as consciousness can in reality have but one focus, one central point: it is under every condition absolutely inconceivable that several demons should at the same time take possession of one man. Manifold possession could only exist in the sense of an alternation of possession by various demons, and not as here in that of a whole arinv of them dwellinir at once in one man, and at once departing ti O A O from him. All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep,) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing- to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked : how can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men,--how, we say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish to enter into brutal forms V Everv rcligion and philosophy which rejects the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of this passage ot the demons into swine: and Olshausen is quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam's ass in the, Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block,'* This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation, that we are here to suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely an influence ot all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For the expression, eweMelv elg -ovy xolpovg, to enter into the swine, as it stands opposed to the expression, e&AJOeiv iic rov dvOpunov, to go out of the )/utn, 470 THE LIFE OF JESUS. •XI \J cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from banishment oat of the country or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires ;* if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit TTvevfta dudOaprov^ than an impure animal £wov andOaprov, like a swine ?f So far, therefore, it is possible that the evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the evangelists affirm an evident impossibility ? Paulus thinks that the evangelists here as everywhere else identify the possessed men. with the possessing demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in tact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their iixed idea, rushed upon the hcrd.f It is true that Matthew's expression anT\Wov et? TOVI; ^oipot'c, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, docs the word eloe^Qov-eg in the two other evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine ; but also Matthew has like them before the word diri}X6ov, they entered, the expression K&XOovret; ol <5aiju.oi>£c, the demons coming out (sc. £K TWV dvOp&TTMv out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men. § Thus our evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their age: they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the. manner they allege. A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to have produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they compelled the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is reasonably asked, what then did the demons gain by entering into the animals, if they immediately destroyed the bodies of which they had taken possession, and thus robbed themselves of the temporary abode for which they had so earnestly entreated ? || The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying the * Clem. Horn. ix. 10. f Fritzsche, in Matth. p. 322. According to Kisenmenger, 2, 447 IV., the Jews held that demons generally had a predileetion for impure places, and =- T»n,,,t 1;,,!,„„! f x 2. (Wetstein) we find this observation : Animt i'lolotru.rttM, qua " '-> <<«-• Winer, bibl. I'.ualw.. MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 471 swine was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual result,* is too far-fetched; the other conjecture that the demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water, f-even if" it were not opposed as wejiave seen to the text,-would not suffice to explain the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to 2,000, according to Mark; or only a numerous herd, according to the general statement of Matthew. The expedient of supposing, that in truth it was only a part of the herd that was drowned,}: has not the slightest foundation in the evangelical narrative. The difficulties connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection that the drowning of the herd would involve O no slight injury to the owners, and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author. The orthodox, bent on justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to enter into the swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac possible, and, they argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man may live ;§ but they "do not perceive that they thus, in a manner most inconsistent with their point of view, circumscribe the power of Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, it is supposed, that the swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus intended to punish them for their covetous transgression of the law, || that he acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual o;ood to higher objects, and bv liffhtninar, • 1 T ' 1 G, ° hail and inundations causes destruction to the property ol many men,T in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be absurd.** But to adopt this expedient is to confound, in a way the most inadmissible on the orthodox system, Christ's state of humiliation with his state of exaltation: it is to depart, in a spirit of mysticism, from the wise doctrine of Paul, that he was made under the law, yevo-[isvog v-b vofiov (Gal. iv. 4.), and that he made himself of no reputation eav-ov KK&VUOE (Phil. ii. 7): it is to make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of humanity. Nothing remains therefore, but to take the naturalistic supposition of the rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to represent the consequent destruction of the latter, as something unexpected by Jesus, for which therefore he is not responsible :ft in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical account, which makes Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in the most decided manner.Jt Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative. §§ It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he lib- * Olshausen, S. 307. f Paulus, S. 474. { Paulus, S. 485 ; Winer, ut sup. % Olsliausen, ut sup. || Ibid. f Ullmann. tiber die Unsuudlichkeit Jesu, in seinen Studien, 1, ], S. ol f. it Paulas. Jf Ullmann. §§ E. g. AVoolston, Disc. I ** Olsliausen. ut sup. n. 32 ff. r 472 THE LIFE OF JESUS. crated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them.* Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which rased durinar his O ' J O O voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, cither he himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then believed and reported to be the fact.t K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the two events^ stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the. mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained ? We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of information, that will throw light on this also. Joscphus tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he sat a vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was out of the man. § In like manner it is narrated of Appollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to depart with a visible sign whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue "- «>•»- r,*. „** Pvthaa. no. 36, ed. Kiesslmg. f In the Abhandlung iiber Ge-•-•-->. M,,«0,,m. i. 3. s. 410 ff. MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS. 473 that stood near at hand; which to the'great astonishment of the spectators actually ensued, in the very moment that the demon went out of the youth.* If then the agitation of some near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a little (junpov} removed from the exerciser and the patient, the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other evangelists, the fact that the herd of swine was feeding a good way off (juucpav), thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the ralation between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the history first considered: he must have succeeded in the most difficult cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of wkom were cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2.), or in the demoniacal relapse in which the expelled demon returns with seven worse than himself (Matt. xii. 45); whence the number of the demons was here made, especially by Mark, to exceed by far the probable number of a herd. As in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;-what wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory features in the narrative ? The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has the peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain attempt the cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three synoptists (Matt. xvii. 14 ff.; Mark ix. 14ff.; Lukeix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus, having descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transtip-m-ntinn frmn/I 476 THE LIFE OF JESUS. declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see; and if we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion on which it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the original one, for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the disciples in an attempted cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more effective by other additions, "besides this episode with the father ; he tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead; but that Jesus, taking him by the hand, as lie does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 25), lifts him up and restores him to life. After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a brief notice of the astonishment of the people ; but the two first synoptists pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon? In Matthew, the immediate reply of Jesus accounts for their incapability by their unbelief; but in Mark, his answer is, This kind (joeth not out but by prayer and fading, which Matthew also adds after the discourse on unbelief and the power of faith. This seems to be an unfortunate connexion of Matthew's; for if fasting and praying were necessary for the cure, the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, could not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest faith.* Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the inability of the disciples can be made consistent by the observation, that fasting and prayer are means of strengthening faith :\ or whether we are to suppose with Schleicr-macher an association of two originally unrelated passages, we will not here attempt to decide. That such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on the part of the exorcist should have effect on the possessed, has been held surprising: it has been thought with Porphyry, J that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has been supposed that the ^po- *"••* «•:„„, i s 1f)1. S I'aulus, cxeg. Handb. 2, 8 MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 477 scribed discipline, gradually recovered. But we need only observe the same form of expression where it elsewhere occurs as the final sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced of the impossibility of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story of the woman who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22.) aal sawdrj f/ yvvfj dnb rfc upat; KKBIVT/^ this will hardly be translated, et exinde mulier paidatim servabatur : it can only mean : scrvata est (et servatam se prcefaiif) ab illo temporis momenta, Another point to which Paulus appeals as a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to be consummated by degrees, is the expression of Luke, direduKev airbv -<3 -rrarpl avrov, he delivered him again to his father, which, he argues, would have been rather superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a recommendation to special care. But the more immediate signification of dnodidupt, is not to deliver or give up, but to give back; and therefore in the above expression the only sense is: puerum, quern sanandum accepcrat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy who had fallen into the hands of a strange power-of the demon-was restored to the parents as their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to take the expression eimopeiieTai, ffoeth out, (Matt. v. 21) in the closer signification of a total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18)! Thus in this case, as in every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was protracted through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously completed by one miracle: hence the fasting and prayer cannot be regarded as a prescription for the patient. With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2 Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme cllfiiculty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here insufficient. Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already sufficiently examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with Beelzelmh- »* »i< +1,, 478 THE LIFE OF JESUS. down, ill our general considerations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed daughter of the Canaanitisli woman (Matt. xv. 22 ff.; Mark vii. 25 ft'.) has no further peculiarity than that it was wrouo'ht by the word of Jesus at a distance: a point of which we shall speak later. According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel the demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that cures of this kind, although they contributed more than any thing else to impress the multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the easiest in themselves, and even I)e AVette sanctions a psychological explanation of the cures of demoniacs, though of no others.* With these opinions we cannot but agree ; for if we regard the real character of the demoniacal state as a species of madness accompanied by a convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that psychical and nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical influence;-an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a prophet, and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the requisite conditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these states, according as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed itself corporeally, and the disturbance of the nervous system has become more or less habitual, and shared by the rest of the organization. AVe may therefore lay down the following rule: the more strictly the malady was confined to mental derangement, on which the word of Jesus might have an immediate moral influence, or in a comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the more possible was it for Jesus by his word Aoyw (Matt. via. 16.), and instantly irapaxp^a (Luke xiii. 13.), to put an end to such states: on the other hand, the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a bodily disease, the. more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able to relieve it in a purely psychological manner and at the first moment. From this rule results a second: namely, that to any extensive psychological influence on the part of Jesus the full recognition of his dignity as a prophet was requisite; whence it follows that at times and in. districts where he had long had that reputation, he could effect more in this way than where Tic had it not. If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall find that the first, viz. that of the demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, is not, so soon as we cease to consider the evangelist's narrative of it circumstantially correct, altogether destitute of probability. It is true that the words attributed to the demon seem to imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus; but this may be probably accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread fame of Jesus in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, had impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that J esus ....." " «,a . T.. .T. 1. R. 9. 223; De Wiitte, bibl. Dogm. J MIKACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS. 479 was the Messiah, as the evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet: a belief that would give effect to his words. As regards the state of this demoniac we are only told of his fixed idea, (that he was possessed,) and of his attacks of convulsions ; his malady may therefore have been of the. less rooted kind, and accessible to psychological influence. The cure of the Gadarcnes is attended with more difficulty in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively little known on the eastern shore; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs is described as so violent and dcepseated a mania, that a word from Jesus could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural explanation of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the narrative as having any foundation in fact, •we must suppose that the description of the demoniac's state, as well as other particulars, has been exaggerated by the legend. The same judgment must be passed in relation to the cure of the boy who was lunatic, since an epilepsy which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the attacks of which were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the system for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years' duration, which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that speech or an erect carriage was not permitted,*-that these afflictions should disappear at a word, no one who is not committed to dogmatical opinions can persuade himself! Lastly, least of all is it to be conceived, that even without the imposing influence of his presence, the miracle-worker could effect a cure at a distance, as Jesus is said to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish woman. Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission, that Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal insanity or nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendency of his manner and words (if indeed Venturini f and Kaiser £ are not right in their conjecture, that patients of this class often believed themselves to be cured, when in fact the crisis only by their disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus; and that the evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned nothing further of them, and thus know nothing of their probable relapse). But while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in this field the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier cases, which alone could be cured psychologically with the most difficult and complicated, to which sn"h a treatment was totally inapplicable. § Is the refusal of a sign on the part of Jesus rcconcilcable with such a manifestation of power as we have above defined,-or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically, but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be ^ * Excg. Ilandb. in loc, f Xaturliche Goschichte, 2, S. 429. J Bill. Thcol. 1, oi 190, Q Among the transient disorders on which Jesus may have acted psychologically, we may perhaps mimbi'r thp fWoi-Af i>..to-'-.""*'.....••- '.......•-' ' ' ' '' ' 480 THE LIFE OF JESUS. denied in order to make that refusal comprehensible ? We will not here put this alternative otherwise than as a question. If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that is does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This omission lias not seldom been turned to the advantage of the apostle John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of enlightenment.* If however this apostle did not believe in the reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But how could the apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession ? According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion, from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to liberate himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John's adored master, irom whom the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a hair's breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporarics and with Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that the apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That he passed over them because the other evangelists had collected enough of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these because they needed correction,-we have seen, in our examination of the cures of demoniacs, that in many, a reduction of them to their simple historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, covdd or should an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus? Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks, * It is so more or less by Eichhorn, in the allg. Biuliothek, 4, S. 435 ; Herder, von ".....- * ' ° •"«• '•>" WoftB. hiliL % MIRACLES OP JESUS-CUKES OF LEPERS. 481 •were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel. T" § 94. CUKES OF LEPERS. AMONG the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent paft, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate of Palestine to produce cutaneous disease. When, accord-. ing to the synoptical writers, Jesus directs the attention of the Baptist's messengers to the actual proofs which he had given of his Messiahship (Matt. ix. 5), he adduces, among these, the cleansing of lepers ; when, on the first mission of the disciples, he empowers them to perform all kinds of miracles, the cleansing of lepers is numbered among the first (Matt. x. 8.), and two cases of such cures are narrated to us ill detail. One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is placed by them in two different connexions: namely, by Matthew, immediately after the delivery of the sermon on the mount (viii. 1 ff.); .by the other evangelists, at some period, not precisely marked, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff.; Luke v. 12 if.). According to the narratives, a leper comes towards Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed; this Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself to the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean (Lev. xiv. 2 ff.). The state of the man is in Matthew and Mark described simply by the word Aerrpoc, a leper; but in Luke more strongly, by the words, 7rA?;p?/c AtTrpoc, full of leprosy. Paulus, indeed, regards the being thus replete with leprosy as a symptom that the patient was curable (the eruption and peeling of the leprosy on the entire skin being indicative of the healing crisis); and accordingly, that commentator represents the incident to himself in the following manner. The leper applied to Jesus in his character of Messiah for an opinion on his state, and, the result being favourable, for a declaration that he Avas clean (d #£/l«f, dvvaoai pe icaOapiaai), which might either spare him an application to the priest, or at all events give him a consolatory hope in making that application. Jesus expressing himself ready to make the desired examination, (0eAw,) stretched out his hand, in order to feel the patient, without allowing too near an approach while he was possibly still capable of communicating contagion; and after a careful examination, he expressed, as its result, the conviction that the patient was no longer in a contagious state (Kaeapia&7)Ti), whereupon quickly and easily (ei>0ea>c) the leprosy actually disappeared.* _ Here, in the first place, the supposition that the leper was precisely at the crisis of healing is foreign to the text, which in the 482 THE LIFE OF JESUS. two first evangelists speaks merely of leprosy, while the TrAj/p?;? AeTrpa? of the third can mean nothing else than the Old Testament expression s^os s"1'^, (Exod. iv. 6; Num. xii. 10; 2 Kings v. 27.), which, according to the connexion in every instance, signifies the worst stage of leprosy. That the word KaOapifav in the Hebraic and Hellenistic use of the Greek language, might also mean merely to pronounce clean is not to be denied, only it must retain the signification throughout the passage. But that after having narrated that Jesus had said, He thou clean, KuBapiodrjTi, Matthew should have added ita} evOeus inadaplaOrj K. r. X. in the sense that thus the sick man was actually pronounced clean by Jesus, is, from the absurd tautology such an interpretation would introduce, so inconceivable, that we must here, and consequently throughout the narrative, understand the word K.aQapl&a~ai of actual cleansing. It is sufficient to remind the reader of the expressions AeTrpoi naQa-pifrv-ai, the lepers are cleansed, (Matt. xi. 5,) and AeTT-poif nada-pi&re cleanse the lepers (Matt. x. 8.), where neither can the latter word signify merely to pronounce clean, nor can it have another meaning than in the narrative before us. But the point in which the natural interpretation the most plainly betrays its weakness, is the disjunction of 0eAo>, I will, from KaOapiadnrt,, be thou clean. Who can persuade himself that these words, united as they are in all the three narratives, were separated by a considerable pause- that 0eAw was spoken during or more properly before the manipulation, xaOapio6r]Ti after, when all the evangelists represent the two words as having been uttered by Jesus without separation, whilst he touched the leper? Surely, if the alleged-sense had been the original one, at least one of the evangelists, instead of the words, fi^a-o av-ov b 'Irjaovi; Aryw StAw, KaOapiaOrj-ri, Jesus touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean, would have substituted the more accurate expression 6 'I. diiEKpiva-o 6&M, nal di/jafiswf avrov el~e-jca6apiad3]ri.. Jesus answered, I will; and having touched him, said: be thou clean. But if KadapiaOvn was spoken in one breath with .0tAw, so that Jesus announces the cleansing simply as a result of his will without any intermediate examination, the former word cannot possibly signify a mere declaration of cleanness, to which a previous examination would be requisite, and it must signify an actual making clean. It follows, therefore, that the word aTTread/u in this connexion is not to be understood of an exploratory manipulation, but, as in all other narrativ.es of the same class, of a curative touch. In support of his natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals to the rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be presupposed in a narrative where the contrary is not expressly indicated.* But this rule shares the ambiguity which is characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, since it leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in. our estimation, and what MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF LEPEHS. 483 was so in the ideas of the author whose writings are to be explained. Certainly, if I have a Gibbon before me, I must in his narratives presuppose only natural causes and occurrences when he Joes not expressly convey the contrary, because to a writer of his cultivation, the supernatural is at the utmost only conceivable as a rare exception. But the case is altered when I take up an Herodotus, in whose mode of thought the intervention of higher powers is by no means unusual and out of rule; and when I am considering a collection of anecdotes which are the product of Jewish soil, and the object of which is to represent an individual as a prophet of the highest rank-as a man in the most intimate connexion with the Deity, to meet with the supernatural is so completely a thing of course, that the rule of the rationalists must here be reversed, and we must say: where, in such narratives, importance is attached to results which, regarded as natural, would have no importance whatever,-there, supernatural causes must be expressly excluded, if we are not to presuppose it the opinion of the narrator that such causes were in action. Moreover, in the history before us, the extraordinary character of the incident is sufficiently indicated by the statement, that the leprosy left the patient immediately on the word of Jesus. Paulus, it is true, contrives, as we have already observed, to interpret this statement as implying a gradual, natural healing, on the ground that svOeu^, the word by which the evangelists determine the time of the cure, signifies, according to the different connexions in which it may occur, in one case im.mediately, in another merely soon, and unobstructedly. Granting this, are we to understand the words eiiBsuq efe/3aAev avrbv, which follow in close connexion in Mark (v. 43), as signifying that soon and without hindrance Jesus sent the cleansed leper away ? Or is the word to be taken in a different sense in two consecutive verses ? We conclude, then, that in the intention of the evangelical writers the instantaneous disappearance of the leprosy in consequence of the word and touch of Jesus, is the fact on which their narratives turn. Now to represent the possibility of this to one's self is quite another task than to imagine the instantaneous release of a man under the grasp of a fixed idea, or a permanently invigorating impression on a nervous patient. Leprosy, from the thorough derangement of the animal fluids of which it is the symptom, is the most obstinate and malignant of cutaneous diseases;. and that a skin corroded by this malady should by a word and touch instantly become pure and healthy, is, from its involving the immediate effectuation of what would require a long course of treatment, so inconceivable,* that every one who is free from certain prejudices (as the critic ought^always to be) must involuntarily be reminded by it of the realm of fable. And in the fabulous region of oriental and more particularly of Jewish legend, the sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy presents itself the first thing. When Jehovah 484 THE LIFE OF JESUS. endowed Hoses, as a preparation for his mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds of signs, amongst other tokens of this gift lie commanded him to put his hand into his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with leprosy; again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing it out a second time it was once more clean (Exod. iv. 6, 7.). Subsequently, on account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was soon healed (Num. xii. 10 fF.). Above all, among the miracles of the prophet Elisha the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this event Jesus himself refers (Luke iv. 27.). The Syrian General Naaman, who suffered from leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his aid ; the latter sent to him the direction to wash seven times in the river Jordan, and on Naaman's observance of this prescription the leprosy actually disappeared, but was subsequently transferred by the prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings v.). I know not what we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narratives to account for the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first Goel was empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah's commission, the second Goel must also be able to perform, and the greatest of prophets must not fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah; the Christians, who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the person of Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his history by such traits, taken from the mosaic and prophetic legend ; with the single difference that, in accordance with the mild spirit of the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) they dropped the punitive side of the old miracles. Somewhat more plausible is the appeal of the rationalists to the absence of an express statement, that a miraculous cure of the leprosy is intended in the narrative of the ten lepers, given by Luke alone (xvii. 12 ff.). Here neither do the lepers expressly desire to be cured, their words being only, Have mercy on us,' nor does Jesus utter a command directly referring to such a result, for he merely enjoins them to show themselves to the priests: and the rationalists avail themselves of this indirectness in his reply, as a help to their supposition, that Jesus, after ascertaining the state of the patients, encouraged them to subject themselves to the examination ot the priests, which resulted in their being pronounced clean, and the Samaritan returning to thank Jesus for his encouraging advice.* But mere advice docs not call forth so ardent a demonstration of gratitude as is here decribcd by the \vords l-neaev t-~i Trpoffw-oi', he fell down on his face; still less could Jesus desire that because his advice had had a favourable issue, all the ten should have returned, and returned to glorify God-for what? that he had enabled Jesus to a-ivc them such good advice ? No : a more real service is here prc- MIUACLES OF JESUS-CURES OF LEPERS. 485 supposed; and this the narrative itself implies, both in attributing the return of the Samaritan to his discovery that lie was healed lldav on IdOif), and in makin<^Jesus indicate the reason why thanks were to be expected from alf^Ty the words : ov%l ol 6&K,a eKaOapia-Orjaav • Were there not ten cleansed? Both these expressions can only bv an extremely forced interpretation be made to imply, that because the lepers saw the correctness of the judgment of Jesus in pronouncing them clean, one of them actually returned to thank him, and the others ought to have returned. But that which is most decisive against the natural explanation is this sentence: And as they went the>/ were cleansed, «' ™ vndyeiv avrovc; iicaOapiaOrjaav. If the narrator intended, according to the above interpretation, merely, to say: the lepers having gone to the priest, and showed themselves to him, were pronounced clean ; he must at least have said: iropev-dfvTeg kKaQapiaOnaav, having made the journey, they were cleansed, whereas the deliberate choice of the expression ev TW vrrdyeiv (while in the act of going], incontestably shows that a healing effected during the journey is intended. Thus here also we have a miraculous cure of leprosy, which is burdened with the same difficulties as the former anecdote; the origin of which is, however, as easily explained. But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it from the former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, the cure does not properly form the main object of the narrative: this lies rather in the different conduct of the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there not ten cleansed, &c., (v. 17.) forms the point of the whole, which thus closes altogether morally, and seems to have been narrated for the sake of the instruction conveyed.* That the one who appears as a model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, cannot pass without remark in the narrative of the evangelist who alone has the parable of the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Lcvite, show themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves cxemplarily compassionate: so here, nine unthankful Jews stand contrasted with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far as the sudden cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have here, as well as there, a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he intended to represent gratitude, as m the other case compassion, in the example of a Samaritan ? It would then be with the present narrative as some have maintained it to be with the history of the temptation. But in relation to this we hayc both shown, and given the reason, that Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and this he must have done if e "<''" S1V™ a narrative of ten lepers once healed by him. If then we are not inclined to relinquish the idea that something originally parabolie is the germ of our present narrative, we must represent 'lie case to ourselves thus : from the legends of cures performed by Jesus on lepers, on the one hand; and'on the other, from parables 111 which Jesus (as in that of the commssionntp Snms,,-;t,,r,\ v,™,,™^ 486 THE LIFE OP JESUS. individuals of this hated race as models of various virtues, the Christian legend wove this narrative, which is therefore partly an account of a miracle and partly a parable. § 95. CUKES OF THE BLIND. ONE of the first places among the sufferers cured by Jesus is filled (also agreeably to the nature of the climate)* by the blind, of whose cure again we read not only in the general descriptions which are given by the evangelists (Matt. xv. oO f.; Luke vii. 21.), and by Jesus himself (Matt. xi. 5.), of his messianic works, but also in some detailed narratives of particular cases. We have indeed inore. of these cures than of the kind last noticed, doubtless because blindness, as a malady affecting the most delicate and complicated of organs, admitted a greater diversity of treatment. One of these cures of the blind is common to all the synoptical Avriters; the others (with the exception of the blind and dumb demoniac in Matthew, whom we need not here reconsider) are respectively peculiar to the first, second, and fourth evangelists. The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a cure of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 2i). parall.): but there are important differences both as to the object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the two other evangelists only one; and also as to its locality, Luke making it take place on the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and Mark on his departure out of Jericho. Moreover the touching of the eyes, by which, according to the first evangelist, Jesus effected the cure, is not mentioned by the two other narrators. Of these differences the latter may be explained by the observation, that though Mark and Luke are silent as to the touching, they do not therefore deny it: the first, relative to the number cured, presents a heavier difficulty. To remove this it has been said by those who give the prior authority to Matthew, that one of the two blind men was possibly more remarkable than the other, on which account he alone was retained in the first tradition; but Matthew, as an eye-witness, afterwards supplied the second blind man. On this supposition Luke and Mark do not contradict Matthew, for they nowhere deny that another besides their single blind man was healed; neither does Matthew contradict them, for where there are two, there is also one.j But when the simple narrator speaks of one individual in whom something extraordinary has happened, and even, like Mark, mentions his name, it is plain that he tacitly contradicts the statement that it happened in two individuals-to contradict it expressly there was no occasion. Let us turn then to the other side and, taking the singular number of Mark and Luke as the orie-inal one, conjecture that the informant of Matthew (the latter MIRACLES OP JESUS-CURES OF THE BLIND. 487 beino- scarcely on this hypothesis an eye-witness) probably mistook the blind man's guide foijjtsecond blind man.* Hereby a decided contradiction is admitted, while to account for it an extremely improbable cause is superfluously invented. The third difference relates to the place; Matthew and Mark have iKiropevopevav dnb, as they departed from, Luke, kv ™ eyyigeiv «'$• 'lept^w, as they came nigh to Jericho. If there be any whom the words themselves fail to convince that this difference is irreconcileable, let them read the forced attempts to render these passages consistent with each other which have been made by commentators from Grotius down to Paulus. Hence it was a better expedient -which the older harmonists! adopted, and which has been approved by some modern critics.J In consideration of the last-named difference, they here distinguished two events, and held that Jesus cured a blind man first on his entrance into Jericho (according to Luke), and then again on his departure from that place (according to Matthew and Luke). Of the other divergency, relative to the number, these harmonists believed that they had disencumbered themselves by the supposition that Matthew connected in one event the two blind men, the one cured on entering and the other on leaving Jericho, and gave the latter position to the cure of both. But if so much weight is allowed to the statement of Matthew relative to the locality of the cure, as to make it, in conjunction with that of Mark, a reason for supposing two cures, one at each extremity of the town, I know not why equal credit should not be given to his numerical statement, and Storr appears to me to proceed more consistently when, allowing equal weight to both differences, he supposes that Jesus on his entrance into Jericho, cured one blind man (Luke) and subsequently on his departure, two (Matthew). § The claim of Matthew is thus fully vindicated, but on the other hand that of Mark is denied. For if the latter be associated with Matthew, as is here the case, for the sake of his locality, it is necessary to do violence to his numerical statement, which taken alone would rather require him to be associated with Luke; so that to avoid impeaching either of his statements, which on this system of interpretation is not admissible, his narrative must be equally detached from that of both the other evangelists. Thus we should have three distinct cures of the blind at Jericho: 1st, the cure of one blind man on the entrance of Jesus, -nd, that of another on his departure, and 3rd, the cure of two blind men, also during the departure; in all, of four blind men. Now to separate the' second and third cases is indeed difficult. For it will not be maintained that Jesus can have gone out by two different gates at the same time, and it is nearly as difficult to imagine that having merely set out with the intention of leaving Jericho, he re- . * Paulus> exeg. Handb. 3, a, S. 44. f Schulz, Anmerkungen zu Michaelis, 2, S. *"•'• t Sieffert. ut sun S inj. a TT-I-- j- ™ - • -• - - - 488 THE LIFE OP JESUS. turned again into the town, and not until afterwards took his final departure. But, viewing the case more generally, it is scarcely an admissible supposition, that three incidents so entirely similar thus fell together in a group. The accumulation of cures of the blind ia enough to surprise us; but the behaviour of the companions of Jesus is incomprehensible ; for after having seen in the first instance, on entering Jericho, that they had acted in opposition to the designs of Jesus by rebuking the blind man for his importunity, since Jesus called the man to him, they nevertheless repeated this conduct on the second and even on the third occasion. Storr, it is true, is not disconcerted by this repetition in at least two incidents of this kind, for he maintains that no one knows whether those who had enjoined silence on going out of Jericho were not altogether different, persons from those who had done the like on entering the town: indeed, supposing them to be the same, such a repetition of conduct which Jesus had implicitly disapproved, however unbecoming, was not therefore impossible, since even the disciples who had been present at the first, miraculous feeding, yet asked, before the second, whence bread could be had for such a multitude ?-but this is merely to argue the reality of one impossibility from that of another, as we shall presently see when we enter on the consideration of the two miraculous feedings. Further, not only the conduct of the followers of Jesus, but also almost every feature of the incident must have been repeated in the most extraordinary manner. In the one case as in the other, the blind men cry, Have mercy upon us, (or me,) t/t,ou son of David ; then (after silence has been enjoined on them by the spectators) Jesus commands that they should be brought to him : he next asks what they will that he should do to them ; they answer, that we may receive our sight; he complies with their wish, and they gratefully follow him. That all this was so exactly repeated thrice, or even twice, is an improbability amounting to an impossibility; and we must suppose, according to the hypothesis adopted by Sieflfert in such cases, a legendary assimilation of different facts, or a traditionary variation of a single occurrence. If, in order to arrive at a decision, it be asked: what could more easily happen, when once the intervention of the legend is presupposed, than that one and the same history should be told first of one, then of several, first of the entrance, then of the departure? it will not be necessary to discuss the other possibility, since this is so incomparably more probable that there cannot be even a momentary hesitation in embracing it as real. But in thus reducing the number of the facts, we must not with Sieffert stop short at two, for in that case not only do the difficulties with respect to the repetition of the same incident remain, but we fall into a want of logical sequency in admitting one divergency (in the number) as unessential, for the sake of removing another (in the locality). If it be further asked, supposing only one •---•.i-..A *„ ;,„ !,„,.„ T^vrntrvl. which of the several narratives is the MIRACLES OF JESUS--CURES OF THE BLIND. 489 comin0' to a decision; for Jesus might just as well meet a blind man on enterin0' as on leaving Jericho. The difference in the number is more likely to furnish us with a basis for a decision, and it will be in favour of Mark and Luke, who have each only one blind man ; not, it is true, for the reason alleged by Schleiermacher,* namely, that Mark by his mention of the blind man's name, evinces a more accurate acquaintance with the circumstances : for Mark, from his propensity to individualize out of his own imagination, ought least of all to be trusted with respect to names which are given by him alone. Our decision is. founded on another circumstance. It seems probable that Matthew was led to add a second blind man by his recollection of a previous cure of two blind men narrated by him alone (ix. ?7 ff.). Here, likewise when Jesus is in the act of departure,-from the place, namely, where he had raised the ruler's daughter,-two blind men follow him, (those at Jericho arc sitting by the way side,) and in a similar manner cry for mercy of the Son of David, who here also, as in the other instance, according to Matthew, immediately cures them by touching their eyes. With these similarities there are certainly no slight divergencies; nothing is here said of an injunction to the blind men to be silent, on the part of the companions of Jesus; and, while at Jericho Jesus immediately calls the blind men to him, in the earlier case, they come in the first instance to him when he is again in the house; further, while there he asks them, what they will have him to do to them ? here he asks, if they believe him able to cure them ? Lastly, the prohibition to tell what had happened, is peculiar to the earlier incident. The two narratives standing in this relation to each other, an assimilation of them might have taken place thus: Matthew transferred the two blind men and the touch of Jesus from the first anecdote to the second ; the form of the appeal from the blind men, from the second to the first. The two histories, as they arc given, present but few data for a natural explanation. Nevertheless the rationalistic commentators have endeavoured to frame such an explanation. When Jesus in the earlier occurrence asked the blind men whether they had confidence _in his power, he wished, say they, to ascertain whether their trust m him would remain firm during the operation, and whether they would punctually observe his further prescriution :t h.ivino- tlmn fntrn.^/l J.T- I - 1 eordinc, toVentnr n"+ T "'"' ll", louncl li curable, ac- ^ assured the , ff+ W;T CaTd b7 tbe fme dust of tllat ^unt y,) «>easue o eilfSr I'"' ^ ^ 8honld be acc°rdi»S to the Jesus removed t1 i fIIereuP°n Panlus merely savs briefly, that ]'^eima™ue?to 7 On1t° ^ vision' but lle als~* detail WbV«toiirf STtllT1S Slmilar t0 what is dcscribed * 7 Ventmmi, who makes Jesus anoint the eyes of the blind * Ut snn S OOT . „ - _ 490 THE LIFE OF JESUS. men with a strong water prepared beforehand, and thus cleanse them from the irritating dust, so that in a short time their sight returned. But this natural explanation has not the slightest root in the text; for neither can the faith (TTICTT(C) required from the patient imply anything else than, as in all similar cases, trust in the miraculous power of Jesus, nor can the word TJT/XITO he touched, signify a surgical operation, but merely that touch which appears in so many of the evangelical curative miracles, whether as a sign or a conductor of the healing power of Jesus ; of further prescriptions for the completion of the cure there is absolutely nothing. It is not otherwise with the cure of the blind at Jericho, where, moreover, the two middle evangelists do not even mention the touching of the eyes. If then, according to the meaning of the narrators, the blind instantaneously receive their sight as a consequence of the simple word or touch of Jesus, there are the same difficulties to be encountered here as in the former case of the lepers. For a disease of the eyes, however slight, as it is only engendered gradually by the reiterated action of the disturbing cause, is still less likely to disappear on a word or a touch; it requires very complicated treatment, partly surgical, partly medical, and this must be pre-eminently the case with blindness, supposing it to be of a curable kind. How should we represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye by a word or a touch ? as purely miraculous and magical ? That would be to give up thinking on the subject. As magnetic ? There is no precedent of magnetism having influence over a disease of this nature. Or, lastly, as psychical ? But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation is not to be entertained. We must therefore acknowledge that an historical conception of these narratives is more than merely difficult to us: and we proceed to inquire whether we cannot show it to be probable that legends of this kind should arise un- historically. We have already quoted the passage in which, according to the •first and third gospels, Jesus in reply to the messengers of the Baptist who had to ask him whether he were the t-p^ofievoc, (he that should come,} appeals to his works. Now he here mentions in the •very first place the cure of the blind, a significant proof that this particular miracle was expected from the Messiah, his words being-taken from Is. xxxv. 5, a prophecy interpreted messianically; and in a rabbinical passage above cited, among the wonders which Jehovah is to perform in the messianic times, this is enumerated, that he oculos ccecorum aperiet, id quod per Elisam fecit* Now Elisha did not cure a positive blindness, but merely on one occasion opened the eyes of his servant to a perception of the superscnsual world, and on another, removed a blindness which had been inflicted on his /n -v-.^r, ,.; -i 7-20V That MIKACLES OF JESUS--CUBES OF THE BLIND. 491 these deeds of Elisha were conceived, doubtless with reference to the passage of Isaiah, as a real opening of the eyes of the blind, is proved by the above rabbinical passage, and hence cures of the blind were expected from the Messiah.* Now if the Christian community, proceeding as it did from the bosom of Judaism, held Jesus to be the messianic personage, it must manifest the tendency to ascribe to him every messianic predicate, and therefore the one in question. The narrative of the cure of a blind man at Bethsaida, and that of the cure of a man th-at was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, which are both peculiar to Mark, (viii. 22 ff.; vii. 32 ff.), and which we shall therefore consider together, are the especial favourites of all rationalistic commentators. If, they exclaim, in the other evangelical narrative of cures, the accessory circumstances by which the facts might be explained were but preserved as they are here, we could prove historically that Jesus did not heal by his mere word, arid profound investigators might discover the natural means by which his cures were effected If And in fact chiefly on the ground of these narratives, in connexion with particular features in other parts of the second gospel, Mark has of late been represented, even by theologians who do not greatly favour this method of interpretation, as the patron of the naturalistic system.f In the two cures before us, it is at once a good augury for the rationalistic commentators that Jesus takes both the patients apart from the multitude, for no other purpose, as they believe, than that of examining their condition medically, and ascertaining whether it were susceptible of relief. Such an examination is, according to these commentators, intimated by the evangelist himself, when he describes Jesus as putting his fingers into the ears of the deaf man, by which means he discovered that the deafness was curable, arising probably from the hardening of secretions in the ear, and hereupon, also with the finger, he removed the hindrance to hearing. Not only are the words, he puts hisjingers into his ears, t!/3a/ls rovg dciK-vkovg ejcra wra, interpreted as denoting a surgical operation, but the words, he touched his tongue r^aro rrjg yAwaajj?, arc supposed to imply that 492 THE LIFE OF JESUS. Jesus cut the ligament of tlic tongue in the degree necessary to restore the pliancy which the organ had lost. In like manner, in the case of the blind man, the words, when lie Jiadput his hands upon M?n, emBels rug xelpa<; avru, are explained as probably meaning that Jesus by pressing the eyes of .the patient removed the crytallinc lens which had become opaque. A further help to this mode of interpretation is found in the circumstance that both to the tongue of the man who had an impediment in his speech, and to the eyes of the blind man, Jesus applied spittle. Saliva has in itself, particularly in the opinion of ancient physicians,* a salutary effect on the eyes: as, however, it in no case acts so rapidly as instantaneously to cure blindness and a defect in the organs of speech, it is conjectured, with respect to both instances, that Jesus used the saliva to moisten some medicament, probably a caustic powder; that the blind man only heard the spitting and saw nothing of the mixture of the medicaments, and that the deaf man, in accordance with the spirit of the age, gave little heed to the natural means, or that the legend did not preserve them. In the narrative of the deaf man the cure is simply stated, but that of the blind man is yet further distinguished, by its representing the restoration of lus sight circumstantially, as gradual. After Jesus had touched the eyes of the patient as above mentioned, lie asked him if he saw auyht; not at, all, observes Paulus, in the manner of a miracle-worker, who is sure of the result, but precisely in the manner of a physician, who after performing an operation endeavours to ascertain if the patient is benefited. The blind man answers that he sees, but first indistinctly, so that men seem to him like trees. Here apparently the rationalistic commentator may triumphantly ask the orthodox one : if divine power for the working of cures stood at the command of Jesus, why did he not at once cure the blind man perfectly? If the disease presented an obstacle which he was not able to overcome, is it not clear from thence that his power was a finite, ordinarily human power'? Jesus once more puts his hands on the eyes of the blind man, in order to aid the effect of the first operation, and only then is the cure completed.t The complacency of the rationalistic commentators in these narratives of Hark is liable to be disturbed by the frigid observation, that, here also, the circumstances which are requisite to render the natural explanation possible are not given by the evangelists themselves, but are interpolated by the said commentators. For in both-cures Mark furnishes the saliva only; the efficacious powder is infused by Paulus and Ycnturini: it is they alone who make the introduction of the fingers into the ears first a medical examination and then an operation; and it is they alone who, con-traryto the signification of language, explain the words «7rmOt'ra< raq * Hilly, II. X. xxviii., 7, and other passages in Wetstein. t Taulus. ut sup. .. „.„ „ ,,„„ ,v x'.,n-,.ii,.i,,, r,i>s<-liiclitt', a, S. ijl ft". 210 f.; Kiistcr, Iimuamid, S. MIRACLES OP JESUS-CUKES OF THE BUND. 493 %elpaf i~l Tovg 6