Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

(b) Paulus, referring to the lepers, says: "Jesus encourages them to go to the priests. The history says nothing more! No one answers that he has already done so. Hence no one was afflicted with a leprosy already pronounced incurable. On the contrary, when they go to the priests, it comes to pass that they are all pronounced clean, i. e. free from infectious leprosy, demanding their exclusion from society. The Samaritan, who went,

not to Jerusalem, but to Gerizim, now returned and testified his gratitude to Christ and to God."

[ocr errors]

To this explanation great objections may be raised. Luke mentions distinctly that while they were going — ἐν τῷ ὑπάγειν αὐτούς

the lepers "were cleansed." Were they merely pronounced clean by somebody on the way? Besides, the return of the Samaritan, his glorifying God with a loud voice, and his falling down before the feet of Jesus and giving him thanks, were, on this hypothesis, surprising and extravagant, rather than the neglect of the Jews to do so ungrateful and irreligious. Finally, it is unreasonable to suppose that there were ten lepers in this place, cast 1 II. p. 837.

out of society by their own mistake or that of their friends, no one of whom had taken the proper measures to ascertain the character of his malady.. Leprosy was

so well known in Palestine as to render such mistakes wellnigh incredible. But argument is superfluous. To read the narrative of Luke with a fair mind is to be convinced of his intention to record a miracle.

(e) Strauss supposes that the narrative of Luke may have been woven out of the story of cures of leprosy wrought by Jesus, and out of certain parables in which he had made Samaritans, though hated and despised by the Jews, examples of compassion and the like. It is therefore half mythical and half parabolical.

Any reply to such a view must be needless; but it may be well to notice a more frequent criticism on the narratives before us. "It has been thought unaccountable," says Rothe, "that so many real lepers were in the communities where Jesus taught. But the meaning of the evangelists is clear; nor is it reasonable to suppose them mistaken on this point. Had a lepers been excluded from society at that time, it is incredible

that they should have been ignorant of the fact and should have burdened their narratives with accounts so absurd. Leprosy was a common disease among the Jews, and the law of expulsion from society was not at once and rigidly enforced." 1 "As a rule," remarks Winer,2 "lepers dwelt by themselves outside of the cities.3 Yet they were not confined to one spot. find lepers going about, Arabia, but shunning an approach to other persons. They were not wholly excluded from the synagogues even." The exclusion of lepers from society appears to have been a religious, not a sanitary regulation. None but Jews were subject to it.7 It may be

In the gospels we

as they do now in

1 From unpublished Lectures on the Life of Christ.

2 R. W. B. I. 117.

4

3 Lev. xiii. 46; cf. Nu. v. 2, sq.; xii. 10, 14, sq.; 2 Kings vii. 3; xv. 5; Josephus, Apion, i. 31; Antiq. iii. 11, 3; Bel. Jud. v. 5, 6. 4 Matt. viii. 2; Luke v. 12; xvii. 12.

5 Niebuhr, Besch. 136.

6 Luke xvii. 12.

7 See 2 Kings v. 1; viii. 5; Kitto's Cyclopædia, article "Leprosy," and Winer, as cited above. "How, moreover," says Trench, "should the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creeping infection, have themselves escaped the disease, obliged as they were by their very office to submit the leper to such actual handling and closest examination?" (p. 175.) We do not know on what authority it is said that Jewish priests were re

added, that though a leper did sometimes recover from the disease, it was altogether "incurable by the art and skill of man."1

quired actually to handle the lepers. According to Lev. xiii. 1, sq., they were to look at the lepers very carefully, but not, so far as appears, to touch them.

1 Cf. 2 Kings v. 7.

CHAPTER III.

THE CURING OF ORGANIC DEFECTS.

§ I. Curing two blind men. Matt. ix. 27-31.

THE exact time and place of this miracle are not surely known; but the language of Matthew seems to favor the opinion that it was wrought very soon after the raising of Jairus's daughter; probably on the same day, and in Capernaum. The principal facts are these: Two blind men followed Jesus on his return to "the house." While doing this, they besought him loudly to restore their sight. In their prayer for this mercy, they addressed him as the Son of David. They came up with him as he was entering the house; and he then said to them: "Believe ye that I am able to do this," namely, to restore your sight? They replied at once in the affirmative. He thereupon touched their eyes, and said at the same time, "be it unto you according to your faith"; and instantly their eyes were opened and they saw. Jesus then strictly forbade them to

« EdellinenJatka »