Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (18 page)

Nor was Jesus the sole exorcist in Palestine. The itinerant Jewish exorcist was a
familiar sight, and exorcisms themselves could be a lucrative enterprise. Many exorcists
are mentioned in the gospels (Matthew 12:27; Luke 11:19; Mark 9:38–40; see also Acts
19:11–17). Some, like the famed exorcist Eleazar, who may have been an Essene, used
amulets and incantations to draw demons out of the afflicted through their noses.
Others, such as Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, could cast out demons simply by uttering the
demon’s name; like Jesus, Yohai would first command the demon to identify itself,
which then gave him authority over it. The book of Acts portrays Paul as an exorcist
who used Jesus’s name as a talisman of power against demonic forces (Acts 16:16–18,
19:12). Exorcism instructions have even been found within the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The reason exorcisms were so commonplace in Jesus’s time is that the Jews viewed illness
as a manifestation either of divine judgment or of demonic activity. However one wishes
to define demon possession—as a medical problem or a mental illness, epilepsy or schizophrenia—the
fact remains that the people of Palestine understood these problems to be signs of
possession, and they saw Jesus as one of a number of professional exorcists with the
power to bring healing to those afflicted.

It may be true that, unlike many of his fellow exorcists and miracle workers, Jesus
also maintained messianic ambitions. But so did the failed messiahs Theudas and the
Egyptian, both of whom used their miraculous deeds to gain followers and make messianic
claims. These men and their fellow wonder workers were known by Jews and gentiles
alike as “men of deeds,” the same term that was applied to Jesus. What is more, the
literary form of the miracle stories found in the Jewish and pagan writings of the
first and second centuries is almost identical to that of the gospels; the same basic
vocabulary is used to describe both the miracle and the miracle worker. Simply put,
Jesus’s status as an exorcist and miracle worker may seem unusual, even absurd, to
modern skeptics, but it did not deviate greatly from the standard expectation of exorcists
and miracle workers in first-century Palestine. Whether Greek, Roman, Jewish, or Christian,
all peoples in the ancient Near East viewed magic and miracle as a standard facet
of their world.

That said, there was a distinct difference between magic and miracle in the ancient
mind, not in their methods or outcome—both were considered ways of disrupting the
natural order of the universe—but in the way in which each was perceived. In the Graeco-Roman
world, magicians were ubiquitous, but magic was considered a form of charlatanry.
There were a handful of Roman laws against “magic-working,” and magicians themselves
could be expelled or even executed if they were found to practice what was sometimes
referred to as “dark magic.” In Judaism, too, magicians were fairly prevalent, despite
the prohibition against magic in the Law of Moses, where it is punishable by death.
“No one shall be found among you,” the Bible warns, “who engages in divination, or
is a witch, an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults
spirits, one who is a wizard or a necromancer” (Deuteronomy 18:10–11).

The discrepancy between law and practice when it came to the magical arts can best
be explained by the variable ways in which “magic” was defined. The word itself had
extreme negative connotations, but only when applied to the practices of other peoples
and religions. “Although the nations you are about to dispossess give heed to soothsayers
and diviners,” God tells the Israelites, “as for you, the Lord your God does not permit
you to do so” (Deuteronomy
18:14). And yet God regularly has his servants engage in magical acts in order to
prove his might. So, for example, God commands Moses and Aaron to “perform a wonder”
in front of Pharaoh by transforming a staff into a snake. But when Pharaoh’s “wise
men” do the same trick, they are dismissed as “magicians” (Exodus 7:1–13, 9:8–12).
In other words, a representative of God—such as Moses, Elijah, or Elisha—performs
miracles, whereas a “false prophet”—such as Pharaoh’s wise men or the priests of Baal—performs
magic.

This explains why the early Christians went to such lengths to argue that Jesus was
not
a magician. Throughout the second and third centuries, the church’s Jewish and Roman
detractors wrote numerous tracts accusing Jesus of having used magic to captivate
people and trick them into following him. “But though they saw such works, they asserted
it was magical art,” the second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote of
his critics. “For they dared to call [Jesus] a magician, and a deceiver of the people.”

Note that these enemies of the church did not deny that Jesus performed wondrous deeds.
They merely labeled those deeds “magic.” Regardless, church leaders, such as the famed
third-century theologian Origen of Alexandria, responded furiously to such accusations,
decrying the “slanderous and childish charge [that] Jesus was a magician,” or that
he performed his miracles by means of magical devices. As the early church father
Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum, argued, it was precisely the lack of such magical devices
that distinguished Jesus’s miraculous actions from those of the common magician. Jesus,
in the words of Irenaeus, performed his deeds “without any power of incantations,
without the juice of herbs and of grasses, without any anxious watching of sacrifices,
of libations, or of seasons.”

Despite Irenaeus’s protestations, however, Jesus’s miraculous actions in the gospels,
especially in the earliest gospel, Mark, do bear a striking resemblance to the actions
of similar magicians and wonder workers of the time, which is why more than a few
contemporary
biblical scholars have openly labeled Jesus a magician. No doubt Jesus uses a magician’s
techniques—incantations, rehearsed formulae, spitting, repeated supplications—in some
of his miracles. Once, in the region of the Decapolis, a group of villagers brought
a deaf-mute man to Jesus and begged him for help. Jesus took the man aside, away from
the crowd. Then, in a bizarre set of ritualized actions that could have come directly
from an ancient magician’s manual, Jesus placed his fingers in the deaf man’s ears,
spat, touched his tongue, and, looking up to the heavens, chanted the word
ephphatha
, which means “be opened” in Aramaic. Immediately the man’s ears were opened and his
tongue released (Mark 7:31–35).

In Bethsaida, Jesus performed a similar action on a blind man. He led the man away
from the crowds, spat directly into his eyes, placed his hands on him, and asked,
“Do you see anything?”

“I can see people,” the man said. “But they look like walking trees.”

Jesus repeated the ritual formula once more. This time the miracle took; the man regained
his sight (Mark 8:22–26).

The gospel of Mark narrates an even more curious story about a woman who had been
suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had seen numerous doctors and spent
all the money she possessed, but had found no relief from her condition. Having heard
about Jesus, she came up behind him in a crowd, reached out, and touched his cloak.
At once, her hemorrhaging ceased and she felt in her body that she had been healed.

What is remarkable about this story is that, according to Mark, Jesus “felt power
drained from him.” He stopped in his tracks and shouted, “Who touched my cloak?” The
woman fell down before him and confessed the truth. “Daughter,” Jesus replied. “Your
faith has healed you” (Mark 5:24–34).

Mark’s narrative seems to suggest that Jesus was a passive conduit through which healing
power coursed like an electrical current. That is in keeping with the way in which
magical processes
are described in the texts of the time. It is certainly noteworthy that Matthew’s
retelling of the hemorrhaging-woman story twenty years later omits the magical quality
of Mark’s version. In Matthew, Jesus turns around when the woman touches him, acknowledges
and addresses her, and only then does he actively heal her illness (Matthew 9:20–22).

Despite the magical elements that can be traced in some of his miracles, the fact
is that nowhere in the gospels does anyone actually charge Jesus with performing magic.
It would have been an easy accusation for his enemies to make, one that would have
carried an immediate death sentence. Yet when Jesus stood before the Roman and Jewish
authorities to answer the charges against him, he was accused of many misdeeds—sedition,
blasphemy, rejecting the Law of Moses, refusing to pay the tribute, threatening the
Temple—but being a magician was not one of them.

It is also worth noting that Jesus never exacted a fee for his services. Magicians,
healers, miracle workers, exorcists—these were skilled and fairly well-paid professions
in first-century Palestine. Eleazar the Exorcist was once asked to perform his feats
for no less a personage than Emperor Vespasian. In the book of Acts, a professional
magician popularly known as Simon Magus offers the apostles money to be trained in
the art of manipulating the Holy Spirit to heal the sick. “Give me this power also,”
Simon asks Peter and John, “so that anyone I lay my hands upon may receive the Holy
Spirit.”

“May your money perish with you,” Peter replies, “for you thought you could purchase
with money what God gives as a free gift” (Acts 8:9–24).

Peter’s answer may seem extreme. But he is merely following the command of his messiah,
who told his disciples to “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and
cast out the demons. You received [these gifts] without payment.
Give them out without payment
” (Matthew 10:8 | Luke 9:1–2)

In the end, it may be futile to argue about whether Jesus was a
magician or a miracle worker. Magic and miracle are perhaps best thought of as two
sides of the same coin in ancient Palestine. The church fathers were right about one
thing, however. There is clearly something unique and distinctive about Jesus’s miraculous
actions in the gospels. It is not simply that Jesus’s work is free of charge, or that
his healings do not always employ a magician’s methods. It is that Jesus’s miracles
are not intended as an end in themselves. Rather, his actions serve a pedagogical
purpose. They are a means of conveying a very specific message to the Jews.

A clue to what that message might be surfaces in an intriguing passage in
Q
. As recounted in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist is languishing
in a prison cell atop the fortress of Machaerus, awaiting his execution, when he hears
of the wondrous deeds being performed in Galilee by one of his former disciples. Curious
about the reports, John sends a messenger to ask Jesus whether he is “the one who
is to come.”

“Go tell John what you hear and see,” Jesus tells the messenger. “The blind see, the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the
poor are brought good news” (Matthew 11:1–6 | Luke 7:18–23).

Jesus’s words are a deliberate reference to the prophet Isaiah, who long ago foretold
a day when Israel would be redeemed and Jerusalem renewed, a day when God’s kingdom
would be established on earth. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the
ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, the lame shall leap like deer, and the tongue
of the mute shall sing for joy,” Isaiah promised. “The dead shall live, and the corpses
shall rise” (Isaiah 35:5–6, 26:19).

By connecting his miracles with Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus is stating in no uncertain
terms that the year of the Lord’s favor, the day of God’s vengeance, which the prophets
predicted, has finally arrived. God’s reign has begun. “If by the finger of God I
cast out demons, then surely the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28
| Luke 11:20). Jesus’s miracles are thus the manifestation
of God’s kingdom on earth. It is the finger of God that heals the blind, the deaf,
the mute—the finger of God that exorcises the demons. Jesus’s task is simply to wield
that finger as God’s agent on earth.

Except that God already had agents on earth. They were the ones clothed in fine white
robes milling about the Temple, hovering over the mountains of incense and the ceaseless
sacrifices. The chief function of the priestly nobility was not only to preside over
the Temple rituals, but to control access to the Jewish cult. The very purpose of
designing the Temple of Jerusalem as a series of ever more restrictive ingressions
was to maintain the priestly monopoly over who can and cannot come into the presence
of God and to what degree. The sick, the lame, the leper, the “demon-possessed,” menstruating
women, those with bodily discharges, those who had recently given birth—none of these
were permitted to enter the Temple and take part in the Jewish cult unless first purified
according to the priestly code. With every leper cleansed, every paralytic healed,
every demon cast out, Jesus was not only challenging that priestly code, he was invalidating
the very purpose of the priesthood.

Thus, in the gospel of Matthew, when a leper comes to him begging to be healed, Jesus
reaches out and touches him, healing his affliction. But he does not stop there. “Go
show yourself to the priest,” he tells the man. “Offer him as a testimony the things
that the Law of Moses commanded for your cleansing.”

Jesus is joking. His command to the leper is a jest—a calculated swipe at the priestly
code. The leper is not just ill, after all. He is impure. He is ceremonially unclean
and unworthy of entering the Temple of God. His illness contaminates the entire community.
According to the Law of Moses to which Jesus refers, the only way for a leper to be
cleansed is to complete the most laborious and costly ritual, one that could be conducted
solely by a priest. First the leper must bring the priest two clean birds, along with
some cedarwood, crimson yarn, and hyssop. One of the birds must be
sacrificed immediately and the living bird, the cedarwood, the yarn, and the hyssop
dipped in its blood. The blood must then be sprinkled upon the leper and the living
bird released. Seven days later, the leper must shave off all his hair and bathe himself
in water. On the eighth day, the leper must take two male lambs, free of blemish,
and one ewe lamb, also without blemish, as well as a grain offering of choice flour
mixed with oil, back to the priest, who will make of them a burnt offering to the
Lord. The priest must smear the blood from the offering on the leper’s right earlobe,
on his right thumb, and on the big toe of his right foot. He must then sprinkle the
leper with the oil seven times. Only after all of this is complete shall the leper
be considered free of the sin and guilt that led to his leprosy in the first place;
only then shall he be allowed to rejoin the community of God (Leviticus 14).