Subject: basilikos' son vs. centurion's slave(?)

From: "Vinton A. Dearing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 12:39:24 PST

I am especially concerned not to conflate these two healings because 
to do so would be to give Jesus a smaller a place in the history of 
and evidence for spiritual healing. There are scholars who feel that 
the historical Jesus was a much less effective person than the 
Gospels say he was and that it is their duty to prove it. Others 
accept their methods and results without, I believe, intending to 
minimize Jesus' place in history and Christian lives. So what I write 
now is not a criticism of particular persons.
     It has been said that impossibilities never occur. The converse 
is that possibilities may always occur more than once. The fact 
that Jesus did not normally heal at a distance, then, is not  
evidence that he did so only once, as differently recorded by 
Matthew, Luke and John. To repeat, (a) if he could do so at all, he 
could do so more than once; (b) we know he could do so at all because 
people today do so all the time "in his name," to use the biblical 
expression; and therefore (c) we know that Jesus could heal at a 
distance more than once.
     Here are the differences between John and Matthew/Luke, the 
latter of whom clearly tell of the same healing:
     (1) The healing was the first that Jesus performed in Galilee 
(John 4:54) vs. a much later one.
     (2) Jesus was at different places, Cana vs. Capernaum. Granted 
that the people healed were both in Capernaum.
     (3) Those who approached Jesus had different professions, 
basilikos vs. centurion. Granted that the basilikos might have been a 
gentile like the centurion, and not a Jew as I said in an earlier 
communication.
     (4) They had different relations to the sick person, father vs. 
master. It is true that all three authors call the sick person a 
"pais"  but John uses the word only when the "douloi" tell the 
"pathr" about his "pais" (4:51,53), whereas Luke uses "pais" as a 
synonym for "doulos" (8:7; cf. 2,3,10). The fact that Matthew calls 
him only a "pais" (8:6,13) does not mean that he uses the word in the 
same meaning as John.
     (5) The diseases were different, fever vs. paralysis. Granted 
that John (4:47) says the sufferer "hmellen apoqnhskein"  and that 
Luke (7:2) says he "hmellen teleutan," nevertheless, "puretos" (John 
4:52) is different from "paralutikos deinws basanizomenos" (Matthew 
8:6). The fact that Luke (7:2) says only that the sufferer was "kakws 
ecwn" does not mean that he agrees with John as to the disease.
     (6) The father wants Jesus to come and heal his child; the 
centurion does not want Jesus to come to his home. Granted that John 
and Matthew say the petitioner came to Jesus and that Luke says he 
sent messengers.
     As I said before, the differences, in my estimation, outweigh 
the similarities.
           Vinton Dearing