1 - Healing in the Old Testament and post-biblical traditions

Summary

Although the New Testament authors were living, thinking, and writing within the larger context of the Graeco-Roman world, they were all in varying degrees, in overt and subtle ways, influenced by the Jewish tradition out of which Christianity emerged. It is essential, therefore, in assessing the New Testament evidence concerning healing, that we examine as well the biblical and post-biblical evidence concerning health, healing and medicine. The direct and indirect references within the New Testament to this aspect of tradition remind us that these dimensions of the Jewish heritage were indeed present in the consciousness of the early Christians, even though they did not merely reproduce the attitudes and practices of their spiritual ancestors.

Stories of healing

Stories of healing are relatively rare in the Old Testament. The first is the curious narrative in Gen 20 of the death threat addressed to Abimelech, who had taken Abraham at his word and acquired Sarah (Abraham's wife) to be his concubine on the basis of Abraham's (half-true) declaration that she was his sister (Gen 20:12). After the deceived king showered Abraham with gifts, the patriarch prayed to God, who healed Abimelech, his wife and female slaves – who had been stricken with barrenness (Gen 20:18). Thus is established a direct cause-and-effect relationship between human disability and divine action. In this case, the inability of the monarch's wives to bear children is the immediate consequence of his having inadvertently violated a divine statute against adultery.