A woman had an incestuous relationship with her twelve year old son, then decapitated him because he was possessed by the Devil.

National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (1994)

Exorcisms and Healing Miracles 2

A Leper
A Palsied Man
The Withered Hand
The Syro-Phœnician Woman

Abstract

Unless Bethany was a leper colony, Jesus could not have been dining with a leper. Nor would he anyway—leprosy was unclean. Either leper is a code word or the event did not happen in reality. For the rabbis, leprosy in the Jewish scriptures was often a euphemism for spiritual uncleanness or immoral behaviour, not necessarily for a physical ailment. Christians always regard the spikenard as a perfume, even though it is described correctly as an ointment, and so fail to realize that it is for the leper not for Jesus. In fact, nard is an oil from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi which is a member of the valerian family. Its active constituents include camphor and patchouli. The conclusion of the story is that “the poor” will have everlasting life. It is another kingdom parable. The healing miracles of Jesus

A Leper

The first healing miracle was when, having recruited Simon and Andrew, Jesus and his companions repare to their house where Jesus lifts a fever from Simon’s wife’s mother (Mk 1:29-31). According to Luke 4:39, Jesus rebuked the fever, implying that he addressed the woman sternly. Though initially skeptical (having a fever) and refusing to do anything to help them, she becomes a convert to the Nazarene cause and she ministered to them.

This vignette explains perfectly the code of illness as opposition. Plainly, the mother in law would have been distraught at her daughter’s husband leaving to join a band of militants. She would have opposed the whole scheme vehemently but she had a stern talking to and, like Gorky’s mother, she was won over and joined them in the end.

Next Jesus cures a leper telling him to offer in the temple what Moses prescribed for his cleansing—a strange thing for someone to suggest who, the clergy tell us, abrogated the law of Moses.

Leprosy was a new and most feared illness—it had only arrived in Israel about a hundred years before (the leprosy of the Old Testament being a general term for a variety of ugly skin diseases like ring worm and psoriasis)—and, of course, was incurable making this a remarkable miracle. The corresponding passage to this in Luke 1:40-45 says it took place in a “certain city” and the passage above from Mark implies it was in a city because afterwards Jesus could “no more openly enter the city”. But a leper had to avoid human habitation and had to live in the desert, calling out “unclean, unclean” if anyone approached—they were not allowed into cities. This proves that the leper here was no leper in a medical sense or that these cities were not cities.

Luke has leper behaviour right in Luke 17:12 where the ten lepers stay at a distance and call out to Jesus to cure them, but the story of the ten lepers is a Christian invention not Nazarene tradition, the point of it not being the cure but the ingratitude of the nine Jews who were cured compared with the Samaritan—it is another version of the parable of the good Samaritan. Both only appear in Luke and their aim is to discredit Jews while hyping up gentiles (represented by the Samaritans). The myth of Jesus was also growing in stature so the earlier cure of just one leper seemed insufficient for Luke.

The symbolism in Mark’s cure is that the man had not been cured. Jesus had warned him you are not to say a word to anybody but the new convert exposes him—he will not be cowed. Consequently, Jesus could not enter any town openly but stayed outside in desert (that is “deserted”, lonely) places (Mk 1:45) hiding not from his own supporters but from Herod’s soldiers who came to him from every quarter. In Luke 5:16, Jesus prayed in the lonely place. The occasion is obviously that described previously, but here the behaviour is linked explicitly to Jesus being exposed by the leper.

The towns Jesus frequented are only hamlets and villages anyway, so he is obviously seeking refuge in the hills as a guerrilla. He is one of the barjonim. He dared not be known openly making his claims and gaining his recruits. He tells all his recruits to keep quiet, is cautious enough to hide in the hills when needed and has to keep to the hills when one of his converts fails to keep quiet. From the beginning, he was a semi-outlaw and Mark makes this absolutely plain. By speaking with authority he was challenging the authorities and even though he did not claim to be the messiah at this stage, those who had ears to hear knew what it was all about. Jesus insists that they keep it to themselves until the time is right.

Many manuscripts say almost the opposite of “moved with pity” in verse 41—they say “moved with anger”. All three synoptics follow Mark in having Jesus effect his cure by putting forth his hand and touching him—a euphemism for hitting him. The scriptural usage of “putting forth a hand” or “stretching out a hand” frequently means to kill or destroy. And both of the verbs in verse 43 are too weak. The verb for “sent away” in the Greek is the same as the verb “drove out” used of demons. “Straitly charged” is better translated as “angrily commanded”, matching the codices that describe Jesus as being angry. It seems that the leper is like the first unclean spirit met by Jesus, a fanatical opponent and Jesus and his disciples treat him similarly. The man however takes his revenge by exposing Jesus.

But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter.
Mk 1:45

In the light of the later pericope of Simon the leper, it seems that a leper is Nazarene code for a high priest of the unclean Jerusalem temple. It probably stems from the detailed instructions in Leviticus 13:1-14:57 for the diagnosis, treatment and ritual cleansing of leprosy which had to be done by the priests. The Essenes permitted Levites to carry out certain priestly functions but in the Damascus Rule specifically exclude them from applying the law of leprosy. Since only priests could handle leprosy cases and the Jerusalem high priests were as unclean as their polluted temple, priests—particularly high priests—were lepers.

A Palsied Man

In his chapter 2, Mark introduces the conflicts with the Pharisees, casting some doubt on its veracity. Christians say Jesus’s ministry was entirely peaceful and worthy, filled with healings, miracles and the driving out of demons. yet he finished up crucified. Here is a problem for the gospel writer which Mark begins to solve in Chapter 2 (Mk 2:1-3:6) by showing that he was set up by the Pharisees who did not like him, though the ordinary folk did. The alert reader will however have noticed that when Pilate offers to release Barabbas or Jesus at the climax of the story, it is the crowd of ordinary folk who choose the robber for release not Jesus. It is all contrived.

In chapter 2, Mark puts five anti-Pharisee stories together to make his case. They must be inserted because Jesus is not anxious to keep his messianic secret as he is in chapters 1 and 3, rather assuming the mantle of messiah and the emphasis on unclean spirits in 1 and 3 is missing. Possibly Mark, in an earlier draft, put the stories together as a later chapter, perhaps preceding the passion narrative, and then he or an editor decided to bring the opposition out early in the story and so moved them forward.

This chapter logically ends at 3:6 with the Pharisees and the Herodians plotting together, an unlikely combination. It opens with another conversion allegorized as a paralysed man on a pallet let down through the roof into Jesus’s presence. Plainly this pericope does not logically follow the previous one because Jesus is back in Capernaum, even though it is a dangerous place to be.

The different afflictions might have different political meanings and in this context the palsied man was a bad sinner from the Essene standpoint—like the leper, a Sadducee. This is signified by the pallet which was used to lift the village priest to a roof from which he would offer prayers to God. Essenes, who considered themselves to be priests, prayed at dawn as if in supplication to the rising sun and in Acts 10:9 the apostle Peter goes up onto a housetop at dawn to pray. He is behaving as an Essene and therefore as a priest. In the next two verses of Mark, Levi, suggesting a priest, is recruited—surely the same man.

The Greek words used here are “paraluo” and “paralutikos”, compound words made up of the preposition para, meaning “near”, and words which mean being “broken”, “loosened” or “enfeebled”. Here the biblical Greek has to be read literally. Who are those who are breaking or loosening or nearly breaking or loosening and thereby enfeebling the law of Moses? The answer is the Hellenized priests. The metaphor is strengthened by the implication of their nearly breaking down the partition wall in the temple which separated the court of the gentiles from the holy parts of the temple. They were keen to relax age old distinction between Jews and gentiles to bring in more wealth.

Since the Essenes were sticklers for this distinction—foreigners had to become Jews before they were accepted into the order—the collaborationist Sadducees could hardly be expected to be welcomed into the Nazarene band of insurrectionists. But Jesus, again demonstrating his authority—all Jews were God’s people—forgives his sins, meaning he offered him the chance of repentance and baptism, allowing him into the Nazarene movement. We may assume that the faith spoken of in Mark 2:5 meant belief in the coming kingdom which would allow the palsied man to join the elect upon receiving baptism.

Mark comes to the real point of the story for him. He uses the incident to introduce the dispute between the orthodox Jews (the scribes, lawyers, doctors and Pharisees) and Jesus. Nearby, Pharisees say it is blasphemous for a man to forgive sins. It has long been believed that the Jews of the time felt only God could—from Isaiah 43:25—so the dispute, from the orthodox Jewish standpoint is valid. In 2 Samuel 12:13, Nathan forgives David’s sin but does so with the authority of God. However in a scroll fragment from Qumran (The Prayer of Nabonidus) we find a gazer, a Jewish healer in captivity in Babylon, forgiving sin. Daniel cures the king, Nabonidus, (Nebuchadnezzar, less correctly in the Book of Daniel, where it is God who does the forgiving) who recalls:

I was afflicted with an evil ulcer for seven years. A gazer pardoned my sins.

This story is important because healing is effected without scandal or blasphemy by forgiveness of sins—among Essenes men could forgive sin. Curing the paralytic, Jesus says:

My son, your sins are forgiven.

Jesus does not blaspheme when he forgives sins because it does not imply that he is divine. Essenes accepted it but not Pharisees though, two centuries later, rabbis agreed that sins had to be forgiven for someone to be cured of an illness.

The forgiveness of sins is on earth because the kingdom expected was to be on earth. If sins could only be forgiven in heaven then there could be no kingdom of God on earth as the Essenes expected. Nevertheless, as Matthew often writes, though a kingdom on earth, it would be a kingdom of heaven—a perfect kingdom.

If the anti-Pharisaic verses 6 to 10 are omitted, the passage reads better. They have been inserted later to discredit the Pharisees but those who would have been upset by the incident were the man’s fellow Sadducees outraged that one of their own should go over. Moreover, the reaction of the scribes to the miracle is not described as would be expected if it were part of the original story. And finally Jesus reads the thoughts of the Pharisees by telepathy in the inserted lines—an editor was giving him god-like abilities.

The expression “uncovered the roof” is a mistranslation into the Greek of the Aramaic which would have read “descended from the roof”. Luke 5:19 has, “let him down on his couch”. “Uncovered the roof” suggests the removal of tiles and Luke states so specifically, whereas Palestinian roofs, unless this was a rich man’s house, were flat—Jesus was one of the poor and would not have been in a rich man’s house. Mark was writing for gentiles who, in the wider Roman Empire, would have been more familiar with tiled roofs. Matthew, writing for Jews, knows that they will connect the scene with a priest praying on a housetop and misses out the lowering from the roof altogether.

In Aramaic, “son of man” either meant “man” in general, “mankind”, or it meant “I”, being a polite circumlocution—“this son of man”. The clergy took the meaning whenever Jesus used it, as he did often for reasons of modesty, to be the supernatural “one like unto the Son of man” of Daniel’s vision (Dan 7:13)—God’s redeemer coming on a cloud. The son of man here simply means man in general and not Jesus himself in some supernatural sense. The gospels themselves prove the point. In Mark 8:27 Jesus says:

Who do men say that I am

In the same passage in Matthew 16:13, we have:

Who do men say that the son of man is?

In Matthew 10:33 the “son of man” of Luke 9:26 is replaced by “I”. The expression “sons of men” occurs in the Master’s song of blessing in the Community Rule meaning simply “mankind”.

The Withered Hand

At the beginning of Mark chapter 3, Jesus heals a man’s withered hand on the sabbath, incurring the wrath of the Pharisees who join with the Herodians in a plot against him. Pharisees and Essenes did not dispute that the law had to be broken if it were necessary to save life on the sabbath. Here though there seems to be no life at stake. The conclusion is that the nature of the living and dying in Mark 3:4:

And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?

was spiritual so the references here are to the coming kingdom and its concomitant judgement when sinners would die and the good be resurrected into the kingdom.

Semites recognize the hand as a symbol of a power and, therefore, of a ruler. Later in Mark, we have the phrase “the right hand of power”. A man with a withered hand is powerless. In the Master’s blessing of God in the Community Rule are the expressions:

He that is everlasting is the support of my right hand…

and

His might is the support of my right hand.

“Thy right hand” was also to be inscribed on the banners of some of those engaging in the apocalyptic battle described in the War Scroll. Luke 6:6 specifies that it is the man’s right hand that is withered!

For the Essenes the War Scroll tells us:

Thy mighty hand is with the poor.

Mark’s miracle is really a parable in which Jesus is illustrating the return of power to Israel but it has been garbled in the author’s determination to make it into a sabbath day healing to invite Pharisaic wrath.

Jerome gives an additional detail about this incident. He quotes from the gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use. The man with the withered hand pleaded:

I was a mason seeking a livelihood with my hands. I pray thee, Jesu, to restore mine health that I may not beg meanly for my food.

The mason is allegorically Israel, which had lost the power of its right hand in being occupied by Rome, and was reduced to begging crumbs from the foreigner. If the people repented, God would restore their power through the poor and they would be able to build a new house for the Lord.

One of the Talmudic names used for the Essenes was the “banaim”, a word derived from the Hebrew for “stones” (abanim) and which means “masons”. “Banim” means “sons” or “children”—both coming from a word meaning “to build”. So “banim” was a pun on “banaim” and explains the gospel use of the word “children” to mean the saved—the “banaim” seek to save the “banim”. In Mark 6:3, Jesus is described as a carpenter and, in Matthew 13:55, his father is so described. S Campbell gives an interesting gloss on the Greek word used in these passages and usually rendered “a carpenter”. The word is “tekton” and is found nowhere else in the New Testament. Yet, in modern Greek, “tekton” means a mason!

In the scriptures, a mason was linked with the building or renewing of the temple. The original context is lost but Jesus’s parable could have referred to David hiring masons to build the temple (the task which was carried out after David’s death by his son Solomon). Jesus might have told a kingdom parable based on 1 Chronicles 22:2:

And he set masons to hew wrought stones to build the house of God.

David’s masons necessarily were foreigners, the nomadic Hebrews knowing nothing of such skills. The Essenes were determined it would not be so this time. Relevant here is the laying of the precious corner stone which for the Essenes meant themselves. The full quotation from Isaiah 28:14-18 puts a whole set of concepts into juxtaposition:

Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement. When the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. And the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

The meaning of the precious corner stone to the Essenes is explained in the Community Rule:

The council of the community shall be that tried wall, that precious corner stone, whose foundation shall neither rock nor sway in its place. It shall be a most holy dwelling for Aaron, with everlasting knowledge of the covenant of justice, and shall be a house of perfection and truth in Israel that they may establish a covenant according to the everlasting precepts, atoning for the land, and witnessing the judgement of wickedness. And there shall be no more iniquity.

Essenes were the bridgehead of the kingdom of heaven on earth. The scornful men that rule this people which is in Jerusalem, the Sadducees, are swept away by the scourge of God’s vengeance as he introduces His kingdom, founded on the precious corner stone—the Essenes—with judgement the line and righteousness the plummet, and the waters overflowing the hiding place.

Here we get both the masonic and the baptismal metaphors rolled into one. It is interesting that when Herod started to rebuild the temple in 19 BC he trained a thousand priests as masons so that they could rebuild the forbidden parts of the building, like the holy of holies, without needing to pollute it with unclean hands. The Essenes might well have seen this as a sign of the times—priest-masons were being called to build the Jerusalem temple. Soon the real priest-masons would get their orders—but not from Herod—from God.

Matthew 12:11-12 introduces an analogy of a sheep falling into a pit which he says the followers of the Pharisees would rescue on the sabbath. It is true that Pharisees but not Essenes would help a stricken animal on the sabbath. For Essenes it was expressly forbidden. Only when the life of a man was in danger did they lift the prohibition. On restoration, however, the parable has nothing at all to do with the sabbath and the apparent dispute with the Pharisees is revealed as entirely invented including the quoting of a true reference to Pharisaic law.

Nor can the Pharisaic plot (Mk 3:6) have been hatched by the Pharisees, who had little influence in Galilee, if that is where it occurred, and would not have allied with the Herodians It was really hatched by the Sadducees, the party of the priests. The Herodians seem to have been supporters of the Herod family and therefore collaborators since the Herod family were Roman puppets. The natural allies of the Herodians were the Sadducees who were also collaborators and, though the Pharisees were little better in practice because they preferred a path of little resistance, Sadducees makes more sense here.

A reconstruction of the parable before it was changed into a sabbath healing would be on these lines:

A certain mason was stricken and his right hand did wither. He was unable to practise his trade and his children hungred. And he prayed to the Lord, saying: I was a mason seeking my bread with mine hands, and for my sins mine hand hath withered; now my children hunger. Lord, forgive me my sins for I repent my vanity and deceit. And the Lord saw that he was sincere and said to the man: Stand forth and stretch forth thine hand; and it was made whole like as to the other. Then saith the Lord God: Go thou to Zion, and there thou shalt lay for me a stone, a foundation which shall not rock or sway in its place, for thine hand is now whole. And that foundation shall be an house of perfection and truth in Israel forever. And thou shalt inscribe it: who trusts will fear not; for this is my covenant with mine elect. The man did as the Lord commanded, and he did build a house of perfection to the Lord. And the house was the foundation of a great kingdom. In like wise shall the right hand of power be restored to Israel, and God shall build a kingdom, and the scornful men in Jerusalem shall be swept away. And judgement shall be the line and righteousness shall be the plummet.

The Syro-Phœnician Woman

In this incident, Mark unusually indicates a major change of scene. Jesus has gone to the next country, gentile Phœnicia. Many pious Jews of Palestine considered gentile countries unclean in themselves, but since the Essenes in the Damascus Rule provide for life among gentiles we can deduce that Jesus would have been comfortable living in such a country because Essene ordinances ruled how it should be done.

He does no teaching and addresses no multitudes. In Mark, there is no mention even of the disciples though Matthew tells us some were with him. Jesus is in hiding. Mark says so explicitly, writing:

He entered into a house, and would have no man know it, but he could not be hid.

Even when he returns to Galilee in Mark 9:30 he does so in secret. There can be no misunderstanding this. Jesus has plainly been forced to flee with only a few companions, presumably to escape Herod’s soldiers, as Luke tells us (Lk 13:31 where the warning comes from a Pharisee!). Mark is keen to depict this as a missionary journey to preach to gentiles but he has very little to work with because it was untrue. Biblical Greek scholars note these sections as unusually opaque even for Mark.

Why cannot Jesus be hid? Because a certain woman heard of him. Jesus is in hiding but the woman has easily found him, a strange contradiction which even Mark appreciates—the woman cannot have been a stranger. Yet she is described as a Greek woman, specifically she is a Syro-Phœnician “by nation”—apparently a gentile—and wants Jesus to cure her daughter of an unclean spirit!

Matthew 15:22 peculiarly calls her a “woman of Canaan”, an absurdly anachronistic description—Canaan had not existed for centuries. Earlier in Mark, Canaanite (or properly, Cananaean) meant one of the Canaim—she is a supporter of the Zealots, a Jewish nationalist. Indeed, the woman is a Nazarene herself—that is why she knew where Jesus was, though he was supposed to be hiding—as is evident from the story, but explicit in Matthew where she addresses Jesus as the “son of David”, acknowledging him as king of the Jews. In Mark, this declaration in public would have made her, as well as her daughter, an “unclean spirit”, but, because Jesus was hiding, speaking to her privately in a safe house, she was publicly betraying no secrets.

If she was a Nazarene, she must have been Jewish—a proselyte, a gentile convert to Judaism, which is why Mark says she is Syro-Phœnician “by nation”. Her daughter, however, who was not a child, remained antagonistic to the Jewish religion, and particularly to the Nazarene cause, and perhaps threatened to expose Jesus. The woman was distressed that her daughter’s opposition risked Jesus’s safety. The disciples in Matthew want her sent away (Mt 15:23) because “she crieth after us”, apparently meaning the woman, but really meaning that the daughter was betraying them.

Unmoved Jesus makes his views of gentiles crystal clear:

Let the children first be filled, for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.

Dogs were unclean flesh eaters banned from the temple (Ex 22:31) and Jews commonly called Pagans ”dogs” because they considered them and their habits as unclean. The Essenes called gentiles “dogs”, code for their enemies, like “the deaf” and “the blind”. Jesus also uses his “bread” metaphor again—it is the staff of life, and therefore the symbol of the kingdom to come. But only the children of Israel can partake of it. It is too precious to cast to the dogs—an outrageous insult in scritural times (1 Sam 17:43; 2 Kg 8:13) and still—gentiles like her daughter.

However, Mark 7:27 says:

Let the children first be filled

implying that, at some stage, gentiles will receive the bread of life. This reflects the view among the Essenes that some gentiles would be saved and would be ruled in peace by God’s children in the kingdom. Other early writings of the New Testament such as Acts 13:46; 18:5-6 still retain the view that the gentiles are called only after the Jews. Even Paul writes (Rom 1:16):

To the Jew first, and then to the Greek.

Knowing this, the woman impresses Jesus with her understanding and her humility when she rejoins:

Yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.

In fact, in verse 7:27, Mark uses the diminutive ”puppies” (kynaria) not ”dogs” (kynoi) and Christians desperately latch on to this to pretend he is speaking kindly to the Greek woman. Yet calling a woman a ”little bitch” rather than a ”bitch” is scarcely endearing. This was, in fact, a common habit of Hellenized Greek speech and here was undoubtedly insulting. The truth is that Mark was not a fluent writer and elsewhere used the diminutive. He refers here to the Children of Israel with the diminutive “the children”.

He concludes that she finds her daughter laid upon a bed with no more devil in her. Like the others she would have been silenced with a beating and threatened with everlasting death. Jesus thinks it sensible to move on quickly!

Jesus said, in the sermon on the mount (Mt 5:45):

God made the sun rise on good and bad alike and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust,

which means everyone deserves equal treatment by each other and should love each other, just as God does—and so the church has taught until today though few take any notice. Jesus’s teaching was to love everyone—but only as long as they were Jews!

In interpreting the gospels, the rule is that a statement which contradicts the later teaching of the church is a fossil of the original Nazarene doctrine. Conversely a statement which supports the later church but contradicts the doctrines of Judaism at the time is safer considered a Christian editor’s “improvement”. When Jesus says his work is for the Children of Israel alone we can accept it as the truth, for why should a Christian editor want to insert something so contrary to the message of a church trying to get gentile converts. It could only be there because it was there in the first place—it would not have been added. When he says his message is for gentiles also, we incline to the view that an editor of the later gentile church has thought it important to insert this message.

Glimpses such as these show that the real Jesus was a Jewish nationalist. He did not believe that God had abandoned the Jews in favour of Graeco-Roman “hoi polloi”. He gave his life believing that God was about to establish a new Jewish kingdom which would rule the earth. The sermon on the mount was addressed to repentant Jews being admitted to the Nazarene order—the elect of God’s kingdom. In it, Jesus says:

Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and rend you.
Matthew 7:6

The dogs and swine of this proverb are unclean animals—they signify gentiles. Historically, Jews had been badly treated by gentiles and had no reason to trust them. Essenes hated them, and this expression is an expression of that hatred. Here he unequivocally states that gentiles, described as swine and dogs, are not fit for the holy.

On the same theme, he told his apostles:

Do not go among the gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, rather make your way to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Matthew 10:5

That these commands go against the church’s later teaching suggests that they are genuine, and indeed the Acts of the Apostles confirms them in the case of the family of Cornelius. Cornelius was a gentile godfearer who sought an audience with Peter. Peter replies that Cornelius, as a godfearer, must know it was against the law of Moses for a Jew to mix with gentiles. In this case, though, God had told Peter, in a dream, it was all right (Acts 10:28). So, though Jesus supposedly taught that Jews and gentiles were equal, Peter apparently did not accept it until God told him in person!

In Acts 11:19, even the Hellenizing faction of the Nazarenes had no intention of preaching to the gentiles, proving that Jesus could never have directed his message to gentiles:

Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phœnice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only.

The clergy have tried to make out that it was the fictitious tribe of Judaizers who tried to forbid the Christian message back to gentiles but here in Acts is proof that even the Hellenizing Nazarenes preached only to Jews.

The whole episode of the Syro-Phœnician woman is curiously similar to that related in 2 Kings 17:1-24 when Elijah, also fleeing into Phœnicia to escape the ire of king Ahab, cures a widow’s son. It seems odd that Luke, who is keen to depict gentiles as being acceptable to Jesus’s ministry, does not use this incident. The reason is that it appears in the sections of Mark accompanying the second feeding which Luke evidently rejected as being a spurious reflexion of the first.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.