Healing in the Pauline epistles: why the silence? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Quest for Healing and the Apostolic Mission (T&T CLARK 2023). ISBN 9780567696564, 265 pp. €97,67. Mark Beumer What role did offers of physical healing (or the hope of receiving it) play in the missionary program of the apostle Paul? What did he do to treat the many illnesses and injuries that he endured while pursuing his mission? What did he advise his followers to do regarding their health problems? Such questions have been broadly neglected in studies of Paul and his churches, but emeritus professor Christopher D. Stanley shows how vital they truly become once we recognise how thoroughly "pagan" religion was implicated in all aspects of Graeco-Roman health care. What did Paul approve, and what did he reject? Given Paul's silence on these subjects, Stanley relies on a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary approach to develop informed judgments about what Paul might have thought, said, and done with regard to his own and his followers' health care. He begins by exploring the nature and extent of sickness in the Roman world and the four overlapping health care systems that were available to Paul and his followers: home remedies, "magical" treatments, religious healing, and medical care. He then examines how Judeans and Christians in the centuries before and after Paul viewed and engaged with these systems. Finally, he speculates on what kinds of treatments Paul might have approved or rejected and whether he might have used promises of healing to attract people to his movement. The result is a thorough and nuanced analysis of a vital dimension of Graeco-Roman social life and Paul's place within it. The book consists of two parts and ten chapters in addition to an introduction, bibliography, index of ancient authors and subject index.
Healing Miracles in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Literature
Tompkins, Lora E., 2023
Jesus was a healer, but what may not be as obvious is that he started a legacy of healing. He passed on his skills and abilities to his followers at least three times. Though not as frequently, they continued to heal through the Book of Acts. The legacy continued in the Apocryphal Acts and other apocryphal materials spanning the early centuries of the common era. Secondary literature looks at modern scholarship and leans heavily into Rabbinic literature. Up to this point, other English-language works in healing have sorely lacked luster in providing. The exploration of the healing legacy of Jesus shifted to meet the skills and needs of the healers, patients, and communities involved. Further, the healings had a substantive resultant impact on various levels of socioeconomics for the parties, which is explored by reexamining each group type of healings, from lameness and paralytics to possession and resurrection, and more. The hope is that taking a holistic approach to these healings as possible will allow readers a new way of experiencing the early common era and these events that permeated everyone's lives at one time or another.
The Things That Mark an Apostle: Paul's Signs, Wonders, and Miracles
The Biblical Annals, 2021
The Acts of the Apostles describes-sometimes in rather colorful details-signs and wonders wrought by the apostle Paul. Can this portrait of the apostle be cor roborated based on his own letters? Or do we have to conclude that contemporaries of the apostle paint a more or less hagiographic picture of Paul's miraculous activities? What is the place of miracles surrounding Paul and wrought by him within the whole of his life and mission? A survey of Paul's letters allows us to get a view of how the apostle sees the function of signs, wonders, and mighty works within the dynamics of the pro clamation of the gospel. Viewed in this way, the possible difference between information based upon Paul's own communication and that of his contemporaries about him appears to decrease. A clearer picture of the part miracles play within the whole of Paul's mission may also help to rethink modern and postmodern worldviews from a biblical perspective.
Life-Giving Spirit": Probing the Center of Paul's Pneumatology
JOURNAL-EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL …, 1998
A survey treatment, in short compass, of so rich and multifaceted a topic as the Holy Spirit in Paul is bound to be supercial. A surely more promising alternative is to identify and reect on those viewpoints in his teaching on the Spirit that are dominant and most decisive. My ...
Social Fractures in the Habitus: Paul’s κατάρτισ- Language of Preventative and Responsive Care
Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2025
While recent research has focused on human agency in Pauline literature, less attention is given to the forms of care portrayed by Paul’s κατάρτισ- language. In this article, I propose that Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus provides fresh insight on how Paul’s letters restructure habitus and early Christian praxis that generate social fractures. To develop this argument, I first describe Bourdieu’s conception of habitus, which elucidates human agents’ interactions with the social fields that shape their practices. Second, I provide conceptual contextualization by exploring κατάρτισ- language in ancient medicine, philosophy, and Jewish sources, particularly in relation to current understandings of healing in Jewish and early Christian conceptualization. Third, I apply Bourdieu’s theory of habitus to Pauline texts that use forms of καταρτίζω and κατάρτισις: 1 Thess. 3.9–10; 1 Cor. 1.10; 2 Cor. 13.9–11; Gal. 6.1; Rom. 9.22–23. In the final section, I offer reflection on a Pauline theology of care in relation to his forms of care, situating Paul more critically within a cultural and theological history of caring. Paul’s letter-writing constitutes interventionist and improvisational care for healing social fractures in early Christians’ habitus.
Aretalogy of the Best Healer: Performance and praise of Mark’s healing Jesus
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies
The study proposes a link between Mark’s healing stories in chapter 1 and praise songs and/or poems performed at Apollo’s temple and other possible shrines of Asclepius in Southern Antioch. Mark chapter 1 begins with Jesus healing the demoniac (Mk 1:21–28), healing of Simon’s mother in law (Mk 1:29–31) and healing of various peoples who gathered at Simon’s mother-in-law’s house (Mk 1:32–34) and people from the region and afar (Mk 13:39). The chapter finishes with the controversial healing of the leper (1:40–45). Assuming that Mark is located in Southern Antioch, with analogies from Zulu praise poems, this study reread Mark’s healing stories alongside Greek aretalogies with a view to reveal the function and mood around which the stories were told and/or performed. As hypothesis, Mark’s healing stories exudes similar characteristics as Greek aretalogies, praising the benefactor (Jesus) vis-à-vis known healers such as Apollo and Asclepius.
The Grounding of Paul's Pneumatology in his Christology in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16
Wipf and Stock , 2017
key words: pneumatic hermeneutic, wisdom, cross, pneumatology, exegesis The cross of Christ crucified symbolized the central theme of Paul’s ministry. In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle commenced his correspondence with “the message about the cross” and “power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18, NRSV). The proposal for this paper utilizes the method analogia scripturae. Set within the wisdom motif of the Greco-Roman world, this study is dedicated to the examination of the apostle’s Christology in the context of 1 Cor. 1:18-25 and the Pneumatology in 1 Cor. 2:9-16 as both pericopes are juxtaposed in his epistle. Essentially, the thesis concerns the grounding of the Pneumatology of Paul with his Christology in 1 Corinthians. The Corinthian church required clarification and pastoral wisdom with their pneumatic experiences; thus, Paul recognized that a strong theology of the cross complemented their encounters with the Spirit. The question for biblical studies involves a lively tension of the Pneumatology of the Spirit with a robust Christology. Because the power of God throughout this passage has the cross as its paradigm, the structure of the paper leds to the significance of the apostle’s pneumatological contribution of the cross and Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:18; 2:2). For this reason, a strong Christology must ground the Pneumatology of the Pauline corpus. This study in biblical literature commences a new discussion in ecumenical dialogue between pneumatic experiences in the church and christological issues in scripture.