HEALING. Healing refers to a restoration to health by any of a number of health care options, including but not limited to the body’s capacity to self-heal, prayer and other forms of divine entreaty, and a range of biomedical interventions (e.g., the intercession of a gifted healer, care within the household, use of traditional medicaments, or employment of a professional physician). The Bible explicitly rejects recourse to magic and generally views physicians with disdain. This negative attitude toward physicians serves largely as a commentary on their unenviable status, due especially to their record of success when compared to the efficacy of folk remedies and costs associated with their services. Theologically, healing practices are guided by the recognition that Yahweh alone is the source of life and, therefore, the source of renewed health. Both the OT and NT portray Yahweh as healer, with the NT adding the image of Jesus as God’s agent of healing. Healing at the hand of others is consistently attributed to God, to “the name” of the exalted Lord Jesus, or to the Holy Spirit.

Perspectives on Healing

“Healing” and “sickness” are notoriously difficult to define, depending on differing cultural and, in some cases, relatively individual and subjective notions of “health.” If “sickness” refers to an unwanted condition or the impairment of normal bodily functions, who decides what is “unwanted” or “normal”? To a degree not often recognized, “sickness” is in the eye of the beholder, so the identification and etiology of sickness, and the therapeutic interventions it warrants, are autobiographically shaped. If “sickness” is any unwanted condition of self or substantial threat of unwanted conditions of self, then notions of health and sickness are tied to how a people measures human well-being.

An immediate implication of this pathological approach is that study of healing in the Bible, particularly but not exclusively in the West, has often been derailed by projecting contemporary biomedical concerns onto accounts of healing from cultures far removed from our own. Too often, focus has fallen on achieving a diagnosis of a presenting problem and its resolution in terms oriented toward the physical body, an approach that turns a blind eye to other definitions of “healing” and “health” assumed in and supported by the biblical materials.

A useful taxonomy for intercultural study of healing makes distinctions along the following lines. 1) Disease accounts focus on abnormalities located within the body, at or beneath the skin. The problem lies in the structure and functions of bodily organs or systems. In this case, healing requires physical or biomedical intervention. 2) Illness accounts center on the body but also one’s networks of relationships and interaction with the larger social environment. The body is not discounted, but placed within a larger web of meaning that includes the embodied lives of persons in community. Healing might require physical intervention, but certainly must address the nesting of persons with others as the target of intervention. 3) Disorder accounts, without neglecting either the body or one’s networks of relationships and interactions within a larger social environment, also attend to one’s relationship to the world at large, experiences as unbalanced, out of order. The recovery of well-being, in this case, would be tantamount to “putting the world back together,” or otherwise redressing a cosmic imbalance. As medical anthropologists are quick to point out, this taxonomy represents ideal categories that, in the lived experience of a people, may overlap; this is almost always the case in the biblical materials.

If contemporary people of the West tend to think of disease preeminently in bodily terms, then they would also imagine that healing requires physical or biomedical intervention. People within biblical accounts, however, tend to think of sickness in more holistic ways. The source of sickness for them lies not only in the bodies of the sick, but also and sometimes especially in their social environments and in the larger cosmos. Accordingly, healing entails alleviating the pressure of one’s social relationships, bodily intervention, and/or redress of cosmic imbalances. This means that persons who tend toward a biomedical paradigm for understanding sickness and healing may need to expand what they allow as significant in talk about well-being to include, e.g., concerns with relational integrity and the life of the community. It does not mean that they should jettison concern with the body as though it were unimportant; this would only substitute one form of reductionism for another.

An intercultural perspective is important when reading biblical accounts of healing. For example, in the Bible “leprosy” is rarely if ever true leprosy, or “Hansen’s disease,” but instead includes any of a number of skin conditions. According to Lev 13-14 , LEPROSY is a sign of divine curse on a person, with the result that a person diagnosed by a priest as a leper is relegated to the periphery of human community. In this case, “leprosy” is not life threatening, from a biomedical point of view, nor is this skin disease contagious. Instead, the contagion is ritual impurity. “Leprosy” thus exemplifies how religious, social, and physical considerations coalesce in a single set of symptoms. Jesus’ intervention in such cases is classified as “cleansing” rather than healing, since religious impurity is the primary presenting problem, and intervention is followed with instruction like that found in Luke 5:12-14 : “Go, show yourself to the priest. . . .” In such an instance, the priest functions as a health care consultant, validating the cure and mediating the former leper’s return to community with God’s people.

Cases of exorcism similarly correlate what might appear as discrete spiritual, social, mental, and physical factors, both in the presentation of the disorder and in its resolution. The Gerasene demoniac lived not in a house but among the tombs (apart from human community, as though he were dead, ritually unclean), was naked and uncontrollable (and thus lacking human identity), and his speech moves back and forth between “I” and “we”-statements (so fully is he demonized). Following the exorcism, he sits at the feet of Jesus (self-controlled and submissive), clothed and in his right mind (returned to human identity), and Jesus returns him to his home to declare what God had done for him (restored to his community, with a vocation) (Luke 8:26-39).

The integration of measures of human well-being is also on display in a worldview in which healing and sickness are indicators of Yahweh’s favor and displeasure. Although one cannot argue that health is necessarily the direct result of God’s favor, nor that sickness is necessarily the direct result of divine punishment, it is nevertheless true that for ancient Israel there could be a causal link from sin to sickness. (See, e.g., Deut 28 ; 1 Kgs 13:1-25 ; Prov 3:28-35; 11:19; 13:13-23 ; 1 Cor 11:29-30 . This position is eloquently represented by Job’s interlocutors in Job 8:1-22; 11:6; 22:1-30 , though in the book of Job their logic is undermined.) In John 9 , the disciples assume the causal relation of sin to physical disorder, but Jesus makes no general pronouncement on the subject.

Ancient Physicians, Ancient Medicine

Healing practices in Israel centered in the home, where the sick were kept; care might take the form of maintaining vigil and soliciting the help of Yahweh through prayer and fasting (e.g., 2 Sam 12:15-23 ). Persons with “leprosy,” on the other hand, were segregated (Lev 13-14 ). Women in childbirth received the aid of midwives (e.g., Gen 35:17; 38:28 ). Only rarely do physicians appear in the OT. When they do, they are typically seen as negative alternatives to Yahweh (e.g., 2 Chr 16:12 ; Jer 8:22-9:6 ) or as persons offering worthless advice (Job 13:4 ). This is consistent with the biblical portrait of Yahweh as the only God. It is also consistent with the state of medical knowledge in antiquity, and thus with the mysteriousness of the human body and its processes, which encouraged hope in magic and/or miracle. Old Testament faith explicitly excluded magic (or sorcery, the manipulation of the spirits) as a remedy, in preference to divine intervention and care (e.g., Lev 19:26-28 ; Deut 18:10-14 ; Ezek 13:17-18 ).

Prejudice against physicians is not unique to the OT world. Due to the association of medicine with the Greeks and an anti-Greek bias characterizing many of the elite of the Roman republic, traditional healing practices among the Romans could be asserted over against Greek medicine. This, together with his disavowal of fee-based medical practices among physicians, explains Cato’s advice to his son to stay clear of doctors, preferring instead “a little book of prescriptions for curing those who were sick in his family” (Plutarch, Cato, 23.3-6). In rural areas of the empire, snake-charmers and healers with magical powers were the norm. In pandemic times, however, all eyes turned toward the gods for defense and salvation.

Nevertheless, in the world of the NT, physicians were sufficiently common that Jesus can allude to their activity metaphorically (e.g., Mark 2:17 par.). Moreover, reflecting a widespread viewpoint that medical attention should be reserved to one’s family and friends, Jesus predicts that some will say, “Doctor, cure yourself”! In effect, he’s saying, “Attend to people of your own community and not to outsiders!” (Luke 4:23 ). Only the wealthy could afford the care of a trained physician, however, and village people were especially vulnerable to the abuse of charlatans who took what little money they had but provided little by way of a cure. Mark 5:26 is illustrative: “She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.”

Village and rural folk depended less on persons who publicly professed the physician’s oath (i.e., those of the “profession”), and found the prospect of divine healing especially attractive (e.g., Acts 5:16 ). Hospitality might take the form of health care (e.g., Luke 10:30-35 ; Acts 16:33-34 ), and the author of 1 Timothy, while recognizing the potential of intoxication, nonetheless reflects medical tradition when he advises “a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (3:8; 5:3; for an extensive registry of practical medicaments, see Pliny the Elder, Nat. 23-32). Relative wealth could not certify medical competence, however. Medical treatises might sneer at root-cutters, drug-sellers, and purveyors of amulets and incantations, but even the best physicians understood little of the ways of the body.

In the Greco-Roman world, the work of healing was claimed by and for “holy men,” and for many others, including emperors and philosophers. Again, though, “healing” must be understood broadly. For example, concerning the exploits of Augustus in rescuing “the whole human race exhausted by mutual slaughter,” Philo wrote, “This is the Caesar who calmed the torrential storms on every side, who healed pestilences common to Greeks and barbarians . . .” (Embassy to Gaius §§144-45). Philosophers were “physicians” since the aim of their teaching was to heal people of their vices and to promote the good health of virtue. Galen (129-ca. 215 ce), the celebrated physician whose writings dominated medicine for almost 1,400 years, entitled one of his books, That the Best Physician Is also a Philosopher.

Healing in Greco-Roman antiquity was associated with the ubiquitous gods, especially but not exclusively the cults and shrines honoring the healing deities (see Acts 14:8-13 ). Exalted to the Greek pantheon, Hercules exercised compassion by healing diseases of all sorts, even raising the dead. The goddess Isis was recognized as dispenser of life, healer, bringer of salvation. Asclepius, the god of healing, was credited with guiding the hands of the physicians. Hygeia, health personified, was recognized as Asclepius’ daughter. Healing was also claimed to be available by means of magical paraphernalia. Acts records the burning of magical books at Ephesus by former magicians who had become believers (19:18-19), thus disclosing what must have been a characteristic Christian response to such practices.

Yahweh as Healer

Throughout the OT, Yahweh’s role as healer is paramount: “I am the Lord who heals you” (Exod 15:26 ; see, e.g., 2 Kgs 5:7 ; Isa 57:19 ). This self-attribution comes immediately after the narrator’s account of Yahweh’s liberation of Israel from Egypt. This demonstrates how broadly the notion of “healing” could be understood—in this instance, to refer to the freedom and formation of a people. Elsewhere in the Pentateuch, Yahweh declares as proof of his singular status, “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deut 32:39 ). In the Prophets, we find appeals to God that he might come and heal persons and the nation. Hezekiah prays that God might restore his health (Isa 38:16 ), and Ezekiel portrays Yahweh as healer of the weak, the sick, and the lost (34:16). The Servant of Yahweh, Isaiah writes, will effect the healing of God’s people (53:5). In the Writings, too, God is portrayed as healer. A recurring motif in the Psalms is God’s restoring the faithful—sometimes by means of forgiveness, liberation, or renewal (Pss 30:2; 41:4; 103:3; 107:19-20 ). Yahweh binds up and heals the wounded (Job 5:17-18 ).

In the NT, the role of God as healer is continued, but with a significant emendation. Healing is a sign of the in-breaking kingdom of God, a reminder that behind the healing ministry of Jesus and others stands Yahweh the healer. Especially in the Gospels and Acts, well-being is a divine gift mediated through Jesus, then through his followers. According to Acts, God worked deeds of power, wonders, and signs through Jesus so as to accredit him as God’s authorized agent of salvation (2:22); likewise, the Lord “testified to the word of his grace by granting signs and wonders to be done” through Paul and Barnabas (14:3). Others may participate in God’s healing activity, but this does not detract from the essential identification of Yahweh as the source of healing. This is underscored in Acts by means of the theologically significant description of miracles as “signs and wonders,” language borrowed from the OT through which the narrator of Acts proclaims the realization of God’s saving purpose and bears witness to God’s commanding influence in history (e.g., Exod 7:3 ; Deut 4:34; 7:19; 26:8 ; Jer 32:20-21 ; Acts 2:19, 22, 43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 7:36; 8:6, 13; 14:3; 15:12 ).

Jesus as Healer

1. Healing and the historical Jesus

The portrait of Jesus as healer is central to the Gospels and its historicity is strongly advocated by standard criteria of authenticity. With regard to the criterion of dissimilarity, when compared with such Jewish holy men as Honi the Circle-Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa—as well as the 1st cent. Gentile miracle worker, Apollonius of Tyana—three things distinguish Jesus: 1) the degree to which healing was typical of his ministry, 2) his emphasis on the component of faith (see the phrase, “Your faith has made you well”—e.g., Matt 9:22 ; Mark 10:52 ; Luke 17:19 ), and 3) his unmediated exercise of the saving power of God. Jesus did not ask God to intervene, but pronounced healing directly, in speech-acts that assumed his authority to do so. The character of these speech-acts distinguishes the healing work of Jesus from that of his followers as well; they pronounced healing in the name of Jesus (e.g., Acts 3:6, 16 ), recoiling from the suggestion that they might be the source of divine power (e.g., Acts 14:14-15 ).

The portrait of Jesus as healer also satisfies the criterion of multiple attestation. The Gospel of Matthew records nineteen healing and four summary statements naming healing as typical of Jesus’ mission. Mark recounts eighteen miracle stories and four summaries, and Luke has twenty stories and three summaries. Taking into account that the Synoptic Gospels occasionally report the same episode, the index is still impressive: six episodes of exorcism and seventeen accounts of healing (including three reports of resuscitation), as well as allusions to unspecified episodes of healing. The Gospel of John refers to miracles as “signs,” among which are numbered five episodes of healing (including one resuscitation). We have further testimony from outside the NT. Although Josephus’ paragraph concerning Jesus (i.e., the Testimonium Flavianum; Ant. 18.63-64) has long been under suspicion as a Christian interpolation, recent study supports the theory that an original reference to Jesus in Josephus’s work has been embellished. The original reference would have included mention of Jesus’ having accomplished “astounding deeds,” the charge that he led the people astray, and his crucifixion. To this can be added rabbinic traditions describing Jesus as a magician who deceived and led Israel astray (b. Sanh. 107b; compare b. Shabb. 104b), and the pointed statement in b. Sanh. 43a: “He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray.” According to Origen, Celsus thought that Jesus journeyed to Egypt, learned the secrets of magicians, then returned to Palestine as a deceptive quack (Cels. 1.38), and Justin Martyr observed that, though Jesus’ healing should have elicited recognition of him as Messiah, some drew the opposite conclusion: “they said it was a display of magic art, for they even dared to say that he was a magician and a deceiver of the people” (Dia. 69:7).

While reviewing evidence for multiple sources, we have also garnered evidence in relation to the criterion of Jesus’ suffering and death: What about the historical Jesus accounts for his opposition and eventual crucifixion? The material from Josephus and rabbinic texts indicates already that Jesus was charged as a deceiver and false prophet, a parallel to the claims in Luke 23:1-5 that Jesus was delivered to Pilate as one who perverted the people of Israel and led them astray. These charges echo the warning in Deut 13 against false prophets. In other words, the portrait of Jesus as healer helps to explain the hostility he attracted and his execution.

Of perhaps even greater interest is the apparent reality that the locus of debate was not whether these episodes actually occurred, but how to account for them. For some, Jesus engaged in healing as a witch, magician, or quack. According to the Synoptic Gospels, some who recognized Jesus’ status as a healer attributed his ministry of exorcism to his association with Satan. In response, Jesus interprets his exorcisms as a sign of the work of the Spirit in his mission, and as a demonstration of God’s kingdom (Matt 12:24-33 ; Mark 2:22-30 ; Luke 11:14-26 ). In these exchanges, Jesus’ healing ministry signifies the inbreaking kingdom of God. His healing ministry marked the coming of the long-awaited era of salvation (see Luke 4:18-19 [citing Isa 58:6; 61:1-2 ]; Matt 8:14-17 [citing Isa 53:4 ]).

2. Jesus as healer in the Gospels

In the Gospels as a whole, the healing ministry of Jesus identifies Jesus as agent of God’s beneficence and signifies the enactment of God’s saving purpose. Each of the Gospels portrays Jesus as healer with its own emphases.

Healing stories in Matthew congregate especially in Matt 8-9 , depicting Jesus as one who makes divine blessing available to those on society’s margins—a leper, the slave of a Gentile army officer, an old woman, the demon-possessed, a paralytic, a collector of tolls, a young girl, and the blind. The result is an admixture of references to “healing” as return to physical health, restoration of persons to status within their families and communities, reordering of life around God, and the driving back of demonic forces. Thus, cleansing a leper allowed him new access to God and to the community of God’s people (Matt 8:1-4 ), healing a paralytic was tantamount to forgiving his sins (Matt 9:2-8 ), extending the grace of God to toll collectors and sinners illustrated the work of a physician (Matt 9:9-13 ), and recovery of sight signified the insight of faith (Matt 9:27-31 ). For Matthew, accounts of healing serve also to underscore christological predicates—e.g., Messiah, Lord, Son of David (e.g., 8:2; 9:27-31; 20:29-34)—and to inscribe Jesus’ mission into Isaianic anticipation of the new age (e.g., 8:17; 11:4-5; Isa 35:6; 53:4; 61:1 ).

For the Gospel of Mark, the healing ministry of Jesus is strategically correlated with the message of the cross in the service of Mark’s concern with the identity of Jesus. It is precisely as the miracle-worker that Jesus goes to the cross, with Mark portraying him as the powerful, self-giving Son of God. Episodes of healing in Mark sometimes have a parabolic function as well (e.g., a comparison of 8:22-25 with 10:46-52 turns on the metaphorical use of sight and blindness for the presence or absence of the insight of faith).

Healing is pivotal for Jesus’ identity and mission in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus’ inaugural address tethers healing and teaching together as complementary means of proclaiming the good news (4:16-30). Jesus’ role as a healer is a consequence of his anointing by the Spirit (e.g., 4:18-19; 5:17; Acts 10:38 ), and healing is an important means by which Jesus extends the frontiers of salvation (e.g., 11:17-19). As a whole, the healing ministry of Jesus is portrayed as an assault on the forces of evil (e.g., 13:10-17). The portrait of Jesus as healer in the Gospel of Luke is carefully balanced with parallel accounts of healing in the Acts of the Apostles, authenticating the status of Jesus’ witnesses (e.g., compare Luke 5:17-26 with Acts 3:1-10; 14:8-13 ).

According to John 20:30-31 , Jesus’ “signs,” including incidences of healing, are to cultivate faith in Jesus, Messiah and Son of God. That is, episodes of healing point beyond themselves to the genuine identity and glory of Jesus, verifying his filial relationship with God and demonstrating that the Father sent Jesus (e.g., 5:36-38). Nevertheless, Jesus’ healing ministry is received as ambiguous testimony; the Fourth Evangelist typically registers a range of responses (e.g., John 9 )—hostility against Jesus, bearing witness to healing apart from a faith-response, and the insight that comes with belief in Jesus.

Other Agents of Healing

In the OT, prophets were sometimes portrayed as agents of healing. Elijah was instrumental in restoring a widow’s son to life (1 Kgs 17:8-24 ), and Elisha instructed Naaman, commander of the Syrian army, how to be cured of leprosy (2 Kgs 5:1-15 ). According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ disciples participated in his ministries of healing and exorcism (Mark 6:7-13 par.), and in Acts the ministries of the apostles, as well as of Stephen, Paul, and Barnabas, are characterized by signs and wonders, including healing. Such healing is performed explicitly in the name of Jesus (e.g., Acts 3:1-10; 9:34; 16:16-18 ). For Acts, the healing activity of persons like Stephen or Peter functions to convey the blessings of salvation now available through the risen Lord, but also to prove that such persons are the Lord’s authorized emissaries.

In 1 Cor 12 , Paul lists the gifts of healings and working of miracles as manifestations of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church. In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of his having performed “the signs of an apostle” (12:12; compare Rom 15:18-19 ; 1 Thess 1:5 ), which presumably would have included healing. Paul, however, is generally reserved in speaking of such matters since weakness is an occasion for identifying with the suffering of Jesus and for communicating the power of the gospel (e.g., Gal 4:13 ; 2 Cor 12:7 ).

James directs those who are sick to call for the elders of the church to pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord (5:15-16). Correlating confession and healing, James emphasizes healing as integral to the integrity of the Christian community.

Bibliography: Hector Avalos. Illness and Health Care in the ANE (1995); Wendy Cotter, ed. Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity (1999); Robert A. Hahn. Sickness and Healing: An Anthropological Perspective (1995); Howard Clark Kee. Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times (1986); John P. Meier. A Marginal Jew. Vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (1994); Vivian Nutton. Ancient Medicine (2004); John J. Pilch. Healing in the New Testament (2000); Graham H. Twelftree. Jesus the Miracle Worker (1999).

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