Article Middleages-Christianity

The hemorrhaging woman in Mark, a “theologically incorrect” miracle

Francesco Quaranta

3 min read

The miracle of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood is present in the three synoptic Gospels. Mark, who is considered by all biblical scholars to be the source of the other two, contains the original narrative invention:[1]

Now a woman who had been suffering from bleeding for twelve years and had endured much at the hands of many doctors, spending all her savings without any benefit, indeed rather getting worse, heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. For she said, “If I can just touch his clothes, I will be saved.” And immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
And immediately Jesus, realizing that power had gone out from him, turned to the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked around to see who had done this. The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” (Mk 5:25-34).

Luke reports the same version as Mark, modifying only the stylistic aspect, replacing Mark's description of the aftermath of the miracle with direct speech, thus increasing the liveliness of the story. The story, in terms of the implications of exclusion and impurity of the woman, which her encounter with Jesus cancels out along with her illness, remains the same in Matthew. What he changes completely, however, is the conception of the miracle and its occurrence. Matthew eliminates the verses of Mark 5:29-33 where there are two qualifying features of the story:

  • healing occurs immediately when the woman touches Christ's robe;
  • Jesus is unaware, he feels an involuntary outpouring of Dynamis, divine power, from his body to someone he does not see and does not know.

Mark's account tells us that Christ's garments, sacred and endowed with divine energy, heal the sick. He represents Christ as the true successor of Aaron, the first of the Jewish high priests, the Anointed One of the Lord who communicates holiness to whatever he touches: You shall consecrate these things, and they shall be most holy; whatever touches them shall be holy (Exodus 30:29). Jesus is the high priest of Israel, and his garments save, as the prophet Ezekiel says: They impart holiness to the people with their garments (Ezekiel 44:19). Templar and priestly spirituality, while remaining within the realm of transcendent monotheism, must acknowledge the presence of God in spaces, objects, and bodies, which mysteriously participate in Him. In the Talmud, for example, it is said that it is impossible to exercise the priesthood without consecrated vestments and that the rites in that case would be completely ineffective.

The will and word of Christ do not exist in this miracle, and this is what scandalizes Matthew. Jesus and the healing power in Mark have become objects at the disposal of the believer's initiative. Matthew makes the word of Christ the protagonist of the story again; in his version, the woman is not healed immediately, the moment she touches Jesus' cloak, but only >after Jesus, noticing her, heals her by speaking to her: Jesus turned, saw her, and said, “Take courage, daughter, your faith has saved you.” And from that moment the woman was saved. (Mt. 9:22) Jesus' ignorance about who touched him disappears from his version, as does the impersonal healing power that emanates from him autonomously. The story, cut by seven verses, was made acceptable to a rabbinical audience that thought very differently from Mark about sacred garments: ...these garments (of the priests) are not totems or true instruments “containing energy” that will ‘work’ on their own. To believe this literally is to commit idolatry; or in the language of the Bible, “to worship gods of wood and stone.” Ritual objects are not “sacred” in and of themselves—they are only “sacred” if they remind us to follow the commandments, to become better human beings, to be more compassionate and sensitive toward our fellow human beings, and to be more authentic devotees of the One True God.[3]

This is “correct theology,” which preserves immateriality, transcendence, spirituality, etc., but when applied consistently to the personal and collective relationship with God, it makes it impossible, because the relationship between man and God is by its nature contaminated and contaminating: there is anthropomorphism, materiality, limitation, and mixture everywhere. [4] The author of the “Gospel according to Mark,” on the other hand, believes that the Kingdom of God is accessible to the woman with the issue of blood, and that the holiness offered by Jesus is not a metaphor but a reality, not an ethical state but an ontological state of communion with the divine, offered to all people with a new, more merciful and fraternal worship.[5]

[3]Harris Robert, http://www.jtsa.edu/the-meaning-of-aarons-holy-garments (posted on February 27, 2010). This comment brings to the present day all the rabbinical opposition to any non-metaphorical sacredness.
[4]cf. Schwartz Baruch J. https://thetorah.com/garments-of-the-high-priest-anthropomorphism-in-the-worship-of-god/ 02/02/2015
[5]cf. Crispin Fletcher Louis, Jesus as the High Priestly Messiah, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Jan 1, 2006.