Jesus and the disabled in the marcan gospel - The paralytic and blind Bartimaeus - Fr Gabriele Scardocci OP

 

JESUS AND THE DISABLED PEOPLE IN THE MARCAN GOSPEL: THE PARALYTIC AND BLIND BARTIMAEUS.
 
Fr. Gabriele Giordano M. Scardocci OP.
 

Introduction.

 In this paper[1], we set ourselves the goal of analyzing the minor characters present in the Gospel of Mark, in particular those minor characters that today we would define as disabled, namely the paralytic and the blind Bartimaeus.

The paper will follow this structure:

We will first outline a structure of the gospel itself according to its main sections;

then on the basis of this structure, we will derive a first definition of "minor character".

In the third paragraph, we will deal closely with two minor characters specifically: the episode of the paralytic and his four friends; in the fourth paragraph, instead, the healing of the blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.

Observing these pericopes and their interweaving with the person of Jesus, we will then try to outline a brief theological-biblical synthesis in the fifth paragraph, underlining the eschatological characteristic and abandonment in faith in God that even the most severely disabled, such as the paralytic and Bartimaeus, can witness to with their own lives and daily choices.

The Greek text of the gospel is taken from the twenty-eighth edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece by the authors Nestle - Aland[2].

 

1.              Structure of Mark and demarcation of Minor Characters

According to the scholar Rafael Aguirre Monasterio, a common element in the synoptic gospels is that they have a schematic development of the plot.

Therefore, there is a standard in the plot that can be applied to all three gospels.
The primary narrative element is the presence of certain Characters (among whom Aguirre Monasterio generally notes for now: Jesus, the disciples, the Pharisees and the Jewish authorities, Pilate, and the people), a Development (again Aguirre Monasterio: the popular echo he arouses, the misunderstanding, the growing hostility, the decision to go to Jerusalem, the journey and the clash in the city) and finally an Epilogue (the scholar concludes that the clash develops into the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus)[3].

We can therefore schematically say, at least for now, that the synoptics have a triadic movement:

 

Beginning	Development	Epilogue
Ministry of Jesus in Galilee	Popular echo, misunderstanding, growing hostility, arrival in Jerusalem and clash.	The clash leads to: passion, death and resurrection.

 

From this triadic structure, we immediately gather that the center of the gospel is the figure of Jesus and his ministry and his message. Precisely starting from this public ministry in Galilee, one arrives at the epilogue which also contains the apex of Jesus' action.

Going more deeply into the Marcan gospel, according to the studies of Antonio Rodriguez Carmona, the text can in turn be sectioned according to the reaction of Jesus' interlocutors, and other literary, chronological, and content criteria[4].

Thus, we can divide it into three parts[5]:

Beginning	Development	Epilogue
Introduction (1, 1-13)	Part one (1:14 – 8:30) gospel of Jesus as messiah proclaiming the kingdom of God	Part two (8:31 - 16:8) gospel of Jesus as son of God who dies and rises
1:1: gospel of Jesus, messiah and son of God.	1:14-3:6: action of Jesus and response of the Pharisees.	8:31-10:52: crossing Galilee, Jesus announces his death and resurrection.
1:2-13: Beginning, Introductory, Triptych	3:7-6:6a: Action of Jesus and response of the people.	11-13: activity of Jesus in Jerusalem before the passion.
	6:6b-8:30: action of Jesus and response of the disciples.	14:1-16:8: Passion, death and proclamation of the resurrection in Jerusalem.

 

On the basis of these considerations, it is possible to derive a line of research.

We therefore define minor characters as those who enter into the Development but do not influence the Epilogue.

This was also the idea outlined at the beginning of the seminar by Father Luca De Santis.

2.              The disabled on Jesus’ Path.

As Monasterio Carmona wrote: "The miracles (exorcisms, healings, etc) [...] have great importance in Mk, playing a privileged role in the revelation of the kingdom, of which they manifest the different aspects and the salvific dynamic "[6].

A second confirmation is given to us by Gerard Theissen and Annette Merz: "If the lordship of God consists in the center of Jesus' preaching, healings and exorcisms form the fulcrum of his activity. Certainly, Jesus did not only perform miracles [...] But Jesus impressed and bewildered his contemporaries above all with miracles."[7]

The first, as we will see shortly, to receive Jesus' miraculous action are precisely the group of the infirm who even today medical science considers disabled and whom Jesus meets during the Development and the Epilogue.

Scrolling through the Gospel of Mark, we can therefore note four encounters between Jesus and the disabled:

 

●                2:3: Jesus meets and heals a paralytic.

●                7:32: encounter and healing of a deaf-mute.

●                8:22: encounter and healing of a blind man at Bethsaida.

●                10:46: encounter and healing of Bartimaeus, a blind man, son of Timaeus.

 

John P. Meier, after showing the data set on miracles, concludes their historical veracity: "This wide range of disparate currents of miracle traditions in the first Christian generation, [...], shows that Mark alone writing at the end of the first Christian generation - is enough to adequately contest the idea that the miracle traditions were in every way a creation of the early church after Jesus' death"[8].

It is particular, therefore, that these episodes fall into that category described by Theissen and Merz defined as therapies: " 1. Therapies are healing miracles in which no clash [with demonic forces] occurs, but the healing is operated thanks to the transfer of a miraculous energy from the thaumaturge to the sick person. Typical features are: the idea of healing power, the healing touch [often the laying on of hands], the healing tools that produce the healing process; in the New Testament, only saliva is mentioned. In therapies, the motif of faith recurs. In ancient miracle stories, there is always talk only of the faith subsequent to the fact of the miracle, to the miracle that has already occurred. Only in the case of Jesus does faith become a thaumaturgic force that precedes the miracle itself"[9].

In this sense, the importance of the miracle as an increase of a faith preceding the miraculous action itself seems evident to us.

We now set ourselves the goal of analyzing two pericopes in which some characters show a very firm faith.

 

3.              The faith of the paralytic and his friends (Mk, 2:1 – 12).

The episode is described within the narrative section of the Development: we find a first encounter with a motor-disabled person, a paralytic.

The scene takes place in Capernaum (2:1 - 12), where a large crowd gathers in a house to listen to Jesus (v. 2).

Four men decide to lower their paralytic friend from the roof of the house (v.4).

At this point the text underlines in v.5:

 

5.     καὶ ἰδὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πίστιν αὐτῶν λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ· τέκνον, ἀφίενταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι

 

Thanks to the faith of the four men which precedes the miracle, Jesus acts on the paralytic.
Indeed, Rudolf Pesch writes: "The act of the bearers is a mute prayer and a manifestation of trust."[10] This hypothesis is confirmed by Vincent Taylor's exegetical analysis of the word πίστιν

 “ It denotes a confident trust in Jesus and in his power to help."

At the same time, however, according to Taylor "The most modern commentators rightly include the faith of the paralytic himself (e.g. Klosterman, 26, Lagrange, 35, Jesus a compris la disposition de son âme, Gould, 36; Bartlet, 123.)”[11]; it is interesting therefore that according to these interpreters the paralytic himself is in some way prepared for his encounter with Jesus. In effect,

a proof of his faith seems to us to come from the paralytic's own obedience following the miracle, as he responds promptly to Jesus' command to get up and start walking (vv. 11-12). Between the miracle and the healing of the paralytic, a conflict arises with the Pharisees (vv 6 9) who are secretly convinced that Jesus is a blasphemer, but Jesus knows their thoughts and orders the paralytic to walk to give proof of messianicity and divinity (v.10)[12].

Thus as Raymond Brown also wrote " Jesus here appears strikingly as someone who does not fit into the religious expectations of his contemporaries, an attitude that provokes a plot by Pharisees and Herodians. "[13]

We seem to be able to conclude that the encounter with the paralytic and his friends has an important role in Jesus' teaching, aimed at showing the importance of faith and above all of its characteristic of being lived in obedience and in everyday life.

Observing a faith that abandons itself trustingly, God himself can make that faith grow through prodigious and miraculous actions, including precisely the remission of sins that scandalized the Pharisees. It is in faith, therefore, that one lives the hope of the coming of the Kingdom of God, in which one can be definitively healed from physical and moral weaknesses.

 
4.     The Faith of Bartimaeus, the blind son of Timaeus (Mk 10:46-52).

This second pericope is placed within the Epilogue and in particular before the beginning of Jesus' activities in Jerusalem. In this second healing miracle, we are in Jericho. The narration is vivid and full of details[14] that allow for its clear understanding.

Proceeding on the road from Jericho, Jesus meets a blind man, son of Timaeus, named Bartimaeus (v.46).

In this case, unlike the paralytic, we are aware of the disabled man's name and even which family he comes from.

In the Marcan gospel, only here and in the verses concerning Jairus, do we find the reference to a proper name[15]

Bartimaeus, having heard that Jesus is passing by, begins to call him by the title Son of David (vv. 47-48).

"It's here used by an individual and not by the crowd at large; it expressed a view which Bartimaeus had formed, perhaps under the influence of Isaia 51"[16]. Despite some resistance, the man shouts louder to attract Jesus' attention (vv 47-48). According to Pesch "the repetition of the cry for help contains a motif of faith"[17] and in the end, Jesus gives the order to call him (v.49). Rushing to reach Jesus, the blind man also loses his cloak: it is a scene full of drama[18] and decisive for Bartimaeus' life. In fact, after the request to be healed of his blindness, Jesus grants it and recognizes in Bartimaeus' faith the beginning of his salvation. Let us then follow vv. 51 52 in the original Greek:

 

51 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· τί σοι θέλεις ποιήσω; ὁ δὲ τυφλὸς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· ταββουνι, ἵνα ἀναβλέψω.

52 καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Ὕπαγε, ή πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε.

καὶ εὐθὺς ἀνέβλεψεν, καὶ ἠκολούθει αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ.

 

Once again, Jesus observes that there is a faith that precedes the healing event[19]. We believe that in Bartimaeus there is a profound faith: calling him by the title Son of David " in its meaning of 'helper of the poor' does not express, likewise, any specifically Christian nuance, but rather the genuinely Jewish and popular expectation of the Son of David."[20] A faith steeped in Jewishness, that of Bartimaeus, but which at the same time seems to present a model of faithful abandonment that every believer should live in daily life.

Immediately after his healing from blindness, Bartimaeus also will set out to follow Jesus, with a strengthened faith.

This passage has been interpreted not as the simple passage from total darkness to the vision of human realities, but as a passage to vision as full adherence to the Christological faith.

It seems interesting to us that Meier connects this purification of Bartimaeus' sight to the purification of Peter's inner sight after the death and resurrection: "As the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida prefigures the partial healing of Peter's inner sight at Caesarea Philippi, at the same way, the healings of Bartimeus, immediately before the passion narrative in the broad sense begins, prefigures the full healing of Peter's blindness after Jesus' death and resurrection. Together with the other disciples, he will finally see that Jesus is the Messiah [...] only then will he see and understand Jesus as son of God.”[21]

 
Conclusions: The disabled, witnesses of the “just” and “not yet” in the relationship wit God Jesus

 

After this detailed analysis of the links between Jesus and the disabled, we will try to draw a set of general hermeneutical conclusions.

a)     In the episodes of the paralytic and Bartimaeus, a first teaching given through the experience of disability can be observed.

 In fact, it can first of all be said that therapies or healings have an initial purpose, that is, "they serve to show that the final dynamic of the kingdom leads to the destruction of sickness and pain. [...] the healing of the paralytic shows that the dynamic of the kingdom tends towards the salvation of the whole person."[22] In the Jewish perspective, sickness was considered a consequence of personal sins or at best "when it strikes the righteous, like Job and Tobit, it can be a providential test intended to demonstrate their fidelity" (Tob12:13)"[23]

Instead, in Jesus' perspective, even the most serious disability has an intrinsic eschatological nature: "the peculiarity of the miracles of the historical Jesus consists in the fact that the healings and exorcisms performed in the today are attributed an eschatological significance: in them the new world begins. [...] The present thus becomes, in a small way, a time of salvation, against an apocalyptic pessimism that sees in the present only a serious crisis"[24] At the same time, by eliminating disabilities, it is shown how "miracles are intended first and foremost to bring concrete, material, healing help [...] they affirm the right of the person that this human misery be eliminated."[25] 24 In this sense, then, the disabled help to understand the not yet of the eschatological time.

b) In the detail of the paralytic and Bartimaeus, we find a second teaching: we have repeatedly stressed the presence of faith even before the performance of the miracle.

The faith explicitly stated by Bartimaeus, it has also been noted, is a well-established Jewish faith that does not waver before the digressions of those present who try to hinder their personal encounter with Jesus. In the case of Bartimaeus, the anonymous bystanders who silence him; whereas regarding the paralytic, we find an enormous crowd that physically blocks the passage of his stretcher. This seems to suggest unequivocally that the disabled person is already capable of cultivating a strong faith and therefore a very lively relationship with God.

In these two studied pericopes, indeed, it seems evident that the two disabled characters have a much stronger faith even than the able-bodied.

They are therefore true models of abandonment to God for all believers and live the serene presence of God already now.

In this sense, then, the disabled help to understand the already of the eschatological time.

Within the episode of the paralytic, finally, one last point can be made: the action that the four men perform in lowering the stretcher shows itself as an episode of help for the disabled.

Therefore, the disabled can be true moments of encounter with God, deepening and awareness of one's own faith.

Against a totally negative mentality of his time, and if we will, against a negative mentality of the time in which we live, Jesus opposes a new perspective on disability: thanks to a careful biblical reading, it is possible to grasp the presence of Jesus the God-Man even in the lives of disabled people.

That is, even in those who experience the most radical physical evil.

At the bottom of even the most radical physical evil, it is possible to find the presence of Jesus who took that same suffering upon himself and defeated it on the cross, thus giving it a new and profound meaning.

It is a message still addressed to us today. It seems to us to be well expressed by the consideration of Theissen and Merz regarding the accounts of healing and therapy:" Our hope is that where these episodes are told, people will not distance themselves from the hopelessly sick"[26].

 

 

Fr Gabriele Scardocci OP, Florence, Santa Maria Novella.

disabilitateologia@gmail.com

gab.scard84@gmail.com

 

  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NESTLE - ALAND Novum testamentu graece, 28th edition.

R. E. BROWN, Introduccion al Nuevo Testamento, vol I, Editorial Trotta, 2002.

R. A. MONASTERIO, A. R. CARMONA, Vangeli Sinottici e Atti degli Apostoli, Paideia Editrice, Brescia 1995.

J. P. MEIER, Un Ebreo Marginale ripensare il Gesù storico vol 2: Mentore, Messaggio e Miracoli, Queriniana Editrice, Brescia, 2002.

R. PESCH, Il vangelo di Marco, Parte Prima, Paideia Editrice, Brescia, 1980.

R. PESCH, Il vangelo di Marco, Parte Seconda, Paideia Editrice, Brescia, 1982

V. TAYLOR, The gospel according to Mark, Macmillan & Co Ltd, St martin's press, New York, 1959.

G. THEISSEN, A. MERZ, Il Gesù Storico - Un manuale, Queriniana Editrice, Brescia, 1999.

Dizionario di Teologia Biblica, a cura di XAVIER LÉON-DUFOUR, Marietti, Casale Monferrato, 1971.

 

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[1] This paper is nor academical translation of https://www.academia.edu/26781648/Gesu_e_i_disabili_nel_vangelo_marciano_pdf originally pubblished as a tesina for a Seminary Workshop in Angelicumm University with father Stipe Juric OP and father Luca De Santis OP.

[2] Available online at this address

http://www.nestle-aland.com/en/read-na28-online/text/bibeltext/lesen/stelle/51/100001/109999/

 [3] R.A. Monasterio. A. R. Carmona, Vangeli Sinottici e Atti degli Apostoli, Paideia Editrice, Brescia 1995, 42.

[4] Ibidem, 97.

[5] Ibidem, 98.

[6] Ibidem, 122.

[7] G. Theissen, A. Merz, Il Gesù Storico - Un manuale, Queriniana Editrice, Brescia, 1999, 349.

[8] J.P. Meier, Un Ebreo Marginale - ripensare il Gesù storico - vol 2: Mentore, Messaggio e Miracoli, Queriniana Editrice, Brescia, 2002, 730-731.

[9] Ibidem, 362-363.

[10] R. Pesch, Il vangelo di Marco, Parte Prima, Paideia Editrice, Brescia, 1980, 259

[11] V. Taylor, The gospel according to Mark, Macmillan & Co Ltd, St martin's press, New York, 1959, 194

[12] "The εξουσία of the son of man is His authority to remit sins. [...] Authority to remit sins on earth is set over against the divine prerogative exercised in heaven. The implication of passage is that the authority is given and that the speaker possess it because He is the Son of Man", Ibidem, 198.

[13] R. E. Brown, Introduccion al Nuevo Testamento, vol 1, Editorial Trotta, 2002, 197, the translation from Spanish is ours.

[14] V. Taylor, op. cit, 446. 

[15] Ibidem, 447.

[16] Ibidem, 448.

[17] R. Pesch, Il vangelo di Marco, Parte Seconda, Paideia Editrice, Brescia, 1982, 259.

[18] V. Taylor, op. cit, 449.

[19] We note, along with V.Taylor, ibidem, 449 and R. Pesch, op.cit, 266, that in both this circumstance and that of the paralytic, Jesus does not perform a true visible action with which he heals, such as, for example, an imposition of hands, or the application of saliva, actions which are, instead, characteristic of other healing / therapy episodes.

[20] R. Pesch, op. cit,.263

[21] J.P. Meier, op. cit., 813.

[22] A. Monasterio - Carmona, op. cit., 123.

[23] Entry Sickness - Healing, p.593, in Dizionario di Teologia Biblica, edited by XAVIER LÉON-DUFOUR, Marietti, Casale Monferrato, 1971.

[24] G. Theissen, A. Merz, op. cit. 382. 

[25] Ibidem, 387.

[26] Op.cit,387.