Boan’s point is valid re. Ac.19:13. It shows exorcism predating Paul. Quite possibly it had some success, but when they tried to take Christianity’s success with taking Christ, they were rightly rebuffed. Lk.11:19 also shows that in Inter-testamental Jewish Religion (strictly speaking Judaism began in ad 70) demons were cast out. Certainly physical divine healing took place in the OT, but like Boan I am scratching my head to think whether the method of speaking a word – either to announce it done or to do it – was used.
I would not wish to relate a word from an elderly translation (eg KJV’s maimed), link it to its current semantic range, and including the full range of meaning (totality transfer fallacy) to cover my point. If I did I might say that he healed the dumb, that today dumb means idiot, and that therefore Jesus healed idiots. Now there was a guy mentioned in Lk.8:27 who fitted the bill, but is that what Mt.15:30 is about?
I’ve even more problems with the idea that Jesus’ works were because he was God (see my post #9). A# many prophets (who were not God) had healed before him, B# he said that it was by the Spirit (would God need any help?), C# those healed didn’t think it was since he was God (no blasphemy charge), D# & he set a pattern for us which he expected us to follow & exceed (exceeding God is difficult).
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