Disease and Healing in the First Century

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Disease and Healing in the First Century

Acts 4:9

Excerpt

‎In the early Christian period illness may be caused by numerous demonic entities who are not always acting at Yahweh’s command (Matt. 15:22; Luke 11:14), and not necessarily by the violation of covenant stipulations (John 9:2). Illnesses mentioned include fevers (Mark 1:30), hemorrhages (Matt. 9:20), and what has been identified by some scholars as epilepsy (Mark 9:14–29). The cure for illness may be found in this world, and not simply in some utopian future.

‎Christianity also may have attracted patients who were too poor to afford fees charged in many Greco-Roman traditions (cf. Matt. 10:8). Some Greco-Roman traditions insisted that travel to a shrine was necessary for healing, but Christianity, with its emphasis on the value of faith alone, in effect announced that travel to a shrine was not required (Matt. 8:8). Likewise, Christianity resisted temporal restrictions on when healing could be administered (Mark 3:2–5). Nonetheless, early Christianity preserved many older Hebrew traditions regarding miraculous healings…
Avalos, Hector. “Illness and Health Care.” Ed. David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, & Astrid B. Beck. Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible 2000 : 630. Print.

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