show_no_mercy

What's going on here? Jesus seems to fail at healing a blind man's sight and has to repeat his healing process to get it right. Why would the author of Mark put this in his gospel? It seems like a superhero coming of age incident where the superhero is getting used to his new superpowers.

This fits in with an adoptionist Christology (the entire gospel of Mark seems adoptionist), but doesn't really make sense in the context it's put in; an incident like this should have happened towards the beginning of the gospel after his baptism by John... at least, according to my superhero analogy. Jesus seems to have no problems prior to this doing healings and other miraculous things (the feeding of the multitude happens right before this for example).

Clivedurdle

http://journals.cambridge.org/action...ne&aid=1683000

aa5874

Or perhaps the author of Mark was an advocate of the "criterion of embarrassment".

This is embarrassing, Jesus underestimated the man's blindness, he had to touch the man twice.

It must be true, spit and two touches can make the blind see.

This procedure is not approved. Do not try at home..

Jane H

Another question would be, why did Jesus go out of the village and not do the miracle in front of the whole population? Surely if He wanted to spread the Good News about God’s kingdom, he would want the maximum publicity? Surely Mark would want to emphasise Jesus’ power by making the whole public see it?

If you take as your starting point, as many of my co-religionists do, second hand ideas about Jesus as a fully powered up God, (even when He was a baby in the manger!), you end up with these sorts of questions.

If you start, as the disciples did, with an enigmatic, baffling human who did inexplicable things. Who ultimately performed actions that had been reserved for God to do, and therefore was in their eyes to be identified alongside God. Then you’re starting to think critically.

Mark‘s probably stuck the miracle where he has because of the surrounding context in Ch8- Mark’s asking the question, “Who was Jesus?” either side. The two stage miracle fits in there because the disciples are part way to “seeing” at that point, and after the resurrection “see” clearly.

“Criterion of embarrassment” is right. If you were making the story up, it wouldn’t look like this. The secrecy, the spittle, the need for two stages. Strange details that ask questions which won’t go away.

rhutchin

We are told that the end of the process is that the man's sight was restored. This may have been the procedure that Jesus followed in many cases of restoring sight. In general, we are told that Jesus healed many people but the process is not described in most cases. That the process of healing in the case you site is described should not detract from the ultimate outcome of that process. Had the man's sight not been restored, then that would be an issue (as when the disciples were not able to heal a man).

Ben C Smith

Some readers of Mark think that this episode is an allegory of sorts for the hardness of heart displayed by the disciples in and around this section of the gospel. Just as Jesus keeps telling them things over and over, yet they still fail to understand, so Jesus attempts to heal the blind man, yet he is still blind (the first time). YMMV.

Ben.

aa5874

You mean that is why Jesus is coming back a second time. People did not see him in the right way at first.

When Jesus comes back again, we will all see him, right?

Those who can't see straight, still wait for the second, and were are now in the third millenium.

Solo

Hi Ben,

I think I would be one of those readers: the cure follows Jesus' rebuke of the disciples' which they thought was because of their forgetting to bring bread along. Jesus asks:

8:18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember?

8:19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied.

So, he enacts the second mass feeding, and they still do not see the significance of the seven baskets of leftovers. (i.e. as the harvest of faith - W.Kelber believes that of Gentiles in Bethsaida which it may well be). To help them, he sets up the two stage cure of the blind man. In the first stage the man says he sees "men like trees, walking". This means his vision was restored but not the "seeing" of truth. (i.e. Jesus manipulates the "vision" of himself like in Luke's Emmaus story) When he makes the man see the "secret" of his messiahship, he forbids him to enter the village.
After that, at Caesarea Philppi, Jesus inquires with his disciples about how he is seen by people and he is told that he is taken to be John, Elijah, and one of the prophets. Peter makes a confession of him as Messiah but does not understand the Pauline Christ who must die to wash away sin. Jesus rebukes Peter for being on the side of men not God.

So, yes, I would say the Bethsaida cure was designed by Mark to contrast Jesus' view of his destiny of the cross and the disciples running away from that "vision".

Jiri

p.s. It's easy to see why the Bethsaida "cure" would be deleted in the later gospels which rehabilitated the disciples.

yalla

Anything your god can do my god can do too.

From an inscription in the Temple of Asclepios at Epidaurus:
A certain Alcetas of Halice was cured of blindness by the god and 'the first things he saw were the trees in the temple precincts'..

This "Markan" story, closely related to the healing of the deaf-mute at 7.31, utilises standard magical methods of the time for healing.
Its just another story, probably based on the Asclepios one, or maybe Vespasian, or possibly both, or from a milieu where such was common.