19. - James 5:15
"...Is one of you ill? . . . 15The prayer offered in faith will save the sick man, the Lord [here there is no doubt the writer means God] will raise him from his bed, and any sins he may have committed will be forgiven." [NEB]
It is inconceivable that the writer would not have appealed to the fact that Jesus himself had done these very things, had he possessed any such traditions. Mark 2:1-12 presents us with a miracle scene in which Jesus does both. To the paralytic he says: "Take up thy bed and walk", and at the same time he pronounces the man's sins forgiven. The writer of James has clearly never heard of it.
Nor has he who sent the letter known as 1 Clement, from Rome to Corinth, at the very end of the first century. In chapter 59, "Clement" delivers a long prayer to God which must have been in the liturgy of the church at Rome. Here is one part of it:
'Grant us, O Lord, we beseech thee, thy help and protection. Do thou deliver the afflicted, pity the lowly, raise the fallen, reveal thyself to the needy, heal the sick, and bring home thy wandering people. Feed thou the hungry, ransom the captive, support the weak, comfort the faint-hearted."
The reader should be left dumbfounded at the silence of Clement and his community about any such activities.
1. Silences in passage/challenge to a historical Jesus:
Jesus ministry included many miraculous healings of the sick.
2. Relevancy within context:
The book of James is full of practical advice on how to conduct oneself. As Doherty points out the passage has two things in common with the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels: The raising up of one who is sick, and the forgiveness of sins. It also stresses the need to pray and to have faith, also portrayed by Jesus as important for healing. In fact, the epistle of James is full of teachings we find in the gospels. Doherty claims it is inconceivable that the author wouldn't mention Jesus' own similar acts and teachings with regard to healings. It is inconceivable that the author wouldn't have had Jesus in mind, but is a lack of attribution "inconceivable"? Such a lack is consistent throughout all of James. The similarities with teachings found in the gospel accounts are so strong that either the gospels borrowed from James, James borrowed from the gospels, both James and the gospels borrowed from existing teachings, or some combination of these. If one concludes that James is a Christian document then the relative silence about Jesus (other than 2 explicit mentions of the "Lord Jesus Christ") can only be explained by the idea that author considered his teachings to have already been known as reflecting those of Christ, and therefore saw no need to state the obvious. This cannot be shown, of course.
As for 1 Clement, the context is a prayer. I see that Lightfoot's translation has "heal the ungodly" so the prayer may not even include a request for physical healing. If it does, this doesn't create an expectation for a mention of Jesus' own ministry of healing any more than a current believer's prayer for healing would.
3. Related information in other early writings:
Paul didn't deny the miraculous power of God in his own mission:
Rom 15:19 "19in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ."
2 Cor 12:12 "12The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles."
One might expect Paul to have elaborated on these "signs and wonders and miracles". The very fact that he didn't perhaps should be seen not as "inconceivable" but as an indication that the context doesn't require such an elaboration.
Had Jesus lived or even just believed to have lived and been a perfect man--God's Son on earth--, given the signs of an apostle Paul attests to, it is reasonable to expect that Paul and others would have thought Jesus to have been a healer also. However, as the context may not have been such that Paul saw a reason to tout miracles he (Paul) had done, so too may be the case with Jesus.
A number of factors including Jesus' own attitude toward his healing ministry, as well as readers perceptions of it may have been an influence: One could argue that the ministry of healing existed but wasn't as widely known as is portrayed in the gospels. A clue to this might be the fact that in Mark, considered by many to be earliest, many of the alleged miracles were not recognized as miracles at the time they were performed by the eyewitnesses themselves (the feeding of the 5,000, for example), and many were not widely witnessed because Jesus took the recipient aside and away from the crowd to perform the miracle. In addition, Jesus is said to have strictly warned them to not tell people about them, seeming to prefer to teach. After his first night of healings Jesus withdrew: Mark 1:35 "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there. 36Simon and his companions searched for Him;
37they found Him, and said to Him, "Everyone is looking for You." 38He said to them, "Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for."
Or, perhaps there was some doubt in the air, even among believers, with regard to Jesus' healing ability, knowing of a tradition that Jesus sometimes couldn't heal (Mark 6:5-6) "5And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6And He wondered at their unbelief. And He was going around the villages teaching."
Paul says in 1 Cor 1:22 that "Jews ask for signs". In Matt 12:38-39 "38Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." 39But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign;" Paul may have been aware of this response and decided to downplay this kind of requirement of proof over faith.
Or, perhaps Paul saw his own struggles with an unnamed thorn, which the Galations, the Corinthians and probably others were aware of, as a potential seed for doubt. This may have dampened any desire to tout Jesus' ministry of healing.
In addition, there is little occasion for mention of Jesus' ministry of healing in the early writings. There is this brief mention of the sick in James, but I don't see any such mentions in the Didache, Hebrews, 1 Peter, or 1 John. Paul's mentions consist of the following: 1. In 1 Cor 11:30 he mentions the sickness among the current Corinthians as being due to their not honoring the Lord's supper properly in 1 Cor 11:30 2. 2. In 2 Cor 12:7-9 and Gal 4:13-14 Paul mentions a "thorn" given to him, and his own illness, and an illness of a fellow worker in Phil 2:26-27, for which he said "God had mercy". In all, there were few contexts in which mention of a ministry of Jesus' healings should be expected.
There is one early writing that may reference miracles by an earthly Jesus, though it is too vague to say with certainty:
Heb 2:3-4 "3how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, 4God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will."
4. Conclusion
It is not unreasonable to expect some mention by the author of James of Jesus' ministry of healing. However, the level of expectation is dependant upon what one believes was known to the author's readers, as there are clear links between teachings of James and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, perhaps reflecting a known tradition. The author of James' silence on the source of his teachings which match those of Jesus in the gospels moreso than teachings of the OT is a curious silence if his readers didn't know the origin. One might see the silence of Paul with regard to his own miracles as curious until one again considers the possibility that there was no need to provide further detail for his readers. There are a number of other possible reasons why the early writings don't discuss a ministry of healing. On the other hand we do have a reference in Hebrews that may allude to the miracles of Jesus.
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