Note 4 — Chapter XV · THE METHOD OF M. LOISY

M. Loisy in turn blenches at a claim in which “raising the dead” figures as a customary thing, with cures of leprosy and blindness; and he too falls back on the “spiritual” interpretation,4 failing to note the flat fallacy of making the preaching to the poor at once a contrast and a climax to the spiritual healings, which also, on the hypothesis, are precisely matters of preaching. The Teacher is made to say: “I raise the spiritually dead, and cure the spiritually leprous, deaf, and blind, by preaching to them: to the poor I just preach.” Schmiedel does not see that the preaching of the Gospel to the poor is added as the one thing that could be said to be done for them, who would otherwise have had no benefit; and that on his own view he ought to treat this as a late addition. On the contrary, he insists that the “evangelists” could not have thought of adding it; and that it makes an excellent climax if we take the healings to be purely spiritual.