Note 184 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Decisive evidence, alike for the necessity of viewing this as a miraculous cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin of the anecdote, is to be obtained by a closer examination of the Old Testament narrative already mentioned, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff.. A prophet out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, while offering incense on his idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar and the overthrow of his false worship; the king with outstretched hand commanded that this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand dried up so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the altar was rent. On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet besought Jehovah for the restoration of the hand, and its full use was again granted.184 Paulus also refers to this narrative in the same connexion, but only for the purpose of applying to it his natural method of explanation; he observes that Jeroboam’s anger may have produced a transient convulsive rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the hand just stretched out with such impetuosity. But who does not see that we have here a legend designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, and to hold up to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder Jeroboam? The man of God denounces on the idolatrous altar quick and miraculous destruction; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth his hand against the man of God; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous altar falls asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the prophet is the king restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and the natural in what is so evidently a mythus? And who can fail to perceive in our evangelical narrative an imitation of this Old Testament legend, except that agreeably to the spirit of Christianity the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive miracle, but as a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus; whence also the outstretching of the hand is not, as in the case of Jeroboam, the criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the drawing of it back again a sign of cure; but, on the contrary, the hand which had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after the completion of the cure be again extended. That, in other instances, about that period, the power of working cures of this kind was in the East ascribed to the favourites of the gods, may be seen from a narrative already adduced, in which, together with the cure of blindness, the restoration of a diseased hand is attributed to Vespasian.185