Note 207 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

But apart from the false interpretation of the words of Jesus, this view of the subject has many difficulties. That in many diseases conditions may present themselves which have a deceptive resemblance to death, or that in the indifferent state of medical science among the Jews of that age especially, a swoon might easily be mistaken for death is not to be denied. But how was Jesus to know that there was such a merely apparent death in this particular case? However minutely the father detailed to him the course of the disease, nay, even if Jesus were acquainted beforehand with the particular circumstances of the girl’s illness (as the natural explanation supposes): we must still ask, how could he build so much on this information as, without having seen the girl, and in contradiction to the assurance of the eye-witnesses, decidedly to declare that she was not dead, according to the rationalistic interpretation of his words? This would have been rashness and folly to boot, unless Jesus had obtained certain knowledge of the true state of the case in a supernatural way:207 to admit which, however, is to abandon the naturalistic point of view. To return to the explanation of Paulus; between the expressions, ἐκράτησε τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῆς, he took her by the hand, and ἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον, the maid arose, expressions which are closely enough connected in Matthew, and are still more inseparably linked by the words εὐθέως and παραχρῆμα in the other two gospels, he inserts a course of medical treatment, and Venturini can even specify the different restoratives which were applied.208 Against such arbitrary suppositions, Olshausen justly maintains that in the opinion of the evangelical narrator the life-giving word of Jesus (and we might add, the touch of his hand, furnished with divine power) was the means of restoring the girl to life.