Scholars who have worked to create a “harmony of the Gospels” through the centuries (the earliest known attempt was Tatian’s Diatessaron around A.D. 150) have noted something not widely recognized about the very beginning of Christ’s life with the apostles. Jesus, it would appear, gathered most of them up, performed the water-into-wine miracle at Cana to retain their interest—and then left Galilee abruptly.
For reasons of his own, he made a brief journey to Jerusalem during Passover, a pilgrimage to which the “First Four” (Andrew, Simons, James, and John) plus two (Philip and Nathanael) do not seem to have been invited. Andrew and Simon, and James and John, at least, apparently returned to their day jobs as fishermen, awaiting their more famous call (Matt. 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20) to leave their nets behind for good and become full-time “fishers of men.” And Jesus, having not yet begun to disciple his ostensible disciples, did little to no teaching during his sojourn in the south.
One can’t help wondering if his followers puzzled over this kind of treatment while he was away—perhaps even grumbled, as the Israelites did when Moses lingered on the mountain. What was Jesus up to down there in Jerusalem? Sizing up his support among the Jews in the southern kingdom of Judah? Recruiting Judean disciples to add to his existing band of Galileans? (Practically all of Jesus’ followers at that point were northern natives; indeed, only one Judean ever was numbered among the Twelve.) Scouting out the lay of the land for future military action? Whatever it was, it was apparently “Messiah business” and above the pay grade of those left behind.
A new and inscrutable messiah
Up to this point, these early disciples were relying heavily, almost exclusively, on the word of John the Baptist, whom they had followed until he had identified Jesus as the Messiah, and they may have decided that the two cousins compared poorly so far. John had not treated them like this, perhaps; and switching over to the Nazarene, quiet thus far and inscrutable, may have been confusing at first, even disappointing.
And if, as seems to be the case, the breaking news of John’s imprisonment by Herod (brought on by the Baptizer’s “meddling” in the private lives of the royal household) arrived during this same period of Jesus’ absence, then the sense of loss and of nostalgia for their previous mentor would have been heightened even more acutely.
When he did return to Galilee, Jesus went straight to the synagogues where, as a recognized rabbi, he was entitled to preach. As he did so, he was “praised by everyone” (Luke 4:15). But he likely gave the same short presentation at each of the synagogues he visited. We may take the one described in Luke 4:16-21 as typical:
He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
These readings were, of course, universally recognized as a prophecy of the long-expected Deliverer to come. For Essenes, and those familiar with their ideas, the choice of this reading would have been doubly dramatic. The Melchizedek Dead Sea Scroll found at Qumran ties this passage from Isaiah directly to Essene expectations of a great jubilee, a day when the Messiah would liberate mankind, “releasing them from the debt of all their sins,” and “deliver them from the power of Belial [commonly used as a synonym for Satan], and from the power of all the spirits predestined to him.”
Either way, as Luke says, “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” Jesus seems to have allowed the words of the reading to hang in the air a moment or two, “then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’” (Luke 4:21). Israel’s great prophet, in other words, was writing about me.
Many self-proclaimed messiahs had come and gone, so we needn’t jump to the conclusion that all the Galileans who heard this announcement were deficient somehow in their faith. Those who took a wait-and-see approach were actually behaving prudently: “Do not believe every spirit,” as St. John later wrote, “but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
Promises had been made about this event, after all; sacred words that Israelites had been learning by heart for the last fifteen centuries. And, as Jesus said in a later context, “Everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). The proof of the pudding would be in the eating. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” (Matt. 11:19).
Affirmations of divinity
Jesus accepted the challenge. “He went down to Capernaum,” probably the very next week, “and was teaching them on the Sabbath . . . In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon,” and clearly, since that man had the demon there with him “in the synagogue,” the existing religious authorities had been powerless to help. The possessed man cried out with a loud voice,
“Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, “What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!” (Luke 4:33-36).
Next, Jesus went to Simon’s house—Simon, who along with at least some of the others must have been eyewitness to both the announcement and the accompanying exorcism. “Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked [Jesus] about her. Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them” (Luke 4:39).
As the sun was setting [still on the same Sabbath day, mind you] all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them. Demons also came out of many, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah (Luke 4:40-41).
This affirmation expressed a certainty that the apostles, along with the rest of humanity, had not yet earned—but the lesson was now well under way.
Fulfilling the prophecies
The next day, a Sunday, Jesus left to go south again—another fifty-mile walk or more. “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose’—and do notice that “proclaiming the good news” at this stage chiefly meant laying claim to ancient prophecies and then making good on the claims. “So he continued proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea” (Luke 4:43-44). He healed a leper along the way, and “many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases” (Luke 5:15).
A group of men brought a paralytic and tried to lay him before Jesus,
but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:17-24).
Jesus saw where these rhetorical questions were going and answered,
“Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the one who was paralyzed—“I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.’”
The man stood up, and went home, “glorifying God.” The assembled group, “filled with awe,” likewise glorified God, saying “We have seen strange things today” (Luke 5:25-27).
Strange things, yes; but what these witnesses had seen was nothing more or less than the same old signs their prophets always told them to expect.
Were the men of Qumran looking for a new Melchizedek who could deliver humanity from the power of Belial? Jesus rebukes devils and out they go.
Were the Essenes expecting a priest-king to begin releasing men from the debt of their sins? The Nazarene says, “Your sins are forgiven,” and the sinner is healed as proof of a successful transaction.
Isaiah had promised recovery of sight to the blind and that the ears of the deaf would be unstopped, the lame made to leap like deer (35:5-6, 42:6-7)—a miracle-worker, in other words. And now here Jesus was, working the promised miracles.
Signs and wonders
In later chapters, our Lord himself affirms this interpretation. Asked for proof that John the Baptist’s identification had been correct when he named him “Lamb of God,” Jesus provides the following “you tell me” response: go, he says, and report simply that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matt. 11:2-4).
When the rabbis accused him of performing his signs through the power of black magic, Jesus reminds them that demons don’t drive out demons and leads them to a conclusion: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:19-20).
Jesus’ wonders thus are not only a valid but an essential stamp of God’s approval on his mission. Unbiased spectators saw this clearly, even as the religious authorities offered compelling theological arguments against the Nazarene’s claim: “Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, ‘When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?’” (John 7:31).
For the disciples, all of this must have happened awfully fast. Before his teaching began in earnest with the Sermon on the Mount, before they even got to know him at all, with hardly a word of explanation from the man himself, the future apostles watched dozens and dozens of signs and wonders take place at the Nazarene’s command:
“They brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them”(Matt. 4:24);
“Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’” (Mark 3:11); and
“They brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door” (Mark 1:32-33).
The end of a dry spell
It is important to realize that these early chapters of the four Gospels contain a truly unprecedented outpouring of the miraculous. Many who haven’t yet studied the Bible carefully harbor an impression that Scripture is chock-a-block with signs and wonders—a miracle on practically every page. This isn’t the case at all.
During certain phases of Israel’s history, centuries go by with scarcely a whiff of the supernatural. Even when Moses began to lead the people, “there had been no appearance of Jehovah to any one for above four hundred years, and they might well think that the age of miracles was past,” according to the great Anglican scholar Charles Ellicott. “Miracles cluster around certain crises in God’s dealings with man,” Ellicott continues, often “ceasing altogether between one crisis and another” (A New Testament Commentary for English Readers, vol. 1, [1878], 79). In fact, the whole 500 years before Christ’s great Galilee ministry began—since the days when Daniel had been delivered from the lion’s den—had been one of these dry periods.
If we distinguish between miracles worked by God at his own initiative and those “called down” in some manner by a human wonder-worker—an audible plea, for instance, or the use of some sacramental medium such as Moses’ rod of power or the salt with which Elisha healed the poisonous waters of Jericho—then miracles of the type worked by Jesus are rare indeed in the Old Testament. Moses performed twelve or fifteen, depending on how many of the Egyptian plagues we reckon were commenced at his word (and at least one of those was performed by his brother Aaron using Moses’ rod). Joshua worked about four such miracles during his career, and Elijah and Elisha about twelve each.
Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, may well have performed twelve an hour some days. Nearly forty, at any rate, are individually described in the Gospels, but the actual total is impossible to calculate. They came in such a flood that large numbers of them are often lumped together in indefinite masses, as Luke relates:
He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases . . . And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them (Luke 6:19).
This is but one of fifteen or so similar passages.
So when our Lord did finally begin to teach his disciples, we may be sure that he had their full attention. In their eyes, he was no longer auditioning for the part; they had ceased comparing him to the Baptist or, indeed, to any other prophet. The eruption of miracles had simply blown all quibbles away. They still entertained, to be sure, half a dozen contradictory ideas about the role he had come to play, but now they considered the puzzle from a new position: sitting at his feet figuratively—and then often literally—speaking.