What can you say about Jesus' power to heal?

Answer 1

The development of Jesus' power to heal is interesting. The first gospel to be written was Mark's Gospel, and this seems to have introduced Jesus' miracles somewhat tentatively.

Two early miracles are the cure of a deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:32) and of blind man (8:23). In these, Jesus had to use spit and even had difficulty in completing one cure successfully. It was customary in ancient times for holy men to use spit when curing afflictions, and the manner of performing these two cures was so orthodox that Mark could have created the stories simply based on his knowledge of anecdotes about holy men in general.

Since the strength of Jesus' inherent powers should not have changed over time, all other reports of miraculous cures would be inauthentic if they seem to demonstrate clearly greater miraculous powers than exercised here, but he soon began to cure blindness or deafness without the traditional spit, cured third parties who were not even present, and even cured unintentionally - for example the woman with the issue of blood. Nevertheless, no one thought to approach Jesus to cure life-threatening injuries, although these ought to have been common in Palestine during the first century, or to regrow severed limbs.