Did Paul heal people

Answer 1

In his epistles, Paul never claimed to have performed any healing miracles, even though to have announced this would have assisted his missionary work enormously, especially when he faced many challenges to his authority. Of course, had he made any such claim himself, he might have been asked to provide evidence, or to have helped another deserving Christian. If he then failed to do so, his credibility would have been utterly destroyed.

After a safe interval of around fifty years, Acts of the Apostles claimed that Paul really had performed miraculous cures and other miracles, although each such miracle was matched by at least one even more awe-inspiring and worthy miracle performed by St. Peter. According to Acts, Paul's first miraculous cure was improbably similar to Peter's first cure. In both cases, a man who had been lame since birth was immediately cured by being commanded to stand and walk. Peter's first miracle cure was performed in the name of Jesus, at the Temple, where the faithful saw the healed beggar praising God, and was the opportunity for some outstanding proselytising. Paul's first cure was clumsy and without apparent purpose, given that Paul did not tell the man about Jesus and he was even mistaken for a pagan god.

Acts says that Paul also resuscitated a young man who foolishly fell asleep in an upper storey window and fell to the ground, although the story leaves some uncertainty as to whether the young man was really dead when Paul intervened to revive him. This was more than matched by Peter, who resurrected Tabitha, a good woman and a disciple, who was certainly dead and her body had already been washed, a miracle that became known throughout Joppa and, as a result, many were converted.

Acts of the Apostles was defining Paul and Peter for the Christian faithful, not writing history. On this evidence, it can be concluded that Paul did not perform any miracles at all.

Answer 2

For those who have faith, it is not necessay to ask this question. It is simply taken for granted that Jesus did heal people, because The Bible says so.

Nevertheless, 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.

So there are two points of view. We can either believe unquestioningly that Jesus did heal people, just as described in the Bible, or raise doubts about those miracles. The Bible can not answer our question, and there is no extra-biblical evidence that Jesus did heal people.

Answer 3

A:

By his own account, Paul did not perform any miracles, but remember that he was writing to people who actually knew him and he could not risk his credibility by writing to them about miracles and wonders if they never really happened, since he could be challenged to substantiate any events he described.

However, after a safe interval of several decades, the author of Acts attributes previously unknown miracles to Paul. If Acts attributed a previously unknown miracle to Paul, then his followers or admirers were unlikely to complain, but quite comparable miracles are also associated with Peter, and the miracles associated with Paul are always less impressive those associated with Peter. There is likely to have been a theological purpose to the revisions made by the author of Acts, and therefore these should not be taken at face value.

Answer:

Acts 19:11, 12 - Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

Of a truth, neither Peter nor Paul "performed" miracles, but God working through them. After healing a man lame from birth, the apostle Peter is quick to point this out in Acts 3:12 - So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?"

[Quotes from NKJV]

Answer 4

Yes, according to the Bible, Paul performed healing miracles. Acts 19:11-12 describes how God worked through Paul to perform extraordinary miracles of healing in Ephesus, where people were healed when even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick.