Many Healings of the Woman with the Flow of Blood

Abstract

With the emergence of the modern quest for the historical Jesus, theologians began increasingly questioning traditional views of Jesus as a healer of human bodies. While a growing suspicion of Jesus’s role as a literal healer of the body is commonly traced to the influence of the Enlightenment, in this essay, I will suggest that the roots of this theological marginalization run deeper, in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformations, when supernatural did not yet equal superstitious. The essay will examine two representative exegeses of the healing of the woman with the flow of blood in Mark 5:25–34, offered by Martin Luther and John Calvin. My analysis will reveal a shift of hermeneutical emphases from the bleeding woman’s restoration to the dynamics of her faith, and consequently, a new Protestant vision of Jesus’s role in the story, which I will argue occurred due to the new theological importance placed on faith by Protestant reformers.