THE HEALER: What Healing Meant in First-Century Galilee

Across roughly thirty healing accounts in the gospels, there is not one herb, one compound, one dose, one instrument or one prescription.The methods are a word, a touch, or nothing at all - including three cases where the patient is never present. Only three episodes involve any applied substance, and in all three it is saliva, which the entire ancient Mediterranean regarded as a general-purpose remedy.That matters, because a developed medical profession existed and people in Galilee used it. This is not a book that debunks the healings, and it is not a book that defends them. It asks what the accounts actually describe, sets them beside the medicine, the healing cults and the holy men of the same world, and grades every modern theory against the evidence.The conclusion is that the question most people ask - miracle or medicine? - is a disjunction the sources do not contain. The New Testament has no word meaning miracle. It has words meaning power, sign and wonder.18 chapters. Six parts. What the accounts actually say.