This will be a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject, but I think it is vital to deal with it as it has the poten­tial to free up Chris­tians from dan­ger­ous mis­con­cep­tions and practices.

The first pas­sage that may give us impor­tant infor­ma­tion, this time con­cern­ing how the gospels were com­piled is this:

Luke 1:1 Inas­much as many have under­taken to com­pile a nar­ra­tive of the things which have been accom­plished among us, 2 just as they were deliv­ered to us by those who from the begin­ning were eye­wit­nesses and min­is­ters of the word, 3 it seemed good to me also, hav­ing fol­lowed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excel­lent The-oph’ilus, 4 that you may know the truth con­cern­ing the things of which you have been informed.

We learn that Luke (and we may also sup­pose the other gospel writ­ers) col­lected eye­wit­ness accounts about Jesus’ min­istry. There was a win­dow of time when after the min­istry of Jesus when noth­ing was writ­ten down, but sto­ries were trans­mit­ted by oral tra­di­tion in small mod­ules that were easy to mem­o­rise self-contained sto­ries. The gospels were com­piled from these orally trans­mit­ted stories.

The oral trans­mis­sion made some schol­ars ques­tion the valid­ity of these accounts, but the Jews excelled in this area. They trans­mit­ted what they call the Oral Law through­out many cen­turies. At the end, due to very heavy per­se­cu­tions they suf­fered, and because of fear that the Oral Law would be lost they com­piled it into the work known as the Tal­mud (which by itself is not the Oral Law, but con­tains it).

There­fore, I see no rea­son why not to trust these accounts as long as they are authen­tic (not late addi­tions), how­ever, we need to keep in mind that eye­wit­nesses told these sto­ries as they under­stood them, with their own lim­i­ta­tions. Now this is an impor­tant point, for eye­wit­nesses, though they may not pick up all the details, are never wrong, they sim­ply tell their account accord­ing to how they com­pre­hend it (God doesn’t bypass people’s intel­lect). This also explains the dif­fer­ences between the gospel accounts.

Now why do I empha­size this so much? Because it gives us the key to under­stand many of the gospel sto­ries. Isn’t the bible the unmis­tak­able “Word of God”? Well, I have dealt with the term ear­lier, and thus you should be aware that the term “word of God” in my opin­ion sim­ply refers to the ora­cles of God — most often to the Law, but some­times to the other say­ings (promises) of God, for exam­ple to the King­dom. The bible never refers to itself as the “word of God”, but as Scrip­tures, that is, holy writ­ings, so let us stick with that def­i­n­i­tion. Jesus broke it down to three divi­sions; the law, the prophets and the writ­ings. I leave it to you to iden­tify the time when the writ­ings of the NT were began to be referred to as Scripture.

There­fore, I con­clude that the gospel sto­ries were col­lected from gen­uine eye­wit­nesses who faith­fully told their account to oth­ers as they under­stood them. This is impor­tant for our next step. Let us read about the begin­ning of Jesus’ ministry:

Matt 4:23 And he went about all Galilee, teach­ing in their syn­a­gogues and preach­ing the gospel of the king­dom and heal­ing every dis­ease and every infir­mity among the peo­ple. 24 So his fame spread through­out all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with var­i­ous dis­eases and pains, demo­ni­acs, epilep­tics, and par­a­lyt­ics, and he healed them.

Pagan reli­gions, espe­cially the reli­gion of the Syr­i­ans were filled with demons, and sick­ness (par­tic­u­larly men­tal ill­ness) was attrib­uted to them. Those liv­ing in Galilee near the Syr­ian bor­der were heav­ily influ­enced by their neigh­bours, thus the belief that demons caused sick­ness was com­mon. This is why we see Jesus cast­ing out demons when he trav­els the area and heals peo­ple. The eye­wit­nesses sim­ply told the sto­ries as they under­stood them.

How­ever, when we come to Jerusalem we find that sin is attrib­uted to sin. Let us con­sider the fol­low­ing passage:

John 9:1 As he passed by, he saw a man *blind from his birth*. 2 And his dis­ci­ples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his par­ents, that he was born blind?”

Later on the Phar­isees are talk­ing to this man who was born blind:

John 9:34 They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?”

Being born blind meant being born in sin to the Jews in Jerusalem. Sick­ness was attrib­uted to sin, not to demons.

There­fore, the recog­ni­tion of the sim­ple fact, that ancient beliefs pro­vide the back­ground to the gospel sto­ries, helps us resolve the vir­tu­ally con­tra­dic­tory accounts of Jesus’ heal­ing. What we need to know is that in real­ity peo­ple were sick and Jesus healed them by the power of God.