Jesus the Jew. Geza Vermes
of the cure’ adopted by a certain Eleazar – sometimes surmised to have been a member of the sect – when he expelled demons in the presence of Vespasian and his sons, tribunes and soldiers.
He put to the nose of the possessed man a ring which had under its seal one of the roots prescribed by Solomon, and then, as the man smelled it, drew out the demon through his nostrils, and, when the man at once fell down, adjured the demon never to come back into him, speaking Solomon’s name and reciting the incantations which he had composed.23
From the same account of Eleazar it appears, furthermore, that the professional healer-exorcist was concerned to provide concrete proof that the evil spirit had departed.
Eleazar placed a cup or foot-basin full of water a little way off and commanded the demon, as it went out of the man, to overturn it and make known to the spectators that he had left the man.24
Since public exorcism was performed with the help of an incantation believed to have been revealed and handed over to saints in distant centuries, the naming of the ultimate authority appears to have been part and parcel of the ritual. In the Josephus story, Solomon is quoted. In the Gospels, Jesus asks in whose name the Pharisee exorcists operate.25 He himself was accused, no doubt because he never invoked any human source, of acting in the name of Beelzebub, the prince of demons.26 His disciples, and even one of their unaffiliated imitators, drove out spirits in their master’s name.27
Contemporary sources also suggest that the exorcist’s success was believed to depend on a literal and precise observance of all the prescribed rules and regulations; the correct substances were to be employed possessing the right supernatural properties and the appropriate conjurations uttered. This quasi-magical slant to professional exorcism gave rise, despite its common occurrence in inter-Testamental Judaism, to a certain measure of rabbinical embarrassment, but it was never directly outlawed, perhaps partly because it had become too integral a component of life, and partly because its condemnation would have reflected unfavourably on certain ritual customs enjoined by the Bible itself. In fact the acceptability of the peculiar ceremony of the red heifer28 is argued from the efficacy of formal exorcism! The anecdote is worth reproducing in full as it helps to place the whole problem of the expulsion of demons in perspective.
A Gentile said to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: Certain things you (Jews) do resemble some kind of sorcery. A heifer is brought, it is killed and burned. It is pounded into ashes which are collected. If then one of you is defiled through contact with a corpse, he is sprinkled twice or three times and is told: You are clean.
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai replied: Has the spirit of madness ever entered you? No, answered the other. Have you seen a person into whom such a spirit has entered? Yes. What does one do to him? he asked. The Gentile answered: Roots are brought and made to smoke under him, and water is splashed on him, and the spirit flees. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said: Do your ears not hear what your mouth is saying? This spirit (of madness) is also a spirit of uncleanness; as Scripture says, ‘I will cause the (mad) prophets of the spirit of uncleanness to pass out of the land’ (Zech. 13: 2 (AT)).29
The Gentile may, as the pupils of Yohanan commented, have been ‘knocked down with a straw’, but they themselves were more demanding, and on being pressed by them Yohanan eventually became aware of the speciousness of his argument. A ritual such as that of the red heifer, he confessed, admits of no rational explanation. It is observed simply because God so commanded.
By your life! No dead body defiles and no water cleanses, but this is an ordinance of the King of kings.30
The Holy Man
Was Jesus a professional exorcist of this sort? He is said to have cast out many devils, but no rite is mentioned in connection with these achievements. In fact, compared with the esotericism of other methods, his own, as depicted in the Gospels, is simplicity itself.31 Even in regard to healing, the closest he came to the Noachic, Solomonic and Essene type of cure was when he touched the sick with his own saliva, a substance generally thought to be medicinal.32
On the other hand, Jesus cannot be represented as an exorcist-healer sui generis either, since, in addition to the practice of the angelico-mystical medicine, contemporary Jewish thought reserved a place in the fight against evil for the spontaneous and unscripted activity of the holy man. The pattern set by the miracle-working prophets Elijah and Elisha was first of all applied by post-biblical tradition to other saints of the scriptural past; they, too, were credited with powers of healing and exorcism deriving not from incantations and drugs or the observance of elaborate rubrics, but solely from speech and touch.
Following the biblical chronology, the first hero to be portrayed as a healer is Abraham in the Qumran Genesis Apocryphon. The Old Testament itself provides no real precedent.33 The patient was the king of Egypt and the illness with which he was afflicted after the abduction of Sarah is attributed, as might be expected, to the intervention of an ‘evil spirit’ sent to scourge him and all the male members of his household and thereby protect Sarah’s virtue. The trouble continued for two full years and no Egyptian physician was able to overcome it.
Not one healer or magician or sage could stay to cure him, for the spirit scourged them all and they fled.
Finally Abraham himself was called in to expel the demon, as is recounted in the following autobiographical narrative.
I prayed . . . and laid my hands on his [head]; and the scourge departed from him and the evil [spirit] was rebuked away [from him], and he recovered.34
This combination of prayer, the laying on of hands, and words of rebuke compelling the devil to depart, deserves particular attention because it provides a striking parallel to Jesus’ style of cure and exorcism.35 There is, however, a noticeable though inessential difference between the Qumran concept and that appearing in the Gospels. In the Genesis Apocryphon exorcism and healing form one process; in the New Testament they are kept separate and each is handled in its own way. Sickness is cured through bodily contact, the laying on of hands;36 the devil is expelled by means of a rebuke.37 An illuminating parallel to such a form of exorcism is found in rabbinic literature. Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and Rabbi Eleazar ben Yose are reported to have exorcised the emperor’s daughter by ordering her demon, with whom they were personally acquainted, to leave.
Ben Temalion, get out! Ben Temalion, get out!38
Moses, although represented in the Bible as a miracle-worker, is never depicted there as a healer. Yet, as early as the second century BC, the Jewish Hellenist Artapanus, whose history of the Jews survives only in fragments incorporated into Patristic literature, tells the story of a supernatural cure achieved by him. Finding the gate of the prison into which Pharaoh had thrown him opened by a heavenly hand,39 he walked straight into the royal bedchamber and awoke the king. Pharaoh was intrigued by this unexpected visit, and angry – no doubt because Moses had disturbed his sleep – and enquired the name of the God of Israel so that he could curse him. When the Tetragram was murmured into his ears he collapsed lifeless. But Moses, anticipating the act of Jesus in raising the daughter of Jairus,40 lifted him up and revived him.41
David, whose musical performance is said to have calmed the evil spirit of King Saul,42 is the only scriptural hero described as a kind of exorcist. The first-century AD author, Pseudo-Philo, portrays him in accordance with tradition as a harp-player and singer, but also reproduces in his Book of Biblical Antiquities a poem allegedly composed by David to keep the devil under control.43
The poetic exorcism, which opens with a sketch of the work of the Creation, reminds the devil of the inferior status of ‘the tribe of your spirits’ and that the infernal world would one day be destroyed by a descendant of David. The poet then issues two commands:
Now cease molesting, since you are a secondary creature!44
Remember hell in which you walk!45
Another biblical figure posthumously invested with curative gifts is Daniel, according to a very important, but unfortunately badly damaged,