| 98. Cures At a Distance. | ||||
The Cures performed at a distance are, properly speaking, the opposite of these involuntary cures. The latter are effected by his word- {P.512} solely by the act of the will without corporeal contact, or even local proximity. But there immediately arises this objection: if the curative power of Jesus was so material that it dispensed itself involuntarily at a mere touch, it cannot have been so spiritual that the simple will could convey it over considerable distances; or. conversely, if it was so spiritual as to act apart from bodily presence, it cannot have been so material as to dispense itself independently of the will. Since we have pronounced the purely physical mode of influence in Jesus to be improbable, free space is left to us for the purely spiritual, and our decision on the latter will therefore depend entirely on the examination of the narratives and the facts themselves. | ||||
As proofs that the curative power of Jesus acted thus at a distance, Matthew and Luke narrate to us the cure of the sick servant of a centurion at Capernaum, John that of the son of a nobleman at the same place (Matt. viii. 5 if; Luke vii. 1 if; John iv. 46 if.); and again Matthew (xv. 22 if.), and Mark (vii. 25 if.), that of the daughter of the Canaanite woman. of these examples, as in the summary narration of the last there is nothing peculiar, we have here to consider the two first only. The common opinion is, that Matthew and Luke do indeed narrate the same fact, but John one distinct from this, since his narrative differs from that of the two others in the following particulars: firstly, the place from which Jesus cures, is in the synoptic Gospels the place where the sick man resides, Capernaum, in John a different one, namely, Cana; secondly, the time at which the Synoptics lay the incident, namely, when Jesus is in the act of returning home after his Sermon on the Mount, is diferent from that assigned to it in the fourth gospel, which is immediately after the return of Jesus from the first Passover and his ministry in Samaria; thirdly, the sick person is according to the former the slave, according to the latter the son of the suppliant; but the most important divergencies are those which relate, fourthly, to the suppliant himself, for in the first and third Gospels he is a military person, in the fourth a person in office at court according to the former (Matt. v. 10 if.), a Gentile, according to the latter ,without doubt a Jew; above all, the Synoptics make Jesus eulogize him as a pattern of the most fervent, humble faith, because, in the conviction that Jesus could cure at a distance, he prevented him from going to his house; whereas in John, on the contrary, he is blamed for his weak faith which required signs and wonders, because he thought the presence of Jesus in his house necessary for the purpose of the cure. | ||||
These divergencies are certainly important enough to be a reason, with those who regard them from a certain point of view, for maintaining the distinction of the fact lying at the foundation of the narratives from that reported by John: only this accuracy of {P.513} discrimination must be carried throughout, and the diversities between the two synoptic narratives themselves must not be overlooked. First, even in the designation of the person of the patient they are not perfectly in unison; Luke calls him a servant who was dear to the centurion; in Matthew, the latter calls him o( paij which may equally mean either a son, or a servant, and as the centurion when speaking (v. 9) of his servant, uses the word douloj while the cured individual is again (v. 13) spoken of as o( paij au)tou, it seems most probable that the former sense was intended. With respect to his disease, the man is described by Matthew as a paralytic grievously tormented; Luke is not only silent as to this species of disease, but he is thought by many to presuppose a diiferent one, since after the indefinite expression "being ill," he adds, "ready to die," and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady. But the most important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that all which according to Matthew the centurion does in his own person, is in Luke clone by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is usual to refer to the rule: quod yuis per aliwm facit, etc. If then it be said, and indeed no other conception of the matter is possible to expositors who make such an appeal, Matthew well knew that between the centurion and Jesus everything was transacted by means of deputies, but for the sake of brevity, he employed the figure of speech above alluded to, and represented him as himself accosting Jesus: Storr is perfectly right in his opposing remark, that scarcely any historian wouldso perseveringly carry that metonymy through an entire narrative, especially in a case where, on the one hand, the figure of speech is by no means so obvious as when, for example, that is ascribed to a general which is clone by his soldiers; and where, on the other hand, precisely this point, whether the person acted for himself or through others, is of some consequence to a full estimate of his character. | ||||
With laudable consistency, therefore, Storr, as he believed it necessary to refer the narrative of the fourth gospel to a separate fact from that of the first and third, on account of the important differences;. so, on account of the divergencies which he found between the two last, pronounces these also to be narratives of two separate events. If any one wonder that at three different times so entirely similar a cure should have happened at the same place, (for according to John also, the patient lay and was cured at pernaum): Storr on his side wonders how it can be regarded as {P.514} in the least improbable that in Capernaum at two different periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant, and that again at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at the same place; that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the story of the first, have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and sought to surpass his example of humility, as the first centurion (Matthew), to whom the earlier history of the nobleman (John) was known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the latter; and lastly, that Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner at a distance. But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single root. | ||||
Now the narrative of the fourth evangelist which is most generally held to be distinct, has not only an affinity with the synoptic narratives in the outline already given; but in many remarkable details either one or the other of the Synoptics agrees more closely with John than with his fellow Synoptic. Thus, while in designating the patient as paij, Matthew may be held to accord with the ui(oj of John, at least as probably as with the douloj of Luke; Matthew and John decidedly agree in this, that according to both the functionary at Capernaum applies in his own person to Jesus, and not as in Luke by deputies. On the other hand, the account of John agrees with that of Luke in its description of the state of the patient; in neither is there any mention of the paralysis of which Matthew speaks, but the patient is described as near death, in Luke by the words h)melle teleutan, in John by h)mellen a)poqnhskein, in addition to which it is incidentally implied in the latter v. 52 that -the disease was accompanied by a fever, iroperbf. In the account of the manner in which Jesus effected the cure of the patient, and in which his cure was made known, John stands again on the side of Matthew in opposition to Luke. While namely, the latter has not an express assurance on the part of Jesus that the servant was healed, the two former make him say to the officer, in very similar terms, the one, "Go your way, and as you have believed so shall it be done to you," the other, "Go your way, your son lives;" and the conclusion of Matthew also, has at least in its form more resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent inquiry the father ascertained it to be at the same hour in which Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun to amend than to the statement of Luke that they found the sick man restored to health. {P.515} In another point of this conclusion, however, the agreement with John is transferred from Matthew again to Luke. In both Luke and John, namely, a kind of embassy is spoken of, which towards the close of the narrative comes out of the house of the officer; in the former it consists of the centurion's friends, whose errand it is to dissuade Jesus from giving himself unnecessary trouble; in the latter, of servants who rejoicingly meet their master and bring him the news of his son's recovery. Unquestionably where three narratives are so thoroughly entwined with each other as these, we ought not merely to pronounce two of them identical and allow one to stand for a distinct fact, but must rather either distinguish all, or blend all into one. The latter course was adopted by Sender, after older examples, and Thol ck has at least declared it possible. But with such expositors the next object is so to explain the divergencies of the three narratives, that no one of the'evangelists may seem to have said any thing false. With respect to the rank of the applicant, they make the basilikoj in John a military officer, for whom the ekatontarxoj of the to others would only be a more specific designation; as regards the main point, however, namely the conduct of the applicant, it is thought that the different narrators may have represented the event in different periods of its progress; that is, John may have given the earlier circumstance, that Jesus complained of the originally weak faith of the suppliant, the Synoptics only the later, that he praised its rapid growth. We have already shown how it has been supposed possible, in a yet easier manner, to adjust the chief difference between the two synoptic accounts relative to the mediate or immediate entreaty. But this effort to explain the contradictions between the three narratives in a favourable manner is altogether vain. There still subsist these difficulties: the Synoptics thought of the applicant as a centurion, the fourth evangelist as a courtier; the former as strong, the latter as weak in faith; John and Matthew imagined that he applied in his own person to Jesus; Luke, that out of modesty he sut deputies. | ||||
Which then represents the fact in the right way, which in the wrong? If we take first the two Synoptics by themselves, expositors with one voice declare that Luke gives the more correct account. First of all, it is thought improbable that the patient should have been as Matthew says, a paralytic, since in the case of a disease so seldom fatal the modest centurion would scarcely have met Jesus to implore his aid immediately on his entrance into the city: as if a very painful disease such as is described by Matthew did not render desirable the quickest help, and as if there were any want of modesty in asking Jesus before he reached home to utter a healing word. Rather, the contrary relation between Matthew and Luke seems probable from the observation, that the miracle, and consequently also the disease of the person cured miraculously, is never diminished in tradition but always exaggerated; hence the tormented paralytic would more probably be heightened into one "ready to die", than the latter reduced to a mere sufferer. {P.516} But especially the double message in Luke is, according to Schleiermacher, a feature very unlikely to have been invented. How if, on the contrary, it very plainly manifested itself to be an invention? While in Matthew the centurion, on the offer of Jesus to accompany him, seeks to prevent him by the objection: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof," in Luke he adds by the mouth of his messenger, "I did not think myself worthy to come to you," by which we plainly discover the conclusion on which the second embassy was founded. If the man declared himself unworthy that Jesus should come to him, he cannot, it was thought, have held himself worthy to come to Jesus; an exaggeration of his humility by which te narrative of Luke again betrays its secondary character. The first embassy seems to have originated in the desire to introduce a previous recommendation of the centurion as a motive for the promptitude with which Jesus offered to enter the house of a Gentile. The Jewish elders after having informed Jesus of the case of disease, add, that he was worthy for whom he should do this, for he loves our nation and has built us a synagogue: a recommendation the tenor of which is not unlike what Luke (Acts x. 22) makes the messengers of Cornelius say to Peter to induce him to return with them, namely, that the centurion was a just man, and one that fears God, and in good report among all the nation of the Jews. That the double embassy cannot have been original, appears the most clearly from the fact, that by it the narrative of Luke loses all coherence. | ||||
In Matthew all hangs well together: the centurion first describes to Jesus the state of the sufferer, and either leaves it to Jesus to decide what he shll next do, or before he prefers his request Jesus anticipates him by the offer to go to his house, which the centurion declines in the manner stated. Compare with this his strange conduct in Luke: he first sends to Jesus by the Jewish elders the request that he will come and heal his servant, but when Jesus is actually coming, repents that he has occasioned him to do so, and asks only for a miraculous word from Jesus. The supposition that the first request, proceeded solely from the elders and not from the centurion runs counter to the express words of the evangelist, who by the expressions: "he sent the elders beseeching him," represents the prayer as corning from the centurion himself; and that the latter by the word elqwn meant only that Jesus should come into the neighbourhood of his house, but when he saw that Jesus intended actually to enter his house, declined this as too great a favour, is too absurd a demeanour to attribute to a man who otherwise appears snsible, and of whom for this reason so capri- {P.517} cious a change of mind as is implied in the text of Luke, was still less to be expected. The whole difficulty would have been avoided, if Luke had put into the mouth of the first messengers, as Matthew in that of the centurion, only the entreaty, direct or indirect, for a cure in general; and then after Jesus had offered to go to the house where the patient lay, had attributed to the same messengers the modest rejection of this offer. But on the one hand, he thought it requisite to furnish a motive for the resolution of Jesus to go into the Gentile's house; on the other, tradition presented him with a deprecation of this personal trouble on the part of Jesus: he was unable to attribute the prayer and the deprecation to the same persons, and he was therefore obliged to contrive a second embassy. Hereby, Irowever, the contradiction was only apparently avoided, since both embassies are sent by the centurion. Perhaps also the centurion who was unwilling that Jesus should take the trouble to enter his house, remined Luke of the messenger who warned Jairus not to trouble the master to enter his house, likewise after an entreaty that he would come into the house; and as the messenger says to Jairus, according to him and Mark, "Do not trouble the master" (Luke viii. 49), so here he puts into the mouth of the second envoys, the words, "Lord, do not trouble yourself," although such an order has a reason only in the case of Jairus, in whose house the state of things had been changed since the first summons by the death of his daughter, and none at all in that of the centurion whose servant still remained in the same state. | ||||
Modern expositors are deterred from the identification of all the three narratives, by the fear that it may present John in the light of a narrator who has not apprehended the scene with sufficient accuracy, and has even mistaken its main drift. Were they nevertheless to venture on a union, they would as far as possible vindicate to the fourth gospel the most original account of the facts; a position of which we shall forthwith test the security, by an examination of the intrinsic character of the narratives. That the suppliant is according to the fourth evangelist a basilikoj, while according to the two others he is an e(katontarxoj, is an indifferent particular from which we can draw no conclusion on either side; and it may appear to be the same with the divergency as to the relation of the diseased person to the one who entreats his cure. If however, it be asked with reference to the last point, from which of the three designations the other two could most easily have arisen? it can scarcely be supposed that the ui(oj of John became in a descending line, first the doubtful term paij, and then douloj; and even the reverse ascending order is here less probable than the intermediate alternative, that part of the ambiguous paij there branched off in one direction the sense of servant, as in Luke; in the other, of son, as in John. We have already remarked, that the description of the pa- {P.518} tient's state in John, as well as in Luke, is an enhancement on that in Matthew, and consequently of later origin. | ||||
As regards the difference in the locality, from the point of view now generally taken in the comparative criticism of the Gospels, the decision would doubtless be, that in the tradition from which the synoptic writers drew, the place from which Jesus performed the miracles was confounded with that in which the sick person lay, the less noted Cana being absorbed in the celebrated Capernaum: whereas John, being an eyewitness, retained the more correct details. But the relation between the evangelists appear to stand thus only when John is assumed to have been an eye-witness; if the critic seeks, as he is bound to do, to base his decision solely on the instrinsic character of the narratives, he will arrive at a totally different result. Here is a narrative of a cure performed at a distance, in which the miracle appears the greater, the wider the distance between the curer and the cured. Wold oral tradition in propagating this narrative, have the tendency to diminish that, distance, and consequently the miracle, so that in the account of John, who makes Jesus perform the cure at a place from which the nobleman does not reach his son until the following day, we should have the original narrative, in that of the Synoptics on the contrary, who represent Jesus as being in the same town with the sick servant, the one modified by tradition'? Only the converse of this supposition can be held accordant with the nature of the legend, and here asrain the narrative of John manifests itself to be a traditional one. Again, the preciseness with which the hour of the patient's recovery is ascertained in the fourth gospel has a highly fictitious appearance. The simple expression of Matthew, usually found at the conclusion of histories of cures: "he was healed in the self-same- hour," is dilated into an inquiry on the part of the father as to the hour in which the son began to amend, an answer from the servants that yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him, and lastly the result, that in the very hour in which Jesus had said, Your son lives, the recovery took place. This is a solicitous accuracy, a tediousuess of calculation, that seems to bespeak the anxiety of the narrator to establish the miracle, rather than to show the real course of the event. In representing the a)rxisunagwghj as conversing personally with Jesus, the fourth gospel has preserved the original simplicity of the narrative better than the third; though as has been remarked, the servants who come to meettheir master in the former seem to be representatives of Luke's second embassy. But in the main point of difference, relative to the character of the applicant, it might be thought that, even according to our own standard, the preference must be given to John before the two other narrators. For if that narrative is the more legendary, which exhibits an effort at aggrandizement or embellishment, it might be said that the applicant whose faith is in John rather weak, is in Luke embellished into a model of faith. It is not, however on embellishment for its own sake that the narrator is bent, but {P.519} on embellishment in subservience to their grand object, which in the Gospels is the glorification of Jesus; and viewed in this light, the embellishment will in two respects be found on the side of John. First, as this evangelist continually aims to exhibit the pre-eminence of Jesus, by presenting a contrast to it in the weakness of all who are brought into communication with him, so here this purpose might be served by representing the suppliant as weak rather than strong in faith. The reply, however, which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe," has proved too severe, for which reason it reduces most of our commentators to perplexity. Secondly, it might seem unsuitable that Jesus should allow himself to be diverted from his original intention of entering the house in which the patient was, and thus appear to be guided by external circumstances; it might be regarded as more consistent with his character that he should originally resolve to effect the cure at a distance instead of being persuaded to this by another. If then, as tradition said, the suppliant did nevertheless make a kind of remonstrance, this must have had an opposite drift to the one in the synoptic Gospels, namely, to induce Jesus to a journey to the house where the patient lay. | ||||
In relation to the next question, the possibility and the actual course of the incident before us, the natural interpretation seems to find the most pliant material in the narrative of John. Here, it is remarked, Jesus nowhere says that he will effect the patient's cure, he merely assures the father that his son is out of clanger, and the father, when he finds that the favourable turn of his son's malady coincides with the time at which he was conversing with Jesus, in no way draws the inference that Jesus had wrought the cure at a distance. Hence, this history is only a proof that Jesus by means of his profound acquaintance with semeiology, was able, on receiving a description of the patient's state, correctly to predict the course of his disease; that such a description is not here given is no proof that Jesus had not obtained it; while further this proof of knowledge is called a shmeion (v. 54) because it was a sign of a kind of skill in Jesus which John had not before intimated, namely, the ability to predict the cure of one dangerously ill. But, apart from the misinterpretation of the word shmeion, and the interpolation of a conversation not intimated in the text; this view of the matter would place the character and even the understanding of Jesus in the most equivocal light. For if we should pronounce a physician imprudent, who in the ease of a patient believed to be dying of fever, should even from his own observation of the symptoms, guarantee a cure, and thus risk his reputation: how much wore rashly would Jesus have acted, had he, on the mere descrip-wri of a man who was not a physician, given assurance that a dis-ease was attended with no danger? We cannot ascribe such conduct to him, because it would be in direct contradiction with his general {P.520} conduct, and the impression which he left on his contemporaries. If then Jesus merely predicted the cure without effecting it, he must have been assured of it in a more certain manner than by natural reasoning, he must have known it in a supernatural manner. This is the turn given to the narrative by one of the most recent commentators on the Gospel of John. he puts the question, whether we have here a miracle of knowledge or of power; and as there is no mention of an immediate effect from the words of Jesus, while elsewhere in the fourth gospel the superior knowledge of Jesus is especially held up to our view, he is of opinion that Jesus, by means of his higher nature, merely knew that at that moment the danger was past. But if our gospel frequently frequently exhibits the superior knowledge of Jesus, this proves othing to the purpose, for it just as frequently directs our attention to his superior power. Hence, if a supernatural cognizance of the already effected cure of the boy had been intended, John would have made Jesus speak on this occasion as he did before to Nathanael, and tell the father that he already saw his son on his bed in an ameliorated state. On the contrary, not only is there no intimation of the exercise of superior knowledge, but we are plainly enoxigh given to understand that there was an exercise of miraculous power. When the sudden cure of one at the point of death is spoken of, the immediate question is, What brought about this unexpected change? and when a narrative which elsewhere makes miracles follow on the word of its hero, puts into his mouth an assurance that the patient lives, it is only the mistaken effort to diminish the marvellous, which can prevent the admission that in this assurance the author means to give the cause of the cure. | ||||
In the case of the synoptic narratives, the supposition of a mere prediction will not suffice, since here the father (Matt. v. 8) entreats the exercise of healing power, and Jesus (v. 13,) accedes to this entreaty. Hence every way would seem to be closed to the natural interpretation (for the distance of Jesus from the patient made all physical or psychical influence impossible), if a single feature in the narrative had not presented unexpected help. This feature is the comparison which the centurion institutes between himself and Jesus. As he need only speak a word in order to see this or that command performed by his soldiers and servants, so, he concludes, it would cost Jesus no more than a word to restore his servant to health. Out of this comparison it has been found possible to extract an intimation that as on the side of the centurion, so on that of Jesus, human proxies were thought of. According to this, the centurion intended to represent to Jesus, that he need only speak to his disciples, and the latter would go with him and {P.521} cure his servant, which is supposed to have forthwith happened. But as this would be the first instance in which Jesus had caused a cure to be wrought by his disciples, and the only one in which he commissions them immediately to perform a particular cure, how could this peculiar circumstance be silently presupposed in the otherwise detailed narrative of Luke? Why, since this narrator is not sparing in spinning out the rest of the messenger's speech, does he stint the few words which would have explained all, the simple addition after "speak the word, to one of your disciples," or something similar? But, above all, at the close of the narrative, where the result is told, this mode of interpretation falls into the greatest perplexity, not merely through the silence of the narrator, but through his positive statement. Luke, namely, concludes with the information that when the friends of the centurion returned into the house, they found the servant already recovered. Now, if Jess had caused the cure by sending with the messengers one or more of his disciples, the patient could only begin gradually to be better after the disciples had come into the house with the messengers; he could not have been already well on their arrival. Paulus indeed supposes that the messengers lingered for some time listening to the discourse of Jesus, and that thus the disciples arrived before them; but how the former could so unnecessarily linger, and how the evangelist could have been silent on this point as well as on the commission of the disciples, he omits to explain. Whether instead of the disciples, we hold that which corresponds on the side of Jesus to the soldiers of the centurion to be demons of disease, ministering- angels, or merely the word and the curative power of Jesus; in any case there remains to us a iniracle wrought at a distance. | ||||
This kind of agency on the part of Jesus is, according to the admission even of such commentators as have not generally any repugnance to the miraculous, attended with special difficulty, because from the want of the personal presence of Jesus, and its beneficial influence on the patient, we are deprived of every possibility of rendering the cure conceivable by means of an analogy observable in nature. According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant influence has its analogies; namely, in animal magnetism. I will not directly contest this, but only point out the limits within which, so far as my knowledge extends, this phenomenon confines itself in the do-mam oi animal magnetism. According to our experience hitherto, the cases in which one person can exert an influence over another at a distance are only two: first, the magnetizer or an individual ni magnetic relation to him can act thus on the somnambulc, but this distant action must always be preceded by immediate contact, {P.522} a preliminary which is not supposed in the relation of Jesus to the patient in our narrative; secondly, such an influence is found to exist in persons who are themselves somnambules, or otherwise under a disordered state of the nerves; neither of which descriptions can apply to Jesus. If thus such a cure of distant persons as is ascribed to Jesus in our narratives, far outsteps the extreme limits of natural causation, as exhibited in magnetism and the kindred phenomena; then must Jesus have been, so far as the above narratives can lay claim to historical credit, a supernatural being. But before we admit him to have been so really, it is worth our while as critical inquirers to examine whether the narrative under consideration could not have arisen without any historical foundation; especially as by the very fact of the various forms which it has taken in the different Gospels it shows itself to contain legendary ingredients. And here it is evident that the miraculous cures of Jesus by merely touching te patient, such as we have examples of in that of the leper, Mutt. via. 3, and in that of the blind men, Matt. ix. 29, might by a natural climax rise, first into the cure of persons when in his presence, by a mere word, as in the case of the demoniacs, of the lepers Luke xvii. 14, and other sufferers; and then into the cure even of the absent by a word; of which there is a strongly marked precedent in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings v.9ff. we read that when the Syrian general Naaman came before the dwelling of the prophet Elisha that he might be cured of his leprosy, the prophet came not out to meet him, but sent to him by a servant the direction to wash himself seven times in the river Jordan. At this the Syrian was so Indignant that he was about to return home without regarding the direction of the prophet. He had expected, he said, that the prophet would come to him, and calling on his God, strike his hand over the leprous place; that without any personal procedure of this kind, the prophet merelydirected him to go to the river Jordan and wash, discouraged and irritated him, since if water were the thing required, he might have had it better at home then here in Israel. By this Old Testament history we see. what was ordinarily expected from a prophet, namely, that he should be able to cure when present by bodily contact; that he could do so without contact, and at a distance, was not presupposed. Elisha effected the cure of the leprous general in the latter manner (for the washing was not the cause of cure here, any more than in John ix., but the miraculous power of the prophet, who saw fit to annex its influence to this external act), and hereby proved himself a highly distinguished prophet: ought then the Messiah in this particular to fall short of the prophet? Thus our New Testament narrative is manifested to be a necessary reflection of that Old Testament story. As, there, the sick person will not believe in the possibility of his cure unless the prophet {P.523} Jesus will come into his house; according to the other editions, he is convinced of the power of Jesus to heal even without this; and all agree that Jesus, like the prophet, succeeded in the performance of this especially difficult miracle. | ||||