Book 4, lines 439-531

John narrates.

Horresco, quoties stimulis immitibus actus
quidam animo subit, idem illo quem tempore vidi,       [440]
dum legerem expositos hoc ipso in littore pisces,
obsessum furiis, atque ore immane furentem.
Hunc olim (ut perhibent) vetito genuere parentes
concubitu iuncti, atque inconcessis hymenaeis:
quippe torum ascendere, dei cùm sacra vetarent,         [445]
cùm scenis gens indulget nostra omnis opacis:
sed non gavisi scelere illi tempore longo.
Nam subito amplexus interque et gaudia adulter
sacrilegam tenues animam exhalavit in auras
infelix; scelerique eadem nox prima nefando,              [450]
et pariter suprema fuit discrimine parvo.
Illam autem aethereis flammis divinitus ignis
corripuit, cùm iam maturi pondera partûs
urgerent; eademque duos leto hora dedisset,
infans ni foret exectae genitricis ab alvo                      [455]
exemptus: parvum patris eduxere sorores.
Ipse etiam mox immeritus scelerata parentum
facta luit, iucundâ oculorum luce negatâ;
obstructaeque aures penitus mansere; nec illi
aut ullas haurire datum est, aut reddere voces.            [460]
Quinetiam simul atque adolevit, protinus aegrum
arripuit furor, infernae vis effera gentis.
Centum illum furiae, centum illum (flebile) pestes
victum exercebant, Erebi legio acta latebris;
horrendasque, hominis singultus ore cientes,               [465]
edebant voces, ac terrificos mugitus:
illum omnes exclamantem, atque insueta frementem
horrebant, trepidique fuga se in tecta ferebant,
siquando nodis, ruptisque immane catenis,
incautis liber custodibus evasisset.                                [470]
Iamque ille oblitus fratres, iamque ille sorores,
ampliùs haud gressum patris intra tecta ferebat;
verùm more ferae sylvis degebat et antris,
sicubi saxa cava, aut aevo consumpta sepulcra,
ater, egens, corpusque abjecto nudus amictu.                [475]
Talem igitur, nodo manibus post terga revinctis,
Christi ad conspectum , si fors miseresceret ipse,
vi multa consanguinei carique trahebant.
Ille autem obniti contrà, dum rumpere nodos
tendit, et horrendos clamores tollere ad astra.              [480]
Qualis ubi longis pugnator taurus ad aras
funibus arripitur, saevo fremit ore per urbem,
et spumas agit, et cornu ferit aera adunco:
instant hinc famuli, atque illinc, et verbera crebri
ingeminant, quassantque sudes per terga, per armos;     [485]
diffugiunt vulgus trepidum, in tutumque recepti
porticibus gaudent longè spectare periclum.
Talis erat juvenis species immane furentis:
quem tandem ante Deum fessi statuere, rogantes
ferret opem, saltem furiis tam tristibus illum                 [490]
solveret, excuteretque animo crudelia monstra.
Hic heros palmas in cœlum sustulit ambas;
concipiensque preces Genitorem in vota vocavit.
Ecce autem magnum, subitum, et mirabile monstrum:
auditi exululare lupi, latrare canes ceu                         [495]
tam diras jactat voces lymphatus ab ore.
Non tam immane sonet, sese frangentibus undis,
rupibus ex altis ingens decursus aquarum,
rumpantur claustra alta lacûs si forte Velini,
totaque praecipitent valles stagna ardua in imas            [500]
omnis ea ut regio fiat mare, et oppida circùm
mersa natent, metuatque sacris Roma obruta templis.
Nunc cœli crepitus imitantur, cum superûm rex
fulminat, et tonitru quatit aetheris aurea templa;
nunc ferri sonitum, aut ruptarum mole catenarum           [505]
ingenti horrificum stridorem, aut murmura ponti:
circùm omnis tellus, circùm cœlum omne remugit.
Instat vi multa Deus, increpitatque morantes.
Iamque illi trepidare intus, pacemque precari:
‘Quid nunc, vera Dei atque indubitata propago,             [510]
concesso in pœnas nos ô de corpore trudis?
Egressis saltem pecora haec invadere detur:
(setigeri tum forte sues ea littora propter
pascebant) nos ne horrifero sic merge barathro,
neve iube terrae inferioris operta subire.’                       [515]
Annuit. Extemplo videas procul, ecce, nigrantem
mollibus haud stimulis furiarum errare subactum
in diversa gregem, nunc huc, nunc protinus illuc:
nec mora, nec requies; intus vis effera saevit,
donec praecipites sese alta in stagna dedere,                   [520]
et cunctis pariter vita est erepta sub unda.
At juvenis fessos subitò collabitur artus,
exemptus tandem nodosis brachia vinclis.
Mordicus ora solo impressus çunctatur, adhucque
singultans, pectusque lacessit anhelitus ingens,               [525]
expiransque animam pulmonibus aeger agebat:
quem juxta genitore Deo satus astitit, oraque
attingens dextra, atque oculos auresque reclusit:
iamque videt, loquiturque, et corda oblita residunt.
It vulgi clamor super aurea sidera ovantis,                       [530]
supremique Patris sobolemque Deumque fatentur.

------------

I shudder to recall one man I used to see,
a man maddened as by sharp goads who would come      [440]
when we were sorting our fish upon the shore—
seized by madness, madness frothing in his mouth.
He’d been born (so they say) to parents who
had sealed a forbidden marriage, illegal love:
consummated against the will of God                                [445]
when our nation indulges dark enactments.
They did not enjoy their wickedness for long.
The adulterer lost his life suddenly,
giving up his sacrilegious soul to air,
ill-starred: their joyous embraces took him—                     [450]
their first night of love was also their last.
Then a heaven-sent fever struck her down
as she was ready to give birth to their child:
this hour would have cost two lives, except that
the baby was cut from the mother's womb.                          [455]
He was raised by his father’s sister; but though
he did no wrong his parents’ crime marked him—
deprived of the light we all joyfully see;
and deaf as well; unable to hear anything
and blocked from expressing himself by voice.                    [460]
What’s worse, when he reached adolescence
madness seized him, a violent infernal force.
A hundred devils, a hundred plagues snatched at
him, a legion sent up out of Erebus;
possesssing his mouth, spitting horrible,                               [465]
words and a terrifying bellowing.
His loud raging startled everybody:
they ran and hid whenever he broke out
from the ropes and chains used to restrain him,
escaping his guards and running free.                                   [470]
He forgot his brothers and sisters, and
no longer visited his father’s house.
He lived like a beast in forests and caves,
lurking in hollows, and the tombs of the dead:
blackened and destitute in his nakedness.                            [475]

This man was dragged, hands tied behind his back,
unfortunate soul, before Christ, with force
by a large group of his friends and relatives.
He was resisting, struggling to break his knots
and howling fit to terrify the stars.                                       [480]
As a violent bull is dragged to the altar
through the town by ropes, bellowing fiercely,
mouth foaming, stabbing the air with its horn,
attendants rush in from all sides, and rain
blows upon it, rods on its backs and shoulders;                    [485]
alarmed crowds of people back away, watching
the dangerous scenes from their porticos.
Such was the appearance of this young man
when his weary family brought him to the God,
begging him to free this man from his madness                   [490]
strike out the cruel monsters from his mind.

The hero raised both of his hands to heaven;
and prayed aloud to his great progenitor.
Then, see!—a sudden miracle occurred:
like the baying of wolves, or dogs barking                          [495]
came new wild voices from his slobbering mouth.
Louder they were than when the waves pour over
the high cliffs in a waterfall’s huge stream,
or if the dams on the mighty Velino broke
drowning steep valley in the plunge of the flood                 [500]
making land sea, inundating nearby towns
even threatening Rome and her sacred temples.
Now the man roared like the bolt heaven’s King
sends as lightning when thunder shakes the golden
temples of the sky, massive chains breaking                       [505]
a harsh and dreadful sound, like the ocean’s surge:
the sound filled the air and boomed across the fields.

Forcefully the god bore down upon them
and they, trembling inside him, whimpered for mercy:
‘Why—true son of God—do you evict us                              [510]
from a body given to us to punish?
At least allow us into those swine, there
(it so happened bristly pigs were grazing
by the shore), so we don’t tumble into horror—
don’t dispatch us to the void below the earth!’                  [515]
Agreed. You could see the black beasts, suddenly
jerked to life as if struck with a savage goad
running, now here, now there, galloping
without rest or pause; a wild rage was in them
until they jumped headlong into the deep pools,                 [520]
and all lost their lives beneath the waters.
Now the young man’s exhausted limbs gave out,
his arms were finally freed from what bound them.
He collapsed face-down on the soil, moaning
gulping and gasping, his breast heaving, the air                  [525]
exhaling from his lungs shuddering sobs.
The son of God crouched next to him, touching
his face with his right hand, opening eyes and ears.
The man could now see, and speak and hear too.
The people raised a shout of thanks to the stars,                [530]
accepting him as god, the great father’s son.

------------

Vida's lines 444-45 seem to be some garbled reference to (what he thought he knew about) some Jewish ritual—that marriages were void, or considered adulterous, if undertaken at certain times, perhaps. That there were nights when Jews abstained from sex because they were ‘indulging in dark (or ‘obscure’) enactments’: cùm scenis gens indulget nostra omnis opacis—scēna, there, means ‘a scene, as of a theatre’ but also ‘the public stage, the public’ and ‘outward show, parade, pretext’. Gardner’s version of these two lines is: ‘they went to bed at a time when sacred ritual forbade it, when all our nation devotes itself to dark re-enactments’. He wonders if Vida might be thinking of Yom Kippur (on the eve and day of which five prohibitions are in place: no eating and drinking; no wearing of leather shoes; no bathing or washing; no anointing oneself with perfumes or lotions; no marital relations). But it’s a stretch to imagine that a child conceived during Yom Kippur would be cursed by God—that’s nowhere part of the Jewish sense of the day of atonement. Also, that's a day that entails private prayer, charitable actions and a service in the synagogue—hardly ‘dark’ or ‘obscure’ enactments. Something else is going on here, I suspect.

At any rate, this bizarre provenance for the man’s madness is not in the Gospel account. This episode of the Gadarene, or Gerasene swine is pretty famous (Mark talks of ‘the region of the Gerasenes’; the towns of Gadara and Gerasa have both been proposed—though neither of them lie close to the sea of Galilee, in which we presume the swine drowned; the King James Version has the location as ‘Gergesenes’ which corresponds to the modern ‘Kursi’, which is at least by the water).

Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshiped Him. And he cried out with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.”

For He said to him, “Come out of the man, unclean spirit!” Then He asked him, “What is your name?”

And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” Also he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country.

Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains. So all the demons begged Him, saying, “Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.” And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine (there were about two thousand); and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea.

So those who fed the swine fled, and they told it in the city and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that had happened. Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed, and about the swine. Then they began to plead with Him to depart from their region.

And when He got into the boat, he who had been demon-possessed begged Him that he might be with Him. However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled. [Mark 5:1-20]

The reference to the dam in line 499 shifts the scene (Vida doesn’t do it very often, actually; but he does do it from time to time) from 1stC Judea to 16thC Italy. Concerning the river Velino I quote Gardner:

Vida is alluding to the roar of the Cascata delle Marmore, the famous man-made waterfalls near Terni in Umbria that flow where the Velino runs from the Lago di Piediluco. Flooding from the Velino river was a constant concern of the Renaissance popes, and only ten years after the publication of the Christiad Pope Paul III commissioned the architect Antonio San Gallo to build another channel to contain the waters.

The diabolic possession is vividly written by Vida, with occasional lines of Vergilian filler ... line 506 for instance is based on Aeneid 9:504, and Aeneid 6:140, Sed non ante datur telluris operta subire (‘but to none is it given to enter the hidden recesses of the Earth’) is behind Vida’s line 515. What Vida doesn’t include is the celebrated, and rather spooky, reply of the demons to Jesus asking their name: “What is your name?” “My name is Legion; for we are many.” The slip from singular to plural there is wonderfully effective.

Jesus asks the demon his name. However, nowhere else in the Gospels does Jesus proceed in such a manner. It was the practice of ancient exorcists to uncover the name of the demon, since knowledge of the name was tantamount to power over the person. This questioning is a disturbing element within the exorcism format used in Mk 1,23-28. But more disconcerting is the sudden switch to the plural: ‘…Legion, for we are many.’ (Here Luke makes it more indirect: ‘for many demons had entered him’ 8,30.) H. Preisker suggests that the fluctuation of singular and plural is to be explained by considering the legion as a unity and as individuals. More originally J. Jeremias maintains that the Aramaic word for legion may mean a soldier or a legion. The demoniac thus replied that his name was soldier, but “owing to the fact that the translator rendered the word ‘ligyônã’ by the Greek ‘legion’ the mistaken idea arose that the demoniac was possessed by a whole regiment of demons.” [John F. Craghan, ‘The Gerasene Demoniac’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30:4 (1968), 525-26]

The Vulgate here is Et interrogabat eum: Quod tibi nomen est? Et dicit ei: Legio mihi nomen est, quia multi sumus. I don’t know why Vida omits this; there’s no problem fitting legiō into the metre, after all. Maybe as a good Roman (Catholic) he doesn’t want to dally with the imputation that this madman was possessed by a (Roman) legion of devils.

The presence of so many pigs in a Jewish country has puzzled commentators. Some suggest that there were plenty of gentiles living in this portionof Judea, so the pigs are not remarkable; others argue that this detail implies that a story from another land has been imported, more or less roughly, into the narrative of Jesus’s adventures. Craghan says:

The function of the swine episode is to demonstrate the reality of the exorcism. Josephus relates that a contemporary of his ‘wishing to convince the bystanders and prove to them that he had this power (viz., to drive out demons), . . . placed a cup or footbasin 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.’ [Jewish Antiquities 8, 2, 5]. Philostratus also offers a similar visible proof of expulsion. [cf Cf. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4:20]. But a far closer parallel is a Babylonian incantation text against demons which reads: ‘Give the pig in his stead, and give the flesh as his flesh, the blood as his blood, and let him take it; its heart . . . give as his heart, and let him take it.’ [R. C. Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (London: Luzac, 1904) tablet N, col. 3, 10-15]. According to this tradition the demon who leaves the possessed man at the exorcist's invocation and enters the body of the pig does so visibly, for the pig is forthwith destroyed. Substitution and demonstration are thus combined. There is no reason why this or a similar exorcism ritual should be unknown in first-century Palestine. Such a ritual would then underline the fact that the expulsion of the demon(s) has actually transpired. [Craghan, 531]

All very interesting. One last note on this passage: the intriguing inclusion (again, entirely without Gospel provenance) of the insane man having been born by C-section in line 455: infans exectae genitricis ab alvo. In the words of Kristina Killgrove, there is ‘plenty of evidence for C-section delivery’ in the medieval period, ‘but in these cases, the procedure was done as a last-ditch effort to save the baby when a mother was dead or dying. Doctors did not expect mothers to survive the operation until the 16th century, when French physician François Rousset became the first to advocate for the procedure, and it wasn't until the 1940s with advances in antibiotics that C-sections became routine, survivable surgeries.’ Here's a late 15th-c image of a caesaerian delivery, c. 1473-1476. (Image from the British Library, Royal MS 16 G VIII f.32r):

The mother seems to be taking it remarkably calmly, I must say. François Rousset broke ground, a few decades after Vida's poem, with his L'hysterotomotokie ou enfantement caesarien (Paris, 1581) in which he argued that caesaerian sections could be performed without killing the woman. Why does Vida include this detail in his poem? I suppose it prefigures the violent casting-out of multiple beings from a man's body with a violent casting-out of the man himself from his mother's body. Interesting stuff, at any rate.

 At the head of this post: a medieval illumination of Jesus exorcizing the Gerasene demoniac from the Ottheinrich Folio.

[Next: lines 532-564]

Book 4, lines 399-438

[Previous: lines 389-398]

John is narrating Christ's miracles to Pilate.

Nec minus est olli imperii maris aequora in alta;
uni omnes undae assurgunt, fluctusque quiescunt             [400]
unius edicto: vidi, vidi ipse furentes
illius hybernos ad vocem ponere Coros,
vimque omnem, motas quae flabris asperat undas.
Nondum luna suum ter cursum plena peregit,
cùm subito in lento deprensis marmore nobis                    [405]
nocte ferè media, duni retia ducimus, orta est
turbida tempestas; et pontus inhorruit ater
fluctibus elatis, et concursantibus undis;
inflictamque ratem iamiam salis hauserat aestus.
Nos trepidare metu leti discrimine parvo;                         [410]
cum procul, ecce, ducem. quem nuper liquimus alto
littore spectantem fiuctus scopulo illidentes,
ferre iter aspicimus medias impunè per undas
suspensum, tumidoque pedes baud tingere ponto.
Horruimus visu subito, nec credere quibam                        [415]
me veram faciem, haud simulatum cernere corpus
tam celeres egisse vias sine rcmige in undis,
ni sese, verbis dum nos hortatur amicis,
ultrô ostendisset: ‘Quonam fiducia vobis
iam nunc pulsa mei cessit? timor omnis abesto.                 [420]
Indubitare meis tandem dediscite dictis.’
Sic ait; atque ratem, quae iam superantibus undis
cesserat, insiliens solo tumida aequora nutu
placavit; posuitque minacia murmura pontus.
Sic terrae in tutum positis adnavimus undis                       [425]
incolumes, celerique volavimus aequora cursu.
Nec mora, vix siccum attigerat tellure potitus;
ecce aliud dictu magis, ac mirabile visu.
Namque magistratus aderant in littore missi
aera reposcentes, quœ pendere lege quotannis                   [430]
regibus antiqua, pro sese quisque, iubemur.
Accipit hos placidus; quos dum sermone moratur,
Petrum ad se vocat, et fidam summissus ad aurem:
‘Vade,’ ait; ‘et, iacto quem primum traxeris hamo
aequoribus, piscem cultro scrutabere acuto:                        [435]
intus erit, regi quod jussi pendimus ambo.’
Iussa facit senior: trahit hamo ad littora prœdam;
argentumque viris dat piscis in ore repertum.

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His powers are no less on the high seas;
all waves rise up and then again fall back                           [400]
only at his word. I myself saw a storm,
silenced by his command—bitter northern gales
churning the roiling waters with their blasts.
The moon hadn't waxed and waned three full times
when, suddenly, we were caught on the sea                         [405]
as we wrangled our nets at midnight—tempests
blew-in from nowhere, spiking the sea black
The surge mounted and waves crashed together,
almost overwhelming our fragile boat.
We shivered with fear at approaching death!                       [410]
Then, suddenly, far off, we saw our lord—
who we’d left ashore, watching the surf roll—
walking unharmed across the waves, in the midst
of the waters, his feet not even getting wet!
We were startled by this sight, could not believe it:             [415]
was it really his face, body—or a vision?
How could he pass so quickly over the water?
But then he spoke these words to his friends and
so revealed the truth: ‘where is your faith in me?
how has it flagged? Abandon all these fears!                        [420]
You must learn never to doubt anything I say.’
He spoke. The ship was floundering in the waves:
but he jumped in, and, nodding at the rough sea,
pacified it, quelling its menacing roar.
The pitching waves settled, and we sailed swift                    [425]
through a calm sea to the safety of dry land.

No sooner had we returned to the beach
than we witnessed a more wonderful event.
Some magistrates were waiting on the shore
to collect taxes, as the law requires every year                      [430]
an ancient tribute that all are commanded to obey.
He greeted these man calmly and, as he chatted,
he called Peter and whispered in his ear:
‘Go,’ he said, ‘fetch the first fish off the hook
and cut open its belly with a sharp knife;                              [435]
inside you’ll find enough to pay the king.’
The older man obeyed, and brought the fish
and gave the men a silver coin from its mouth.

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Vida here tacks-on the account of Jesus walking on water (Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:36-41 and Luke 8:23-25) with the separate story of the coin found inside the fish.

When they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, “Does your Teacher not pay the temple tax?”

He said, “Yes.”

And when he had come into the house, Jesus anticipated him, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take customs or taxes, from their sons or from strangers?”

Peter said to Him, “From strangers.”

Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first. And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you” [Matthew 17:23-26]

The Greek for “a piece of money”, at the end there, is στατήρ (statḗr) the exact temple tax for two.

Though this is not attached to the walking-on-the-water episode, Capernaum is on the Sea of Galilee, so Vida isn’t entirely spitballing here. Me, I've always been a little suspicious: combined with the ‘I shall make you fishers of men’ rhetoric of the NT this has the feel, rather, of a fiduciary promise: ‘I shall maker you fishers of men and it will be super-lucrative!’ Although the larger context of the passage suggests that churches should not raise tithes on their followers but instead source income from strangers, and I don't believe any actual Christian churches have attempted this.

Recent scholarship suggests that ‘Jesus walking on the water’ is a stranger and more unique miracle than one might think:

Scholarly treatments of Jesus’s sea-walking miracle frequently cite several parallel figures “walking on water” in Greco-Roman mythology, such as Poseidon, Orion, Euphemus, and Pythagoras. In fact, however, this “walking” terminology is inaccurate because, contrary to Adela Yarbro Collins and others, Greco-Roman mythology supplies no unambiguous example of a figure walking on water in the way that Jesus does in Mark, Matthew, and John. Rather, there are numerous examples—far more than have been recognized—of running, chariot-riding, and flying over water beginning as early as Homer’s Iliad. Whereas Jesus’s feat is presented as a sort of levitation miracle, water running and water riding are understood as a consequence of superhuman speed in the popular Greek conception of physics, with the idea ultimately based on the motion of wind over waves. Flying over water and other surfaces is associated in Greek thought with supernatural travel convenience; it requires speed and flying devices that are entirely foreign to the Gospel narratives. The few examples of Greco-Roman figures purported to walk on water just as Jesus does either have been misinterpreted or are idiosyncratic, Common-Era creations. There are no actual Greco-Roman parallels to what Jesus does in the Gospels. Walking on the sea was more novel, more marvelous, and less immediately interpretable for nonJewish audiences than has been assumed. [Brian D. McPhee, ‘Walk, Don't Run: Jesus's Water Walking Is Unparalleled in Greco-Roman Mythology’, Journal of Biblical Literature 135:4 (2016), 763]

Over the last few blogposts I've been digging a little more into the historical and theological contexts, and spending less time on Vergilian and other intertexts. But I wouldn't want to give the impression that Vida has drifted away from his Vergil. On the contrary, allusions to and direct lifts from the Aeneid are threaded through the whole thing. For example: Vida's ‘bitter northern gales/churning the roiling waters with their blasts’ in lines 402-3 [hybernos quae flabris asperat undas] riffs on Aeneid 3:285: et glacialis hiemps aquilonibus asperat undas, ‘and icy winter ruffles the waters with northern blasts’; and Vida's line 410 ‘We shivered with fear at approaching death!’ [Nos trepidare metu leti discrimine parvo] owes something to Aeneid 2:685: Nos pavidi trepidare metu, crinemque flagrantem; ‘we were shaking with fear at her blazing hair.’ It's a little dull to keep logging all these myriad intertextual moments, although they are everywhere.

The image at the head of this post: Christ marchant sur la mer (1866) by Amédée Varint

Book 4, lines 389-398

[Previous: lines 349-388]

John is narrating various miracles.

“Accipe nunc aliud quod paucis antè diebus
vidimus: arbor erat foliis densissima in agro                     [390]
deserto, unde olim pendentia poma viator
carpebat sitiens: heros, qui hac forte tenebat
pulverulentus iter, quœsivit in arbore fœtus
incassùm; infœcunda comas nam et brachia tantùm
luxurians latè circum tendebat opaca.                             [395]
Non tulit; ac verbis sterilem execratus acerbis:
continuô (manifesta audis) exaruit arbos,
et folia aereas volitârunt lapsa per auras.”

------------

“Now let me tell you: a few days ago
I saw a tree thick with leaves in the desert.                       [390]
Formerly its dangling fruit would refresh
the thirsty traveller; but when the hero
on a dusty journey stopped to pluck its buds—
nothing! only barren foliage spread out
and black branches coiling all around.                         [395]
This could not stand. His words sterilised the tree.
This curse (you’re hearing the truth) shrivelled it up
and its dry leaves fell and drifted through the air.”

------------

The episode of Jesus cursing the fig tree has always baffled me, rather. Why? Poor old tree, struggling to grow in a barren landscape and then: bam. Cursed. John's ‘a few days ago’ reflects that the incident, as reported in the Gospels, happens as Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for his last days.

Now the next day, when they had come out from Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree having leaves, He went to see if perhaps He would find something on it. When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. In response Jesus said to it, “Let no one eat fruit from you ever again.” And His disciples heard it. [Mark, 11:12–14]

Mark's next verse is ‘and so they came to Jerusalem’; and after an account of Jesus driving the money-lenders from the temple Mark's account reverts to the tree:

Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter, remembering, said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which You cursed has withered away.”

So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. [Mark 11: 20-24]

Scholars describe this as an ‘intercalated narrative’; Mark using the cursing of the tree to provide an implicit commentary on his story of the cleansing of the Jewish temple. Like the tree (we intuit) the temple is barren and will wither because, like the fig tree, it has failed to produce the fruit of righteousness for the Son of God. Matthew, 21:18–22 compresses Mark's divided account into a single story in which the fig tree withers-away as soon as the curse is pronounced, putting the miracle behind him as he moves the narrative onward to Jesus' driving the moneylenders from the temple. Luke doesn't narrate this incident at all, but instead includes a parable (scholars suggest this also derives, though in a different way, from whatever body of tradition lies behind Mark and Matthew):

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ [Luke 13:6–9]

Jesus and his followers are on their way to Jerusalem for Passover. That means it's springtime. Figs don't ripen so early in the year, though. So what's going on here? Charles W F Smith quotes that thundering Victorian Archbishop Tench, as well as more recent theologians:

“We must first ask ourselves here,” [says Tench] “how should our Lord, knowing, as by his divine power he must, that there was no fruit upon that tree, have gone to seek it there...? Was this consistent with a perfect sincerity and truth?” “It is again perplexing, that he should have treated the tree as a moral agent, punishing it.... This, in itself perplexing, becomes infinitely more so through a notice of St. Mark's; which indeed the order of the natural year would of itself have suggested, namely, that ‘the time of figs was not yet’.” Tench adds, “For the symbol must needs be carried through... we must be consistent and show that it might have had such, that there was a justifying reason why it should have had none.” Among recent commentators the situation is forcibly expressed by Bundy when he says, “Apart from its sheer physical impossibility and evident absurdity... the act depicted is irrational and revolting: Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season.” [Charles W F Smith, ‘No Time for Figs’, Journal of Biblical Literature 79:4 (1960), 315]

Smith tries to untange the puzzle by arguing that the season was actually autumn, when figs are in season, suggesting that Jesus was going to Jerusalem not for Passover but for the Festival of the Tabernacle (although the Gospels do say Passover); and Mark's ‘it was not the time for figs’ is a later gloss. This, though, raises puzzles of its own. I'm more with Tench here, I must say. All very odd.

The Greek of the NT specifies that the fruit of the tree was the σύκο, or fig; the Vulgate likewise has ficus, fig. For some reason, though I don't know why (hard to fit fīcōrum into the metre, but fīcōs goes easily enough) Vida doesn't like this word; so he goes with pōmum (line 391). It's the word gives us our modern pommes, apples, but in Latin it can apply to any kind of fruit.

[Next: lines 399-438]

Book 4, lines 349-388

[Previous: lines 312-348]

John the Evangelist is narrating some of Christ's miracles.

“Quid repetam, purum vivo cùm è fonte liquorem
in vinum convertit, opes miseratus amici?                     [350]
Forte olim aerei spectans de vertice montis,
cum sol emenso depressior iret Olympo,
ingentem vidit numerum affluxisse sequentum,
matres atque viros, quos per deserta locorum
duxerat oblitosque suî, oblitosque suorum.                    [355]
Substitit hic miseratus: eos iam tertia namque
muneris expertes Cereris lux acta videbat.
Hic neque erant fruges, vicina nec oppida, possent
unde dapes petere argento, victumque parare:
arboreos necdum fœtus decoxerat aestas.                       [360]
Vix tandem inventus puer est ex agmine tanto,
quinque, viae auxilium, qui secum liba ferebat,
atque duos, dederat quos hue pia mater eunti,
incluses myrto, et bene olenti gramine pisces.
Sed quid enim hœc adeô tam multis millibus autem?      [365]
Et iam diffisi socii mussare querentes;
quos bonus affatu Christus solatus amico,
in coetum vocat ac paucis ita deinde profatur:
‘Nemo hodie numero è tanto non lœtus abibit.’
Hinc supplex tali Genitorem voce precatur:                  [370]
‘Summe Parens, ope cujus alit terra omnia, quique
et sole et liquidis fœcundas imbribus agros;
si quondam Isacidum generi per inhospita eunti
divinas epulas cœlo es largitus ab alto;
semine si nullo; constant quaecunque creâsti,                [375]
et nihil omnino fuerant cœlum, œquora, tellus;
adsis, obscœnamque famem tot millibus arce.’
Hœc tantum: dehinc gramineo discumbere campo
imperat effusos cœtus, dapibusque parari:
inde in frusta secat lœto cerealia vultu                             [380]
liba minutatim, et populos partitur in omnes.
(Millia quinque hominum campis saturanda sedebant.)
Ecce (incredibile auditu, mirabile visu)
omnibus in manibus visae succrescere partes
exiguae, dapibusque epulati largiùs omnes;                      [385]
et frugum pariter, laticumque expleta cupido est.
Quin et relliquias, mensis superantia frusta,
vix cava congestas bis sex cepere canistra.”

------------

Do I need to repeat how he changed water
into wine, taking pity on a friend’s need?                              [350]
Another time, watching from a mountain’s peak
as the sun had crossed the sky and was sinking
he saw a large number of people below
wives and men who’d followed him through the desert
without thought for themselves or their families.                  [355]
He pitied them. They’d not eaten for three days;
this darkening place was not blessed by Ceres
and there were no nearby towns to buy bread.
Here nothing grew that could be readied to eat;
summer had not yet ripened fruit on the trees.                       [360]
At last one boy was found, in all that throng
provisioned with five loaves and something to drink,
plus two fish, given by his loving mother—
wrapped in myrtle leaves and seasoned with herbs.
But what could so many thousands do with these?                [365]
The disciples, muttering, had lost confidence,
but the good Christ offered solace to his friends
gathering them together and speaking these words:
‘None of these folk will leave without good cheer.’

Then he called upon his Maker in prayer:                               [370]
‘Supreme parent, who nourishes all the world,
sending heavy rains and sun to make fields fertile;
as you once fed the wandering children of Isaac
a divine banquet you sent down from heaven:
if the seed is nothing unless you quicken it,                            [375]
and the sky, oceans and earth naught without you—
help me drive obscene hunger from these thousands.’
That was all: he told the crowd to sit on the grass
and ready themselves for the coming feast.
With a joyful expression he broke the bread                            [380]
and distributed it among all people.
(five thousand were sitting, waiting to be fed!)
here (incredible to hear, wonderful to see)
all saw their portions grow in their hands
until there was enough for all to feed.                                     [385]
Their hunger and their thirst were satisfied.
And the pieces that remained filled more than
twice six hollow baskets, heaped up high.

------------

Line 357’s ‘this place was not blessed by Ceres’ is a fancy way of saying: nothing edible grew there (Ceres, as you of course knew already, was the Roman goddess of agriculture; ‘she is especially connected with bread, and food more generally’; Barbette Stanley Spaeth, The Roman goddess Ceres (University of Texas Press, 1996), 20].

This, obviously, is the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. In fact there are two such ‘feeding the multitude’ miracles reported in the Gospels:

The first miracle, the “Feeding of the 5,000”, is reported by all four gospels (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14); the second miracle, the “Feeding of the 4,000”, with seven loaves of bread and fish, is reported by Matthew 15:32-39 and Mark 8:1-9, but not by Luke or John.

Here's John's version of the former, which Vida follows quite closely:

After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.

Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.

Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little.”

One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?”

Then Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. So when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.” Therefore they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten. [John 6:1-13]

Vida (lines 373-4) mentions the Old Testament parallel of God feeding the wandering Israelites with manna from heaven in Exodus, although Biblical scholars find a closer parallel with Elisha: ‘then a man came from Baal Shalisha, and brought the man of God’—Elisha, that is—‘bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley bread, and newly ripened grain in his knapsack. And he said, “Give it to the people, that they may eat.” But his servant said, “What? Shall I set this before one hundred men?” He said again, “Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus says the Lord: They shall eat and have some left over.” So he set it before them; and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.’ [2 Kings 4:42-44].

Indeed, according to Biblical scholar Roger David Aus (in his Feeding the Five Thousand: Studies in the Judaic Background of Mark 6:30-44 and John 6:1-15 [University Press of America, 2010]) the Gospel accounts of these two miracles has been deliberately pitched to invoke and surpass the Elisha story:

On the basis of a very long and impressive list of parallel motifs in haggadic sources to the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in its various Gospel versions, Aus convincingly demonstrates that this story is based to a great extent upon postbiblical Jewish traditions concerning Elisha's feeding of 100 men with twenty loaves of bread (2 Kings 4:42-44) and that the message is—inter alia—that, although Elisha was regarded by Jews as the greatest miracle-worker in history (pp. 26-40), “greater than Elisha is here” (with R. Pesch, Aus calls it an “Uberbietungswunder”).[I am quoting Pieter W. van der Horst's review of Aus's book, from Novum Testamentum 53 (2011), 405]

As you can see from its watermark, the image at the head of this post is from a contemporary US stained-glass company, stainedglassinc.com. This particular design Loves and Fishes can be made up in a number of sizes and shapes and ‘would make a good addition to a house of worship or a hospital chapel’: a 60x80 inch panel, for instance, might cost you in the region of $4075. If you're in the States and thinking of acquiring some stained glass I would certainly check them out.

[Next: lines 389-398]

Book 4, lines 312-348

[Previous lines 275-311]

John narrates. Christ has been performing miracles, but he has not yet raised anyone from the dead.

“Atque ideo quacunque viam observatus agebat,
semper eum opperiens turba ingens strata iacebat
perfora, perque vias, sanctique ad limina templi.
Nondum aliquem tamen infernis revocaverat umbris        [315]
morte obita, cùm Sidonia remearet ab ora,
et Naïm ingressus sociis comitantibus altam est.
Ecce autem ingentem longo procedere pompam
ordine flammarum aspicimus; mœstamque per urbem
audimus luctum; causam tum denique luctûs                     [320]
cernimus, egregii iuvenis miserabile corpus
impositum molli pheretro; quem mersit acerba
morte dies, dulci cùm vix pubesceret aevo,
atque omnem vultu florenti dempsit honorem.
Qualis, quem pede pressit agro bos signa relinquens,        [325]
paulatim lassa languet cervice hyacinthus;
aut rosa, quam molli decerpens pollice virgo
vepribus in densis lapsam sub sole reliquit.
Urbe furens tota genitrix miseranda, capillos
scissa, genasque ambas manibus fœdata cruentis               [330]
ibat: eam circum pariter per densa viarum
pulsabant sœvis matres plangoribus astra.
ipsi orbam cives miserantur: ei unica proles
ille relictus erat vidui solatia lecti.
Ut Deus exanimis iuvenili in corpore vidit                          [335]
pallorem, et molli pictas lanugine malas,
parcere lamentis iubet, et considere pompam;
admotusque manu mulcens immobile corpus,
rursum animam gelidis membris innexuit: ecce,
erigitur puer, et (cunctis mirabile visum)                             [340]
prosiluit raptim in medios, vacuumque pheretrum
Llquit, et amplexans solatus voce parentem est.
Nec verô multis etiam post mensibus idem
egregiam amissa donavit luce puellam,
cui calor, et toto de pectore fugerat omnis                            [345]
halitus, aereas penitus dilapsus in auras.
Virginis ipse pater factum testatur Iarus
largus opum, pollens lingua et popularibus auris.”

------------

“And wherever he went he was noticed,
a huge crowd always turned up, lying strewn
on roads or at the Holy Temple’s threshold.
He hadn’t yet recalled any shades from hell,                      [315]
brought the dead back, when he returned from Sidon’s
coast to lofty Naim, with his disciples.
Here we saw a very large procession
all carrying torches, and throughout the city
we heard wailing. Finally—the sorrow’s cause:                  [320]
the pitiful corpse of an excellent young man
laid on a soft bier. He’d been plunged into death,
that very day, barely old enough to be a man:
and all the beauty of his face had vanished.
As when an ox in the field treads upon                              [325]
the stem of a hyacinth and it wilts little by little;
or a rose by a stream is plucked by a girl
then tossed in the sunlight into the briars.
The mother in her grief ran through the city
unkempt, tearing both her cheeks with her nails:               [330]
and around her, through the network of roads
other mothers raised lamentation to the stars.
They pitied her, bereaved of her only child,
the one consolation of her widowed bed.

When the god saw the young man dead, and the                [335]
pallor covering his down-covered cheeks
he stopped the procession and hushed their laments.
He lightly touched the still body, and bound
its soul again to those cold limbs. Behold!
The child rose up, and (amazing thing to see!)                   [340]
jumped from the bier and ran into the crowd
to embrace and console his mother.

A few months later he did the same again:
brought back to the light a beautiful girl,
from whose body all heat had gone, and whose soul           [345]
had completely dispersed into the air.
This is confirmed by Jairus, the girl’s father,
A generous man well loved by the people.”

------------

The first of these two miracles is found only in Luke:

Now it happened, the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and a large crowd. And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” So he who was dead sat up and began to speak. And He presented him to his mother.

Then fear came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen up among us”; and, “God has visited His people.” And this report about Him went throughout all Judea and all the surrounding region. [Luke 7:11-17]

The second is reported in Matthew 9:23-6, Mark 5:37-43 and Luke:

While He was still speaking, someone came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying to him, “Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the Teacher.”

But when Jesus heard it, He answered him, saying, “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.” When He came into the house, He permitted no one to go in except Peter, James, and John, and the father and mother of the girl. Now all wept and mourned for her; but He said, “Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him, knowing that she was dead.

But He put them all outside, took her by the hand and called, saying, “Little girl, arise.” Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately. And He commanded that she be given something to eat. And her parents were astonished, but He charged them to tell no one what had happened. [Luke 8:49-56]

There is, I discover (it's no surprise, of course) a vast scholarly literature on miracles. How to think about them, though? Here, and more broadly?

Setting aside baseline issues of possibility and impossibility, or likelihood and extreme unlikelihood, there is the, I’d say, common-sense business of context. Coming at this matter from my position of relative ignorance, I would have said that Jesus’ miracles make historicist sense. What I mean is: the first century AD, and the near east, was a time and a place in which people believed in magic as a real-world business. The land was swarming healers and wizards and exorcists and conjurers. People took signs and wonders to be part of the fabric of reality. The disciples talk about Jesus performing miracles because nobody, in that place, at that time, would have taken him seriously if he hadn't performed miracles.

Nowadays we don’t, by and large, believe magic is a real-world business. We have been Max-Weber-ishly disenchanted. We walk through a world that figures by the laws of science. Anyway this is, as I understand it, the argument of eminent 20thC German theologian Rudolf Bultmann, more or less: that the truth of the NT is historicist and existential rather than literally miraculous.

But it seems more recent scholarship, or some of it, has challenged this view:

Despite the view made popular particularly by Rudolf Bultmann (whose chapter on miracle in his History of the Synoptic Tradition is arguably the most brilliant one in that book) that the world in which Jesus lived was peopled by miracle-workers of many kinds, and that the story of Jesus could hardly have been told without the recital of similar feats, the evidence tends to the opposite conclusion. True parallels to Jesus' miraculous activity are stubbornly hard to find. Jewish writings of the time show little interest in individual healers; exorcisms in anything like the gospel form are exceedingly rare; and the ‘nature miracles’ are unexpectedly unamenable to explanation as re-plays of classic biblical ‘mighty works’. Even the attempt by Geza Vermes to place Jesus in a class of charismatic ‘men of deed’ is carefully exposed as going beyond the evidence: Honi and Haninah ben Dosa were perhaps exceptional intercessors rather than healers, exorcists, or miracle workers, and the phrase ‘men of deed’ itself (the class of men which is said to have ceased when Haninah died) can be shown not necessarily, or even probably, to refer to miracles. [A E Harvey, review of Eric Eve’s The Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles (Continuum 2002), The Journal of Theological Studies 54:2 (2003), 666]

This was interesting, and surprising, to me. Harvey, here, is reviewing Eric Eve’s attempt to situate the NT reports of Jesus’s miracle-work in a Jewish context; but most of the miracles contemporaneous Jewish writers discuss are OT, with a particular emphasis on those Mosaic wonders from Exodus. It seems that actually there wasn’t the broader culture of many itinerant wonder-workers and magic-men wandering 1st-century Judea that I had assumed: ‘the Gospels provide evidence of far more apparently miraculous activity than any Jewish writings with which they can be compared.’ So it seems the Jesus of the gospels was an unusual figure.

Take a step back. My problem with miracles, I suppose, is the way they imply a one-time or temporary intervention that either breaks or (at a pinch) bends the ‘natural’ logic of things. In the Summa Contra Gentiles Aquinas classifies ‘those things must properly be called miraculous’ (things ‘done by divine power apart from the order generally followed in things’) under three heads: (1) ‘events in which something is done by God which nature could never do’; (2) ‘events in which God does something which nature can do, but not in this order’; and (3) events which occur ‘when God does what is usually done by the working of nature, but without the operation of the principles of nature’. As an example of (1) Aquinas cites the case of the sun going back on its course, as reported in Isaiah; of (2) the case of someone ‘living after death, seeing after being blind or walking after being paralysed’. For (3) Aquinas instances somebody instantly cured of a disease that doctors, working more slowly over time, might have been able to cure eventually anyway. But this, it seems to me, separate God from His creation, such that we mark as miraculous moments when He intervenes. Brian Davies puts it well, I think:

It is very common to find people speaking of miracles as divine interventions. As we have seen, Mackie speaks in such terms. For him, the world has certain ways of working when left to itself, and miracles are instances of God stepping in. One might, however, wonder about the appropriateness of thinking of miracles in these terms. For should we suppose that God is literally able to intervene? To say that something has intervened on a given occasion would normally be taken to imply that the thing has moved in where it was not to be found in the first place. In this sense, I can be said to intervene in a fight when I enter the fight myself, having formerly not been part of it. Does it, however, make sense to speak of God moving in where he has not been present before? And does it make sense to think of miracles as cases of God moving in? It will make sense to speak and think in such ways if we take God to be basically a kind of observer in relation to the world, and if we think of the world as able to carry on independently of him. On such a view, sometimes referred to as ‘Deism’, there is no intrinsic problem with the notion of God intervening (though classical deists were not, in fact, supporters of belief in miracles as divine interventions). But matters are different if, along with orthodox Christianity, for example, we hold that the world is always totally dependent on God for its existence. If that is the case, then God is always present to his creatures as their sustainer or preserver. He is ‘omnipresent’ or ‘ubiquitous’, and it will therefore make sense to deny that he can, strictly speaking, intervene. It will also make sense to deny that miracles should be thought of as cases of divine intervention. [Brian Davies, ‘Miracles’ New Blackfriars 73 (1992), 102-120]

It is, I suppose, theologically uncontroversial to suggest that since God made the laws of the universe He can break the laws of the universe if he wishes to. But it's much harder for me to see, and is indeed rather obnoxious to imagine, that God can break Himself. If he is the ground of existence, and everywhere within it, then what we call the laws of nature are, simply, Him; and to violate them would be to violate Himself. That's a problem, isn't it?

Davies quotes another theologian, Samuel Thompson

The notion of miracle as something which happens in nature and is contrary to the laws of nature is a curiously confused concept. In the first place, no such conception can be found in the Biblical sources of the Hebrew-Christian tradition, for those sources did not have the conception of natural law. To call an event a miracle is to call it a ‘marvel’, and to say that it evokes wonder and awe. It is to say that the event is inexplicable apart from its supernatural significance. Even if direct intervention by God occurs in nature only ignorance can make it appear capricious. Whatever it is, it has its explanation and it fits the rational order of being. If we cannot account for it in terms of the natural order it is because the natural order is not the whole of the rational order of being. We have to assume that complete knowledge would show us the complete harmony of divine and natural causation in every event. [Thompson, A Modern Philosophy of Religion (Chicago, 1955), 454]

There’s something attractive in this—C S Lewis makes a similar argument in his Miracles book. In an earlier blogpost I meandered along lines somewhat like these: the three ‘kinds’ of miracle associated with the NT Jesus are to do with his miraculous birth, his curing of the sick and magicking food and drink for others, and his resurrection. If we take these not as violations of the natural order but as marvellous intensifications of three astonishing facts of our existence—that our decaying genetic material is able to combine into fresh new genetic material when we make babies, that we are able to counter the flow of entropy to the extent that medicine and agriculture carve out islands of flourishing, against the cosmic grain, and that … well, as I say in that blog the third miracle there is the one I find hardest to swallow, but: life as such, I guess. That we live and continue to live rather than not. Davies isn’t having this, though. He suggests that the miracles recorded in the NT are not ‘intensifications’ of an, as it were, natural grain of flourishing woven into reality, but stark breaches with natural law:

It is correct to say that in English translations of the Bible, ‘miracle’ is sometimes used to refer only to an event which the author regards as somehow significant, or as somehow pointing beyond itself. It is also correct to say that biblical authors never speak of ‘natural laws’, and that some of them (e.g. the author of the Fourth Gospel) do not regard the significance of miracles as exhausted by the observation that they are events which are contrary to what modern authors mean by ‘natural laws’. According to the New Testament scholar R.H. Fuller, the Bible ‘knows nothing of nature as a closed system of law. Indeed the very word “nature” is unbiblical’. But it is surely going too far to suggest that, in the sense of 'natural law' noted above, biblical authors have no notion of natural law, and that they have no notion of miracles as violations of natural laws. As writers like Swinburne and Mackie understand it, the following events, if they occurred, would be violations of natural laws:

Levitation, resurrection from the dead in full health of a man whose heart has not been beating for twenty four hours and who was dead also by other currently used criteria; water turning into wine without the assistance of chemical apparatus or catalysts; a man getting better from polio in a minute.

Yet this is exactly the sort of event typically cited in the Bible (or, at least, the New Testament) as miraculous. And, though biblical authors do not indulge in the sort of qualification present in the list just given, any reader of their texts ought to be able to see that they often seem to presuppose something like it when they talk of the miraculous. In many cases, at any rate, they presume that miracles are events which cannot be brought about by the physical powers of objects in the world. [Davies 106]

These are deep waters, I know; but even the small pedalo-like excursion I have made into them has not filled me with confidence that scholarship has them very well mapped. Take for instance, Larry Shapiro’s sceptical line in The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified (Columbia University Press 2016). He makes the distinction between ‘justified’ and ‘unjustified’ beliefs:

Another way to understand the significance of the justified/unjustified distinction is to reflect on the difference between beliefs that you think are true on the basis of some sort of evidence versus those that you simply want to be true or wish were true. Beliefs of the latter sort have nothing to recommend them except, perhaps, that it might be really nice if they were true. Sadly, beliefs don’t become true just because you would like them to be. If they did, I would get myself to believe that a big bowl of ice cream will appear in front of me in the next ten seconds because I have a hankering for some mint chocolate chip. No doubt living in a world where beliefs were true just because you wanted them to be would have its advantages. Just imagine. You would never become ill unless you wanted to. You would become rich if you believed that you would be. You would never die, or if you did, you would live in paradise for eternity if that’s what you believe would happen. If only wishing that something were true actually made it true. [Shapiro 17-18]

His point is that ‘to demand justification for one’s beliefs is to understand that their truth doesn’t rest on their desirability. Justification requires evidence of some kind.’ But this is very oddly put. ‘Beliefs don’t become true just because you would like them to be’ presupposed that all belief is denotative, and none of it is performative; and his daft little example with the ice-cream contradicts, rather than supports, what he’s trying to say, I think. I have a hankering for a cup of tea. I wish one would appear on my desk, as I type. I get off my arse, go into the kitchen, brew up a cup and bring it back. Presto!

I don’t mean to be merely facetious. Shapiro is finessing that wish, want and will and all tangled up together and that, in fact, nothing happens in the human world at all without some willpower putting its pressure on the Archimedian lever of actuality. My cup of tea appears if and only if I will it to appear. Similarly telepathy, ‘reading’ another’s mind, might seem miraculous, in the sense of impossible, were it not that humans have language, a tool that enables us to do it all the time, every day, simply by talking to one another. Nor is this philosophically trivial: there is an important and respectable tradition in metaphysics that sees will and primary, actually: for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will is the fundamental nature of everything.

At the head of this post: ‘Christ Raising Jairus's Daughter’ (c.1800) by William Blake.

[Next: lines 349-388]

Book 4, lines 275-311

[Previous: lines 239-274]

John narrates, here describing Jesus' miracles of healing.

“Vix memorem, quaecunque oculis, quaecunque sub illo   [275]
auribus his hausi repetens miracula rerum
tempore tam parvo, (vix terna hyberna peracta,
ex quo illi socii dignatus nomine iungor),
nec me tam vastum nunc currere oporteat aequor.
Pauca sed è multis, et ea haud mihi mollia fatu,                  [280]
ingrediar tamen; et breviter, tua iussa capessens,
expediam: mitto modò quae monimenta reliquit
finitimas (tibi nota reor) non parva per urbes:
namque omnem egregiis factis insigniit oram.
Quis nescit nuper revocatum ad munera vitae                       [285]
palmiferae regem Bethanes, lumine quarto
quem vidit sol extinctum, impositumque sepulcro?
ut sileam innumeros, quibus ipse in limine leti
affuit, et durae de mortis fauce revulsit.
Nam priùs enumerem, quot ponto aquilonibus undae             [290]
spumescant vasto, quot inundent littora arenis,
quàm quot opem morbos varios in corpore passis
supplicibus tulit, et validos laetosque remisit.
Multi capti oculis, clausis multi auribus orti,
ne possent ullas audire, aut edere voces:                                [295]
claudi alii imparibus vix aegrè passibus ibant.
His rigor ex longo immotos sopiverat artus:
illis semeso serpentia corpore hiabant
ulcera, et illuvies membris immunda fluebat.
Nec deerant, tumefacta quibus praecordia, et alvus                [300]
insincera sitim miseris adduxerat acrem,
nullae artes poterant, quam nulla extinguere aquae vis.
Tum quibus assiduis concussa tremoribus usque
nutabant, tremuloque lababant corpore membra;
ignea quos febris, aut corrupti corporis humor,                        [305]
et quos praeterea vis caeci incognita morbi
versabat lecto totos distracta per artus;
quosve animis captos agitans malè habebat Erinnys;
omnibus aspectu solo, tactuve ferebat
divus opem: subitò linquebant corpora morbi,                           [310]
et stratis ipsi surgebant protinus aegri.”

------------

“I can hardly mention everything I saw                          [275]
with my own eyes—his many wondrous works
achieved so quickly (for it’s scarcely three years
since I first called myself his disciple)—
nor could I story the ocean of so many!
But I can tell you about a few of them,                           [280]
in brief, although even that won’t be easy.
I shall leave out a number of recent deeds
in the locality (I think you know them)
that have been honoured by the whole country.
Who has not heard how he recalled a man to life           [285]
in palm-rich Bethany—on the fourth day
after the sun saw him dead and in the tomb?
Not to mention those many saved from dying
multitudes snatched from the jaws of death.
Easier to count the waves stirred by the north wind       [290]
foaming on the sea and crashing against the sand!
They came to him with myriad afflictions
as suppliants, and left joyful and cured.
Many were born blind and unable to hear,
some could neither hear nor speak. And others               [295]
came who were crippled and unable to walk,
who'd lain motionless for years, numbed in the limbs:
half consumed by disease, bodies covered
with ulcerations, sores exuding foul pus;
others still with torsos swollen with corruption              [300]
wretched bloating and a dreadful thirst that
no amount of water could extinguish.
Some more were shaken by constant trembling
and shaking—they could barely stand upright,
fiery fevers driving out all bodily moisture.                   [305]
And some afflicted by an unknown sickness
tossing on their bed as seizures shook their frame.
And some who’d lost their sanity to Furies—
one look upon these, one touch of life from him
and all disease suddenly left their bodies                       [310]
and they rose from their sickbeds divinely cured.”

------------

Vida's emphasis, when it comes to describing Jesus curing the sick, is to dwell with rather revolting specificity on the horrible diseases the messiah encountered rather than on the actual healing. In doing so he, arguably, truncates one of the key features of Jesus's ministry, the way he made his cures conditional on the faith of the sufferers, and on their commitment to stop sinning. There are, it seems, thirty one specific individual instances of healing in the NT:

Most of the episodes are short, focusing on the miraculous nature of the healing and offering few extended representations of the social impact of impairment on those before and after they are healed. The primary emphasis of each is on highlighting the power of Jesus, but healing is sometimes followed by the admonition to “sin no more,” implying a correlation between previous sin and current impairment (John 5:14). At other times, the key element to healing is the belief of those requesting help. When two blind men ask for help, Jesus queries them about their faith. “Do you believe, that I can do this unto you?’ They say to him, ‘Yea, Lord.’ Then he touched their eyes, saying, ‘According to your faith, be it done unto you’” (Matthew 9:28–29). But the Gospels sometimes disconnect disability from sin and belief and cast its healing as a way to glorify God, such as in the John 9 episode on the healing of a blind man. Finally, some examples of healing become metaphors for spiritual rebirth. As noted by the venerable Bede, the episode of the man born blind shows him healing in stages to parallel his spiritual growth (Mark 8:22—25). [Will Eggers, ‘Selected Episodes on Healing and Disability from the Vulgate Bible’, in Cameron Hunt McNabb (ed) Medieval Disability Sourcebook (Punctum Books. (2020), 113-114]

As for the kinds of diseases listed, they were as prevalent in the early 16th-century as they were in the 1st-century. Robert A Scott explains:

Given the short average life span in the Middle Ages, we would not expect to encounter the kinds of diseases characteristic of aging populations today. Heart disease, stroke, many cancers, age-related dementia, osteoporosis, and degenerative diseases of the joints and muscles were comparatively rare. In their place we find a spectrum of disorders characteristic of populations who did back-breaking manual labor, survived on suboptimal diets, lived among vermin, parasites, and animal and human feces, and lacked clean drinking water or adequate protection from the wet and cold.

Such environments are breeding grounds for infectious diseases of all sorts, particularly among people whose immune systems are already compromised by the chronic stresses associated with intimate communal existence, violence, and fear. Upper and lower respiratory-tract illnesses, ear and sinus infections, fevers, dysentery, and other gastrointestinal disorders are rampant. Poor hygiene results in skin diseases of various kinds and contributes to endemic eye infections. Because of poor sanitation, wounds easily become infected and are slow to heal. [Robert A Scott, Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimage, and the Healing Powers of Belief (University of California Press 2012), 153-53]

Eurgh. At the head of the post: an illustration of Jesus exorcising a boy possessed by a demon from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (15th century). You can see the demon, Vida's Erinnys (line 308) ,flying away from the lad's head. And you can it more clearly if you click on the image to embiggen it.

[Next: lines 312-348]

Book 4, lines 239-274

[Previous: lines 199-238]

John narrates. Jesus gathers his disciples.

“Credita res paucis, donec se ostendere coram
supra hominem cœpit Deus ipse ingentibus orsis.       [240]
Nam primùm numero ex omni delegit amicos
bis senos, queiscum curas durumque laborem;
partiri, et casus posset deducere in omnes:
antè quidem solus ter denos egerat annos.
Sed ne forte putes multis è millibus illi                       [245]
nos ideo placuisse, dolis quòd et arte magistra
spectatos longè ante alios deprenderit omnes,
aut opibus, claraque domûs à stirpe potentes;
omnibus obscurum genus, et sine luce penates,
atque humilis fortuna, nec astu praedita vita.            [250]
Quinque adeò sumus exigua Bessaïde creti:
nobis ars erat insidias piscosa secundùm
flumina squamigerûm generi hamo tendere adunco,
atque innare salum, fœcundaque piscibus arva.
Tunc etiam, cùm nos ad se primùm ille vocavit,          [255]
humida littoreâ sarcibam retia arenâ.
Ipse Iacobus adhuc salientes littore pisces
servabat frater: nec tum procul inde secabant
Andreas parvâque Petrus vada salsa carinâ,
isdem acti fratres studiis, eadem aequora circum.        [260]
Tum, mihi conjunctus patriaque domoque, Philippus
accitus, pisces et retia torta reliquit.
Addunt se socios Thomas, Thaddaeus, eademque
arte Simon, Cana quem genuit Galileïa, amicum
fluminibus patriis, mutisque natantibus hostem.           [265]
Namque Iacobus ei cognato sanguine fretus
Alphaeo natus patre se subiunxerat antè.
Ut genus indecores penè omnes, sic quoque nostra
nomina dura vides, insueta atque aspera dictu.
Haud facies sola est impexis horrida barbis.                 [270]
Tres alii neque enim longè meliore sequuti
fortuna addiderant sese, Matthaeus, et aevo
iam gravis, effœtisque Petri iam proximus annis,
Bartholomaeus, et ipse mali fabricator Iüdas.”

------------

“Few believed him, until his miracles
revealed the superhuman nature of the God.                 [240]
The first thing he did was select from his friends
twelve men to share his cares and hard labour;
men he could count on in any circumstance:
(before this he’d lived three decades alone).
But don’t think he chose us out of thousands                [245]
because we seemed to him cleverer or
more learned than all those the others, or that
we came from wealthy or illustrious families:
we are humble men, not aristocrats,
our ways simple, and we don’t live by our wits.            [250]
Five of us were born in humble Bethsaida.
Our only skills are casting for fish beside
teeming rivers, to dangle the slender line,
and ply the watery fields fecund with fish.
When he first came for me I was repairing                    [255]
damp nets on the sandy shore of the sea;
James gathered the still-twitching fish on the strand—
my brother! Not far from us, on the salt flood
Andrew and Peter were steering their boat,
two more brothers, of the same watery trade.                 [260]
Then a man from the same country as me: Philip
was called, and left the fish and his tangled nets.
We were joined by Thomas, Thaddaeus and
Simon—from Cana in Gallilee, friend
of his land’s rivers, enemy of its mute fish!                    [265]
His blood-relative James had already
joined (he was Alphaeus’s son). Since we come
from humble families, you can see that our
names are hard, unusual, tricky to pronounce.
It’s not just our faces that are rough and bristly!             [270]
Three others, no more fancy than the rest,
soon joined us: Matthew, and an older man
(second only to Peter in his age)
Bartholomew: and Judas the maker of evil.”

------------

The order in which Vida introduces the apostles here is standard enough.

One of the most characteristic features of the Gospels is the fact that Jesus gathered a circle of disciples around him. The selection of his disciples was a gradual process, which seems to have begun with four (Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, James son of Zebedee and his brother John) and ultimately led to the number twelve, clearly alluding to the twelve tribes of Israel. The twelve disciples accompanied him until his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, celebrated the Last Supper with him, witnessed the betrayal of one of them (Judas) who delivered him to the authorities, and the remaining eleven saw him after his resurrection. [Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press 2009), 75]

The Gospels record the recruitment of these twelve; or more precisely, Matthew only describing the recruitment of Simon, Andrew, James, and John, where John 1:32-51, Mark 3:13-19 and Luke 6:13-16 talk of all twelve. Since so many of them are fishermen, Vida indulges in a few stylistic flourishes to vary the expression. His Peter is always Peter, and never Simeon, Simon or Simon-Peter.

Why twelve? Vida implies a kind of, not arbitrariness exactly, but mystery about the process. These twelve men weren't the cleverest or best-educated from among the multitude of Jesus's followers; they were low-class, rough, humble men. Vida doesn't pick up on the connection between twelve apostles and the twelve tribes, although some contemporary scholars see this as central. In the words of Dale B Martin: ‘Jesus also appointed twelve male disciples, doubtless as an eschatological symbol for the messianic reconstitution of the twelve tribes of Israel. He probably expected that these twelve men would be heads of the miraculously reconstituted twelve tribes in the eschatological world.’ Indeed, Martin's common-sense extraction of a ‘historical Jesus’ from the later accretion of legend and back-formation is very interesting. This is it, in a nutshell:

Jesus began as a follower of John the Baptist. Jesus was certainly baptized by John, and he seems not to have begun his own ministry until after the arrest of the Baptist. That all suggests that he was in the beginning a disciple of the Baptist. All our evidence about John the Baptist indicates that he was a prophet attempting to prepare the Jewish people for some urgent, imminent apocalyptic event, probably the arrival of the “reign of God.” So Jesus began as an adherent of an apocalyptic movement. [Dale B. Martin, New Testament History and Literature (Yale University Press 2012), 191]

Martin goes on:

Beyond that general picture, we can say a few more things about the historical Jesus, most of which I cannot defend here because doing so would merit a book of its own. Jesus was a lower-class Jewish peasant from Nazareth, a small village in Galilee. There is no reason to believe the later legends that he was born in Bethlehem. He grew up probably in a family of hand laborers. He had brothers and probably sisters. His mother was named Mary, and his father, Joseph. Since we hear nothing of Joseph’s activities from Jesus’ adulthood, he likely was dead by the time Jesus began his preaching. His mother, though, and at least his brother James later were figures in the movement after Jesus’ death, with James ending up as the main leader of the Jewish church in Jerusalem. Jesus certainly spoke Aramaic as his first language. If he spoke Greek at all, it was only enough to get by in bilingual situations. He probably could not write, and if he could read, it was only minimally.

Jesus did gather followers around him, some of whom were certainly women in central positions. Mary Magdalene was doubtless a close follower, later respected by the community after Jesus’ death. ... I also think Jesus taught against the traditional household and formed, in its place, a band of men and women separated from their traditional households and families and bound to one another as a new, eschatological household of God. There are few aspects of Jesus’ ministry more certain to be historical than that he called people away from their families for the sake of the coming kingdom of God. The historical Jesus, therefore, was certainly not a “family man” in any way advocated by modern Christianity or ancient household ethics.

In spite of the possibility that Jesus was something of an ascetic with regard to marriage and family, he was not one with regard to eating and drinking. In fact, one of the things that may have differentiated the ministry of Jesus from that of John the Baptist, his early teacher, and other Jewish ascetics was that he and his followers did not follow an ascetic agenda with regard to food and drink. I think it is historical that he was rumored to be a man who enjoyed feasting and drinking when the rare opportunity arose for someone so poor, and that he kept the company of tax collectors, prostitutes, and other disreputable persons. [Martin 193-4]

We're a long way from Vida with all this, of course. But I do find it very interesting.

At the top: Vocation of the Apostles, a fresco in the Sistine Chapel by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1481-82)

[Next: lines 275-311]