Jesus__Man, God, Alien

[chloebware]

To many Jesus was a Healer or Magician

II.THE MEDICINAL AND MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF SPITTLE (MK. 7:33, 8:23; JN. 9:6) 


The authors of Mark and John report that Jesus applied spittle to the eyes of the blind and the dumb (Mk. 7:33, 8:23 and Jn. 9:6). Saliva was widely reported to have medicinal properties in the ancient world. For example, Celsus and Galen mention its healing properties and Pliny collected together many instances of its use in the treatment of boils, pains, sores, snake bites, epilepsy and eye diseases.[1] Even modern medical studies have investigated the usefulness of saliva as an antiseptic healing agent.

The merits of saliva for treating eye-diseases in particular are noted in a variety of Jewish, Greek, Roman and early Christian sources.[2] Egyptian myth tells us that Thoth healed Horus’s blind eye by spitting on it and perhaps the most documented account of a saliva healing is that of the Roman emperor Vespasian (A.D. 69) who was approached by a blind man, a follower of the Egyptian god Serapis, who asked him to ‘moisten his cheeks and his eyes with saliva.’[3] When Vespasian did so, the blind man’s eyesight was restored. R. Selare demonstrates that cures for sore eyes which require a combination of spittle and clay, perhaps directly influenced by John’s Gospel, have survived right up to the modern day.[4] However, most ancient cures involving spittle do not incorporate medical language into their instructions, but instead involve ritualistic elements which suggest that the efficacy of the result produced owes its success not to the physical properties of saliva itself, but to a symbolic usage that is based on inherent superstitions surrounding the magical employment of saliva. For example, Pliny’s writings on the ‘medicinal’ properties of spittle often take on a supernatural quality which betrays an underlying conviction in its magical potency:


‘The best of all safeguards against serpents is the saliva of a fasting human
being. But our daily experience may teach us yet other values of its use.
We spit on epileptics (comitiales morbos) in a fit, that is, we throw back
the infection. In a similar way we ward off witchcraft (fascinationes) and
the bad luck that follows meeting a person lame in the right leg.' [5] 


A widespread confidence in the inherent magical powers of spittle and the act of spitting is demonstrated throughout history by the numerous ancient customs and rituals which use spitting as a basis for a covenant [8], as a means to increase luck [9] or to curse enemies and the efficacy of charms, cures and exorcisms was believed to be increased by spitting during, or after, their application. Under further investigation, most spittle cures rarely have solid grounding in medical observations, but instead rely on a charm-like quality founded upon a superstitious belief from which they take their effectiveness.