I think so, yes. Magic is the invoking of a spirit to perform miracles. How a spirit might be invoked would depend on the person. Vespasian, for example, healed a man's withered arm by "the print of a Caesar's foot". The ability to heal via a touch showed the person's status with the gods.Does this - Vespasian applying to his 'eye-balls with his spittle' - suggest a common source of both in knowledge of practices from what is known as magic?
It doesn't seem to me that Mark was interested in portraying Jesus as a magician, since Jesus being a magician would detract from the idea of Jesus containing divine power. Later in Mark Jesus is accused of exorcising spirits through the use of Beelzebub. So the use of spit might have been a common trope that Mark left in.And if so - to word it differently - why does Mark present Jesus this way? For example:
Was Mark himself interested in magic and decided to portray Jesus as a magician?
Celsus apparently accused Jesus of using magic to perform miracles:
https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ ... en161.html
... he [Celsus] invents something altogether different, admitting somehow the miraculous works done by Jesus, by means of which He induced the multitude to follow Him as the Christ. And yet he desires to throw discredit on them, as being done by help of magic and not by divine power; for he asserts "that he (Jesus), having been brought up as an illegitimate child, and having served for hire in Egypt, and then coming to the knowledge of certain miraculous powers, returned from thence to his own country, and by means of those powers proclaimed himself a god."
...
But, as it helped his purpose, he compares the (miracles) related of Jesus to the results produced by magic. There would indeed be a resemblance between them, if Jesus, like the dealers in magical arts, had performed His works only for show; but now there is not a single juggler who, by means of his proceedings, invites his spectators to reform their manners, or trains those to the fear of God who are amazed at what they see, nor who tries to persuade them so to live as men who are to be justified by God. And jugglers do none of these things, because they have neither the power nor the will, nor any desire to busy themselves about the reformation of men, inasmuch as their own lives are full of the grossest and most notorious sins.
...
But, as it helped his purpose, he compares the (miracles) related of Jesus to the results produced by magic. There would indeed be a resemblance between them, if Jesus, like the dealers in magical arts, had performed His works only for show; but now there is not a single juggler who, by means of his proceedings, invites his spectators to reform their manners, or trains those to the fear of God who are amazed at what they see, nor who tries to persuade them so to live as men who are to be justified by God. And jugglers do none of these things, because they have neither the power nor the will, nor any desire to busy themselves about the reformation of men, inasmuch as their own lives are full of the grossest and most notorious sins.
Statistics: Posted by GakuseiDon — Sun Dec 01, 2024 1:42 am