ABSTRACT
Mark’s account of the Woman a icted with the Issue of Blood (Mark 5: 25-34) shows Jesus working a miracle without even realizing it: the woman comes up behind Christ in a large crowd and, by simply touching his garment, is healed a er twelve years of medical ordeal. Christ has said or done nothing to cure her. Unaware even of her presence, he realizes only that the ‘power within him’ has suddenly le him,1 having apparently emanated outwards. A er reading Gary Vikan’s chapter (10) we might understand that Jesus is functioning in this narrative exactly like the magico-medical amulets made of hematite which were meant to prevent or cure haemorrhaging: somebody makes purposeful contact with a supernaturally charged medium (Christ’s person or at least his clothes) and is instantly healed through its immanent power. is particular miracle, as Vikan remarks, ‘comes as close to the essence of Graeco-Roman magic as any in the Bible’. A pagan would probably have construed it as an act of ‘magic’ – except that here, as Mark is at pains to stress, it is the woman’s faith, and not only her brush with an object, that has cured her: ‘Daughter,’ Christ announces, ‘your faith has made you well’.2
