ABSTRACT
Closer analyses of narratives of women healing will enable an informed reading of the gendering of the Markan text and context to become more visible. The gospel of Mark creates a world of healing, a glimpse of understandings of some aspects of the health care system of an early Christian community. To use the language of wonder and miracle which is so prevalent in scholarly interpretations is to bring an etic perspective that colors the reading of the text and any attempt to understand and reconstruct the Markan world of healing. The Markan narrator has very skillfully intercalated the healing of a young girl and of an older woman in an extraordinary variety of ways. The daughter who has the unclean spirit is not a full participant in the therapeutic encounter but her mother comes to the one whom she has heard of as healer to seek release for her daughter.
