Healing a man born blind

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The oil painting, in shades of brown and blue, shows a public square where Jesus heals the blind. The square is shown from a central perspective, the floor is tiled with light brown, square stone slabs; on the left is a house facade. The sky is deep blue with strong, vivid clouds. At the left edge of the picture the blind man kneels, clad only in a simple cloak that barely covers his upper body, with a walking stick in his hand. Right behind him, in the left half of the picture, is Jesus in a long blue cloak. With his left hand he holds the outstretched arm of the blind man, with his right hand he touches his eye. Behind it you can see some passers-by who don't seem to pay any attention to what is happening. In the foreground in the center of the picture is a small dog; a group of bearded, older men in the right half of the picture seem to shrink from this.
El Greco: healing of those born blind

The healing of a man born blind is a miracle story in the Bible based on the Gospel of John ( John 9 : 1-41  EU ). The Gospel of John understands it as one of the seven "signs" ( Greek σημεῖα ) of Jesus , which are told in this Gospel in order to awaken the faith of the readers ( Joh 20,31  EU ).

action

The story tells how Jesus and his disciples pass by a man born blind and are asked who is to blame for this man's blindness: himself or his parents. Jesus replies that God's work should be revealed in him and heals him by putting a mixture of saliva and earth on his eyes and then sending him to the pool of Siloam . This is followed by an argument with some Pharisees because, as is only now being told, the healing took place on a Sabbath .

interpretation

A common view at that time saw illness or disability as a direct punishment from God for guilty committed. However, since the man was already born blind , the disciples are concerned with the question of whether he himself can be to blame for his handicap or whether his parents were guilty and were punished with the birth of a blind child. Jesus breaks this doing-doing-connection by answering the question about the cause with "neither nor" and instead pointing out that the handicap of this man has a purpose: God's works are to be revealed in him - in the subsequent healing .

The mud that Jesus puts on the man's eyes can be interpreted in several ways. On the one hand, it could have been based on medical treatment methods of the time. It is striking, however, that Jesus does not shy away from touching the sick person during many of his healings, without any fear of cultic contamination . The gesture is also an allusion to the creation of man, which the Bible reproduces with the symbol of the earth, which God forms and into which he breathes the breath of life.

The story is directly related to a dispute with some Pharisees about the question of whether healing is allowed on the Sabbath. In contrast to the synoptic disputes about the Sabbath, it makes sense here that the evangelist was already at a greater distance from the question of keeping the Sabbath and the Jewish groups at the time of Jesus.

The story of the healing of the blind stands in the overall context of a dualism of the terms “being blind” and “seeing”, which Jesus uses in a figurative sense.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Healing a Man Born Blind  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benedict XVI. : The Holy Scriptures: Meditations on the Bible / Benedict XVI. Stefan von Kempis (ed.), Benno Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-7462-2482-4