Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (Jesus the Healer)

Rating:
Summary: Rare book on ancient hypnosis
Review: 'Jesus of history as a spirit-possessed healer whose healing was effected by induction of spirit possession analogous to the psychotherapeutic techniques of Milton Erickson'

The are only a handful of books dealing with evidence of the practice of hypnosis in the Ancient World. This is one of the best. Well-written, intelligent and orignal.

Rating:
Summary: Highly original!
Review: Given that alternate states of consciousness are associated with religions--whether examined cross-culturally or historically--it is somewhat surprising that the Jesus literature has ignored this fact. Until the publication of Davies's book, that is. Why this gaping hole in the literature? Either Jesus scholars have not read widely in the religion literature, or have themselves never experienced alternate states of consciousness--or both. I suspect that the second factor is the more important one--and reflects the fact that most Jesus scholars have come from a socio-economic class that precludes their having had much, if any, contact with contemporary pentecostalists.

I read Davies's book several years ago (shortly after it was published), and the book sticks in my mind because I can't think of another book about Jesus that displays more creativity than Davies's book (not surprising given that creativity is not particularly welcomed in academia, "normal" research being what's prized, as Thomas S. Kuhn has argued). Granted that a creative book is not THEREBY a good book; but Davies's book IS a good book--and for two reasons.

First, it makes a very plausible argument for a facet of Jesus's ministry that has been all but ignored by Jesus scholars. My main complaint is that Davies goes too far in arguing that he is presenting an ALTERNATE view of Jesus. I think, rather, that he should have stated that he was presenting a COMPLEMENTARY view--and then indicated how his particular puzzle piece fits into the larger picture of Jesus, as presented by critical scholars.

Second, one of the problems of the dominant scholarly view of Jesus (that he was an apocalypic) is that it renders Jesus virtually irrelevant for the modern. For why should one today be interested in an individual who, 2000 years ago, (1) made a false prediction (i.e., that God's arrival was imminent), (2) offered an ethic that was premised on the assumption that God's arrival was imminent, and (3) whose ministry was a "bust" (given, e.g., that the "orthodox" Christianity that emerged to dominance had--and has--virtually no relationship with his ministry)? Insofar as Jesus attained alternate states of consciousness, and we can do the same today (also through "natural" means), we can emulate some aspects of Jesus's ministry. (Davies does not state this, but such a conclusion is implicit in his discussion.) Thus, Davies's thesis helps us arrive at a picture of Jesus that makes Jesus relevant for us moderns. Which picture is the only one that is of ultimate interest anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Could portions of John's gospel be historical after all?
Review: With rare exceptions (the late John A.T. Robinson comes to mind), the Christian gospel of John is usually assigned a comparatively late date and its understanding of Jesus regarded as a pretty well-developed "high" christology. It is therefore usual, at least among theologically liberal scholars, to dismiss it as almost entirely unhistorical. (Interestingly, this dismissal is usually performed by Christians, of whom I am not one.)

Stevan Davies, himself a secularist New Testament scholar, here makes an interesting argument that such dismissal may be unnecessary. His claim is that Jesus sometimes underwent spirit-possession, speaking and healing while in a "trance state" known as the "kingdom of God."

This view has a number of advantages. First, it allows us to recognize John as a possibly historical source of at least some of Jesus's spirit-entranced speeches. Second, it deals neatly with a problem that faces those who attribute the Johannine speeches to early Christians "speaking in the spirit": why would anyone think they sounded like Jesus if Jesus himself never talked that way? Third, it links Jesus's speech closely to his healings and exorcisms, and therefore resists the tendency to reduce Jesus to a merely "ethical teacher." And fourth, it offers us at least the beginning of a way to assimilate even the Johannine Jesus to the Judaism of his time -- not, indeed, as an academic-Marxist "empowerer of the oppressed," but as a charismatic holy man announcing (perhaps mistakenly) the eschatological reign of God.

Davies may overstep a bit in arguing that even Jesus's parables were therapeutic in nature. Nevertheless there is a foundation even for this claim, at least if we allow that Jesus's parables were not merely tales to be listened to passively but little "story-bombs" intended to bring about spiritual transformations and paradigm shifts.

I do not think Davies provides a full picture either of Jesus or of the "kingdom" he announced; nor does Davies claim to do so (in fact he expressly acknowledges that he has _not_ done so). Nevertheless, though there are parts of the New Testament record that resist assimilation to Davies's account, he has provided a new window into the gospel of John that may prove helpful in the task of placing Jesus properly into his own time and place -- i.e., as the faithful Jew that he was, and not as the "liberation theologian" some modern readers might like him to be.