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CHAPTER 5 - RE-TELLING STORIES OF WOMEN HEALING/HEALING WOMEN: THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

Elaine Wainwright
Elaine Wainwright
Affiliation:
University of Auckland, New Zealand
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Summary

Bultmann held that as the oral tradition developed, names and details would be inserted, reflecting a ‘novelistic’ concern with the ‘characters’ in the tradition. This implies that, other conditions being equal, the simpler tales will be closer to the original tradition; details are also added to provide links between originally discrete groups of material.

The ability of counterstories to reconfigure dominant stories permits those who have been excluded or oppressed by a ‘found’ community to gain fuller access to the goods offered there.

In turning to the gospel of Matthew and its characterization of women healing in the context of the Matthean construction of a health care system, one notes that the same stories of healing women are recounted as in the gospel of Mark. This could lead to the assumption that there is mere repetition of stories. One finds, however, a re-telling of stories and a reshaping of the Jesus narrative so that the emphases are quite distinct.

An Infancy Narrative and a much more extensive John the Baptist/Jesus story (Matthew 3–4), means that the ministry of Jesus in Matthew's gospel does not begin until 4.17. The narrator tells us that Jesus begins to preach repentance for the basileia of the heavens is at hand, a message similar to Mk 1.15. Following the call of four fishermen from beside the Sea of Galilee into a new fictive kinship, the Matthean reader encounters the narrator's voice again in the first of ten summary passages which characterize Jesus’ teaching, preaching and healing (4.23-25).

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Women Healing/Healing Women
The Genderization of Healing in Early Christianity
 , pp. 139 - 159
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2006

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