Chapter 44 of 404

Honi and Hanina

Most scholars today accept the claim that Jesus was a healer and exorcist, as his contemporaries would have understood such categories.⁶⁵ Vermes naturally looks for the closest parallels to miracle workers not among Gentiles but among Jewish sages, and cites the most prominent, namely Honi and Hanina. He probably goes too far in suggesting that holy men like Hanina ben Dosa dominated first-century Galilean religious experience more than the priests or scribes did;⁶⁶ we do not hear of many other miracle-working sages,⁶⁷ especially from Jesus’ era. This observation conflicts with what we would expect if such miracle workers were as common as Vermes allows.⁶⁸ Still, he is surely correct to emphasize that many people would have followed such charismatic leaders.⁶⁹

Vermes appropriately looked to the most obvious context for understanding Jesus as a miracle-working sage, namely those available in his Palestinian Jewish setting. Hanina was a Galilean, like Jesus, although he is the only other Galilean we know of to whom signs are attributed.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, the value of these sources is more limited than we might hope, if taken by themselves. Thus rain-making is the only miracle common to both Honi and Hanina, yet it is absent from Jesus’ ministry.⁷¹ Relatively few of the divine interventions reported involve healing.⁷²

We also have a more difficult time knowing as much about these sages’ miracles as we would like because most sources for them come from centuries after their time. While Honi (Onias) was earlier than Jesus and undoubtedly known for getting answered prayer regarding rain,⁷³ most of the details we hear about him surface only perhaps half a millennium after he lived.⁷⁴ Most scholars place Hanina ben Dosa in the first century,⁷⁵ but his association with miracles is mild in early rabbinic sources.⁷⁶ Later material about Hanina is much more abundant, but was transmitted and developed over the course of three or four centuries.⁷⁷ Many scholars also conclude that while Jewish wonder-workers offer closer parallels than pagan ones do, they differ significantly from Jesus (especially because they operate only through prayer and because they lack an explicitly eschatological context for their miracles).⁷⁸

But Vermes and others have also appealed to the biblical model of Elijah’s signs.⁷⁹ However relevant Honi and Hanina are for understanding Jesus’ prophetic ministry, Jesus and most of his Jewish contemporaries knew very well the model of Elijah. (Vermes shows that the rabbinic portrait of Hanina ben Dosa is also modeled on Elijah.)⁸⁰ Some biblical prophets like Elijah and Elisha were particularly emphasized as healers;⁸¹ some others, like Isaiah, might heal occasionally (Is 38:21);⁸² and Jewish sources continued to link miracles with many of the biblical prophets.⁸³

↑ Back to top