The gospel of John’s ‘Book of Signs’ features several characters with varying levels of belief in Jesus’ messianic identity. Two of those characters interact with Jesus in healing type scenes that share many similarities: the lame man of John 5 and the blind man of John 9.
There have been several studies on these characters, including Culpepper’s classic study on narratology and characterization in John. Likewise, two edited volumes (Skinner) and (Hunt, Tolmie and Zimmerman) have contributed to the scholarly dialogue on such characters in John.
This paper will add to the discussion by exploring how juxtaposition is a key hermeneutical strategy that allows for a richer understanding of John 5 and 9. Specifically, this paper will argue that directly comparing the men’s responses to Jesus reveals how one can only receive spiritual healing and salvation through belief in Jesus. While the blind man of John 9 progresses in his understanding of Jesus as the Messiah, the lame man of John 5 does not. Ultimately, the blind man receives wholistic and spiritual healing, while the lame man only receives physical healing.
This paper will thus also engage in Greco-Roman background regarding sickness and healing. As scholars have noted regarding ὑγιής (Kubis, Kok, Thomas), physical illnesses in the ancient Greco-Roman world affected an individual’s whole life and social mobility. In fact, John 7:23 explicitly makes this link between wholeness and healing when Jesus says he made a whole man well (ὅλον ἄνθρωπον ὑγιῆ ἐποίησα).
Ultimately, this paper seeks to demonstrate that juxtaposition is a key strategy readers should use when engaging with narratives, including healing type scenes. As such, this paper will conclude with the implications this study can have on engaging with other type scenes in gospel narratives and beyond. For example, juxtaposition may richen our understanding of how various characters’ responses to the gospel in Acts (ie: the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Lydia) reveals about the socioeconomic dimension of Christianity and its spread in the first century.