Understanding Jesus healings : shrinking history and Donald Capps’s different thinking cap

dc.contributor.authorVan Aarde, A.G. (Andries G.)
dc.contributor.emailandries.vanaarde@up.ac.zaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2011-02-03T11:04:37Z
dc.date.available2011-02-03T11:04:37Z
dc.date.issued2010-08
dc.description.abstractThis article is a critical appraisal of Donald Capps’s interpretation of the significance of Jesus’ healings for today. It focuses on Capps’s recently published book, Jesus the village psychiatrist. Capps sees Jesus as the ‘forerunner’ of the modern psychological profession. In his book he demonstrates that mental illnesses were known in antiquity. Referring to Sigmund Freud’s insights into the psychological phenomenon, hysteria, Capps interprets mental illness as ‘somatoform disorders’. According to Capps, Jesus’ deeds of healing should not be considered ‘miracles’ because this implies that they contradict natural laws. Building on the insights of historical Jesus research, Capps shows that these deeds of Jesus were performed ‘at the tension points between village and city, family and parents and children and between siblings’. Capps believes Jesus was a ‘psychiatrist’ because he ‘studied’, ‘treated’ and ‘prevented’ disorders of the mind. This article investigates the possibility whether Capps falls into the trap of ‘psychological fallacy’. The finding is that he does not; he deliberately avoids individualistic and ethnocentric anachronism. Nevertheless, the article criticises Capps’s indifference with regard to the socialscientific distinction between illness and disease, and curing and healing, respectively. Capps’s interpretation could be augmented by medical and anthropological insights and current studies on alternated states of consciousness.en
dc.identifier.citationVan Aarde, A.G., 2010, ‘Understanding Jesus healings : shrinking history and Donald Capps’s different thinking cap, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 66(1), Art. #821, 5 pages. DOI: 10.4102/hts.v66i1.821en
dc.identifier.issn0259-9422
dc.identifier.other10.4102/hts.v66i1.821
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2263/15813
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherOpenJournals Publishingen_US
dc.rights© 2010. The Authors. Licensee: OpenJournals Publishing. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.en_US
dc.subjectHistorical Jesusen
dc.subjectJesus’ miracles and healingsen
dc.subjectShamanic studiesen
dc.subjectAlternated states of consciousnessen
dc.subject.lcshCapps, D.E. (Donald Eric) -- Criticism and interpreationen
dc.subject.lcshJesus Christ -- Miraclesen
dc.subject.lcshSomatoform disordersen
dc.subject.lcshHealing in the Bibleen
dc.titleUnderstanding Jesus healings : shrinking history and Donald Capps’s different thinking capen
dc.typeArticleen

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