The Virtues of Spittle

I recently read Pagan Christianity by Barna (the pollster) and Viola, and while I was generally unimpressed by their arguments about the pagan origins of many church traditions, along the way there was some discussion of how Jesus intentionally confronted many of the traditions and practices of His day. One example of this is when He healed the man born blind by making clay with spittle and rubbing it on the man's eyes (John 9). A few days later, our pastor preached on this same passage. Both the book and the sermon pointed out that this healing was done on the Sabbath, which confronted the Jewish traditional teachings from the Mishnah that prohibited work on the Sabbath, including healing. In the book, however, they noted in a footnote that the Mishnah, which is the rabbinic interpretation of the Torah, includes a passage in the section about the Sabbath (Sabbath 108:20) in which spitting to make clay to anoint eyes (as well as pouring wine into the eyes) are specifically prohibited. How weird is that?



So what is with this fixation on spitting? How could spitting be important enough to anyone that the rabbis would make a specific rule about it regarding the keeping of the Sabbath? In searching around the internet to find out about this I came across some information that surprised me. It turns out that both Jews and others in ancient times considered that saliva could have healing properties (see JewishEncyclopedia.com under 'saliva'). This is recorded by the Roman historian Pliny as well, and Tacitus ascribes to the emperor Vespasian the healing of eye diseases with his saliva. The Greeks also held this view. The Jews held that a man who kept the law and had just been fasting as well could have special power in his saliva. In some contexts spittle was considered unclean, but for the most part it was not and was even viewed as having special powers. In this context, for Jesus to spit and anoint eyes would have been very much expected for a healer. While this passage strikes my modern sensibilities as very weird, Jesus was doing exactly what a healer would be expected to do in that time.



There are 3 passages that involve Jesus spitting to heal: this one in John 9, plus Mark 7:33 and Mark 8:23. It was not a 'one off' event. The gospels report these without comment, just as if it is behavior that one would expect, and such it is. Once again I was reminded of how separated our habits of mind are from that time and place, and how much more we would understand the subtleties of the gospel if we better understood the culture of that time and place.



As I discussed this with my daughter, she brought up a related case around baptism. Here is an interesting link discussing the Jewish mikvah (or mikveh): www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Life_Events/Conversion/Conversion_Process/Mikveh for reference. Mikvah is the cleansing by immersion that is used for several purposes in Judaism, but it is notably used as part of the process for a Gentile to convert to Judaism. It must be complete immersion so that every part and every hair is immersed. It is to be done in specified water, 'living' water, not stagnant or impure water. The comparison to being re-born is explicit, as one enters the water a Gentile and emerges a Jew, just as one born a Jew. So when Jesus confronted a devout Jew like Nicodemus in John 3 and tells him that he, too, must be 'born again' He was referring to something Nicodemus already knew about. However, Nicodemus would not have thought that what was required for a Gentile was needed for himself. He had already been born a Jew. But Jesus confronted him that a major, life altering change of heart was needed for the Jews to be truly God's people, just as is required for a Gentile to become a Jew in seeking the true God. This is not the sprinkling of babies that eventually emerged in the West at all. How much else do we misinterpret by westernizing the gospel teaching?