Israel's Divine Healer

Preface My interest in Israel's divine Healer is long-standing, both spiritually and academically. The origins of that interest, however, are unique and worth recounting. Raised in a Conservative Jewish home on Long Island, New York, I can only explain my teenage foray into the world of drugs and hard rock music as symptomatic of the times-those turbulent years of the late 60s and early 70s, the years of Woodstock idealism, the so-called Age of Aquarius. For me, a pleasure-seeking youth of just fifteen or sixteen, the rock/drug world was full of allure and temptation, and I plunged into that world with reckless abandon. Little did I know that by the end of 1971, while still sixteen, I would experience a radical conversion in a small Italian Pentecostal church in Queens, New York. Drawn there with the sole purpose of pulling my two best friends (and fellow band members) out of the church and back to "reality," I was confronted instead with the love of God emanating from a sincere people who simply believed. Their testimony of God's life-changing power, their acceptance of this young, proud, stubborn rebel, and their eyewitness stories of miracles, healings, and deliverances seemed totally genuine. Soon enough, my resistance melted, faith came alive, and I surrendered. In a moment of time, I was free. In the present context, there are two key events from those early days that are especially relevant. First, I experienced a sudden and dramatic healing of a bad and persistent case of hives, which had tormented me for days. The remission came in immediate answer to prayer after a frustrating week. Now I was an eyewitness. Second, at the behest of my dear father, I met the local rabbi. Pleased beyond words that I had given up my destructive ways, my father wanted me to "return" to my traditions. Although I did not take the route they had envisioned, the relationship formed with that rabbi has endured for almost twenty-five years, and it was in direct response to his persistent prodding that I began to study Hebrew in college. At that time, I had not the faintest inkling that those studies would lead to serious Semitic scholarship. But that is only part of the story. Life was not always so simple in my Pentecostal church. Why were many prayers for the sick not answered? Why was it that the more I read and learned, the more I questioned some of our doctrinal distinctives? By 1977, a separation came, and I became active in a church that was theologically and academically much more broad-minded, albeit certainly lacking in terms of those early, miraculous testimonies of which I had by now become skeptical. Then, in 1982-83, I and many others in the congregation experienced a dramatic spiritual renewal, prompting me to reconsider the relevance of what was then my working dissertation topic, "Abbreviated Verbal Idioms in the Hebrew Bible." In the light of eternity, was such a project worth the time and effort? Along with this was a new problem: People were getting healed again in answer to prayer, but their theology, so far as I could tell, was askew, and their use of Scripture to support their position seemed amiss. The same held true, I thought, in even more pronounced fashion among the leading figures in public healing ministry. How could this be? Was it my view that needed adjustment? Or was God simply honoring honest, trusting hearts in spite of doctrinal error? I was determined to understand as best I could the biblical views of God as Healer, and as one specializing in Old Testament and Semitics, the study of the Hebrew root rampam' seemed logical. Thus I began my exegetical and comparative philological study of rampam', completed as a New York University dissertation in 1985 under the tutelage of Baruch Levine. At the same time, I began to teach on the subject of healing in various popular and academic settings here and abroad, often praying for the sick as well. I can now add further eyewBrown, Michael L. is the author of 'Israel's Divine Healer' with ISBN 9780310200291 and ISBN 0310200296.