Jairus's Daughter and the Haemorrhaging Woman: Tradition and Interpretation of an Early-Christian Miracle Story

In this book Arie W. Zwiep investigates the gospel stories of the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the healing of the haemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:21–43; Matt 9:18–26; Luke 8:40–56), with particular attention to the proficiency of a multiperspectival reading strategy. Applying a range of interpretative models to the same set of texts, it aims to describe and evaluate what happens when an ancient Gospel text is approached from a variety of (sometimes conflicting) methodological angles. Among the various (diachronic and synchronic) models that are being applied in this study are philological criticism, form criticism and structural analysis, tradition- and redaction criticism, orality studies and performance criticism, narrative analysis, textual criticism and the study of intertextuality. Such a comprehensive approach, it is argued, leads to an increased knowledge and a deepened understanding of the ancient texts in question and to a sharpened awareness of the applicability of current scholarly research instruments to unlock documents from the past.