Healing the blind near Jericho
Bartimaeus (literally "Son of Timaeus") is a blind man appearing in the Gospel of Mark (10:46–52), in which he is healed by Jesus outside of Jericho.
Matthew (20:29–34) gives a similar account of two blind men being healed outside of Jericho, giving no names. Luke (18:35–43), who does not provide a name either, places the event when Jesus enters Jericho, instead of when he is leaving.
Paula Fredriksen, who believes that titles such as "Son of David" were applied to Jesus only after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, argued that Mark and Matthew placed that healing with the proclamation "Son of David!" just before "Jesus' departure for Jerusalem, the long-foreshadowed site of his sufferings."[1]
The naming of Bartimaeus is unusual in several respects: (a) the fact that a name is given at all, (b) the strange Semitic-Greek hybrid, with (c) an explicit translation "Son of Thimaeus." Some scholars see this to confirm a reference to a historical person;[2] however, other scholars see a special significance of the story in the figurative reference to Plato's Thimaeus who delivers Plato's most important cosmological and theological treatise, involving sight as the foundation of knowledge. [3]
Notes
See also
References
- Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (2000), ISBN 0-300-08457-9
 | This biographical article about person in connection with Christianity is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |