Paul And Asklepios

For a man who endured so much bodily suffering during the course of his ministry, the apostle Paul has surprisingly little to say about health, medical care, or healing in his letters. Christopher D. Stanley explores the reasons for this silence and what we might reasonably infer regarding Paul's views on the subject. He focuses in particular on two questions that have been neglected in previous scholarship on the apostle Paul: first, what did Paul think, say, and do regarding the treatment of his own and his followers' illnesses and injuries, including "pagan" modes of medical care? And second, how did his ideas on this subject affect the success of his missionary enterprise?

Stanley begins with a thorough and nuanced examination of the nature and extent of sickness and injury in the Greco-Roman world, and then moves into a critical review of the three overlapping systems of care that were available to treat it: folk remedies, religious healing, and medical cures. From there this volume transitions to a consideration of what is known about how Jews and Christians other than Paul viewed and used these systems in the first few centuries of the Christian era. Stanley finally speculates on what Paul himself might have thought about the available modes of treatment, what he might have taught his followers on the subject, and how his teachings might have affected the success of his missionary enterprise.