Product Description

The theme of Yahweh as healer is illuminated in this comprehensive biblical study of the Divine Healer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #879427 in Books
• Published on: 1995-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 462 pages

From the Back Cover
Israel's Diving Healer is the first complete, systematic treatment of the biblical motif of God as "Divine Healer." It traces the theme of the Divine Healer from the Old to the New Testament, showing the continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments, particularly in Jesus' miracles that reveal God as the world's Divine Healer. Israel's Divine Healer begins with a study of various Hebrew words on healing. It then explores, within the larger context of the Ancient Near Eastern religions, the roles of medicine, magic, and the physician-priest together with their possible influences upon Israel's beliefs and practices regarding healing. Against this background, the remaining chapters examine, from the Torah to the Gospels, how Yahweh progressively revealed himself as Divine Healer to Israel and ultimately, through Jesus, to the whole of humanity.

About the Author
Michael L. Brown, (Ph.D., New York University) is president and professor of practical theology at Fellowship for International Revival and Evangelism School of Ministry. He has also served as adjunct professor of Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield and adjunct professor of Jewish apologetics at Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission. He has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion, and the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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 eyewitness accounts of supernatural answers to prayer, along with some difficult stories of suffering, pain, and death, all in connection with seeking to minister to those in need.

In 1990, the idea of turning my rather technical (and not particularly edifying) dissertation into a book began to gel, and, at the request of a potential publisher, in 1991 I drafted a chapter on "Israel’s Divine Healer in the Prophetic Books," greatly expanding and revising relevant portions of my thesis for a theological and biblical audience. It was to the credit of Len Goss at Zondervan Publishing House that the projected volume was deemed suitable for the nascent series, Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology. The bulk of this present monograph was written from June 1992 to April 1994, with roughly 20 percent of the material drawn from my thesis. That which was used, of course, has been thoroughly reworked, and I am amazed to see just how much I have learned personally through a fresh, wide-ranging encounter with the biblical text. It is liberating to derive one’s theology and beliefs from the Scriptures, without having a prefabricated mold into which every passage and book must be squeezed. The reader can make his or her own judgment as to how faithful I have been to the task of honest interpretation.

When preparing the chapter on the prophetic literature, I regularly used my own translations of the Hebrew text. This has been retained in what is now chapter 4. However, as the project wore on, I felt that, for the most part, my own renderings added little to the argument, hence my primary use of the NIV elsewhere. When appropriate, I have suggested corrections to the NIV, and for comparison, I have made reference in particular to the New Jewish Version, since its overall approach and methodology often vary greatly from "Christian" versions.

Customer Reviews

A brilliant and comprehensive statement of God as Healer
Steeped in Hebrew scholarship and Christian appreciation of healing, Brown challenges much of Old Testament scholarship about the meaning of healing as a word and concept. Yahweh as the source of all healing becomes a prominent theme in the Hebrew Bible, which then turns into a flood of healing in the New Testament.

The Best Book on Divine Healing
Israel's Divine Healer is the most scholarly book that I have ever read on the subject of divine healing from a Pentecostal perspective. Many books that I have read tend to focus on the individual or positive confession but Dr. Brown does neither and focuses rather on building a case that God is indeed a healer based on His revelations to Israel.

Dr. Brown further argues that God is immutable and therefore His promise of healing is the same for today. Dr. Brown's book has thousands of footnotes and is full of Scripture. For those not use to reading a book on divine healing from a theological viewpoint then you will want to skip this book. It is quite technical and deep. However, don't let that scare you. Read this book and be filled with faith that Jesus is a healing God.

A Very Important Study of God as Healer
I just now finished reading this book. I have been reading it very, very carefully - writing notes from time to time - for close to three months!

From the cultural background of the Hebrew Scriptures to the etymological study of the Hebrew (and Greek) word translated "to heal" (and the convincing suggestion that it should be translated "to restore, make whole") to a rather full study of significant Biblical texts on the subject of healing to the discussion of healing in the NT to his "Conclusion and Reflections", Dr. Brown gives believers the necessary tools to build up faith in God's desire to miraculously heal today like Jesus did and poses a serious challange to those in the Body of Christ who hold to a cessationist view or have a distaste for the teachings, which they may have heard or read, on the subject.

This book is so important, I would suggest a careful reading of end-notes and, even though Dr. Brown suggests in his preface that the "nontechnical reader may want to skip" the sections on the root meanings of the Hebrew word "rapa", I think it is important that the nontechnical (like me) read it anyway; you may not get all of it but you will gain some basic but vital understanding (along with a section that discusses healing deities), that I believe undergirds and is foundational to all else that is said. If you do not get a satisfactory and firm grasp of what he writes in the Introduction and first chapter, I think you will miss the central significance of everything else fail to achieve the necessary firmness of understanding to strenghten any area where your faith may waver concerning God as Healer.

I cannot over emphasize that those in the Church who do not believe God is healing today should read this book. It is a challanging read and his arguments are logical and persuasive. If you are adamant and serious about what you believe, let me suggest that you gather up all your books on the cessationist view and read them alongside Israel's Divine Healer and see where it all takes you.

The book, while technical, is packed with information that even a layman would recognize as hard for any Biblical scholar to effectively refute. If anyone knows of a book that does so, please let me know.