 Is there any significance to the clay that Jesus spit on to heal the blind man? He had just left the temple on a Sabbath when he healed the man so being in Jerusalem He was on God's turf his portion on Jacob. Was this another message slight to the powers and principalities of a heavenly spiritual nature that they got and we didn't I Understand that Jesus you spit other times to heal people and I understand the Levitical law about spit But do you know if there is any deeper meaning to the fact he used the dirt clay of Jerusalem to mix with his spit to perform the healing? Well, if there is it would be pretty oblique and You'll understand that by the time I get to the end of the answer on the one hand I don't think there's anything clearly going on here with cosmic geography because there's no indication that the blindness was caused By the powers of darkness if you had that element in there, then I could see again some sort of cosmic geographical Sign or confrontation here, but we don't have that again the Old Testament Comments about saliva in the Old Testament It could saliva could convey ritual Uncleanness if the person spitting had been unclean if they were in an unclean status that person spit would render in theory someone else Unclean so the verse for that is Leviticus 15 8 for example If the one with the discharge spits on someone who is clean then he shall wash his clothes and bathe himself so on and so forth So it could render someone unclean That's interesting because the unclean status typically takes the discussion into Let me rephrase that put it this way some scholars see a parallel to this It's gonna sound odd, but they see a parallel to this with when Jesus heals the leper You recall leprosy obviously you can't touch a leper because then you become unclean and so when Jesus does this You know he he's asked by the leper if you will you can heal me and Jesus says yes I'm willing to do that and he touches the leper and heals him So on the one hand when Jesus does does this it kind of renders the uncleanness point moot because as soon as he touches The guy he's healed so he's not really is he really in contact with an unclean person or not No, it looks clean to me. So some people think that that because spit is Referenced in Leviticus as possibly rendering someone unclean that when Jesus use it the teaching point of both that and the leper Is really the same in other words that that Jesus is a higher authority Than the normal priests, you know who would be using mosaic law to determine whether you should or shouldn't do something like that So by using saliva to cure the man or by touching the leper Jesus is presented or is presenting himself as someone having some sort of Unusual or inordinate spiritual authority because it basically amounts to Jesus saying look I'm unaffected By these Levitical taboos I transcend them And watch because I'm going to do this act and sort of the question becomes moot because this person is healed now Now that that's possible again scholars go there Because they're looking for a parallel to the this unusual incident with the using of the spit Then they find Leviticus 15 and then they start thinking well, maybe this is kind of like the leprosy incident It's possible. I don't I don't think it's that strong of a connection But I think it's on the table saliva of course was regarded by some rabbis as Having healing properties in other words if the spit of a person who wasn't done clean is a different matter And you can actually find in rabbinic tradition References to saliva being an agent of healing. I'm just going to give the abbreviation BAT 126b I can't remember what what that stands for in the Talmud But it says this the saliva of the firstborn of a father heals Specifically diseases of the eye, but the saliva of the firstborn of the mother does not heal Can assist a rabbinic opinion, but it shows you know that that that some at least some Jews were thinking that okay They had it had healing properties now the interesting part of this is that it's the firstborn of a father And so is Jesus doing this? Because of this Jewish notion that the firstborn in his case of the father Which of course he has claimed for himself is a healer which of course would be associated with the Messiah And so does this act so I kind of reinforce his messianic status and his claim to be the son of God Okay, again, I think that's on the table. I think it's possible on the other hand You'll get other rabbis that condemned saliva because pagans often you know use saliva in their healing rituals And so some of the rabbis were skittish over it rabbi Akiba has a famous Sentence about this that we shouldn't you know, you shouldn't be doing this So, you know, who really knows now? I think there's a more interesting parallel more interesting sort of backdrop to this Other than this he set of possibilities. There was a recent article. This is 2013 so it's it's just in the last couple years in journal biblical literature where somebody the author happened to notice That they're the spit language is actually in a few Dead Sea scroll texts And the article if I can't again, it's not something I can post Because it's not public domain But the article essentially I'll just give you the gist of it There's a there was an old interpretation of this passage John 9 with the spit from Irenaeus our buddy Irenaeus and like I said, I like him because he thinks outside the box a lot But Irenaeus taught that Jesus use of clay the spit You know that to form the clay to heal the manborn blind alluded to God's use of dust Or dirt in the creation account in Genesis 2 you know where he creates Adam from the dust to the ground now That there are a lot of scholars who didn't buy that because hey, it's it's dust It's not it's not clay, you know, it just didn't feel right Well, this article actually defends the idea using the Dead Sea scroll So Irenaeus gets defended here and what it amounts to I'll just quote a few excerpts from from the article It both spittle and clay are Similarly juxtaposed in several Dead Sea scrolls in the context of the creation of humankind Suggesting that John and the authors of these scrolls may have been drawing on a shared tradition that understood both elements as Materials of creation now, it's important to keep in mind. This is me talking now that ancient Near Eastern You know creation stories and myths also use spit and dirt and things like this So it well when you go back into the Israelite context These elements are part of the story that the main reason back to the article here now This is another quotation the chief reason scholars have been hesitant to see an allusion to Genesis in John 9 6 you Jesus act of spitting and creating the clay is that Whereas it is dust Hebrew the Hebrew term there is afar out of which God creates Adam and Genesis 2 7 Jesus uses clay, which is a different Hebrew term came are now What's interesting here is dust gets translated in in Greek in Septuagint New Testament as coos the word is coos and mud the clay is Palos Palos is also used by the Septuagint in the Old Testament passages Where God is described as a potter Remember the potter in the clay thing the Old Testament casting God is the As the potter you know who molds the clay and and that's associated in certain contexts certain Instances when this language is used with creation so you actually do have Old Testament precedent for clay talk in Terms of you know with respect to the creation account and not just dust talk is what this amounts to now The two Dead Sea Scrolls of the article it actually refers to more than this But I'll give you I'll give you two examples of what this author is trying Basically, how he's defending iron AS and defending this view from the Dead Sea Scrolls One of them is the rule of the community, which is 1 qs for you kumran fans out there This would be column 11 lines 21 and 22 says as what shall one born of a woman be considered in your presence? Question shape from dust has he been? Okay, so one born from a woman, which is human humankind No as was what shall humankind be considered in your presence shape from dust has he been Maggots food shall be his dwelling. He is spat saliva molded clay and For dust is his longing. What will what will the clay reply and The one shape by hand and what advice will he be able to understand? So it's a clear reference to humanity being formed not just from the dust of the ground but Spit and clay right here in this in this scroll text another example as it comes from the Thanksgiving hymns That's one qh Specifically in this instance one qha column 20 says what is he to do that he who returns to his dust? I have kept my silence for what can I say about this matter in accordance with my knowledge? I spoke spat saliva one fashion from clay Again, it's kind of an awkward Translation or an awkward text, but it's another clear reference to the one returning to the dust which would be humankind and At the end of the line that that humanity is identified with spat saliva and being fashioned from clay So if this is the backdrop and again, this is second temple material if this is the backdrop to John 9 And I actually think there's a better chance of this being the backdrop than the rabbinic material frankly because the Rabbinic material is later it might refer to some attitude During Jesus time it may or may not we can't really be sure but with second temple material We you know we can be sure of of the greater potential. There's a greater potential for cross fertilization here But if this is the backdrop this idea of associating the Spit and the dirt forming clay and it's an illusion to creation That's really interesting because then this whole incident in John 9 would be casting Jesus as at least Having power over the physical world as the Creator did or Even as the Creator in the words it cast Jesus it puts Jesus pardon the pun in that mold So that when people would read this or hear the story or witness it their mind would be taken back to Something that the potter did the Creator did and here you have Jesus doing it So it's a way to telegraph and John is really, you know, well known again for connecting Jesus to Old Testament To Yahweh of the Old Testament. He John is very well known the gospel again for Really strong statements of deity and so this I think could be added to the list Based on the association with the Creator with the potter who who molds the claim