The miracles in the Gospel of Mark largely had to do with the healing of unclean spirits within people and to this I attribute Marks portrayal of the mercy of Jesus as the Son of God. Many times in the miracle stories in Mark Jesus is proclaimed the Son of God by the demons. It seems that the author of Mark had strong interests in tying Jesus with being the Son of God and applying mercy to his deeds. It would seem one of the reasons the miracles Mark 1:21-3:6 were linked together was because healing is prevalent throughout. It seems the author could have been trying to persuade the audience of Jesus’ divine nature through these miracle healings.

Focusing on the miracle of exorcism of an unclean spirit in Capernaum in the Gospel of Mark 1:21-28 which is also written about in the Gospel of Luke. The story is of the typical structure of an exorcism story in this time period that White talks about in this chapter. One interesting twists it adds to the structure is that the spirit names Jesus and calls him the “Holy One of God” when normally it is the one doing the exorcism who names the spirit.   Most likely the reason is just to further illustrate the divine nature of Jesus. But much of the rest of the miracle is typical exorcism story telling for the time even the word “rebuked” in both Gospels refer to exorcism in the Jewish tradition according to the footnotes of our New Testament. In Luke there are subtle redactions like the people proclaiming what Jesus did a “new teaching” or the way he describes the effect of the miracle. Luke describes the reaction of the people in the synagogue as saying “What is this word” which could be putting more authority in Jesus’ knowledge more so than the teaching emphasis in Mark. Another small difference is that in Luke there is no comparison to Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue to the scribes. In both Matthew and Mark there is a direct defense of Jesus’ authority and teaching against the “scribes” but in Luke there is none while Matthew is devoid the entire exorcism miracle itself. I am not sure what the significance could be except for that maybe both the authors of Mark and Matthew had an agenda against certain scribes directly confronting them in their Gospels.

In Matthew 8:5 Jesus preforms a healing miracle in which a Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal one of his slaves and he does. An interesting thing about this passage is that the centurion is asking Jesus for the miracle and Jesus even marvels at the “faith” of the soldier. The centurion shows his understanding of Jesus’ because he won’t have Jesus come to his place of living because he is not worthy. This act could be because the author of Matthew could be trying to gain support of Roman people. This miracle provides a Roman authority understanding Jesus, Jesus rewarding his faith, and a reference to the Old Testament all of which allow the author of the Gospel of Matthew to build Jesus’ reputation.