- Dec 20, 2003
- 13,631
- 2,680
- Country
- Germany
- Faith
- Christian
- Marital Status
- Married
While doing some research on Greek medicine I was surprised to find that 3 early centres of Greek Medicine in the crucial first century era coincided with early church activity.
So while the apostles John and Paul were healing people in Ephesus there were major medical centres often associated with the temple. They would base their medicinal practice on the "Hippocratic corpus" of medical writings that were loosely traced to Hippocrites in the 4th century BC. Again these writings were largely the standard text until the 18th century. Rufus of Ephesus was based in Ephesus at about the time John died there.
Pedanius Dioscorides who lived in Tarsus from where Paul came wrote the definitive work on Pharmacology that was still being used in the nineteenth century - "On Medical Material" and is still useful today. But seems to have been active across the Asia Minor region.
The other major centre was Alexandria which had a large church very early on.
I wonder to what extent there was an obsession with healing in the era, maybe to do with the peace and prosperity that the Roman empire had brought the region. Over time Christians established themselves as the prime healing community but since the Constantinian era relied heavily on the Greek secular medical writings rather than miraculous healings. The church having a motive to heal people out of human compassion also adopted the methods of the Greeks in doing so. But maybe in so doing they cut themselves off from the kind of miraculous healings of the apostolic era in favour of the empirical methodology of the Greeks regarding healing.
1) Did the adoption of Greek Medicine end the age of miracles?
2) Was the churches adoption and promotion of proper medical practice , based on the early Greeks, a logical progression and outworking of its Christian mission to bless the communities in which it grew?
So while the apostles John and Paul were healing people in Ephesus there were major medical centres often associated with the temple. They would base their medicinal practice on the "Hippocratic corpus" of medical writings that were loosely traced to Hippocrites in the 4th century BC. Again these writings were largely the standard text until the 18th century. Rufus of Ephesus was based in Ephesus at about the time John died there.
Pedanius Dioscorides who lived in Tarsus from where Paul came wrote the definitive work on Pharmacology that was still being used in the nineteenth century - "On Medical Material" and is still useful today. But seems to have been active across the Asia Minor region.
The other major centre was Alexandria which had a large church very early on.
I wonder to what extent there was an obsession with healing in the era, maybe to do with the peace and prosperity that the Roman empire had brought the region. Over time Christians established themselves as the prime healing community but since the Constantinian era relied heavily on the Greek secular medical writings rather than miraculous healings. The church having a motive to heal people out of human compassion also adopted the methods of the Greeks in doing so. But maybe in so doing they cut themselves off from the kind of miraculous healings of the apostolic era in favour of the empirical methodology of the Greeks regarding healing.
1) Did the adoption of Greek Medicine end the age of miracles?
2) Was the churches adoption and promotion of proper medical practice , based on the early Greeks, a logical progression and outworking of its Christian mission to bless the communities in which it grew?