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Eusebius of Caesarea, NPNF II.1
Book 7, 18. The Statue Which the Woman with an Issue of Blood Erected
Since I have mentioned this city I do not think it proper to omit an account which is worthy of record for posterity. For they say that the woman with an issue of blood, who, as we learn from the sacred Gospel,1 received from our Saviour deliverance from her affliction, came from this place, and that her house is shown in the city, and that remarkable memorials of the kindness of the Saviour to her remain there. For there stands upon
an elevated stone, by the gates of her house, a brazen image of a woman kneeling, with her hands stretched out, as if she were praying. Opposite this is another upright image of a man, made of the same material, clothed decently in a double cloak, and extending his hand toward the woman. At his feet, beside the statue itself,2 is a certain strange plant, which climbs up to the hem of the brazen cloak, and is a remedy for all kinds of diseases. They say that this statue is an image of
Jesus. It has remained to our day, so that we ourselves also saw it when we were staying in the city. Nor is it strange that those
of the Gentiles who, of old, were benefited by our Saviour, should have done such things, since we have learned also that the likenesses of his apostles Paul and Peter, and of Christ himself, are preserved in paintings,3 the ancients being accustomed, as it is likely, according to a habit of the Gentiles, to pay this kind of honor indiscriminately to those regarded by them as deliverers.
Notes
- See Matt. ix. 20 sq.
- ου παρα τοις ποσιν επι της στηλης αυτης. This is commonly translated “at his feet, upon the pedestal”; but, as Heinichen remarks, in the excursus referred to just above, the plant can hardly have grown upon the pedestal, and what is more, we have no warrant for translating στηλη “pedestal.” Paulus, in his commentary on Matthew in loco, maintains that Eusebius is speaking only of a representation upon the base of the statue, not of an actual plant. But this interpretation, as Heinichen shows, is quite unwarranted. For the use of επι in the sense of “near” or “beside,” we have numerous examples (see the instances given by Heinichen, and also Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, s.v.).
- Eusebius himself, as we learn from his letter to the Empress Constantia Augusta (see above, p. 44), did not approve of the use of images or representations of Christ, on the ground that it tended to idolatry. …