The role of disabled bodies in the Bible often illustrate contradictory messages and are portrayed in a very stereotyped manner. This paper will discuss the different representations of disability and impairment in the Bible, and also the shift in the roles of disabled bodies from the Old Testament into the New Testament to spread the teachings of Christianity. The Old Testament devalues disabled bodies and represents them as unclean and less than those with seemingly perfectly able bodies. They are used to promote charitable acts and improve the morality of able-bodied people and to act otherwise would result in punishment of an impairment or disability to the offender who in turn would not be welcomed by God. In the New Testament, while Jesus does welcome the disabled, they play a role of allowing able-bodied Christians to witness Jesus’ healing abilities and disabled people are written to need salvation.
Beginning in the Old Testament, disability and impairment are shown in the Bible through blindness, deafness, dumbness, leprosy, and paralysis with visual impairment being the most common. For those who are viewed as disabled or having a form of physical defect, they are ostracized and excluded from society and this was seen often in religious ceremonies. These ceremonies that celebrated God emphasized the societal structure and the various roles in the societal hierarchy. To be accepted as a high-ranking official in the church one must prove bodily normality (Bengtsson). Those with physical impairments or disabled bodies could never be considered to be a priest or take a leading role, and this order established clear division between able bodied people and those with disabilities and this is blatantly stated in the book of Leviticus:
The Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy (Lev. 21:16-23 NIV).
This passage clearly defines and separates the view of able-bodied people and disabled people in the eyes of God, and how he finds the most satisfaction from a perfect and normal body (Bengtsson). By allowing disabled bodied people to be that close to God it would be a blatantly disrespectful act.
In these sacrificial rituals the purpose is to bring individuals to the divine power by offering the best of their possessions to the God, so to exclude those that are disabled or have defects it exhibits they are less desirable and this is mentioned again in the book of Malachi:
When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you? Says the Lord Almighty (Mal. 1:8 NIV).
This reiterates that there is a feeling of shame surrounding any being with a disabled body or physical defect and that they should be hidden from the eyes of God. In early years of Christianity, the church believed that faith “comes from hearing the message” (Romans 10:17 NIV). This belief would leave those deaf and hard of hearing without faith and excluded from the church which is another example of the ostracism of those with disabilities that is exhibited in the Old Testament.
Alongside the narratives and stereotypes of shame and being less desirable there are contradicting messages about the treatment of disabled and impaired people in the Bible, even in the book of Leviticus where it is spoken that God should be distanced from anyone seen as disabled preaches that there should not be mistreatment of disabled people. In the previous chapter of Leviticus God states that no man should “curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind” (Lev. 19:14 NIV). It can be argued that this is the first instance in the Bible that advocates for the protection of the disabled in society and reflects competing attitudes toward disability in the Old Testament (Braddock and Parish 4).
The book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament stresses heavily the way able-bodied Christians in communities should act towards the “others.” The role of disabled people in their communities should be to allow able-bodied people an outlet to practice better acts of charity and learn to increase morality. They were not viewed as equal and should be pitied. “Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road” (Deut. 27:18 NIV). In instances where one does not act charitably towards disabled people, they were to be punished by God. Disability is used as a punishment towards able-bodied people and they are warned:
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you… The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of the mind. (Deut. 28:15-28 NIV).
Society was to recognize their obligation to people with disabilities, while also fearing that they could be punished by God with the very same disabilities. The belief that illness was inflicted by an angry God as punishment was widespread among Christian communities (Braddock and Parish 4).
Continuing into the New Testament, although there are much fewer chapters addressing disability directly, the stigma surrounding disability is not changed but rather just narrated differently. The New Testament gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John feature numerous examples of people with physical and sensory disabilities, just as the Old Testament, but now those examples only exist to highlight Jesus’ healing as a miracle worker (Gosbell 9). Their role in their communities has shifted from being an outlet for able-bodied Christians to improve their morality to providing an outlet for able-bodied Christians to see the miraculous healing of Jesus. Disabled people represent the version of humanity that needs to be restored and saved through ministry and faith. If the followers of Jesus are not deemed healthy or able-bodied, it would be because they are not doing something right.
In the book of Mark, the spread of leprosy is a concern for Christians, and it is written that Jesus has the power to heal this undesirable disease:
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed (Mark 1:40-44).
This representation of disability in the book of Mark perceives disease and disability as something that is in need of being saved. The removal of disability is seen as a foreshadowing of the full restoration of humanity, and to be left disabled is a “manifestation of brokenness” (Gosbell 10). The representation of disabled people as more sinful and in need of healing further illustrates that disabled people are not fully accepted in Christianity other than to accentuate the abilities of Jesus. This is exhibited again in the book of Mark when Jesus heals a blind man in Bethsaida:
They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him… Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly (Mark 8:22-25 NIV).
There are countless examples of Jesus healing the disabled throughout the Gospels, and this is another example of the role that disabled people play in their communities and in Christianity at the time.
Unlike the Old Testament, where God turned away those with disabilities as they were not deemed worthy to be near, Jesus does welcome the disabled into his ministries and does not turn them away. Jesus states in the book of Luke that “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed” (Luke 12:12-13 NIV). The role of the disabled people in their communities change after the birth of Jesus Christ due to the fact there were changes in how Christians then practiced ministry.
In the Old Testament, disability was written as a factor of life that could not be escaped or healed and as a result disabled people were turned away from the church and left to be isolated from their communities. The meaning of disability in the Bible shifts with the introduction of the New Testament and the birth of Jesus and gives Christianity a new way to celebrate the able body it deems it perfect. Although there are consistent stereotypes present in the Bible when narrating stories of people with disabilities, the representation of disabled people throughout both Testaments illuminates the complexity of the inclusion of people with disabilities and impairments in Christianity.
Works Cited
Bengtsson, Staffan. “On the Borderline- Representations of Disability in the Old Testament.” Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, vol. 16, no. 3, 3 Jan. 2014, doi:http://doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2013.873077.
Braddock, David L, and Susan L Parish. “An Institutional History of Disability.” Disability Studies as a Field, 2001, pp. 11–68.
Gosbell, Louise A. The Poor, the Crippled, the Blind, and the Lame: Physical and Sensory Disability in the Gospels of the New Testament. Mohr Siebeck, 2018.
Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2017.
Stiker, Henri-Jacques. A History of Disability. Translated by W. Sayers, University of Michigan Press, 1997.
