Divine Healers at the Hot Springs

In the absence of dedications that explicitly name the divine healers credited with miracles, we can only speculate about their identity. Among Greek and Roman visitors, it is likely that Asklepios, the healing god par excellence, was the focus of visitors’ hopes for a miracle.

For the identity of the healer envisioned by Jewish and Christian visitors, I return to the pilgrimage diary written by Antoninus of Placentia. He describes Hammat Gader as a place with “hot waters, which are called the springs of Elijah (thermae Heliae), where lepers are healed” (Itinerarium 7.14).

Elijah was already associated with Hammat Gader in the century before Antoninus wrote his account. When Empress Eudokia visited the site in the middle of the fifth century, she composed a poetic inscription that was set into the pavement of the Hall of Fountains (Area D; see figures 2 and 5). Her inscription lists sixteen parts of the bath complex, one of which she calls, “pure Elijah” (’HXlac; ayvoc;):

Figure 5. Fifth century inscription dedicated by Eudokia at Hammat Gader; Di Segni 1997, 231, fig. 45; used with the permission of the Israel Exploration Society.

+ Of the Empress Eudokia +

[Column 1] In my life many and infinite wonders have I seen

But who, however many his mouths, could proclaim, O noble Clibanus

By your strength, having been born a worthless mortal? But rather

It is just that you be called a new fiery ocean.

Paean and life source, provider of sweet streams.

From you is born the infinite swell, here, once there another.

On this side boiling, but there in turn cold and tepid.

You pour fourth your beauty into four tetrads of springs.

[Column 2] An Indian woman and a matron; Repentinus; pure Elijah;

Good Antoninus; dewy Galatia and

Hygieia herself; the large warm (baths) and the small warm (baths);

The Pearl; the old Clibanus; an Indian woman and also another

Matron; the strong (woman) and the nun, and the (spring) of the Patriarch.

For those in pain your mighty strength (is ever constant).

But (I will sing) of god, famous for wisdom...

For the benefit of men and.

Eudokia’s inscription confirms that Elijah was connected with the hot spring by the fifth century CE, but I would suggest that it also allows for the possibility of a much earlier association. Efforts have been made to identify the “four tetrads of springs” listed in the inscription’s second column to a set of sixteen fountains or pools in the archaeological remains. While this has not been possible, Di

Segni (1997, 230) is nevertheless likely correct that the names corresponded in some way to “individual parts of the baths or elements of the water system” that Eudokia saw as she toured the site. Among the eponymous names are two that date to the second century CE. The oldest identifiable name in the inscription is in line 11, Αντωνΐνος ευς (“good Antoninus”), a shortened form of Αντωνίνος ευσεβής, the name by which the emperor Antoninus Pius was known in the East. As the successor of Hadrian, whom rabbinic tradition placed at Hammat Gader, Antoninus Pius may have also visited the site and contributed to its beautification.^[372] Another early patron, Repentius, is found in line 10. A newly discovered Latin inscription from the site identifies Sex. Cornelius Repentinus as the leg(ato) Aug(usti) pr(o) pr(aetore), under whose command a vexillatio of Legio VI Ferratae completed a building project (Eck 2014, 212-14).

In light of this link between Elijah and Hammat Gader, I return to R. Judah ha-Nasi, who was credited with the controversial ruling about travel between Gadara and the hot spring on the Sabbath. Among the many medical complaints that rabbinic texts attribute to R. Judah was a prolonged toothache described in the Yerushalmi:

Rabbi lived in Sepphoris for seventeen years and ofthat time he spent thirteen suffering from a toothache... Elijah came to him in the guise of Rabbi Hiyya the Elder.. [Elijah] put his finger on the tooth and healed it. The next day Rabbi Hiyya the Elder came to him and said, “How does my lord do? As to your teeth, how are they doing?” He said to him, “From that moment at which you put your finger on it, it has been healed.” (y. Ketub. 12:3)

The appearance of the prophet Elijah in this passage marks a significant departure from accounts of him in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic texts. In biblical stories, Elijah was known for his prophecies and for his ability to bend the laws of nature. For example, Elijah orchestrated a three-year drought and later caused it to rain (1 Kgs 17-18), and he brought about the spontaneous combustion of a water­laden altar (1 Kgs 18:36-40). While Elijah did perform a healing miracle in the raising of the widow's son (1 Kgs 17:17-23), such cures were not commonly ascribed to him in the Hebrew Bible.

I propose that the story of R. Judah's thirteen-year toothache and his vision of Elijah as the agent of his cure are not informed by the stories of Elijah found in the Hebrew Bible or elsewhere in the Talmud, where the prophet rarely performed miraculous cures. Rather, by the time that the Jerusalem Talmud with its story of R. Judah's toothache was completed in the fifth century, a long-standing link between Elijah and Hammat Gader may well have conditioned rabbinic authors to see the prophet as a source of healing, a connection that manifested itself in the story about the rabbi's toothache. Furthermore, R. Judah's relief from a legendary toothache and incubation at Hammat Gader share a similarity beyond the figure of Elijah; in both situations, healing was administered through a dream or vision. I would suggest that this form of epiphany underscores that influence of ritual incubation at Hammat Gader on this rabbinic story.

In conclusion, two tentative hypotheses can be offered. First, on the basis of Eudokia's inscription, Elijah's name may have been associated with the bath complex as early as the second century. It was not named exclusively after him at this point, but as a local wonder-worker, his name was given to part of the baths, alongside the names of important benefactors and figures from Greek myth, such as Hygeia and the nymph Galatea. The area named for Elijah might have even been a portion of the complex where Jewish visitors congregated. Second, Elijah may have been seen by both Jews and Christians as the agent of healing in their incubation dreams. This is possible on the basis of his name's appearance at the site alone, but it finds more support in the story of R. Judah's dream, in which Elijah is clearly portrayed as a healer. The coexistence of Asklepios and Elijah as divine healers for their respective populations is perhaps understandable, as Elijah's miracles and fiery chariot to heaven (2 Kgs 2) parallel Asklepios's wondrous cures and divine ascent in Greek myth.