Jesus healing the bleeding woman
The incident occurred while Jesus was traveling to Jairus's house, amid a large crowd, according to Mark: And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years.
"[citation needed] Given that the woman was cured when she touched the hem of the garment, John McEvilly writes in his Gospel commentary, supports the doctrine of the efficacy of relics, that is, that physical objects can have divine power in them.
The same being clear from the miracles produced from contact with the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13:21),[13] as well as the shadow of Peter curing diseases (Acts 5:15).
The statues were placed outside the house of the woman, who came from the city, and was called Veronica (meaning 'true image'), according to the apocrypha Acts of Pilate and later tradition, which gave other details of her life.
[17] In Panease this resulted in the replacement of the statue of Christ, with results described by Sozomen, writing in the 440s: Having heard that at Caesarea Philippi, otherwise called Panease Paneades, a city of Phoenicia, there was a celebrated statue of Christ, which had been erected by a woman whom the Lord had cured of a flow of blood.
Julian commanded it to be taken down, and a statue of himself erected in its place; but a violent fire from the heaven fell upon it, and broke off the parts contiguous to the breast; the head and neck were thrown prostrate, and it was transfixed to the ground with the face downwards at the point where the fracture of the bust was; and it has stood in that fashion from that day until now, full of the rust of the lightning.
However, it has been pointed out since the 19th century that the statues were probably a misunderstanding or distortion of a sculptural group in fact originally representing the submission of Judea to the Emperor Hadrian.
Images of this particular coupling, typical of Roman Imperial adventus imagery, appear on a number of Hadrian's coins, after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136.
Since Caesarea Philippi had been celebrated for its temple of the god Pan, a Christian tourist attraction was no doubt welcome news for the city's economy.
[18][a] Representations of the episode which seem clearly to draw on the lost statue, and so resemble surviving coins of the imperial image, appear rather frequently in Early Christian art, with several in the Catacombs of Rome, as illustrated above, on the Brescia Casket and Early Christian sarcophagi, and in mosaic cycles of the Life of Christ such as San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.
