On the purpose of Jesus' miracles, NT Wright says:
> One way in which Jesus' mighty works were evidently understood by some was that they were signs of the long-awaited fulfilment of prophecy. For a first-century Jew, most if not all of the works of healing, which form the bulk of Jesus' mihty works, could be seen as the restoration to membership in Israel of those who, through sickness or whatever, had been excluded as ritually unclean. The healins thus function in exact parallel with the welcome of sinners, and this, we may be quite sure, is what Jesus himself intended. He never performed…