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What if the healing of the bleeding woman wasn’t just a private miracle—but a public confrontation with shame, exclusion, and bad theology? And what if we’ve taken the wrong approach to holiness? 

We assume holiness must be protected from impurity—that we must keep the unholy and impure at arms length, because we fear that holiness will be tainted by the unholy. But Jesus shows in his encounter with this woman that quite the opposite is true. Rather than avoid the unholy and impure, true holiness actually seeks it out—it goes to the dark and impure spaces and people of the world, not to call them out or “witness” to them and then leave them in their place, but to bring them healing, acceptance, and transformation.  

In this powerful episode of What the Bible Actually Says, Dr Tyson Putthoff unpacks the healing of the woman who touches Jesus’ tzitzit—the sacred fringe or tassel of his garment—in Mark 5. But this isn’t just about one woman’s faith. It’s about Jesus publicly dismantling a system that said she didn’t belong.

We explore the honor-shame culture of Second Temple Judaism, the ritual purity laws of Leviticus 15, and the mystical significance of tzitzit as symbolic conduits of divine presence and healing power. From the structure of Mark’s “story sandwich” (intercalation) to the theological reversal at the heart of the scene, this episode shows how Jesus doesn’t just heal the body—he restores dignity, reorders priority, and redefines holiness itself.

If you’ve ever felt sidelined by religion, society, or politics, shamed by your past, or taught that God only stops for the pure and powerful—this episode is for you.

·  Listen now to see how Jesus stops a miracle in motion… to affirm the one everyone else had tried to ignore.

·  Check out show notes and biblical text handouts at ⁠BibleActuallySays.com⁠

·  Grab Volumes 1 and 2 of my new book Jesus: The Strategic Life and Mission of the Messiah and His Movement at ⁠Hekhal.co⁠ or on Amazon.

·  Subscribe, review, and share this episode with someone who needs Jesus’ healing.