During the last thirty years significant advances have been made in the study of early Christian miracle stories. The story of the woman who touched Jesus' garment has been especially well analyzed by Heinz Joachim Held and Gerd Theissen, and recently Manfred Hutter has brought additional information to bear on the Matthean version. It is my goal to look at each version of the story from the perspective of ‘comparative social-rhetorical’ analysis and interpretation. The rhetorical observations are informed especially by Kenneth Burke's chapter entitled ‘Lexicon Rhetoricae’ in Counterstatement and by Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative. The comparative and social observations are stimulated by various interpreters' use of Hellenistic-Roman data as well as Jewish data for analysis of New Testament literature.