| 96. Cures of Paralytics. Did Jesus Regard Diseases as Punishments? | ||||
AN important feature in the story of the cure of the man born thud has been passed over, because it can only be properly estimated in connection with a corresponding one in the synoptic narratives of the cure of a paralytic (Matt. ix.1ff.; Mark ii.1ff.; Luke v.17ff.), which we have in the next place to consider. Here Jesus first declares to the sick man: "Your sins are forgiven you" and then as a proof that he had authority to forgive sins, he cures him. It is impossible not tc perceive in this a reference to the Jewish opinion, that any evil befalling an individual, and especially disease, was a punishment of his sins; an opinion which, presented in its main elements in the Old Testament, (Lev. xxvi.14ff.; Deut. xxviii.15ff.; 2 Chron. xxi. 15. 18 f.) was expressed in the most definite manner by the later Jews. Had we possessed that synoptic narrative only, we must have believed that Jesus shared the opinion of his contemporary fellow-countrymen on this subject, since he proves his authority to forgive sins (as the cause of disease) by an example of his power to cure disease (the consequence of sin). | ||||
But, it is said, there are other passages where Jesus directly contradicts this Jewish opinion; from which it follows, that what he then says to the paralytic was a mere accommodation to the ideas of the sick man, intended to promote his cure. The principal passage commonly adduced in support of this position, is the introduction to the story of the man born blind, which we have just considered (John ix. 1-3.). Here the disciples, seeing on the road the man whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the question, whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or of those of his parents? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the Jewish theory of retribution. With respect to diseases which attach themselves to a man in his course through life, an observer who has once taken a certain bias, may easily discover or assume some peculiar delinquencies on the part of this man as their cause. With respect to inborn diseases, on the contrary, though the old Hebraic opinion (Exod. xx. 5; Deut. v. 9; 2 Sam. iii. 29), it is true, presented the explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited on their posterity: yet as, for human regulation, the Mosaic law itself ordained that each should sufer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv. 1.6; 2 Kings xiv. 6); and as also, in relation to the penal justice of the Divine Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer. xxxi. 30; Ezek. xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the expedient of supposing, that men so afflicted might probably have sinned in their mother's womb, and this was doubtless the notion which the disciples had in view in their question v. 2. Jesus says, in answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, did this man come into the world blind; but in order that by the cure which he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument in manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion, that disease and other evils were essentially punishments {P.501} of sin. But the words of Jesus are expressly limited to the case before him; -he simply says, that this particular misfortune had is foundation, not in the guilt of the individual, but in higher providential designs. The supposition that his expressions had a more general sense, and included a repudiation of the entire Jewish opinion, could only be warranted by other more decided declarations from him to that effect. As, on the contrary, according to the above observations, a narrative is found in the synoptic Gospels which, simply interpreted, implies the concurrence of Jesus in the prevalent opinion, the question arises: which is easier, to regard the expression of Jesus in the synoptic narratives as an accommodation, or that in John as having relation solely to the case immediately before him, a question which will be decided in favour of the latter alternative by every one who, on the one hand, knows the difficulties attending the hypothesis of accommodation as applied to the expressions of Jesus n the Gospels, and on the other, is clear-sighted enough to perceive, that in the passage in question in the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the declaration of Jesus had a more general meaning. | ||||
It is true that according to correct principles of interpretation, one evangelist ought not to be explained immediately by another, and in the present case it is very possible that while the synoptic writers ascribe to Jesus the common opinion of his age, the more highly cultivated author of the fourth gospel may make him reject it: but that he also confined the rejection of the current opinion on the part of Jesus to that single case, is proved by the manner in which he represents Jesus as speaking on another occasion. When, namely, Jesus says to the man who had been lame thirty-eight years (John v.) and had just been cured, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come to you," this is equivalent to his saying to the paralytic whom he was about to cure, "Your sins are forgiven you;" in the one case disease is removed, in the other threatened, as a punishment of sin. | ||||
Here again the expositors, to whom it is not areeable that Jesus should hold an opinion which they reject, find a means of evading the direct sense of the words. Jesus, say they, perceived that the particular disease of this man was a natural consequence of certain excesses, and warned him from a repetition of these as calculated to bring on a more dangerous relapse. But an insight into the natural connection between certain excesses and certain diseases as their consequence, is far more removed from the mode of thinking of the age in which Jesus lived, than the notion of a positive connection between sin in general and disease as its punishment; hence, if we are nevertheless to ascribe the former sense to the words of Jesus, it must be very distinctly conveyed in the text. But the fact is that in the whole narrative there is no intimation of any particular excess on the part of the man; the {P.502} words "your sins are forgiven" relate only to sin in general, and to supply a conversation of Jesus with the sick man, in which he is supposed to have acquainted the former with the connection between his sufferings and a particular sin, is the most arbitrary fiction. What exposition: for the sake of evading a result which is dogmatically unwelcome, to extend the one passage (John ix.) to a generality of meaning not really belonging to it, to elude the other (Matt, ix.) by the hypothesis of accommodation, and forcibly to affix to a third (John v.) a modern idea; whereas if the first passage be only permitted to say no more than it actually says, the direct meaning of the other two may remain unviolated! | ||||
But another passage, and that a synoptic one, is adduced in vindication of the superiority of Jesus to the popular opinion in question. This passage is Luke xiii.1ff., where Jesus is told of the Galileans whom Pilate had caused to be slain while they were in the act of sacrificing, and of others who were killed by the falling of a tower. From what follows, we must suppose the informants to have intimated their opinion that these calamities were to be regarded as a divine visitation for the peculiar wickedness of the parties so signally destroyed. Jesus replied that they must not suppose those men to have been especially sinful; they themselves were in no degree better, and unless they repented would meet with a similar destruction. Truly it is not clear how in these expressions of Jesus a repudiation of the popular notion can be found. If Jesus wished to give his voice in opposition to this, he must either have said: you are equally great sinners, though you may not perish bodily in the ame manner; or: do you believe that those men perished on account of their sins? No! the contrary may be seen in you, who, notwithstanding your wickednesss, are not thus smitten with death. On the contrary, the expressions of Jesus as given by Luke can only have the following sense: that those men have already met with such calamities is no evidence of their peculiar wickedness, any more than the fact that you have been hitherto spared the like, is an evidence of your greater worth; on the contrary, earlier or later, similar judgments falling on you will attest your equal guilt: whereby the supposed law of the connection between the sin and misfortune of every individual is continued, not overthrown. This vulgar Hebrew opinion concerning sickness and evil, is indeed in contradiction with that esoteric view, partly Essene, partly Ebionite, which we have found in the introduction to the sermon on the mount, the parable of the rich man, and elsewhere, and according to which the righteous in this generation are the suffering, the poor and the sick; but both opinions are clearly to be seen in the discourses of Jesus by an unprejudiced exegesis, and the contradiction which we find between them authorizes us neither to put a forced construction on the one class of expressions, nor to deny them to have really come from Jesus, since we cannot calculate how he may have solved for himself the opposition between two ideas of the world, presented to him by different sides of the Jewish culture of that age. | ||||
As regards the above-mentioned cure, the synoptic writers make Jesus in his reply to the messengers of the Baptist, appeal to the fact that the lame walked (Matt. xi. 5), and at another time the people wonder when, among other miracles, they see the maimed to be whole and the lame to walk (Matt. xv. 31). In the place of the lame, paralytics are elsewhere brought forward (Matt. iv. 24), and especially in the detailed histories of cures relating to this kind of sufferers, (as Matt. ix.1ff. parall. viii. 5, parall.) paralutikoi and not xwloi are named. The sick man at the pool of Bethesda (John v. 5) belongs probably to the xwloi spoken of in v. 3; there also "withered" are mentioned, and in Matt. xii.9ff. parall. we find the cure of a man who had a withered hand. As however the three last named cures will return to us under different heads, all that remains here for our examination is the cure of the paralytic Matt. ix.1ff. parall. | ||||
As the definitions which the ancient physicians give of paralysis, though they all show it to have been a species of lameness, yet leave it undecided whether the lameness was total or pxrtial; and as, besides, no strict adherence to medical technicalities is to be expected from the evangelists, we must gather what they understand by paralytics from their own descriptions of such patient?. In the present passage, we read of the paralytic that he was bone on a bed, and that to enable him to arise and carry his bed was an unprecedented wonder, from which we must conclude that he was lame, at least in the feet. While here there is no mention of pains, or of an acute character of disease, in another narrative (Matt. viii. 6) these are evidently presupposed when the centurion says that his servant is sick of the palsy, grievously tormented; so that under paralytics in the Gospels we have at one time to understand a lameness without pain, at another painful, gouty, disease of the limbs. | ||||
In the description of the scene in which the paralytic, (Matt. ix. 1 ff. parall.) is brought to Jesus, there is a remarkable gradation in the three accounts. Matthew says simply, that as Jesus, after an excursion to the opposite shore, returned to Capernaum, there was brought to him a paralytic, stretched on a bed. Luke describes particularly how Jesus, surrounded by a great multitude, chiefly Pharisees and scribes, taught and healed in a certain house, and how the bearers, because on account of the press they could not reach Jesus, let the sick man down to him through the roof. If we call to mind the structure of oriental houses, which had a flat roof, to which an opening led from the upper story; and if we add to this the rabbinical manner of speaking, in which to the via per portam (way by the door) {P.504} was opposed the via per tectum (way by the roof) as a no less ordinary way for reaching the iwepaiov upper story or chamber, we cannot under the expression "Let down through the tiles" understand anything else than that the bearers who, either by means of stairs leading there directly from the street, or from the roof of a neighbouring house, gained access to the roof of the house in which Jesus was, let down the sick man with his bed, apparently by cords, through the opening already existing in the roof. Mark, who, while with Matthew he places the scene at Capernaum, agrees with Luke in the description of the great crowd and the consequent ascent to the roof, goes yet further than Luke, not only in determining the number of the bearers to be four, but also in making them, regardless of the opening already existing, uncover the roof and let down the sick man through an aperture newly broken. | ||||
If we ask here also in which direction, upwards or downwards, the climax may most probably have been formed, the narrative of Mark, which stands at the summit, has so many difficulties that it can scarcely be regarded as nearest the truth. For not only have opponents asked, how could the roof be broken open without injury to those beneath? but Olshausen himself admits that the disturbance of the roof, covered with tiles, partakes of the extravagant. To avoid this, many expositors suppose that Jesus taught either in the inner court, or in the open air in front of the house, and that the bearers only broke down a part of the parapet in order to let down the sick man more conveniently. But both the phrase, dia twn keramwn in Luke, and the expressions of Mark, render this conception of the thing impossible, since here neither can mean parapet, nor do they imply the breaking of the parapet, while e)corrutw can only mean the breaking of a hole. Thus the disturbance of the roof subsists, but this is rendered improbable on the ground that it was altogether superfluous, inasmuch as there was a door in every roof. Hence help has been sought in the supposition that the bearers indeed used the door, but because this was too narrow for the bed of he patient, they widened it by the removal of the surrounding tiles. Still, however, there remains the danger to those below, and the words imply an opening actually made, not merely widened. | ||||
But dangerous and superfluous as such a proceeding would be in reality, it is easy to explain how Mark, wishing further to elaborate the narrative of Luke, might be led to add such a feature. Luke had said that the sick man was let down, so that he descended in the midst before Jesus. How could the people precisely hit upon this place, unless Jesus accidentally stood under the door of the roof, except by breaking open the roof above the spot {P.505} where they knew him to be ? This trait Mark the more gladly seized because it was suited to place in the strongest light the zeal which confidence in Jesus infused into the people, and which no labour could daunt. This last interest seems to be the key also to Luke's departure from Matthew. In Matthew, who makes the bearers bring the paralytic to Jesus in the ordinary way, doubtless regarding the laborious conveyance of the sick man on his bed as itself a proof of their faith, it is less evident just where Jesus sees their faith. If the original form of the story was that in which it appears in the first gospel, the temptation might easily arise to make the bearers devise a more conspicuous means of evincing their faith, which, since the scene was already described as happening within a great crowd, might be best expressed in the uncommon way in which they contrived to bring their sick man to Jesus. | ||||
But even the account of Matthew we cannot regard as a true narrative of a fact. It has indeed been attempted to represent the result as a natural one, by explaining the state of the man to be a nervous weakness, the worst symptom of which was the idea of the sick man that his disease must continue as a punishment of his sin; reference has been made to analogous cases of a rapid psychical cure of lameness: and a subsequent use of long-continued curative means has been supposed. But the first and last expedients are purely arbitrary; and if in the alleged analogies there may be some truth, yet it is always incomparably more probable that histories of cures of the lame and paralytic in accordance with Messianic expectation, should be formed by the legend, than that they should really have happened. In the passage of Isaiah already quoted (xxxv. 6), it was promised in relation to the Messianic time: "Then shall the lame man leap as a hart," and in the same connection, v. 3, te prophet addresses to the feeble knees the exhortation, "Be strong," which, with the accompanying particulars, must have been understood literally, of a miracle to be expected from the Messiah, since Jesus, as we have already mentioned, among other proofs that he was the e)rxomenoj. adduced this: xwloi peripatousi (the lame walk.) | ||||