Cege

There are no walls depicted, either. Nor are there colonnades to represent the healing at the pool where the disabled man was told to take up his bed/mat and walk.

I think poetic license is to be expected when these stories are presented as art.

sotto voce

He's inside the building, on the stairway, and the balustrade gives way; quite possibly because he's fond of the rich food his servants amply supply. Or maybe he falls through the lattice of a second-storey window that hadn't been properly fastened. Or perhaps he's on the roof, leaning on the railing, and it gives way. But there's no chance he descended through the roof. He's the king, and his roof is certainly not made of thatch, so nobody could dig through it to get to his scrolls, his money and precious luxuries.

There's no similarity here whatever.

Horatio Parker

The similarity is falling; descending. In Kings he descends and is afflicted, in Mark the afflicted descends and is cured.

Admittedly a stretch, but I wouldn't go so far as to say no similarity whatsoever. Something may be missing.

sotto voce

Only the latter. And that is not a similarity worth attention.

Horatio Parker

Your Mileage May Vary

Seems to me there could also be some Gnostic imagery here. Jesus blocked in the house by the crowd could represent the divine light entombed in the body. Access was by the roof would indicate that it is with the mind that the spirit is realized.

sotto voce

Also.

Solo

Whatever the "gnostic imagery" was to symbolize, it did not sit well with Matthew, who removed the roof-removing sketch and had the paralytic presented to Jesus in a non-descript location in Jesus' home town. I happen to think that Matthew read Mark with remarkable acuity and "his" sensoring of Mark was purposeful. The story without the four going through the roof looks banal and the mere delivery of the man on the stretcher to Jesus does not illustrate "faith" convincingly.

Any idea what offended Matthew and made him present a watered-down version of the cure of the paralytic ?

Best,
Jiri

Horatio Parker

Not being a NT scholar I'm speculating, but what first occurs to me is this: finding enlightenment through the self diminishes the role of clergy or church. An external all powerful monarch type God figure is a better fit for an institution.

The author of gMatthew need not have been Machiavellian; the Gnostic approach could've simply been too much of a departure for him or maybe he didn't understand it. It's considerably more abstract than the traditional superman God. Or not Jewish enough; too Greek etc.

jdboy

Maybe the story is not about healing a paralytic man.
Jesus is foreseeing the Son of Man will have the power to forgive sin. The Son of Man is the one that brings Jerusalem to a stand still(the paralytic man). Jesus also foresees that because of the advisors around the Son of Man it was easier to tell the people in Jerusalem to hit the road. The people's faith that they would be forgiven was betrayed.

sotto voce

Assuming there was gnostic imagery; this could be pure imagination!

Or perhaps he hadn't caught that nuance. Or perhaps he originally included it, but edited it out, to save space; not an unusual experience. Because it really is not central. Matthew did get across that Jesus noted the faith of the men, which was an important inclusion.

But the distinctive point in this event, which all the synoptics make, is that here is Jesus, in his home town, being scrutinised by supposed religious authorities, and showing them that they are on the wrong side. Jesus neatly tricked them into demonstrating his divinity. Only God could forgive; the man got up and walked; ergo, Jesus was God. The details of the event pale into insignificance beside that.