Vorkosigan

Neil Godfrey and I figured this out several years ago. The major Markan miracles are literary prefigurings of the Resurrection and Rising. The paralytic is representation of Jesus being lowered into the Tomb (house), which He will shortly Rise (walk) out from.

stephan huller

But only evangelicals think that Jesus raised himself

PhilosopherJay

I tend to agree with Logical.

This is a "faith will be rewarded" motif. In these little stories, someone does something that is ordinarily considered wrong, but because they did it out of the good motive of being faithful, they are rewarded.

The story probably originally referred to Exodus 2:22: "If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed;

The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides notes, "[The license to kill] applies to a thief caught breaking in or one caught on a person’s roof, courtyard or enclosed area, whether during the day or during the night . ."

It is like the Abraham sacrificing Isaac story. Ordinarily sacrificing your son is a crime. However if you do it to show your faith or trust, it is not a crime and should be rewarded.

In this case, entering someone's house through the roof is ordinarily a criminal action. Instead of having the men arrested as we would expect, Jesus takes it as an act done in good faith and heals the man.

We get the same motif in this story in Mattthew:

Basically, the soldier is saying that he is a bully and therefore he's not worthy to have Jesus come into his house to heal his servant (lover originally?). Jesus takes this as a sign of his faith and does the healing as a reward.

One would suspect that in an earlier version of the story, Jesus just went into the house of the Roman and healed. Jews would criticize Jesus for entering the house of an oppressor. Matthew invents the little speech to explain why Jesus did it - to help a person of faith regardless that he was a Roman and also to make the correction that Jewish didn't actually enter the house.

The motif is also in this tale:

A strange woman touching a man's garment would normally be considered wrong. Because she did it out of faith, Jesus healed the woman. Originally, the story probably had the woman grabbing Jesus' crotch. This is ordinarily forbidden by Jewish law:

In Deuteronomy 25:11-12

Similarly in Luke we read:

We can easily reconstruct the original story where Mary evidently performed fellatio on Jesus in exchange for an expensive jar of ointment/perfume that Jesus gave to her. The apostles were upset that she had cheated Jesus. However Jesus lets her have the expensive ointment as she showed faith by performing the act first before charging him.

Another faith motif story is in Mark 10:

The blindman throwing off his mantle (clothes?) is probably a clue that the original story was quite different, exactly how is difficult to say.

Finally, there is this tale in Luke:
The story is botched in this telling. Clearly, in an earlier version, Jesus just told the ten Lepers to go the Jewish Rabbis to be healed. Only the Samaritan thanked Jesus. Therefore Jesus only healed the Samaritan who showed his faith in Jesus by thanking him. Luke, who wasn't interested in the difference between faithful Samaritans and unfaithful Jews, just decided to increase the miracle powers of Jewish by having him heal all ten lepers instead of the faithful one. In so doing he destroyed the moral of the story.

Again, the underlying moral of all these miracle stories is that even criminals and criminal actions are forgiven if you have faith in your religious leaders.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

The closest I can get to the passage in Clement (Paed 1.6.4)

But the good Instructor, the Wisdom, the Word of the Father, who made man, cares for the whole nature of His creature; the all-sufficient Physician of humanity, the Saviour, heals both body and soul. "Rise up," He said to the paralytic; "take the bed on which thou liest, and go away home;" and straightway the infirm man received strength. And to the dead He said, "Lazarus, go forth;" and the dead man issued from his coffin such as he was ere he died, having undergone resurrection. Further, He heals the soul itself by precepts and gifts--by precepts indeed, in course of time, but being liberal in His gifts, He says to us sinners, "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

Ὁ σωτὴρ ἀνάστα, φησὶ τῷ παρειμένῳ, τὸν σκίμποδα ἐφ' ὃν κατάκεισαι λαβὼν ἄπιθι οἴκαδε

---------"Rise up," He said to the paralytic; "take the bed on which thou liest, and go away home;"

It is crazy how different ALL of Clement's passages are here (even the Lazarus reference) to the canonical gospels.

Matthew 9:6 τότε λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ Ἔγειρε ἀρόν σου την κλίνην καὶ ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκον σου

Mark 2:11 Σοὶ λέγω, ἔγειρε καὶ ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου.

Luke 5:24 σοὶ λέγω, ἔγειρε καὶ ἄρας τὸ κλινίδιον σου πορεύου εἰς τὸν οἶκον σου.

Clement's word for bed is σκίμποδα. There is something fishy here. I would have to suppose that the three canonical gospels have been made to appear to be identical because something about the original story was problematic for the faith.

stephan huller

The Greek Church devotes the fourth Sunday of Passover to the narrative - Τὸ ῥῆµα Χριστοῦ σφίγµα τῷ παρειµένῳ (The word of the Christ was a brace for the Paralytic)

Solo

In what other stories of the triple tradition do you find Mark's account "richer with details" than the Matthean/Lukan parallels ? Off the top of my head, I can't seem to recall another instance where both Matthew and Luke stripped down Mark's account rather than modified it with, or added to it, their own material.

Best,
Jiri

Horatio Parker

It suggests that the way through the world to salvation is difficult; it takes effort.

The roof setup is in Luke. Matthew probably thought it reflected badly on Jesus making the paralyzed man come to him.

I think Jay's point about the action being wrong in an everyday sense is a good one; morality comes from God, not from rules.

Adam

I meant that Matthew routinely abreviates, not Luke. As I explained in my Post #15 about Luke, he got his account from Twelve-Source (an expanded Q). So what he saw he condensed while translating or (more likely) it had already been condensed when translated into Proto-Luke. Though Luke copied some material from gMark (and thus discernable by close verbal parallelism), it did not include this.
See my (third) article in Noesis (but disregard the first paragraph under "Matthew")

sotto voce

And they are not even evangelicals.

sotto voce

To show that even the greediest cheats can redeem themselves by paying back what they have stolen.

Lots of scope, here.