Note 138 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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 partial;138 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 patients. In the present passage, we read of the paralytic that he was borne on a bed κλίνη, and that to enable him to arise and carry his bed was an unprecedented wonder παράδοξον, whence 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, βέβληται—παραλυτικὸς, δεινως βασανιζόμενος; so that under paralytics in the gospels we have at one time to understand a lameness without pain, at another a painful, gouty disease of the limbs.139