Note 140 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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;140 and if we add to this the rabbinical manner of speaking, in which to the via per portum (‏דרך פתחים‎) was opposed the via per tectum (‏דרך נגיך‎) as a no less ordinary way for reaching the ὑπερῳον upper story or chamber,141 we cannot under the expression καθιέναι διὰ τῶν κεράμων, to let down through the tiling, understand anything else than that the bearers—who, either by means of stairs leading thither 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.