Healing the paralytic at Bethesda
The Healing of a paralytic at
This event is recounted only in the
Narrative
John's Gospel account describes how Jesus, visiting Jerusalem for a Jewish feast (John 5:1), encounters one of the disabled people who used to lie here, a man who had been paralysed for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks the man if he wants to get well. The man explains that he is unable to enter the water, because he has no one to help him in and others go down ahead of him. Jesus tells him to pick up his bed or mat and walk; the man is instantly cured and is able to do so.
The Gospel then explains that this healing took place on the Sabbath, and the local Jews told the cured man that the Law forbade him to carry his mat on this day. He tells them that he had been told to do so by the man who had healed him. They ask him who this healer was but he is unable to tell them because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
Later, Jesus finds the man in the Temple, and tells him not to sin again, so that nothing worse happens to him. The man goes away and tells the Jewish people that it was Jesus who had made him well (John 5:15). The Gospel account explains that the Jews began to persecute Jesus because he was healing on the Sabbath. He responds by saying that "My Father is still working, and I also am working" (John 5:17). This assertion makes the Jews all the more determined to kill him, because not only is he breaking the Sabbath but he is making himself equal to God by calling God his father (John 5:1–18).
Textual interpolations
Several
Relation to pagan healing
Some scholars have suggested that the narrative is actually cast as part of a deliberate polemic against the
Comparison with Acts 3
In Acts 3:1–10 a similar healing event is recorded, in which the Apostles Peter and John visit the Temple and heal a disabled person in Jesus' name. The setting is comparable, in each case a specific location in Jerusalem is named, and in each case the fact that the healed person walked away is highlighted.[citation needed]
See also
- Life of Jesus in the New Testament
- New Testament places associated with Jesus
References
- ISBN 1592442854p. 462
- ^ a b James H. Charlesworth, Jesus and archaeology, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006. pp. 560–566.
- ^ See, for example, the New International Version, English Standard Version, Revised Standard Version, New Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New American Bible, New Jerusalem Bible and New Living Translation.
- ^ a b c Maureen W. Yeung, Faith in Jesus and Paul, p. 79.
- ^ John 5:6.
- ^ John 13:5–18.
- ^ John 13:10.