Friday, February 28, 2014

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin? (Luke 5)

In Luke 5, the SAB finds absurdity with the opening story of Jesus helping Simon Peter catch the huge amount of fish. Really, it is a ridiculous story; that's actually sort of the point of miracles isn't it?

As I said in commentary on the last chapter, while "they forsook all" might mean that Peter left his wife, it's not necessarily so.

The story of Jesus healing a leper is an interesting one for a number of reasons. One thing is the fact the Jesus chose to touch the leper, since lepers were "unclean"; I've actually heard it argued that the leper must have been healed before Jesus touched him, otherwise Jesus would be "unclean". Another thing that is interesting is that Jesus tells the man to go to a priest and do what the law of Moses commands a person cured of leprosy to do; it's odd that the law has such a provision, as there is no cure for leprosy.

In the story starting in verse 18, the SAB says that "Jesus cures a paralytic by forgiving his sins, thereby proving that he is God (since only God can forgive sins) and paralysis is caused by sin." I don't think that this is quite right. First of all, it appears to me that in the story, the forgiveness and the healing are two separate acts. Secondly, Jesus never says that paralysis is caused by sin.

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