In Defense of the Authenticity of 1 John A review. Various texts copyrighted by their authors. Please feel free to link to pages on this site, but do not copy articles without authors' permission. Toggle navigation AV KJV Dictionary D dropsied « drop dross ». Diseased with dropsy. There is another, darker possibility. Maybe the leader of the Pharisees placed the man with dropsy right in front of Jesus at a Sabbath banquet in order to test Jesus.
They were lying in wait. That strongly suggest that the man with dropsy was a plant. The Pharisees were looking for an opportunity to pounce on Jesus and he would their means. As in some other places in the Gospels, Jesus seems to be answering their thoughts and intentions. Considered with the placing of the man with dropsy and the watching of the Pharisees, this leads me to suspect a plot. Note that the various possibilities cited above are not entirely mutually exclusive.
For example, the man might have been a rich Pharisee with dropsy who was legitimately invited to the feast as part of the conspiracy against Jesus. We cannot help but note that he does not ask Jesus for help or express thanks, in spite of having been healed of an incurable disease.
Also, there is nothing said of his faith. As odd as it may sound, the Pharisaic conspiracy theory makes better sense than to assume someone could just walk into the home of a rich leader of the Pharisees and appear at the dinner table.
Your job for the day is done. But the question of why Luke mentions dropsy remains. What makes dropsy special and how does it relate to the context, assuming that it does? Dropsy is a medical condition in which, stated very simply, water accumulates in the body.
In the physical affliction, the man with too much water in his body wanted nothing more than more water. The metaphorical application is obvious and applies to the paragraphs that follow the healing of the man with dropsy.
Jesus told a parable about people invited to a wedding and warned them not to be covetous for honor. To be invited itself is actually honor, but some are so filled with lust for honor that they force their way to the best places in the feast. Open Access for Academic Societies. About us. Stay updated. Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations. Review a Brill Book. The healing of the man with dropsy is a surprisingly under-noticed passage in Luke.
Few commentaries give much attention to it at all. Where attention is given, the passage is usually heard in one of the following ways: 1 in the context of healing stories or Sabbath healings in general, and thus through the lens of form criticism and how this story participates in the larger context of healing stories; or 2 in the context of the symposia or meal stories since this passage introduces such a scene, and the background for understanding the passage is thus the literary topos of meal stories in the Greco-Roman world.
In either reading, the fact that the man has dropsy specifically is essentially irrelevant to the story; he might as well have been blind or lame or deaf. Yet this is the only occurrence in the NT of this specific condition, and I would like to suggest that dropsy is not incidental to the story at all.
Rather, the dropsy is itself key to the story. Dropsy is used widely in the ancient Greek world, particularly in the writings of philosophers, and it is frequently a metaphor for greed and wealth. Among the commentary tradition, few scholars take notice of the dropsy metaphor. This paper will mine the Greek philosophical tradition for examples of dropsy to build the case for its metaphorical usage, and it will apply that metaphor to this passage in Luke to see how it might serve the Lukan narrative.
Joel B. Rudolf Bultmann , History of the Synoptic Tradition trans. Charles H. Robert H. Johnson , The Gospel of Luke , pp. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Heil indexes and exegetes all of the meal scenes, but the dropsy scene specifically is found on pp.
Nolland , Luke , p. Fitzmyer , The Gospel According to Luke , p. Robert C. Green , Gospel of Luke , pp. Tannehill , Luke , p. Green , Gospel of Luke , p.
Talbert , Reading Luke , p. Braun , Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14 , p. Stobaeus , Flor. Lucian , Gall. Ovid , Fast. Philostratus , Vit. Horace , Epod.
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