Disability in a disabling empire: Investigating a person with paralysis in Luke 5:17–26

This article offers a critical reexamination of Luke 5:17–26 using combined perspectives of empire studies and disability studies, emphasizing the paralyzed man as a subject of interpretation rather than only a foil to Jesus’s power and authority. Typical approaches focus on the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees or the theological idea of forgiving sins, which often marginalizes the disabled man further. In contrast, this article employs an informed imagination to reconstruct possible social, economic, and bodily conditions that might have influenced the man’s life within the hierarchical and oppressive framework of the Roman Empire. Three interpretive scenarios are suggested: impairment from birth leading to begging, injury at work in the stone-working economy, and paralysis linked to malnutrition from enslavement. Each scenario highlights the vulnerability of impaired bodies under imperial systems and challenges the assumption that healing was always a desirable or beneficial outcome. By resisting able-bodied interpretations that connect proximity to Jesus with an inevitable desire for a cure, this essay destabilizes traditional interpretive paths and emphasizes Luke’s narrative reshaping of the episode. The analysis ultimately aims to refocus interpretive attention on the humanity of the disabled character and to expand the hermeneutical possibilities of gospel healing stories.