paralytic: a person disabled by paralysis, unable to move part or all of the body
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
The word appears only in Matthew and Mark, and always for a real person brought to Jesus to be healed. It is a plain, everyday label, the kind a crowd would use rather than a doctor's diagnosis: someone whose body has gone slack and will no longer obey them.
The range it covers is wide. It can name a person so helpless he has to be carried on a mat and lowered through a roof (Mark 2:3-4), or a servant lying at home, bedridden and in terrible pain (Matthew 8:6). The one constant is loss of control over the body, not a precise medical picture.
Luke tells some of the same healing stories but avoids this common word, describing the same people with the verb παραλύω, "having been paralyzed." The two point to the same condition; "paralytic" is the blunt popular term, and Luke's wording is a touch more careful.
was a broad everyday word covering any loss of control over the body, from total immobility to a weak, bedridden stateMat 8:6
Both
both name a person disabled by the loss of muscle controlMat 9:2
Only paralytic
the modern word can sound like a precise clinical diagnosis, narrower than the loose way first-century speakers used it
“paralyzed”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“palsy”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How paralutikos differs from similar Greek words
παραλύωLuke's word for the same condition: the verb "to disable, to paralyze," used as "having been paralyzed." It is a slightly more careful term than the blunt everyday "paralytic."
The everyday, popular label for the person: "the paralytic," a plain noun naming a whole category of sick people brought to Jesus for healing. Matthew and Mark reach for this street-level word, listing paralytics right alongside other kinds of the sick.Mat 4:24Mat 8:6Mrk 2:3
Both
Both name the loss of the use of one's limbs, the condition of paralysis, and both are used of people so disabled they had to be carried to Jesus because they could not walk to him.Mat 9:2Luk 5:18
Describes the paralysis as something that has happened to the body, "having been disabled," the more clinical wording Luke and Acts prefer for the same affliction rather than the popular label.Luk 5:18Act 8:7Act 9:33
Reaches beyond outright paralysis to weakness in general: Hebrews uses it for feeble, drooping knees that need strengthening, not for a person robbed of the use of his limbs.Heb 12:12
What scholars say about paralutikos
Standard lexica gloss παραλυτικός straightforwardly as "paralytic, one afflicted with paralysis" (BDAG; Louw and Nida place it in the domain of physical impairment). The form is a colloquial adjective built on παραλύω ("to loosen from beside, to disable"), and it is confined to Matthew and Mark, while Luke consistently substitutes the perfect passive participle παραλελυμένος (Luke 5:18, 24; Acts 8:7; 9:33). Older scholarship (Hobart) took Luke's preference for the more technical participle as evidence of medical training, but Cadbury showed the vocabulary is ordinary educated Koine and demonstrates no such thing. That debate concerns Luke's background, not the meaning of παραλυτικός, which is not in question. The referent in the Gospels is a popular category rather than a diagnosis: Matthew 8:6 pairs the label with acute pain, and Mark 2 depicts a man wholly unable to walk.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. παραλυτικόςlexicon
Louw and Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, s.v. παραλυτικόςlexicon
W. K. Hobart, The Medical Language of St. Luke (1882)monograph
H. J. Cadbury, The Style and Literary Method of Luke (1920)monograph