to be moonstruck: to suffer an affliction of recurring, seizure-like attacks that people in Jesus' day blamed on the moon and on hostile spirits
This Greek word means "to be moonstruck," literally to be affected by the moon. It is built on the ordinary Greek word for the moon, and it pictures a person on the receiving end of the moon's supposed influence. It appears only twice in the New Testament, both times in Matthew, and both times it names an affliction that Jesus heals.
To hear the word as Matthew's first readers did, you have to know what people in the Roman world believed about the moon. Recurring attacks of falling, foaming, and going rigid were widely blamed on the moon, which was thought to be damp and to govern the body's moisture and so to disturb the brain. Many also traced such attacks to hostile spirits. These were not rival theories so much as one blurred picture: a single word could point to the symptoms, to the moon as their cause, and to a spirit behind them, all at once.
The two verses show this range. In Matthew 4:24 the word appears in a summary of the sick and troubled people brought to Jesus, listed right beside those tormented by demons. In Matthew 17:15 a father begs Jesus to help his son, who is "moonstruck" and keeps falling into fire and into water; a few verses later Jesus drives out a demon and the boy is cured. Matthew is the only Gospel to use this word here, choosing it where Mark instead speaks of a spirit that left the boy unable to speak.
The word carries one meaning, not several. It names a single affliction, seen from more than one angle. What scholars argue about is not whether it has different senses but how to fit that one affliction into our own categories: as a medical condition, as demonic possession, or as an ancient category that never pulled the two apart. A related word, δαιμονίζομαι, names being in a demon's grip more directly.
Disputed
How to place the single affliction this word names into modern categories: whether Matthew's term points to a medical condition (epilepsy), to demonic possession, or to an ancient category that never separated the two.
- majorityThe categories were never separate. Ancient thought explained recurring seizures both as a natural illness and as the work of a divine power or demon, so the word names one integrated phenomenon and neither a purely medical nor a purely demonic English rendering captures it.; U. Luz, Matthew 8-20 (Hermeneia; Fortress, 2001), 407-408; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT; Eerdmans, 2007), 659; C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Eerdmans, 1999), ad loc.; J. Wilkinson, "The Case of the Epileptic Boy," Expository Times 79.2 (1967): 39-42
- minorityMatthew is medicalizing: he renders the popular spirit-language he inherited from Mark with a term whose ancient sense corresponds to the seizure disorder now called epilepsy, so "epileptic" is the right translation.; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997), 2:721-722; J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 2005), 711; D. A. Hagner, Matthew 14-28 (WBC 33B; Word, 1995), 503
- minorityMatthew is naming demonic possession: he passed over the available Greek medical terms, the boy's self-endangering behavior fits possession rather than an involuntary seizure, and a demon is exorcised at 17:18, so "possessed" is the better rendering.; L. Velardo, L. Verdini and P. Vernola, "Seleniazomai en Mateo 17,15," DavarLogos 21.2 (2022): 71-80; P. G. Bolt, Jesus' Defeat of Death (SNTSMS 125; Cambridge University Press, 2003), 66 n. 82