Luke 5:17 who is "them" referring to?

normally, there is a entry explaining who "them" is referring to. Like "People of Galilee" or something to this effect. Was this pronoun missed?

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Scott E. Mahle

I think you’re asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is does “them” belong there. Many scholars feel this is a copyist’s error and they have mistaken αὐτόν as the object instead of the subject. References below.

Copyists failed to see that κυρίου (of the Lord) refers to God and not to Jesus and that the pronoun αὐτόν is the subject, not the object, of τὸ ἰᾶσθαι (to heal). So they replaced αὐτόν with a plural form, as αὐτούς (them), πάντας (all), αὐτοὺς πάντας (all of them) or τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας (those who were sick). TEV and FC substitute the name Jesus for the pronoun “him” for the sake of clarity: “The power of the Lord was present for Jesus to heal the sick.”

Omanson, R. L., & Metzger, B. M. (2006). A Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament: an adaptation of Bruce M. Metzger’s Textual commentary for the needs of translators (p. 115). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

αὐτόν ⟦var. αὐτούς⟧ αὐτόν would be subject of the inf. (Jesus), αὐτούς obj.

Zerwick, M., & Grosvenor, M. (1974). A grammatical analysis of the Greek New Testament (p. 191). Rome: Biblical Institute Press.

The failure to see that αὐτόν is the subject, not the object, of τὸ ἰᾶσθαι led copyists to replace it with a plural form, as αὐτούς (A C D al), πάντας (K Cyril), αὐτοὺς πάντας (syrpal), or τοὺς ἀσθενοῦντας (l11).

Metzger, B. M., United Bible Societies. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.) (p. 115). London; New York: United Bible Societies.

The variants for αὐτόν in the MSS are due to scribes taking κυρίου to mean Jesus and the pronoun to be the object of ἰᾶσθαι (cf. Metzger, 138).

Marshall, I. H. (1978). The Gospel of Luke: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 212). Exeter: Paternoster Press.

The power of the Lord was with him to heal may have to be restructured, e.g. ‘Jesus was-made-strong by God to heal the sick’ (East Toradja 1933), ‘the strength of God was there, so that Jesus was-strong to heal people’ (South Toradja), ‘the power of the Lord caused him to be able to heal people’ (Sundanese). For Lord see on 1:6, sub (c); some versions (Rieu, NEB, Leyden, East and South Toradja) substitute ‘God’; this is advisable where it is necessary to avoid that the term would be mistaken for a reference to Jesus.—In several languages to heal requires an object, e.g. ‘persons/people/the sick’, cp. some of the above quotations.

Reiling, J., & Swellengrebel, J. L. (1993). A handbook on the Gospel of Luke (p. 239). New York: United Bible Societies.

Hopefully these will kick-start your study . . .

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/669268#Comment_669268

Scott, thank you for your very informative answer! Appreciated.

Lee

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/669271#Comment_669271

And yet, would that be the basis for the non-tagging? Something should be documented

toughski

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/669281#Comment_669281

And yet, would that be the basis for the non-tagging? Something should be documented

I agree. As this is an anomaly, leaving it out will probably create more posts and calls to CS in the future. Since the tagging/editorial team made the decision of "we can't make a decision" - perhaps they should put an asterisk there in the right panel and link it to an explanation.

Bradley Grainger (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/669281#Comment_669281

And yet, would that be the basis for the non-tagging? Something should be documented

Tagging is based on SBLGNT, which reads αὐτόν.

Extending tagging to all manuscript variants is possible in our system, but hasn't been done yet.