(Click to enlarge.)
Compare Mark 2:1; 7:30
The harmony that I’m using as the basis of this exercise — Kurt Aland, ed., Synopsis of the Four Gospels: Greek-Gnglish Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (14th ed.) — plainly believes that the incident recounted in John 4 is the same as that described in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. It may be, but I’m not so sure.
In any event, I’ve always found the centurion’s protest (“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof”) quite moving. Especially given the fact that his neighbors plainly held him in high esteem: “He is worthy to have you do this for him,” they said to Jesus, “for he loves our nation, and he built us our synagogue” (Luke 7:4-5).
It seems obvious, incidentally, that this centurion was one of the “God-fearers,” Gentiles who admired and accepted the Jewish message of ethical monotheism but who were unwilling to accept the entire ceremonial law that went with Judaism. And who could really blame such people? For most men, at least, the requirement of circumcision would have been an obvious deal-breaker. But it was far more than that. The constraints imposed by Jewish law were numerous and burdensome, and the requirements of ritual purity and of avoidance of many social interactions with Gentiles, while perhaps slightly irksome for a Jew, would have been catastrophic for a non-Jew, posing enormous risk to many of his friendships and even to his ties with his family.
It’s thus unsurprising that, when Christianity really began to pick up speed, it did so as something of a “good-parts version” of Judaism, minus the ceremonial law (including circumcision) and without the difficult purity rules. The “God-fearers,” the Gentile sympathizers, were an obviously rich field wherein the early missionaries (such as Paul) could work, and those missionaries did so very effectively.
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