Luke 5 Footnotes

5:1-11 This episode is similar to that in Jn 21:1-14, though different enough to conclude they represent distinct events. If this is the same event as in Mt 4:18-22 and Mk 1:16-20, Luke moved it to this point in his narrative in order to shift from an introduction to Jesus’s ministry in 4:1-44 to an introduction of his disciples in 5:1-28. Lk 4:38-39 seems to indicate that the placement of the call narrative was thematic, not chronological.

In 1985 a boat, called “the Jesus boat,” was discovered in the depths of the Sea of Galilee between the ancient harbors of Magdala and Ginnosar. Carbon 14 dating places the construction of the boat at about 40 BC. The boat was likely in service on the Sea of Galilee during the first half of the first century AD.

5:19 Houses with tile roofs were uncommon, though not unknown, in first-century Palestine. It is not clear, however, if Luke was actually referring to a roof of baked clay tiles or to something else. The Greek word here translated “tiles” (keramoi) can mean “clay,” and Luke may have been merely referring to the common mud-clay roof, which seemed to be the case in Mk 2:4. Alternatively, Luke’s word choice may be an accommodation to his audience’s normal experience of Greco-Roman architecture, which included roof tiles, and only meant to express the idea that the men dug through the roof.