CURATIVE TERMINOLOGY IN THE ACCOUNT OF THE HEALING OF THE LAME MAN AT BETHESDA POOL
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Babeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Press
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The importance of healing in the biblical texts is determined by the use of a precise terminology, which designates multiple therapeutic actions. Analysing the Greek language of healing in the Gospel of John can prove this. The central lexical element around the theme of healing developed in the Gospel of John is the Greek adjective ὑγιής. Used as an antithetical description to the noun ἀσθένεια, this adjective indicates, according to the Gospel of John, a new existential reality concretised in a new moral life. The main thesis of the paper is that the Johannine term ὑγιής involves a holistic existential dimension of human health. An important part before analysing the occurrences of ὑγιής in the New Testament is given by the need of etymological foundation for conceptualizing the health in the Greek world and in the same time the need of emphasizing the Old Testament Hebrew and Judeo-Hellenist perspectives on health. This will give us the possibility to determine the importance of the Johannine healing terminology in the precise social, historical, cultural and linguistic context.