My brain doesn’t work right. This should not be a surprise. In some ways it works to my benefit, and in others it works in active opposition to my well-being and continued existence. This is probably a case of the latter.
See, I see a published journal article like this one, and the title catches my eye. “Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time?” This should be interesting as hell! How many articles do you see where people try to piece together tidbits of information to identify an illness that occurred two millennia ago?
And then I read the first sentence of the abstract:
The Bible describes the case of a woman with high fever cured by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh. There’s… there’s not going to be any of that piecing together or analysis I was hoping for, is there?
The rational thing to do, perhaps, would be to scoff, close the browser tab and move on. But this is where my brain not working right comes in. The article is available in full. My school has not deactivated my journal access yet, so I can check Scopus for information. And my brain decides I have to go through this piece by piece and annihilate it to the best of my ability. Out of the kindness of my heart, I will put the annihilation behind a cut, so that the majority of you who have absolutely no interest in witnessing this aren’t forced to have it cluttering your dashboard.
The first thing I want to point out is that these are not three authors coming out of nowhere to spew this article into the world. According to Scopus, they’re responsible for a combined 450+ published articles, and each of them has more than 100 to their credit.
The second thing I want to point out is that Virology Journal published this article as received. They did not ask for revisions; they accepted and published it a month after receiving it. There are many researchers out there who would kill to have an article published without revision requests. And Virol. J. certainly appears to be a legitimate journal (plenty of articles from Virol. J. have been cited multiple times; this isn’t just some kind of vanity-published journal), with a legitimate parent company in BioMed Central.
On to the article itself. Well, we’re still in the abstract, but at least we’re discussing the content. What kind of source and subject matter are we dealing with here?
Based on the information provided by the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, the diagnosis and the possible etiology of the febrile illness is discussed.
Oh.
I don’t want to get too down on anybody’s religion here, but when the first source listed for what claims to be a biomedical research article is the New King James Version, I get a bit pessimistic about the outcome.
Infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity, and influenza has been with us since the dawn of human history. If the postulation is indeed correct, the woman with fever in the Bible is among one of the very early description of human influenza disease.
Infectious diseases continue to be a threat to humanity, and influenza has been with us since the dawn of human history.
That’s (sic), folks. They literally copied and pasted the third sentence of their (six-sentence) abstract and reused it as the fifth sentence. Ten points for efficiency, minus several million for appropriate abstract composition.
The Bible descrbies the case of a woman with high fever cured by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, my God, they did it again! The first sentence of the “Case” section is identical to the first sentence of the abstract. (And, yes, that “descrbies” is (sic) again.)
The case is also described in the gospel by Luke (Luke 4:38-39), who was a physician in his days and he specifically mentioned that the fever was high
Here, for reference’s sake, is Luke 4:38-39 according to the NKJV:
38 Now He arose from the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. But Simon’s wife’s mother was sick with a high fever, and they made request of Him concerning her.
39 So He stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. And immediately she arose and served them.
First of all, even if we stipulate that the author of the Gospel of Luke was, in fact, the physician Luke, companion of Paul (and there is not a consensus on this point), the Gospel of Luke was probably written in the 80s or 90s; fifty or sixty years, in other words, after the event described should be assumed to have taken place. Medical details tend to get muddled after that long a time, particularly back when the life expectancy wasn’t much above 30. Nearly two lifetimes of the era elapsed between the alleged event and the recording of it.
Second, Luke, as a companion of Paul and not of Jesus, would not have been present at the event, so Luke’s occupation is irrelevant. It’s not as though, even back then, one really needed a medical professional to determine “high fever.”
Third, I hope you weren’t looking for more details about this case than those provided in the two verses quoted above, because those two verses contain every detail the authors use in this paper. They assume that the woman had a high fever and was bedridden, and do all their work from there.
Luke did not quantify the fever as the Fahrenheit temperature scale was not invented until 1724
Thanks for clarifying that. Though I personally find it more likely that “Luke did not quantify the fever” because a) as noted above, he wasn’t there and b) the thermometer itself was not invented until the 1600s.
By the way, the date the Fahrenheit scale was invented is the first statement in this biomedical article with a cited source that is not the Bible. (It’s the history section of the sizes.com page on Fahrenheit).
The Bible describes that when Jesus touched the woman, the fever retreated instantaneously. This implies that the disease was probably not a severe acute bacterial infection (such as septicemia) or subacute endocarditis that would not resolved instantaneously.
“Would not resolved” is (sic).
I’m puzzled by this. Presumably, Jesus healing Simon’s mother-in-law is a miracle. Miracles, if we stipulate them as events enabled by the power of an omnipotent God, would be without limit. So why would miraculously healing a bacterial infection be any more difficult than miraculously healing a viral infection?
It was probably not an autoimmune disease such as systemic lupus erythematousus with multiple organ system involvement, as the Bible does not mention any skin rash or other organ system involvement.
Here, as I mentioned, the authors are stipulating that the two symptoms (high fever, bed-ridden) mentioned in the Gospel written by a non-witness half a century after the event was assumed to occur are the only two symptoms the woman suffered. Come on. If I told a doctor, “I saw my friend’s mother-in-law half an hour ago and she’s bedridden with a high fever,” that doctor would certainly not assume those were the only two symptoms she suffered.
It seems that an acute self-limiting infectious illness is a possible diagnosis. The brief duration, high fever, and abrupt cessation of fever makes influenza disease probable
The brief duration and abrupt cessation were miraculous. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? How can you responsibly call a diagnosis “probable” when two of your three criteria for that diagnosis are admittedly not a part of the disease’s natural course?
Shortly following her recovery, presumbly within minutes, it is described that the woman began to serve Jesus and the disciples, thus making influenza illness highly probable. Most miserably sick patients recover without sequlae when the high fevers subside following influenza-like illness
Most miserably sick patients don’t have Christ Himself coming by to chase the illness from their body.
The next question is whether the virus is influenza, avian flu, parainfluenza, or other respiratory viruses such as adenovirus or even SARS-CoV
The next question? The next question? I think we’ve skipped about eight or nine questions here.
The Bible does not describe if any members of the family including Andrew and Simon developed febrile illness, before or subsequent to her febrile illness.
…I’m just going to let this one stand on its own.
Other possibilities include drug fever and poisoning (such as atropine). Naturally-occurring plants containing the belladonna alkaloid atropine could have been consumed but the Bible does not describe unusual food or medicine intake by the woman and her family.
The Bible uses two sentences to describe this woman, her condition and her recovery in their entirety. That’s all. Verse 40 goes on to other people Jesus healed. For any value of X, “the Bible does not describe X” about the woman should be taken for granted. And how can one assume that there was no unusual food or medicine intake when there was no mention of or, presumably, witness to her activities prior to her illness?
One final consideration that one might have is whether the illness was inflicted by a demon or devil.
This is a biomedical research article printed in a biomedical journal.
I felt the need to restate that point.
The Bible always tells if an illness is caused by a demon or devil … The victims often had what sounded like a convulsion when the demon was cast out. In our index case, demonic influence is not stated, and the woman had no apparent convulsion or residual symptomatology.
They’re seriously discussing the symptomatology (which is a word, even if Firefox’s spellcheck doesn’t recognize it) of demonic indwelling. This is a biomedical oh never mind.
The Bible has many examples of descriptions of medical diseases. For instance, the first pediatric case of mouth-to-mouth cardiopulmonary resuscitation is vividly described in the Old Testament when the prophet Elisha pressed upon an apparently dead child and breathed into him seven times, and the child was revived
First of all… damn, I’ve got to think of a “first of all.”
Okay. First of all, mouth-to-mouth cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is not a disease.
Second, CPR was not developed until the 1950s, and was principally the work of Dr. James Elam, who, to my knowledge, has never credited Elisha’s efforts with contributing to his research.
Third, Elisha, according to tradition, died before 800 BC. This would mean Elisha introduced CPR, and then it went unused and forgotten for 2800 years.
Fourth… well, the relevant Scripture here is 2 Kings 4:32-35. Again, here it is in its entirety from the NKJV.
32 When Elisha came into the house, there was the child, lying dead on his bed.
33 He went in therefore, shut the door behind the two of them, and prayed to the LORD.
34 And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands; and he stretched himself out on the child, and the flesh of the child became warm.
35 He returned and walked back and forth in the house, and again went up and stretched himself out on him; then the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
So the “pressing” the article’s authors describe was not in any stretch of the imagination similar to the chest compressions we associate with CPR, it was Elisha literally laying on the child. Elisha doesn’t breathe into the child seven times or, apparently, at all; Elisha puts his mouth on the child’s mouth, and then the child sneezes seven times. This isn’t even Biblical literalism, it’s Biblical misreading.
And fifth and finally, I have no idea what this has to do with Simon’s mother-in-law having a fever possibly as a result of the flu.
The current 2009 flu pandemic is a global outbreak of a new strain of H1N1 influenza virus, often referred to colloquially as “swine flu” which began in the state of Veracruz, Mexico in April 2009 and the virus continued to spread globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in June escalated the global alert level to phase 6 and declared the outbreak to be a global pandemic since the 1968 Hong Kong flu
Just imagine a big (sic) there.
This all appears to be factual, at least, but has absolutely no obvious relevance to or effect on the point of the paper.
Summary
I have never been so happy to see that word. Their argument is flimsy and incomplete, but it’s over and that’s all that matters now.
If the postulation is indeed correct, the woman with fever in the Bible is among one of the very early description of human influenza disease.
I’m guessing “the postulation” is a typo for “the wild-ass drunken guesses we made above.”
I mean, come on. Luke’s Gospel tells us that Simon’s mother-in-law has a fever. The authors conclude she’s bedridden, because, after the fever left her, “she arose,” which is fair enough. The authors eliminate bacterial infection immediately because the sudden, divine miraculous healing she received was too quick to eliminate the lasting effects of such infections (keeping in mind here that the Gospels claim Jesus suddenly and miraculously healed, among others, several blind people, lepers, a man with a withered hand and a deaf-mute, I still fail to see why a bacterial infection would have proved too difficult to miraculously heal quickly). They eliminate lupus because the two verses Luke uses to describe this event don’t mention any symptoms other than the fever; even Dr. House wouldn’t eliminate lupus on evidence that flimsy, and it’s never lupus on House (except the time it was). They eliminate an underlying malignancy (cancer?) for the same reason.
At the end of the first paragraph of discussion, they call influenza “probable.” They then spend a paragraph debating the kind of influenza and disregarding poisoning (again, because Luke only mentions a fever and no cause), a paragraph on demonic possession, a paragraph on Elisha not performing CPR and a paragraph on the H1N1 pandemic.
That’s the “postulation” they’re talking about in their summary.
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Riiiiiight.
It’s way too early in the morning, so I have nothing witty remaining to conclude this post with.
ETA: 2400 words. What the hell is wrong with me?
