Luke 5:15,16

1 st. Luke 5:15-16.

While seeking to calm the excitement produced by His miracles, Jesus endeavoured also to preserve His energies from any spiritual deterioration by devoting part of His time to meditation and prayer. As Son of man, He had, in common with us all, to draw from God the strength He needed for His hours of activity. Such touches as these in the narrative certainly do not look like an apotheosis of Jesus, and they constitute a striking difference between the evangelical portrait and the legendary caricature.

This thoroughly original detail suffices also to prove the independence of Luke's sources of information.

After this general description (the seventh), the narrative is resumed with a detached and special incident, given as an example of the state of things described.