πυρέσσω

From the study of Matthew 8:14

Range of meaning

'To be feverish, burn with fever.' It comes from pyretos (fever), and both are related to pyr (fire). In the NT the verb appears only here and in Mark 1:30. Ancient medicine treated fever (pyretos) as a disease in its own right, not just as a symptom of something else. It was classified by its pattern (daily, tertian, quartan) and by its severity.

Against the English

'Fever' is a correct translation. But modern readers hear a symptom, often a mild one that can be treated. To an ancient household, a fever bad enough to put an adult in bed was a serious and possibly deadly illness with no reliable cure.

How it drifted

Since germ theory and modern medicine, 'fever' has meant the body's reaction to an infection, not a disease in itself, and most fevers are no longer dangerous.

Used elsewhere in the period

LXX Deuteronomy 28:22 lists pyretos among the covenant curses: 'The LORD will strike you with wasting disease and fever…' (compare Leviticus 26:16). Later Jewish tradition kept amulets and incantations against fever, and in Luke 4:39 Jesus 'rebuked' the fever as if it were a hostile power. Greek medical writers (the Hippocratic corpus, later Galen) discussed fevers at length. Malaria was common around the Sea of Galilee.