Acts 28:8

πυρετοῖς : the use of the plural for a fever is peculiar to St. Luke in N.T., and quite medical, Hobart, J. Smith, Zahn (cf. Luke 4:38-39); although the plural is found in Dem., Lucian in the sense of “intermittent attacks of fever,” but Hobart shows that the term was very common in Hipp., and he also quotes from Aretæus and Galen. Each of the other Evangelists uses πυρετός, but in the singular, never in the plural. The disease was common in Malta (J. Smith and C. and H.). δυσεντερίᾳ, see critical note, “dysentery,” R.V.; “Lucas medicus morbos accuratius describere solet,” Wetstein; another medical term, peculiar to St. Luke in N.T., often joined with πυρετός by Hippocrates (Hobart, Zahn). συνεχ., cf. Luke 4:38, συνεχομένη πυρετῷ μεγάλῳ, where St. Luke not only speaks of πυρ. μέγας, where Matthew and Mark (Matthew 8:14 and Mark 1:30) have simply πυρετός, but also introduces the term συνεχ. where they have πυρέσσουσα; ἔχεσθαι and συνέχ. are both used by the medical writers as in these passages, although no doubt συνέχεσθαι is sometimes found with a word like νοσήματι in classical Greek (cf. Grotius. in loco, Hobart, Zahn, Weiss), so in Hippocrates, ὑπὸ δυσεντερίης ἐχομένῳ, and τοῖσιν ὑπὸ τῆς ἡρακλείης νόσου συνεχομένοισιν; nine times in St. Luke, elsewhere only three times in N.T., and once in St.Matthew 4:24, in a way similar to St. Luke, but joined there not only with νόσοις, but with a word (βασάνοις) which the medical writers (so St. Luke) never employ of bodily disease. Ιάσατο αὐτόν, cf. Mark 16:18, the word is more frequently used by the medical writers for “healing” than any other (Hobart), and it occurs in St. Luke's writings fourteen times and once figuratively, in St. Matthew four times and once figuratively, once in St. Mark, three times in St. John, once figuratively, and in the rest of the N.T. three times, but in each case figuratively. In answer to the attempts to regard the miraculous element as an addition to the narrative here, as in the previous chapter, it may be sufficient to quote the remarks of Weizsäcker: “The stormy voyage and shipwreck form the central point of the narrative: to this is appended the residence at Malta. In the former, Paul reveals himself as a prophet; in the latter, as the possessor of miraculous power. We should make a vast mistake, however, if we were to infer from this that the simple travel-record had here been revised by a writer intent upon artificially glorifying the Apostle as a worker of miracles. The narrative is an indivisible whole; it is impossible to disentangle the mere history of travel from it, or to strip away the miraculous additions,” Apostolic Age, ii., p. 126, E.T.