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Mat_8:5. The centurion was a Gentile by birth, Mat_8:10, but connected with Judaism (Luk_7:3), probably from being a proselyte of the gate, and was serving in the army of Herod Antipas. The narrative is, in the main, identical with Luke 7, differing only in points of minor importance. The question as to which of the two evangelists the preference in point of originality is to be accorded, must be decided not in favour of Matthew (Bleek, Keim), but of Luke, whose special statements in the course of the incident (misinterpreted by Strauss and Bruno Bauer, comp. de Wette) cannot, except in an arbitrary way, be ascribed to an amplifying tendency; they bear throughout the stamp of historical and psychological originality, and nothing would have been more superfluous than to have invented them for the sake of giving greater prominence to the man’s humility, which is brought out quite as fully and touchingly in Matthew’s narrative. Comp. Neander, Krabbe, Lange. For the points of difference in the account Joh_4:47 ff., see note on that passage.