Mark 2:4; Luke 5:19. It has often been assumed that the four friends who brought their paralytic friend to Jesus broke through the mud and brushwood roof to let him down. This assumes that the roof was easily repaired. The tiles Luke refers to would then be sun–baked mud. But Luke was writing to a Roman who knew about Roman tiling. It is therefore more likely that Jesus was talking under a colonnade/veranda attached to the house, and that the friends, having gained access to the roof, stripped off