Lepra designates the skin disease that made its sufferers outcasts in ancient Israel -- not necessarily modern Hansen's disease, but a broader category of severe, visible skin afflictions that produced flaking and scaling (the root lepis means 'scale'). Healing a leper was among Jesus' most dramatic signs of messianic authority: he touched the untouchable and pronounced them clean (Matt 8:3; Mark 1:42; Luke 5:12-13). The disease carried enormous social and religious weight, since Levitical law required separation from the community until a priest certified restoration.