Basically, I'm looking for people's ideas. I'm utterly stuck.
They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!" For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"
Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"
"My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many." And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, "Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them." He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.
As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.
Various perspectives emerged:
1. That it's just as it says it is, and that the man was demon-possessed.
OK, but why and how, and what do we mean or understand by possession? In the most literalist readings of the Bible, even with the vague fallen-morning-star explanation for Satan, it's unclear when or where or how demons enter the frame. Most scholars think the Zoroastrians, whom the Jews in exile would have met, have something to do with it. But for a fundamentalist reader, a proposition that any other religious/philosophical practices have had any impact upon Christianity is unacceptable even to contemplate. So what, then, can one really say about demons?
2. That there's no such thing as demons.
If there's no such thing as demons, why do many, many people see, hear from and chat to them on an intermittant or regular basis, mainly in non-Western cultures but also in Britain today? Even if one takes the social-constructionist view of demons being merely a humanly-devised concept, or the non-realist view that demons can be there for some people if not for others, or even regards demons as a literary archetype or tropic device, surely one cannot deny that demons, in some sense of the word "existence", exist?
3. That what they in 1st Century Israel/Palestine understood as demon-possession, we can now interpret as what we know today to be mental illness.
Probably. But to say too swiftly is to risk missing the context and to ignore what it was like for the man to be and/or be considered as demon possessed. Him being chained up by those around might give some sort of clue. But all the Levitical purity statutes about how to deal with menstruation and mildew make no mention of how to handle the demon possessed. And as far as I'm aware, there's been no research done to investigate this. So what was life like for this man and what can we learn from his experience of possession?
4. The the demon-possessed man was designated/scapegoated by his community to embody and represent the "demons" of social, mental or spiritual "Other-ness", and Jesus set him free by talking to him as a sane and rational human being, therefore breaking the powers of the taboos surrounding him, and enabling him full inclusion, welcome and participation in the Kingdom of God.
I like that. But then, if the demons or "demons" weren't really to be feared, why did Jesus so theatrically cast them into a herd of pigs? Why didn't Jesus just do what happens in all of the other New Testament "deliverance" narratives, and simply tell everyone that the demon has left?
Would anyone else like to join in?
2 comments:
James McGrath had a post describing this passage as an example of the "neglected Biblical genre" of satire. I'm not entirely clear what Mark was getting at either, but it definitely seems that the Gerasene demoniac story is a piece of seditious, anti-Roman propaganda. Notably, "legion" in Greek can only mean a Roman military division, and apparently the Greek for "herd" is the wrong collective noun for pigs, but it can be used to refer to a band of soldiers.
Intriguing! Thanks for that...
Post a Comment