Peter Kirby

1They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me." 8For he was saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!" 9And Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many." 10And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12and they begged him, saying, "Send us to the pigs; let us enter them." 13So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. 14The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19And he did not permit him but said to him, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." 20And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

This passage contains one of the most detailed descriptions of madness to be found in the Gospels. We learn the following things about the mad man of Mark:

1) People tried to subdue him and to chain him.
2) He had the strength not to be subdued and the chains did not hold.
3) He lived in tombs.
4) He cried out a lot, among the tombs and on the mountain.
5) He cut himself with stones.
6) He was thought to be possessed of an unclean spirit or spirits ("Legion").
7) He apparently wore no clothes or inappropriate clothing (since he was later found to be clothed when in his right mind).

What led him to this point is not clear; one presumes that he had not been this way from birth, but was driven mad at some point; in which case, it is a guess whether displacement from a home and work came first and led to madness, living among tombs, or whether madness set on him first and led him to be driven from a home and work.

What is interesting to me about this story, right now, is that the man *begs* to be able to follow Jesus, but Jesus does not permit him. There is no explanation of why the formerly mad man is not permitted to follow Jesus, but he is told instead to go to the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him.

This story suggests to me that the Jesus of Mark is a wonder worker with an urgent mission that does not include turning people's beliefs around. The idea of turning away someone who wishes to follow is natural to Mark, whose Jesus has no time to develop theories of his person and his relationship to followers. It is contrary to the Jesus of a Gospel of John, who would likely have at least informed the formerly mad man the full truth of who Jesus is. But in the Gospel of Mark, the demons already know who Jesus is.

The demons beg not to be sent 'out of the country', which might be presumed to mean out of the earthly plane (instead of merely the area of Syria in which Jesus currently was). Oddly, they ask to be sent into a herd of some 2000 pigs, and Jesus grants the request, upon which they rush into the sea. Why do the demons not want to be sent out of the country? And why do they ask to be sent into pigs, and immediately drown them in the sea? And why is Jesus granting the request?

Perhaps the reason is that Jesus did not actually have the power to send the demons out of the country. For this reason, he 'permitted' the demons to enter the pigs. While, in fact, Jesus could not have exorcised the man if the demons did not want to leave the man's body. Jesus simply allowed the demons of the man to go the way they wished to go. This line of thought suggests that the Jesus of Mark is a limited power, but also a clever one. The Jesus of Mark repeatedly says things along the lines that "your faith has saved you," and perhaps he means it in a strong sense: it is you, your faith, that has saved you, not me.

aa5874

I don't know of any human being that can answer those questions. And as far as I understand, Jesus, the pigs, the demons, the requests, the dialogue, the sea and the madman are all the creation of the author of gMark or some-else that the author may have copied from.

Peter Kirby

I am a human being who can answer questions about worlds known through narration.

Your belief that the narrative is the creation of the author of gMark ("or some-else that the author may have copied from") is irrelevant.

Why did Socrates drink the hemlock? Does it matter whether Socrates really drank the hemlock, to answer that question? Would it be any different an answer if the historical Socrates absconded to Egypt after his trial and ran a profitable cat grooming service in his elder years?

Toto

How would this relate to the commonly drawn connection between the 2000 pigs and the Roman 10th Legion that used the Boar as a standard? Have the demons been transformed into Zealots who fight the Romans - this time winning? Is there some deeper meaning, or is that just a humorous dig at the Romans, comic relief?

I have not had time to review Joe Wallack's Jewrassic Pork thread to see if there is any help there.

andrewcriddle

In favour of the idea that 'out of the country' means out of the earthly plane; we have Luke's version in 8:31 EIS THN ABUSSON

Andrew Criddle

Peter Kirby

Establishing a connection would require that the audience be familiar with the legion X Fretensis, and this would require that the Gospel of Mark (or, at least, this story) be authored sometime after the First Jewish Revolt. I found an interesting website here on the tenth legion. Apparently the standard was not just a boar. It was a boar beneath a ship. This suggests a connection even more strongly. But what is the meaning of the connection? What statement is being made about the Roman legion, the war, and Jesus?

My original analysis above was that Jesus did not actually have power over the demons. They asked Jesus not to be sent away to another country; a demonstration of power would have been to send them away to another country. (I had suggested that this meant another plane than the earth; instead, it may have meant the country of Judea and environs, especially on the Roman legion-reference interpretation of the story.) Instead, Jesus did as they asked, and 'permitted' them to enter the swine. This permissive stance reflects the likely-historical hands-off attitude of the Christians towards the First Jewish Revolt: it was not their war.

How could this story have been originally used? Suppose someone was saying that Jesus could not have commanded the Roman legions to exit Judea, and for this reason Jesus was not the Son of God, because he did not have that power. This story demonstrates (by its narrative logic) both the reality and nature of Jesus's power. He doesn't directly rebuke the legion and cause them to leave the country immediately, but he does grant their request to be sent into swine. The swine immediately die by rushing into the sea. I am reminded of jokes where a devil grants a wish, only to find that the outcome of the wish is not as intended ("I want to be the smartest man alive" -> everyone smarter dies). The legion didn't want to be contained inside of this one strong man, but instead wanted to be in the herd of thousands, as the demon was a many-fold entity. Yet, wish granted, they immediately found their own destruction. What the story-teller seems to be saying is that if you let the Romans do as they want, they will manage to destroy themselves by their own designs.

XKV8R

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2-J

Maybe the author of gLuke wasn't aware of the original reference to the Romans. If you're not aware of the reference, the most ready interpretation is to just interpret the story literally, then it's natural to bring in the concept of the abyss.

Not knowing about the possible Roman legion reference, I always thought that Jesus was in some way being lenient on the demons, letting them go into the pigs, when he could have just cast them out of the madman ( they then would have had no host and presumably would have had to return to the abyss). But the fact that the demon possessed pigs then rushed off the cliff and killed themselves was puzzling. So puzzling in fact, that an interpretation about the Roman legion becomes more viable.

Gamera

Christians have been perplexed by this passage for millennia. Even early on the church fathers seemed unable to make sense of it.

It is the longest miracle in the gospels, and the only one which references a demon's name. It appears in three gospels, so it was considered important.

I think the demoniac passage isn't about "magic" per se, but rather identity. The narrative makes clear that demoniac is alienated from his community, from God, and from himself. The point of the miracle is to show his integration back into the community, as we see in the end, where he goes back to his town and priases the works of Jesus. The pigs play the role of the "disease" animals (a common shamanistic motif) that takes away the affliction.

The point of the passage (which is told in a narrative that the people of the time would have understood and we don't: demons, disease animals, a healing), is that Jesus' message restores human identity in relation to other people and God.

George S

The "other" side of the sea (Lake Tiberias -- Sea of Galilee) puts our Joshua (Yeshua -- Jesus) out of Israel and Judah.

No Jewish community keeps a herd of pigs.

He rejected the gentile applicant. Today we might call the EEOC.