Diogenes the Cynic

Take it up with Maurice Casey. I'm just reporting what he said in his book.

aa5874

I am not sure that you are reporting what Casey said in his book or that Casey knows what he is talking about.

Why did you bring up Casey if you are NOT willing to state the accurate stories in gMark??

Did you expect me to swallow what you wrote??

I have ALREADY gone through gMark so please tell your Casey that there is NOTHING about Jesus in gMark that is historically accurate.

Diogenes the Cynic

The exorcism stories in Mark that Casey thinks are accurate include the first one in the Synagogue, and the "deaf and dumb" one. From memory, I don't remember if there were others. He does say that, in general, people probably did fall down in front of him as described.

Casey points out that these stories give no follow ups, and we are not told how long, if at all, any of these exorcisms (or healings) lasted.

Exorcisms are a real phenomenon. It's not far fetched. When I was teaching and working with LD kids, I once had a Hmong student prone to seizures. His grandmother went to school with him (he was young, only like 1st or 2nd grade) and would "exorcise" demons if she thought something was amiss.

Demonic possession is still an everyday occurrence in Chinese folk religions too, and there are Arabic cultures who still believe in Jinns (which like 1st century, Jewish Palestinian devils can be controlled by commands).

I've seen this stuff happen. People are unbelievably suggestable, and they get really mad if you tell them they aren't possessed. There is some kind of social psychodrama being enacted which is very alien to me, but which is (for whatever reason) important to them. There are social statuses being worked out or something. I don't know. Sometimes it seems as if they all know they're acting, but that they have to pretend it's real anyway.

I guess the Christian Eucharist is like that too.

Adam

Next thing you guys are going to be saying my "Gospel According to the Atheists" is ahistorical because it doesn't have enough exorcisms in it. That's help support your preference for gMark over Proto-Luke.

Iskander

In The Jewish annotated New Testament, Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Berttler (editors) OUP, 2011 page 61 note1 it says;

" Mark 1.21-45 A series of healings without opposition


Diseased people in the ancient world were often thought to be possessed by demonic forces...The unclean spirits were sometimes understood to have been descended from fallen angels...

Although there has been a tendency in the modern period to distinguish Jesus’ healing from those of contemporary Jews and others, this is a theological not historical judgement.

The miracles in the Gospels contain the same procedures, healing formulae (e.g., “be muzzled”, “ rebuked” v 25, often retaining the original Aramaic, e. g. 7:34 “ephphatha”), and demonological lore as the magic of the ancient world.”

sotto voce

Original to.... ?

Iskander

e. g. 7:34 “ephphatha”

Page 75 Mark


Note 7.31-37: Healing a deaf man (Mt. 15; 29-31). In rabbinic sources a deaf person, “heresh”, is often considered similar to being a minor,”quatan”, or mentally ill,”shoteh”, that is such a person is not considered responsible for observing the law


33-34 Spat...touched....sighed, on the physical aspects of healings in this period see Introduction.


Ephphatha, Aramaic, another indication (see 5.4-1n) of the original Aramaic-language versions of gospel narratives

sotto voce

Oh. That nonsense. I thought perhaps it was alleged that demons had to be addressed in Aramaic.

outhouse

exactly the human mind is weak.


But theres also two aspects to all this.


#1 yes as a teacher of judaism jesus would have had natural healing skill and would have also drove out them darn demons for dinner scraps as payment at the end of he day in the village he was in, so he could spread his jewish theology. Free health care gathered crowds and made it possible for him to find someone to feed his butt by nightfall


#2 mythology had also overblown these healings dramatically.



what and how much healing jesus did is completely unknown as what we have is way to far from its original source to be of any use at all.


getting into details just gets you a way from the truth at this point

luca

thanks to all the posters for the debate and information;
I would like however to go back to my original post which asked, among others, why there is
no trace of exorcism in the Old Testament (although there are a few demons here and there)
while the NT is practically an uninterrupted sequence of exorcisms and demon stories. And similarly why no prophet of the OT is an exorcist and just rarely a healer, while apparently all the messianic figures in the NT, in Josephus and in contemporary literature are exorcists/healers. This seems to me such a major shift in messianic character that I think is worth trying to understand it better.
One possible reason is the influence of hellenization and the conflict with the new cults brought by the Romans and Greeks; another one perhaps is that the OT authors despised exorcisms as "peasant's religion" and had no interest in that. It seems to me that exorcisms where unknown in Roman or Greek religion, is that right?
I would be interested in hearing more opinions on this.