sotto voce

This may be because Judaism is spiritually misguided, and is no more capable of detecting demonic presence than anyone else.

Opposition to demon possession was quite often stated as their aim by fake Christians such as Catholics and Calvinists; had they not adopted this stance, their legitimacy would have been in doubt. They had to be particularly careful to avoid identification as those who 'follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons' (1 Ti 4:1 NIV).

However, this does not mean that real Christianity has been and is unaware of demon possession; indeed, Christians believe that demons are not uncommon today, but now rarely allow themselves to be detected by physical disorders that were apparent in the time of Jesus and the apostles.

Jesus used no ritual; he had no need of it. Ritual is for those who need some visual/auditory signal because there is no reality to their claim.

Jesus put an end to priests forever, anyway. When you see a priest, you see an antichrist, an egregious phoney.

Or might it be that 'Christianity' is possessed by demons? Perhaps phoney Christianity is keen to express opposition to demons because it is represented by the demon-possessed.

What Jewish practice? The Sanhedrin had arrogated to itself the authority to do deal with demons, but did nothing, apparently. One would hardly expect otherwise, from their description as 'a den of vipers'. Its members were evidently far too concerned with their own selfish interests to be concerned. Or were some of them actually under the influence of demons?

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the gospels is that Jesus, uniquely at the time, was both able and willing to identify and oppose demons— who were said to have identified him.

Adam

There are at least seven early sources in the gospels. Only the two in gMark are heavy on exorcism. I exclude these in my "Gospel According to the Atheists", and yet achieve a complete gospel based on Proto-Luke and the Passion Narrative. Five of the sources did not tell of Jesus doing exorcisms, so it was not the essence of Jesus's ministry.

Adam

I had expected to be challenged to prove that the exorcisms are absent from my listing of the earliest sources. Doing so works out pretty well, but it's complicated. I'll interleave underlined for exorcism items with the text I give for The Gospel According to the Atheists (mostly from #555 in Gospel Eyewitnesses):
“So the proposed Gospel According to the Atheists has a snag on the final section. Back to the list from Church WOW Proto-Luke including Q passages:
Luke 3:1-4:30;
4:33-36, 41 has exorcisms, in-between Proto-Luke sections.
5:1-11;
6:18-19 about unclean spirits immediately precedes next Q section. However , 7:21 about curing evil spirits is in Q. But look at my Bolded list below, where I list Luke 7:18-23 as being from Q2 (my 8th source).
6:20-8:3
8:2-3 is often listed as Proto-Luke, but is probably best understood as a redaction by the writer Luke. It's a technical glitch that is not really a problem for my case.

The Calming of the Storm: 8:22-25 is not about an exorcism, but this supernatural event comes from outside our list. More proof for me that Jesus's ministry was not primarily about supernaturalism.
8:26-39, and 9:37-43 are exorcisms found in a long Marcan interlude.
9:51-18:14;
11:24-26 about unclean spirits is in the middle of another Q2 section listed below.
The last half of Luke has no exorcisms in any material.
19:1-28, 37-44, 47-48; 22:14-24:53
from Church without Walls: http://wowchurch.blogspot.com/2009/0...l-of-luke.html.

But delete the last section from Luke and substitute [John 11:54, 12:2-8, John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38], Luke 22:1-38 and then the Synoptic parallels in John 18 and 19:
One can read just chapters 18 and 19 here in Fortna’s Signs:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/signs.html
Or here’s my list I’ve provided a number of times:’ John 18:1b, 1d, 3, 10b, 12, 13b, 15-19, 22, 25b, 27-31, 33-35, (36-40); 19:1-5a, 9-19, 21-23, 28-30, 38b, 40-42.”

[To agree with my Post #230, from all the above subtract Q2 material from Q (identified by too much identity between Matthew and Luke). A separate later Q2 in Greek makes better sense to explain about a dozen sequences. These include Lk. 3:7-9, 16-17; 6:36-42, 7:18-23; 9:57-10:24; 11:1-4, 9-32; 12:2-7; 12:22-31,39-46; 13:34-35; 17:1-2. These passages are disproportionately about John the Baptist and apocalypticism.]
(This bolding from Post #561 corrects my main post #555 as listed above in the non-bolded, non-underlined from #555 in Gospel Eyewitnesses.)
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=23

I have prescreened the above to find it free of incredible supernatural happenings. Healings and such that can be explained away may be found, but even these are few. This gives us Proto-Luke pretty much as written. It combines the very early eyewitness accounts of whoever wrote Q, L and the first Passion Narrative (respectively in my opinion Matthew, Simon, and John Mark). They simply wrote what they heard and saw. The final version of gLuke does add supernatural features that Proto-Luke avoids, mostly because it adds in so very much from gMark.

(New) Yes, I know the above is hard to follow. The upshot is clear, however, that several early sources in the gospels did not even tell about Jesus doing exorcisms. As a by-product we find additional proof that Q is not unitary. The earlier Q (without close verbal parallels, because independently translated from Aramaic) does not talk about exorcisms, but the later Q2 (with many word-for-word passages) is more "exercized" to tell about exorcisms. The earliest eyewitness accounts tell us the day-to-day Jesus, whereas the later (also eyewitness, in my opinion) accounts retain mostly memories of more spectacular events and sayings. Q1, L, and the Passion Narrative Discourses in gJohn are simpler and earlier. The later gMark and the Signs Gospel in John are not necessarily spurious, but the passage of time has allowed the non-supernatural to fade from memory.

luca

the fact that Jesus was not using a ritual at all to cast out demons is interesting, since I've read that in contemporary Judaism there were on the contrary some kind of ritual (prayers, incantations, fumigations). So perhaps Jesus did indeed innovate on exorcism, or perhaps the gospel writers were not familiar with Judaism enough to introduce ritual in their account and remained vague.

It remains to me a mystery why such an important and spectacular aspect of both contemporary Judaism and of the Jesus movement, exorcism, is totally absent in the OT. Was it really a recent cultural shift or just the emergence in full light of the traditional, and probably very ancient, popular beliefs in demons and healers ? Maybe the OT writers thought exorcism and similar practices were something for ignorant peasants and not serious enough to be described in their texts. Or maybe the demons were introduced in Palestine by the Roman conquerors and by Hellenism and their pagan gods.
If both cases is very interesting to see that the gospel writers (except John) were particularly keen in presenting Jesus as a exorcist/healer rather than "just" as a prophet. It seems to me this aspect, more than anything else, differentiates Jesus from the OT prophets.

Just random thoughts...I would be happy to read more about this.

sotto voce

That's true, though there was no divine instruction for this. In the postexilic period, Jews who had experienced Eastern techniques adapted them for their own use; though with what success is unknown. Evidently, they had little effect in Judea in Jesus' day.

Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian culture had been to some degree involved in apotropaic (preventative) and exorcistic techniques and rituals, as demons and spirits were widely thought to cause physical and mental disorders; but there is no trace of them in Mosaic instruction, or later. The actual worship of demons by other nations is mentioned and disapprobated in the OT, so their presence is acknowledged; so the principle for Israel was presumably that of the sovereignty of Jehovah, obedience to him barring the influence of demons, as it made for safety and welfare in other respects. The apparent widespread occurrence of possession in Jesus' day, six hundred years after the last of the prophets, who had ensured a degree of sovereignty, may be ascribed to deep apostasy in Judea, a land that would barely have been recognised by contemporaries of Moses.

It is precisely this sovereignty, missing for so long, that appears to have been the significant factor in the capacity of Jesus to exorcise. Even a non-disciple had success by using Jesus' authority via the simple use of his name; and Jesus made no attempt to prevent him doing so. Those who claim to exorcise today therefore ensure that they do so using Jesus' name, though one suspects that many of them do this only in order to attempt to promote veneration of their own reputations and influence.

DCHindley

You might look at Stephan Davies, Jesus the Healer: Possession, Trance, and the Origins of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk), New York: Continuum, 1995.

DCH

Toto

There is a blog from one of Mark Goodacre's students on the somewhat related topic of whether Jesus was a magician.

http://wasjesusamagician.blogspot.co.uk/

outhouse

yes he was.

back in their time it was called free health care. Jesus was a teacher/healer


he would go around town to town and heal and preach for dinner scraps, he and the other apostles didnt charge for this other then wanting to eat your food to keep from starving. Thus he only traveled with a small number of people, probably just the inner circle. 12 is mythical and I doubt that many would survive on food scraps


remember, back then disease was everywhere and they had no clue what caused illness, so everything was blamed on demons ect ect


jesus being a jewish teacher and a handworker he would have been familar with cures and remedies that the common peasants knew nothing about.




because he only accepted food and traveled with no money, he was living the good life without paying any roman tribute or taxation which was a thorn in his side.


part of what made him so popular was figuring out how to beat the romans at their own game, romans figured out ways to tax anything and everything keeping jews in poverty due to this heavy handed oppression. To make matters worse the romans had infected judaim to the point the temple was corrupt, jesus outrage over thi sis what got him killed.

outhouse

false

jesus was a jew, he was just doing what every other traveling teacher healer worth his salts was doing. he wasnt the only one. there were many.



I think your confusing later exorcism mythology as being teh same in jesus time. it wasnt that way.

Toto

We're still waiting for outhouse to tell us why he is so sure of what he claims to know.