Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?
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The Gerasene Demonaic
You see, "the other side" was a phrase packed with meaning, for this crowd. "The other side" was the region of the ten cities - Decapolis. The Jews and Decapolis had...history.
The region of Decapolis was where the seven pagan Canaanite nations - driven out of the Promised Land by Joshua and the Israelites (Josh. 3:10, Acts 13:19) - had settled afterwards. The prophet Isaiah speaks of these people as "a people who continually provoke Me to My face", they "sit among graves and spend the night in secret places", they "eat swine’s flesh", and yet their people say "keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am holier than you!" (Isa. 65:3-5) After the Maccabean revolt, when Israel had won their independence from the Greeks, the Hasmonaeans advanced into the territory of Decapolis, and conquered most of the area by the beginning of the 1st century BCE. Later, when the Jewish civil war broke out, the pagans of Decapolis massacred the Jews within their cities - an uprising for which Justus of Tiberias took bloody revenge.
The point is - Decapolis was enemy territory! There was a history of violence between Israel and Decapolis, and what's more, the people of Decapolis had practices which Israel found to be...unclean. Detestable might be a better word.
But Jesus casually says "let's go to the other side." In "Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus", John Ortberg writes:
What was he doing? Didn’t he know that the kingdom is for our side? It’s almost as if he didn’t know that this is the other side. It’s almost as if he thought it’s his side. It’s almost as if he thought every side belonged to him, or that he belonged to every side. It’s almost as if he thought that all the peoples of the earth were now going to be blessed through him – even the seven nations of Canaan.So Jesus and the disciples go to the "other side." What they find there was quite unlike what had become Jesus' usual reception (at this point in his career) of large crowds. Instead, they found one lone demonically afflicted man.
In the story within the gospels, the demon possessed man runs to Jesus and kneels at his feet - the demon possessing him demanding to know what Jesus wants. Jesus asks the demon its name, and the response is heavy on the symbolism: Legion. Legion was the name the Romans used for a company of soldiers, and this area housed one of the largest of Rome's Legions.
These cities had seen their freedoms stifled by the Ptolemies, the Selucids, the Jews, and then Herod / Rome. And during the Roman occupation, this area's economy had been hit hard. They had to resent their Roman oppressors.
The gospels say about the demoniac: "no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain." (Mk. 5:3, Lk. 8:29) What does this mean? Are we to take it literally, or is it symbolic? Could it be as Rene Girard writes in "The Scapegoat" - since we know that they really could have devised chains that would have been unbreakable by human strength, could the Geresenes have been play-acting and allowing this man to break free in order to serve their need to play out their inner violence? If this is so, then when this man breaks his chains, he acts out the repressed desires of his society to break the chains of Roman oppression. Could he be serving as an escape valve - relieving the built up pressure of seething discontent? This would have given them a scapegoat who serves as a lightening rod, to draw away the volatile charge that would otherwise throw their society into chaos and strife.
In Girard's theory of scapegoating, there are four stereotypes which are often present in a situation of persecution.
- The first is that cultural order is eclipsed and there is confusion resulting from undifferentiated society where individuals cannot be distinguished from one another in terms of hierarchy or whether they are friends or foe. With the Roman occupation and the resulting economic turmoil we can check this one off.
- In the second stereotype of persecution, the people believe that some foreign element is responsible for their problems. These foreigners are supposedly responsible for economic issues, crime, and even natural crises like disease or natural disasters. Crime, intimidation and retaliatory acts are carried out by members of the community - focused on these foreigners. But this usually only serves to increase the tension. With the history of Decapolis, we know that Rome had dealt with small uprisings in the area - crushing them ruthlessly.
- In the third stereotype of persecution, the mob seeks a cause that will satisfy their appetite for violence - they need a way to release the angst that has built up over their crisis. Could they have been using this man as this release valve?
- In the fourth stereotype, the people place the blame for their crisis on a group of people, or even an individual - usually someone who is different. Is it possible that, as blaming the Roman oppressors would have resulted in imprisonment and/or death for the people of the area, they had scapegoated this demoniac?
The people of Gerasa would have been under considerable pressure to comply with the Roman government - yet, the demoniac is able to live out the violence that everyone in the society secretly wishes they had an outlet for. He has the freedom to be violent that no one else possesses, because he is “crazy” or “demon-possessed”, and so no one tries to help him. This is a relationship of perverted mirroring or mimicry. The demoniac even stones himself - as the Geresenes would do to their victims - and he lives among the tombs, where those who had been stoned would have gone. It is almost as if he carried out his own sentence so that the society wouldn’t have to. The demoniac does violence to himself as a reproach to the Gerasene society for their violence to him, and they in turn do violence to him in the form of trying to chain him up, and this cycle continues endlessly. This demonstrates the insidious nature of accusation - for as the society piles on their accusation, their scapegoat begins to subconsciously believe these things about himself and act them out.
As Girard writes in "The Scapegoat":
Thanks to his well-known mimetic ability Satan succeeds in making the victim's guilt credible.
Girard describes this cycle as “aggravated mimeticism” - the demoniac is mimicking the society’s violence to himself, and they are in turn aggravating the situation by continuing to seek to do violence to him themselves. And underneath all of this is hidden the true problems of this society - the society actually projects their madness upon the scapegoat in order to avoid dealing with their own problems. “My name is Legion” - this man is taking on the role of the symbol of his own society's unresolved issues. Roman Legions were disciplined and orderly, but this man was a perverted mirror of this symbol - perhaps as a way to reveal the true nature of the Roman Legion. The society is possessed by a Roman Legion, just as this man is possessed by his own Legion of chaos.
To put it another way, René Girard says in "The One by Whom Scandal Comes":
It is the unclean spirit who himself says: I am the crowd, I am the Roman crowd.The demon Legion is the symbol of the Roman crowd that strips its captives of their individuality and dehumanizes them. The Roman crowd possesses the cultures it conquers and enslaves, and the captive members of these societies are supposed to get in line and behave without protest.
It is difficult for us to imagine what "my name is Legion" would mean in its original historical context because we are so far removed from this period. To get a sense of what it would mean to the audience this story was originally written for, we'd have to imagine a similar story with a Vietnamese demoniac whose demon was named "Napalm", or an Afghani demoniac whose demon was named "Drone Strike". And the military theme is continued when the "demon" is cast into the pigs - the word used to describe this "herd" is strange, as pigs do not travel in herds, and actually the original greek word - agele - may refer to a band of military recruits. Also, when Jesus gave the legion permission in Mark 5:13, the word that is used is epetrepseri which is a military command, and the pigs go charging into the sea and drown in a scene that is reminiscent of Pharaoh's army in the book of Exodus.
“Legion” may also allude to the angry mob of the Gerasene society who has cast this man out. Note how the angry mob at Jesus’ trial spoke with one voice - just as this Legion, though they were many, spoke with one voice. Through mimesis, individuality disintegrates as the multiple units mimic each other’s desires and cry out with one voice. And just as a mob all clamors for a singular desire, they also fall off a cliff together in a panic - which, if you recall from the section on the Azazel goat, is the symbolic method of death for a scapegoat! And do you recall how the people tried to drive Jesus off a cliff in Luke 4:28-30?
But there is something very interesting about this scene - there is no cliff anywhere near that part of the sea. Are we to surmise that the gospel writers were ignorant of their geography? Or, could they have deliberately chosen a symbolic image to communicate spiritual truths?
Being driven off a cliff is the ritual for disposing of a scapegoat. But in this scene, the scapegoat ritual is not carried out - it is not a scapegoat forced off the cliff, but the Legion itself, along with the real "sins" of that society, which are symbolically represented by the pigs: the symbol of their oppressors. It's almost as if Jesus is forcing the Gerasenes to face the real issues they’ve been repressing by removing their ability to effectively scapegoat this man any longer!
Note that the demons in this story cannot survive without a host - or perhaps, we might ask, can they even exist without one? The Legion of this man is sent out into the countryside, where it must be dealt with - because it is the symbol of the issues that this society has been repressing and avoiding. This mythological language of pathology might be a mask for the political issues which no one dared speak of - it could not safely be expressed in the open, so it was play-acted out through this scapegoat. This man's mental illness in this situation may have functioned as a distorted protest against occupation and oppressive authority.
Note also that Jesus doesn’t do anything violent to the “demons”: they do it to themselves in the end. This reveals the futility of accusation - the Accuser's methods always end up causing self-destructive chaos. And Jesus doesn’t come to accuse the demons of “Legion” - if he did, he would be fighting accusation with accusation.
After Jesus heals the demoniac, the reaction of the people from the area provides some very interesting psychological analysis. Here was a man who had reportedly been causing a lot of trouble. You’d think the townspeople would thank Jesus for taking care of their problem, and maybe even do as the Jews and bring him more of their sick for healing. But instead, they begged him to leave.
Why? Could it be because Jesus had removed their symbolic scapegoat, and forced them to deal with the real problems that were plaguing their society?
The former demoniac begs to go with Jesus - but Jesus says "no, go tell your story." Jesus has freed this man from his insanity, and is now telling him to go tell his story - with a clear, rational mind now - and to spread the message that the way of Jesus provides freedom from captivity.
The gospel of Mark writes that Jesus returned to the area, in Mark 6:53-56. And the scene is quite dramatic - they "ran about that whole country and began to carry here and there on their pallets those who were sick, to the place they heard He was. Wherever He entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places, and imploring Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured."
Jesus had shown these people that the God of Israel cares about "their side", and they had come to believe that freedom came through Jesus.
Now, for those who find it difficult to bear my non-literal interpretation of the story of the Gerasene demoniac, I would like them to consider two things. First, scholarship has noticed structural similarities between Mark 5:1-20 and Homer's Odyssey - specifically Odyssey 9.101-565. Here is one link that outlines this structural similarity side by side.
Another very similar tale to the Gerasene demoniac can be found in Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana IV:XX:
And when he [Apollonius) told them to have handles on the cup and to pour over the handles-this being a purer part of the cup since no one's mouth touched that part-a young boy began laughing raucously, scattering his discourse to the winds. Apollonius stopped and, looking up at him, said, "It is not you that does this arrogant thing, but the demon who drives you unwittingly," for, unknown to everyone, the youth was actually possessed by a demon, for he used to laugh at things no one else did and would fall to weeping for no reason and would talk and sing to himself. Most people thought it was the jumpiness of youth that brought him to do such things, and at this point he seemed carried away by drunkenness, but it was really a demon which spoke through him. Thus, when Apollonius began staring at it, the phantom in the boy let out horrible cries of fear and rage, sounding like someone being burned alive or stretched on the rack, and he began to promise that he would leave the young boy and never again possess anyone else among men. But Apollonius spoke to him angrily such as a master might to a cunning and shameless slave, and he commanded him to come out of him, giving definite proof of it. "I will knock down that statue there," it said, pointing to one of those about the Porch of the King. And when the statue tottered and then fell over, who can describe the shout of amazement that went up and how everyone clapped their hands in astonishment! But the young boy opened his eyes, as if from sleep, and looked at the rays of the sun. Now all those observing these events revered the boy, for he no longer appeared to be as coarse as he had been, nor did he look disorderly, orderly, but had come back to his own nature nothing less than if he had drunk some medicine. He threw aside his fancy soft clothes and, stripping off the rest of his luxuriousness, came to love poverty and a threadbare cloak and the customs of Apollonius.Note in the above that the demoniac is notorious for strange behavior, that when the miracle worker (in this case, Apollonius) comes to cure him he protests quite loudly and makes promises in an attempt to bargain with the miracle worker, the method of exorcism is simply to speak sternly to the demon and command it to come out, when the demon leaves there is striking physical evidence which startles the audience, and afterwards the demoniac changes his clothing and follows the miracle worker. These are all common elements with the story of the Gerasene demoniac.
In light of these similar stories, it seems likely that the story was not meant to be taken as history, but as a retelling of a familiar story (or part of a genre of fictional story) in which the audience would have noticed the "twists" and considered them of particular importance (or in other words, the "twists" would have signaled lessons or morals to be learned). The point is not to take this story as historical fact, but as a tale which teaches truths to its audience.
It's time for another break - in the next section, we will discover further lessons on exorcism in the Bible.
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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?
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