Mark 5.1-10, Matthew 8.28-29, Luke 8.26-31.
Let’s begin with ancient northern Israel’s geography. First there’s Kinneret, the lake.
The Galilean sea.
On its northeast was the province of the Galilee, named for the word
In Old Testament days the Dekápolis belonged to the Hebrews. Today part of it is called the Golan Heights. In Jesus’s day, even though it was full of Greek-speaking Syrians, it was still considered part of Israel, and still part of the territory Antipas Herod supervised. But it was full of gentile, Greek-enculturated pagans. They weren’t even Hebrew like the Palestinians are.
By Greek-enculturated I mean they lived like Greeks. Alexander of Macedon had pushed his own culture everywhere he went, and in fourth-century
The ruins include lots of monuments to Greek deities. The major deities were called
And that’s where our story begins: Jesus and his students, after crossing the lake, landed on the beach, in full view of a cluster of monuments. And in full view of some wild man who was living among the monuments, who eagerly—and in utter terror—rushed down to meet him.
Was he of two minds about meeting Jesus? More like of 2,001 minds. Dude was full of devils.
Discrepancies first.
Yeah, okay, there are
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As you can see, Matthew says Jesus and his students landed the boat in the territory of the city-state of Gadara, and Mark and Luke say Gerasa. And if you’re
Take a peek at that map again. Gadara’s about 12 kilometers from the lake. Gerasa (present-day Jerash, Jordan) isn’t even on the map, ’cause it’s 80 kilometers to the southeast. Gergesa (present-day Kursi, Israel) actually is on the lake, so you can see why the editors of the Textus Receptus—the Greek
But commentators point out the gospels don’t say Jesus and the kids landed in any one city, but in that city’s land. Their provincial territory. Which can extend hundreds of kilometers away from the city itself. Heck, Rome’s authority extended that far. So they figure wherever Jesus landed on the eastern shore, it must’ve fallen under the authority of… whatever city they’re going with.
Because commentators really don’t try to investigate the geography and deduce Jesus’s landing spot from that. They pretty much pick the gospel (and translation) they like best.
- Matthew fans: This guy’s “the Gadarene demoniac.”
- Matthew and
KJV fans: “The Gergesene demoniac.” - Mark or Luke fans: “The Gerasene demoniac.”
So there ya go: Three different names for the very same story.
My own tendency is to lean towards Mark, ’cause that gospel was written first. But Matthew presents a more plausible explanation, ’cause the following events took place outside the city, and people ran to the city and back, and it took time to do so. Gergesa’s too close. Gerasa’s way too far, though the city doesn’t specifically have to be Gerasa. Gadara seems to be far enough away to fit the story’s details.
Well, those details which match. Discrepancy number two is the number of demoniacs Jesus encountered: One or two?
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Aw come on, Matthew.
Gleason Archer’s explanation is kinda amusing: Apparently there were two demoniacs in Mark and Luke, but the authors of those gospels simply never bothered to mention one of them. Guessing he didn’t howl as much.
How serious a problem is this? If there were two of them, there was at least one, wasn’t there? Mark and Luke center attention on the more prominent and outspoken of the two, the one whose demonic occupants called themselves “Legion.”
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties at Mt 8.28
I agree with Archer that it’s not that serious a problem. But since he’s trying to defend the idea
Lastly there’s the discrepancy no commentators mention: In a very few verses, Jesus is gonna find out this dude (or in Matthew, dudes) isn’t possessed by one critter, like the text of Mark and Luke has implied by referring to a singular “unclean spirit”
Interpreters give the authors a pass when they switch from singular to plural, ’cause most interpreters figure the authors were withholding this relevant bit of data for dramatic reasons: Surprise Jesus, you’re not just throwing out one spirit!
But just as I was pointing out the inconsistency between one demoniac and two, there’s a way bigger inconsistency between one unclean spirit and thousands. If one’s a problem (though, as Gleason Archer points out, a not very serious one), so’s the other.
And again: Those same people who give these inconsistencies a pass, frequently turn round and insist the bible’s authors practiced meticulous factual accuracy in a lot of other places—and leave no room for drama, metaphor, or estimation. I’m looking at
Back to the demoniac(s).
Because we Christians identify demons as devils, we figure it’s a horrible thing for this man to be demonized. It may blow your mind to know ancient Greeks wouldn’t have thought this way at all. They would’ve thought of a demonized person—I’m not kidding—the same way we’d think of a Spirit-filled person.
’Cause to the Greeks, demons were little gods. And a man full of gods was holy. Sure, a little wacky and strange, but they act this way because the spirits are working on ’em, right? But they were full of divine power—able to break chains! So it was odd, and problematic, but not necessarily evil to them.
No spirit but the Holy Spirit has any business possessing a human. Yet this man was full of them. A Roman legion could consist of up to 6,000 soldiers. Spirits, since they don’t consist of matter, don’t take up space in the same way we do. Hence that old theologians’ riddle, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” We don’t know how many. This story was our first clue of how densely you could cram ’em into a human.
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How’d he get full of them?
People read about this demoniac’s mad behavior, and assume there’s a connection between being demonized and mental illness. There isn’t really. The man might’ve initially been mentally ill, so his parents turned to the witch doctor to “fix” him, and the end result was two thousand times worse. People assume demonization looks like mental illness, and this is why plenty of demonized people
No doubt the demoniac(s) wanted to be rid of the demons, once it became clear they were hurting more than helping. Problem is, it doesn’t work that way. We call it possession because these critters feel they own you. True, there might be someone in the area with some relationship to God;
Hence the demoniac(s) reached a point where they figured they were beyond help. Nothing to do but scream and cut yourself. Stay away from people; stay out of the city; live among the lakeside monuments, which were all dedicated to demons. Hopelessly surrounded by demons every which way.
Till Jesus arrived.
Demons and judgment.
The first response of the demoniac(s), “What’re you to me/us?” is a Greek way of saying, “We have no relationship.” Really, it’s a euphemism for
We don’t have a lot of the details about how God judges spirits. Most of it comes from Christian mythology, not revelation in the scriptures. We know God’ll judge them. But the bible, because it was written for humans, only tells us about us. Not so much about them.
What little we do know, indicates once God decides to clamp down on evil spirits’ activity, he sends ’em to the
The legion of demons had their merry way with this man (or men), but now that Jesus arrived, it was their personal Judgment Day. Apparently spirits, like us humans, don’t always remember
We get this idea, mainly from bad movies like
But in every other instance in scripture, when someone
Where they got out to… I’ll save that story for later.
