Tue. Feb. 8th, 2011 / Highland Park United Methodist Church [on the edge of SMU’s campus]
The Academy: “The Jesus of History”
Touching
Jesus reaching out and physically touching is a major theme in many of the healing stories. Jesus’ touching of the sick is mentioned 31 times in the first three gospels. So, we have physical healing but more than that: touching also had an aspect of social healing.
Steefen
Yes, that is part of the fascinating aura of the Biblical Jesus that is respectable and an inspiration to Christian women and men who visit congregants when they are sick.
Tue. Feb. 8th, 2011 / Highland Park United Methodist Church [on the edge of SMU’s campus]
The Academy: “The Jesus of History”
Jesus’ act of eating was like his healing ministry and his touch. He was embracing those who had been outside. This highly symbolic act had a highly provocative message. By eating with these people, Jesus was announcing that they were not to be excluded.
Jesus’s Judaism was about including others:
Lepers
Sinners
Tax collectors
Prostitutes
The “possessed”
Women
Gentiles
Jesus would give everyone a chance.
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Jesus appears to have made a conscious decision to go to Jerusalem and force a confrontation with authorities there.
Steefen
Turning over the tables at the Temple got him on the radar.
Tue. Feb. 8th, 2011 / Highland Park United Methodist Church [on the edge of SMU’s campus]
The Academy: “The Jesus of History”
Entry into Jerusalem
Jesus carefully prearranges the events. He stages the scene to fulfill multiple messianic hopes:
Coming down the Mount of Olives
The colt
Entering the Eastern Gate
The crowd’s interpretation is that Jesus is the nationalistic military leader who will overthrow Rome and cries “hosanna” and waves palm branches: “deliver us!”
It is not clear that Jesus was against the Temple itself. It is his Father’s Temple, he asked those he healed to go and show themselves to the priests at the Temple.
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The death of Jesus is not the death of a person. It is the death of Israel.
People point to Isaiah 53: 3-9, but who was Isaiah talking about? Answer: a personification of Israel.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy (self-published, well-edited, well-reviewed by professional reviewers)
Jesus is a composite character of historical fiction and you can say that, but verse 9 does not fit at the point where you show, “he had done no violence.” The rebels attacked Rome’s Legion XII Fulminata.
Rev. Marcum,
You say, Like John the Baptist, Jesus was offering what the Temple offered but without the Temple.
Rev. Marcum
Yes, direct access to God’s forgiveness without the Temple [without Yom Kippur], without the cult or the priesthood. It is not accidental that the opposition to Jesus was centered in Temple authorities.
Steefen
Jesus may heal a person and then send them to the Temple, but it wasn’t Temple priests doing the healing.
Paraphrasing Douglas Michael King posting on the Facebook Group, “Daily atheist quote” (no spaces)
Titus is recorded in Josephus telling the Jews to “repent.” Just like Jesus did so often. When reading the gospels as part Roman satire, it becomes clear Titus wants the Jews to repent for rebelling against Vespasian, himself, Rome.
Jesus and Titus also had remarkably similar experiences in Gadara.
** you do not have permission to see this link ** tells the story of Jesus casting out a demon named “legion, for we are many” to a herd of swine that ran into the River Jordan and drowned.
In Josephus’s The War of the Jews, 4, 6, and 7, Josephus documents Titus in Gadara.
General Titus ran into a legion of Jewish militants called Sicariii
Steefen
The answer is becoming apparent where Josephus is setting up the equation:
Jewish militant rebels = demons in possession of Jews who need to repent to be saved!
Paraphrasing Douglas Michael King posting on the Facebook Group, “Daily atheist quote” (no spaces)
Continuing:
General Titus ran into a legion of Jewish militants called Sicariii who after being attacked with Roman darts began to run around like wild animals until they drowned in the River Jordan.
There were so many dead bodies [dead swine that were possessed by a legion of demons] floating in the river the army could not cross it.
Josephus said from one head this wickedness came forth. The first group affected a second group [possession] that became just as bad. No doubt, swine was the way the Flavians thought of the rebels.
Josephus speaks of a rebel leader hiding in the tombs: ** you do not have permission to see this link ** the demons in two possessed men come out from hiding in the tombs.
Robert
I’m familiar with the Roman interpretation of the legion of pigs in Mark 5.
See Mark 1-8 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) – Illustrated, May 21, 2002 by Joel Marcus
Paperback: $43.79
Published by Yale University Press
Steefen
Joel Marcus mentions an interpretation later put forward by Joseph Atwill and Michael King. That is–shall I politely say–questionable.
The following is what I would expect from mainstream scholars.
Stephen Simon Kimondo, Author of The Gospel of Mark and the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE: Jesus’ Story as a Contrast to the Events of the War
Jesus’ encounter with the Gerasene demoniac took place in a Gentile region of the Gerasenes, the other side of the sea (3:1) with respect to the Galilean villages and towns (2:1-4:35). Mark depicts the man with an unclean spirit as being in a pathetic condition. The man is possessed by a “legion,” an expression of an army of demons; he lives among tombs, an unclean place because of the dead bodies there; and he dwells in the soil inhabited by an army of unclean pigs. In additin, the demoniac also lives among tombs naked, as is implied by the expression that after his liberation from the legion, he was found clothed (5:15). Such description intensifies the man’s terrible condition. That the man lives among the tombs implies that he has been exiled from the world of the living, the community that makes human life possible, to live in the world of the dead. His restoration is a return to life from among the dead.
Steefen
A resurrection story.
Stephen Simon Kimondo
By driving out the legion, not only has Jesus freed the man from the demons, he has brought the man back to life. Horsley understands the Gerasene demoniac in terms of Roman oppression.
Steefen
The gospels are post-war literature.
Stephen Simon Kimondo
Horsley does not believe that Mark’s Gospel was written as a response to the Roman-Jewish War. I say that partly because his insight can be applied for the situation during and after the war.
Mark’s use of military language is so pervasive that his hearers would not miss the link between the legion story and the events of the war.
Steefen
Oh, not before the war; so, The Gospel of Mark is war literature and the other gospels are post-war literature.
Stephen Simon Kimondo
First, the word “legion” is a military term associated with the Roman imperial power that depended on its armies.
Steefen
Long story shortened: the parallel is not General Titus attacking a legion of sicarii with darts, then they run around like mad men, then drown, the parallel is that Jesus defeated a Roman legion with his spiritual authority. Jesus is a personification of post-War Jewish pride that it was the Romans who were the demonic (the wicked) non-kosher pigs. Jesus usurps the powers of General Vespasian and General Titus: he takes their armies and drowns them.
Conclusion: now, in this thread, we are familiar with a Jewish interpretation of the legion of pigs, not just a Roman interpretation of the legion of pigs.
Bart, which interpretation do you prefer?
Jesus sends the legion of demons out of a man into pigs who drowned in the sea.
Roman Interpretation:
Those who rebelled against Rome had a wicked spirit of militancy that led to death (they attacked the Roman legion Fulminata XII, they acted as if they had won independence from Rome, they fell into civil war (Jewish Civil War), they cut off food supplies throwing many in Jerusalem into starvation, they backed themselves into the Temple, at the Temple, they killed the high priests Jesus of Gamala and Ananus, …
The Sicarii were attacked with darts by Roman soldiers and trying to get away, they ran into the River Jordan and drowned.
The demons: the wicked Sicarii rebels against Rome (Josephus said demons are the spirits of the wicked.)
Jesus: General Titus
The Jewish Interpretation:
The man was possessed by a [Roman] legion of demons.
Jesus, with spiritual authority, defeats Roman domination enforced by its military. It is Rome that drowns itself in the Mediterranean Sea, not pigs rushing into a sea drowning themselves. Mark’s gospel is war/post-war literature, recounting the Roman attack on the Sicarii.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
The Jewish Interpretation
makes Jesus more dangerous (not so pro-Roman or Roman-neutral, actually a stance against Rome).
This pushes the Biblical Jesus closer to the historical Jesus of Galilee who rejected Vespasian’s diplomacy and was the cause of the Battle of Galilee which he lost.
Steefen said
Bart, which interpretation do you prefer?Jesus sends the legion of demons out of a man into pigs who drowned in the sea.
Roman Interpretation:
Those who rebelled against Rome had a wicked spirit of militancy that led to death (they attacked the Roman legion Fulminata XII, they acted as if they had won independence from Rome, they fell into civil war (Jewish Civil War), they cut off food supplies throwing many in Jerusalem into starvation, they backed themselves into the Temple, at the Temple, they killed the high priests Jesus of Gamala and Ananus, …
The Sicarii were attacked with darts by Roman soldiers and trying to get away, they ran into the River Jordan and drowned.
The demons: the wicked Sicarii rebels against Rome (Josephus said demons are the spirits of the wicked.)
Jesus: General Titus
The Jewish Interpretation:
The man was possessed by a [Roman] legion of demons.
Jesus, with spiritual authority, defeats Roman domination enforced by its military. It is Rome that drowns itself in the Mediterranean Sea, not pigs rushing into a sea drowning themselves. Mark’s gospel is war/post-war literature, recounting the Roman attack on the Sicarii.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
Bart
I’ve thought about the passage for many years and am still not sure what to make of it.
The demons are the “legion” and so represent Roman forces; they make life miserable for this man, presumably a Jew.
But Jesus has power over them and can drive them out from the man (representing Jews)? They enter swine (non-Jewish, since precisely not culture, therefore presumably pagan) and kill them (the non-Jews, the pagans).
All sorts of intriguing issues here.
Where are there herds of swine in Jewish territory?
Why would demons want to kill their hosts?
Is it that Jesus will save the Jews but destroy the pagans, or at least the demons that control the empire? I really don’t know.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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Marcus says there is a Markan concept of the Messiah as God’s holy warrior.
I say, the Jewish Interpretation does make Jesus more dangerous (a stance against Rome)
[God’s holy warrior].
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Marcus, in his commentary, also has the same sentiment that you have: the story has loose ends.
On p. 347, he says, “It is possible that the story or parts of it originally had nothing to do with Jesus.” He references the commentary: Saint Mark by D. E. Nineham without giving a reason. On p. 348, he wrote, “There is probably some sort of historical event at the root of this story,” without bringing up historical events in the Works of Josephus.
Problem: this removes the exorcism of legion out of Oral Tradition making it only a creation (with loose ends) of the gospel writer because 1) possibly the story or parts of it had nothing to do with Jesus and 2) there is a historical event at the root of this story [I’d say from the Jewish Revolt, not from the days of Pilate].
Thank you, Bart.