The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (4th ed.)

Among the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three first gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are especially remarkable: the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum, that of the Gadarenes possessed by a multitude of demons, and lastly, that of the lunatic whom the disciples were unable to cure.

In John the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle performed by Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into Galilee; but in Mark (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 ff.) the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum has this position. Jesus had produced a deep impression by his teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac who was present, cried out in the character of the demon that possessed him, that he would have nothing to do with him, that he knew him to be the Messiah who was come to destroy them—the demons; whereupon Jesus commanded the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which happened amid cries and convulsions on the part of the demoniac, and to the great astonishment of the people at the power thus exhibited by Jesus.

Here we might, with rationalistic commentators, represent the case to ourselves thus: the demoniac, during a lucid interval, entered the synagogue, was impressed by the powerful discourse of Jesus, and overhearing one of the audience speak of him as the Messiah, was seized with the idea that the unclean spirit by which he was possessed, could not maintain itself in the presence of the holy Messiah; whence he fell into a paroxysm, and expressed his awe of Jesus in the character of the demon. When Jesus perceived this, what was more natural than that he should make use of the man’s persuasion of his power, and command the demon to come out of him, thus laying hold of the maniac by his fixed idea; which according to the laws of mental hygiene, might very probably have a favourable effect. It is under this view that Paulus regards the occasion as that on which the thought of using his messianic fame as a means of curing such sufferers, first occurred to Jesus.42

But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon, speaking through the man, evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus, in the words, οἶδά δε τίς εἶ κ.τ.λ., not as information casually imparted by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature. Further, when Jesus cries, Hold thy peace! he refers to what the demon had just uttered concerning his messiahship; for it is related of Jesus that he suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him (Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 41), or because they [424]made him known (Mark iii. 12). If then Jesus believed that by enjoining silence on the demon he could hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, he must have been of opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something of it from the people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might learn it from the demoniac; and this accords with the fact, that at the time of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the Evangelists place the occurrence, no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah.

If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the Messiah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into his service the preternaturally heightened activity of the nervous system, which, in demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the presentient power, and produces a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such a man might very well discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the whole realm of spirits. The evangelical narrative, it is true, does not ascribe that knowledge to a power of the patient, but of the demon dwelling within him, and this is the only view consistent with the Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, in order to overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (ἀπολέσαι ἡμᾶς, comp. 1 John iii. 8; Luke x. 18 f.)43 and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of fire (Matt. xxv. 41; Rev. xx. 10)44: it followed of course that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them.45 This however might be deducted as an admixture of the opinion of the narrator, without damage to the rest of the narrative; but it must first be granted admissible to ascribe so extensive a presentient power to demoniacal subjects.

Now, as it is in the highest degree improbable that a nervous patient, however intensely excited, should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when he was not believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by himself; and as on the other hand this recognition of the Messiah by the demon so entirely agrees with the popular ideas;—we must conjecture that on this point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with historical truth, but has been attuned to those ideas.46 There was the more inducement to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on the part of the demons would redound to his glory. As when adults disowned him, praise was prepared for him out of the mouth of babes (Matt. xxi. 16)—as he was convinced that if men were silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke xix. 40): so it must appear fitting, that when his people whom he came to save would not acknowledge him, he should have the involuntary homage of demons, whose testimony, since they had only ruin to expect from him, must be impartial, and from their higher spiritual nature was to be relied on.

In the above history of the cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the simplest kind; the cure of the possessed Gadarenes on the contrary (Matt. viii. 28 ff.; Mark v. 1 ff.; Luke viii. 26 ff.) is a very complex one, for in this instance we have, together with several divergencies of the Evangelists, instead of one demon, many, and instead of a simple departure of these demons, their entrance into a herd of swine.

After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore, Jesus [425]meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among the tombs,47 and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself48 and others; according to Matthew, there were two. It is astonishing how long harmonists have resorted to miserable expedients, such as that Mark and Luke mention only one because he was particularly distinguished by wildness, or Matthew two, because he included the attendant who guarded the maniac,49 rather than admit an essential difference between the two narratives. Since this step has been gained, the preference has been given to the statement of the two intermediate Evangelists, from the consideration that maniacs of this class are generally unsociable; and the addition of a second demoniac by Matthew has been explained by supposing that the plurality of the demons spoken of in the narratives became in his apprehension a plurality of demoniacs.50 But the impossibility that two maniacs should in reality associate themselves, or perhaps be associated merely in the original legend, is not so decided as to furnish in itself a ground for preferring the narrative in Mark and Luke to that in Matthew. At least if it be asked, which of the two representations could the most easily have been formed from the other by tradition, the probability on both sides will be found equal.

For if according to the above supposition, the plurality of demons might give rise to the idea of a plurality of demoniacs, it may also be said, conversely: the more accurate representation of Matthew, in which a plurality of demoniacs as well as of demons was mentioned, did not give prominence to the specifically extraordinary feature in the case, namely, that one man was possessed by many demons; and as, in order to exhibit this, the narrative when reproduced must be so expressed as to make it clear that many demons inhabited one man, this might easily occasion by degrees the opposition of the demoniac in the singular to the plural number of the demons. For the rest, the introduction of Matthew’s narrative is concise and general, that of the two others circumstantially descriptive; another difference from which the greater originality of the latter has been deduced.51 But it is quite as probable that the details which Luke and Mark have in common, namely, that the possessed would wear no clothing, broke all fetters, and wounded himself with stones, are an arbitrary enlargement on the simple characteristic, exceeding fierce, which Matthew gives, with the consequence that no one could pass by that way,—as that the latter is a vague abridgment of the former.

This scene between Jesus and the demoniac or demoniacs opens, like the other, with a cry of terror from the latter, who, speaking in the person of the possessing demon, exclaims that he wishes to have nothing to do with Jesus, the Messiah, from whom he has to expect only torment. Two hypotheses have been framed, to explain how the demoniac came at once to recognize Jesus as the Messiah: according to one, Jesus was even then reputed to be the Messiah on the Peræan shore;52 according to the other, some of those who had come across the sea with Jesus had said to the man (whom on account of his fierceness no one could come near!) that the Messiah had just [426]landed at such a spot:53 but both are alike groundless, for it is plain that in this narrative, as in the former, the above feature is a product of the Jewish-Christian opinion respecting the relation of the demons to the Messiah.54 Here, however, another difference meets us. According to Matthew, the possessed, when they see Jesus, cry: What have we to do with thee? Art thou come to torment us?—according to Luke, the demoniac falls at the feet of Jesus and says beseechingly, Torment me not; and lastly, according to Mark, he runs from a distance to meet Jesus, falls at his feet and adjures him by God not to torment him. Thus we have again a climax: in Matthew, the demoniac, stricken with terror, deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus; in Luke, he accosts Jesus, when arrived, as a suppliant; in Mark, he eagerly runs to meet Jesus, while yet at a distance.

Those commentators who here take Mark’s narrative as the standard one, are obliged themselves to admit, that the hastening of a demoniac towards Jesus whom he all the while dreaded, is somewhat of a contradiction; and they endeavour to relieve themselves of the difficulty, by the supposition that the man set off to meet Jesus in a lucid moment, when he wished to be freed from the demon, but being heated by running,55 or excited by the words of Jesus,56 he fell into the paroxysm in which, assuming the character of the demon, he entreated that the expulsion might be suspended. But in the closely consecutive phrases of Mark, Seeing—he ran—and worshipped—and cried—and said, ἰδὼν—ἔδραμε—καὶ προσεκύνησε—καὶ κράξας—εἶπε· there is no trace of a change in the state of the demoniac, and the improbability of his representation subsists, for one really possessed, if he had recognized the Messiah at a distance, would have anxiously avoided, rather than have approached him; and even setting this aside, it is impossible that one who believed himself to be possessed by a demon inimical to God, should adjure Jesus by God, as Mark makes the demoniac do.57 If then his narrative cannot be the original one, that of Luke, which is only so far the simpler that it does not represent the demoniac as running towards Jesus and adjuring him, is too closely allied to it to be regarded as the nearest to the fact.

That of Matthew is without doubt the purest, for the terror-stricken question, Art thou come to destroy us before the time? is better suited to a demon, who, as the enemy of the Messiah’s kingdom, could expect no forbearance from the Messiah than the entreaty for clemency in Mark and Luke; though Philostratus, in a narrative which might be regarded as an imitation of this evangelical one, has chosen the latter form.58

From the course of the narratives hitherto, it would appear that the demons, in this as in the first narrative, addressed Jesus in the manner described, before anything occurred on his part; yet the two intermediate Evangelists go on to state, that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. When did Jesus do this? The most natural answer would be: before the man spoke to him. Now in Luke the address of the demoniac is so closely connected with the word προσέπεσε, he fell down, and then again with ἀνακράξας, having cried out, that it seems necessary to place the command of Jesus before the cry and the prostration, and hence to consider it as their cause. Yet Luke himself rather gives the mere sight of Jesus as the cause of [427]those demonstrations on the part of the demoniac, so that his representation leaves us in perplexity as to where the command of Jesus should find its place. The case is still worse in Mark, for here a similar dependence of the successive phrases thrusts back the command of Jesus even before the word ἔδραμε, he ran, so that we should have to imagine rather strangely that Jesus cried to the demon, ἔξελθε, Come out, from a distance. Thus the two intermediate Evangelists are in an error with regard either to the consecutive particulars that precede the command or to the command itself, and our only question is, where may the error be most probably presumed to lie?

Here Schleiermacher himself admits, that if in the original narrative an antecedent command of Jesus had been spoken of, it would have been given in its proper place, before the prayer of the demons, and as a quotation of the precise words of Jesus; whereas the supplementary manner in which it is actually inserted, with its abbreviated and indirect form (in Luke; Mark changes it after his usual style, into a direct address), is a strong foundation for the opinion that it is an explanatory addition furnished by the narrator from his own conjecture.59 And it is an extremely awkward addition, for it obliges the reader to recast his conception of the entire scene. At first the pith of the incident seems to be, that the demoniac had instantaneously recognized and supplicated Jesus; but the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting that the prayer of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his command in the first instance.

To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put by Jesus to the demon: What is thy name? In reply, a multitude of demons make known their presence, and give as their name, Legion. Of this episode Matthew has nothing. In the above addition we have found a supplementary explanation of the former part of the narrative: what if this question and answer were an anticipatory introduction to the sequel, and likewise the spontaneous production of the legend or the narrator? Let us examine the reasons that render it probable: the wish immediately expressed by the demons to enter the herd of swine, does not in Matthew presuppose a multitude of demons in each of the two possessed, since we cannot know whether the Hebrews were not able to believe that even two demons only could possess a whole herd of swine: but a later writer might well think it requisite to make the number of the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, what a herd is in relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in relation to men and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman legion, which term in Matt. xxvi. 53, is applied to angels, as here to demons. But without further considering this more precise estimate of the Evangelists, we must pronounce it inconceivable that several demons had set up their habitation in one individual.

For even if we had attained so far as to conceive how one demon by a subjection of the human consciousness could possess himself of a human organization, imagination would still fail us to conceive that many personal demons could at once possess one man. For as possession means nothing else, than that the demon constitutes himself the subject of the consciousness, and as consciousness can in reality have but one focus, one [428]central point: it is under every condition absolutely inconceivable that several demons should at the same time take possession of one man. Manifold possession could only exist in the sense of an alternation of possession by various demons, and not as here in that of a whole army of them dwelling at once in one man, and at once departing from him.

All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked: how can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men,—how, we say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish to enter into brutal forms? Every religion and philosophy which rejects the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of this passage of the demons into swine; and Olshausen is quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam’s ass in the Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block.60 This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation that we are here to suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely an influence of all the evil spirits on the swine collectively.

For the expression, εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, to enter into the swine, as it stands opposed to the expression, ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, to go out of the man, cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from banishment out of the country or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires;61 if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, than an impure animal ζῶον ἀκάθαρτον, like a swine?62 So far, therefore, it is possible that the Evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the Evangelists affirm an evident impossibility?

Paulus thinks that the Evangelists here as everywhere else identify the possessed men with the possessing demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in fact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their fixed idea, rushed upon the herd.63 It is true that Matthew’s expression ἀπῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, [429]as Paulus himself must admit, does the word εἰσελθόντες in the two other Evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine; but also Matthew has like them before the word ἀπῆλθον, they entered, the expression ἐξελθόντες οἱ δαίμονες, the demons coming out (sc. ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρώπων out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men.64 Thus our Evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their age; they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the manner they allege.

A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to have produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they compelled the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is reasonably asked, what then did the demons gain by entering into the animals, if they immediately destroyed the bodies of which they had taken possession, and thus robbed themselves of the temporary abode for which they had so earnestly entreated?65 The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying the swine, was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual result,66 is too far-fetched; the other conjecture that the demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water,67—even if it were not opposed as we have seen to the text,—would not suffice to explain the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to 2,000, according to Mark; or only a numerous herd, according to the general statement of Matthew. The expedient of supposing that in truth it was only a part of the herd that was drowned,68 has not the slightest foundation in the evangelical narrative. The difficulties connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection that the drowning of the herd would involve no slight injury to the owners, and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author.

The orthodox, bent on justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to enter into the swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac possible, and, they argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man may live;69 but they do not perceive that they thus, in a manner most inconsistent with their point of view, circumscribe the power of Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, it is supposed, that the swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus intended to punish them for their covetous transgression of the law,70 that he acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual good to higher objects, and by lightning, hail and inundations causes destruction to the property of many men,71 in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be absurd.72 But to adopt this expedient is to confound, in a way the most inadmissible on the orthodox system, Christ’s state of humiliation with his state of exaltation: it is to depart, in a spirit of mysticism, from the wise doctrine of Paul, that he was made under the law, γενόμενος ὑπὸ νόμον (Gal. iv. 4), and that he made himself of no reputation ἑαυτόν ἐκένωσε (Phil. ii. 7): it is to make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of humanity.

Nothing remains, therefore, but to take the naturalistic supposition of the [430]rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to represent the consequent destruction of the latter as something unexpected by Jesus, for which therefore he is not responsible:73 in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical account, which makes Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in the most decided manner.74 Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative.75 It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he liberated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them.76

Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which raged during his voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, either he himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then believed and reported to be the fact.77 K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the two events78 stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view.

Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained?

We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point, namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not destitute of information that will throw light on this also. Josephus tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the reality of his expulsions, he set a vessel of water in the neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was out of the man.79 In like manner it is narrated of Apollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to [431]depart with a visible sign, whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue that stood near at hand; which to the great astonishment of the spectators actually ensued in the very moment that the demon went out of the youth.80 If then the agitation of some near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a little (μικρὸν) removed from the exorciser and the patient, the possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other Evangelists, the fact that the herd of

swine was feeding a good way off (μακρὰν), thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the relation between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the history first considered; he must have succeeded in the most difficult cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present narrative, from the very commencement, with its startling description of the fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2), or in the demoniacal relapse in which the expelled demon returns with seven worse than himself (Matt. xii. 45); whence the number of the demons was here made, especially by Mark, to exceed by far the probable number of a herd. As in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue, the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive desire of life.

Only by this derivation of our narrative from the confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;—what wonder if the combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory features in the narrative?

The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has the peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain attempt the cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three synoptists (Matt. xvii. 14 ff.; Mark ix. 14 ff.; Luke ix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus having descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transfiguration, found his other disciples in perplexity, because they were unable to cure a possessed boy, whom his father had brought to them.

In this narrative also there is a gradation from the greatest simplicity in Matthew, to the greatest particularity of description in Mark; and here again this gradation has led to the conclusion that the narrative of Matthew is the farthest from the fact, and must be made subordinate to that of the two other Evangelists.81 In the introduction of the incident in Matthew, Jesus, having descended from the mountain, joins the multitude (ὄχλος), whereupon the father of the boy approaches, and on his knees entreats Jesus [432]to cure his child; in Luke, the multitude (ὄχλος) meet Jesus; lastly, in Mark, Jesus sees around the disciples a great multitude, among whom were scribes disputing with them; the people, when they see him, run towards him and salute him, he inquires what is the subject of dispute, and on this the father of the boy begins to speak. Here we have a climax in relation to the conduct of the people; in Matthew, Jesus appears to join them by accident; in Luke, they come to meet him; and in Mark, they run towards him to salute him. The last Evangelist has the singular remark: And straightway all the people, when they saw him, were greatly amazed. What could there possibly be so greatly to amaze the people in the arrival of Jesus with some disciples?

This remains, in spite of all the other means of explanation that have been devised, so thorough a mystery, that I cannot find so absurd as Fritzsche esteems it, the idea of Euthymius, that Jesus having just descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, some of the heavenly radiance which had there shone around him was still visible, as on Moses when he came down from Sinai (Exod. xxxiv. 29 f.). That among this throng of people there were scribes who arraigned the disciples on the ground of their failure, and involved them in a dispute, is in and by itself quite natural; but connected as it is with the exaggerations concerning the behaviour of the multitude, this feature also becomes suspicious, especially as the other two Evangelists have it not; so that if it can be shown how the narrator might be led to insert it by a mental combination of his own, we shall have sufficient warrant for renouncing it. Shortly before (viii. 11), on the occasion of the demand of a sign from Jesus by the Pharisees, Mark says, ἥρξαντο συζητεῖν αὐτῷ, they began to question with him, apparently on the subject of his ability to work miracles; and so here when the disciples show themselves unable to perform a miracle, he represents the scribes (the majority of whom belonged to the Pharisaic sect), as συζητοῦντας τοῖς μαθηταῖς, questioning with the disciples.

In the succeeding description of the boy’s state there is the same gradation as to particularity, except that Matthew is the one who alone has the expression σεληνιάζεται (is lunatic), which it is unfair to make a reproach to him,82 since the reference of periodical disorders to the moon was not uncommon in the time of Jesus.83 Mark alone calls the spirit that possessed the dumb boy (v. 17), and deaf (v. 25). The emission of inarticulate sounds by epileptics during their fits, might be regarded as the dumbness of the demon, and their incapability of noticing any words addressed to them, as his deafness.

When the father has informed Jesus of the subject of dispute and of the inability of the disciples to relieve the boy, Jesus breaks forth into the exclamation, O faithless and perverse generation, etc. On a comparison of the close of the narrative in Matthew, where Jesus, when his disciples ask him why they could not cast out the demon, answers; Because of your unbelief, and proceeds to extol the power of faith, even though no larger than a grain of mustard seed, as sufficient to remove mountains (v. 19 ff.): it cannot be doubted that in this expression of dissatisfaction Jesus apostrophizes his disciples, in whose inability to cast out the demon, he finds a proof of their still deficient faith.84 This concluding explanation of the want of power in the disciples, by their unbelief, Luke omits: and Mark not only imitates him in this, but also interweaves (v. 21–24), a by-scene between Jesus and the father, in which he first gives an amplified description of the symptoms of [433]the child’s malady, drawn partly from Matthew, partly from his own resources, and then represents the father, on being required to believe, as confessing with tears the weakness of his faith, and his desire that it may be strengthened.

Taking this together with the mention of the disputative scribes, we cannot err in supposing the speech of Jesus, O faithless generation, etc., in Mark and also in Luke to refer to the people, as distinguished from the disciples; in Mark, more particularly to the father, whose unbelief is intimated to be an impediment to the cure, as in another case (Matt. ix. 2), the faith of relatives appears to further the desired object. As however both the Evangelists give this aspect to the circumstances, because they do not here give the explanation of the inefficiency of the disciples by their unbelief, together with the declaration concerning the power of faith to remove mountains: we must inquire whether the connexion in which they place these discourses is more suitable than this in which they are inserted by Matthew. In Luke the declaration: If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, etc. (neither he nor Mark has, Because of your unbelief), occurs xvii. 5, 6, with only the slight variation, that instead of the mountain a tree is named; but it is here destitute of any connexion either with the foregoing or the following context, and has the appearance of a short stray fragment, with an introduction, no doubt fictitious (of the same kind as Luke xi. 1, xiii. 23), in the form of an entreaty from the disciples: Lord, increase our faith. Mark gives the sentence on the faith which removes mountains as the moral of the history of the cursed fig tree, where Matthew also has it a second time.

But to this history the declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see; and if we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion on which it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the original one, for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the disciples in an attempted cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more effective by other additions, beside this episode with the father; he tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was as one dead, insomuch that many said, he is dead; but that Jesus, taking him by the hand, as he does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 25), lifts him up and restores him to life.

After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a brief notice of the astonishment of the people; but the two first synoptists pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon? In Matthew the immediate reply of Jesus accounts for their incapability by their unbelief; but in Mark, his answer is, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting, which Matthew also adds after the discourse on unbelief and the power of faith. This seems to be an unfortunate connexion of Matthew’s; for if fasting and praying were necessary for the cure, the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, could not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest faith.85 Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the inability of the disciples can be made consistent by the observation, that fasting and prayer are means of strengthening faith;86 or whether we are to suppose with Schleiermacher an association of two originally unrelated passages, we will not here attempt to decide. That such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on the part of the exorcist should have effect on the possessed, has been held surprising: it has been thought with Porphyry,87 that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has [434]been supposed that the προσευχὴ καὶ νηστεία, prayer and fasting, were prescribed to the demoniac as a means of making the cure radical.88 But this is evidently in contradiction to the text.

For if fasting and praying on the part of the patient were necessary for the success of the cure, it must have been gradual and not sudden, as all cures are which are attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and as this is plainly enough implied to be by the words, καὶ ἐθεραπεύθη ὁ παῖς ἀπὸ τῆς ὥρας ἐκείνης, and the child was cured from that very hour, in Matthew, and the word ἰάσατο, he cured, placed between ἐπετίμησε κ.τ.λ. Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and ἀπέδωκε κ.τ.λ. delivered him again to his father, in Luke. It is true Paulus turns the above expression of Matthew to his advantage, for he understands it to mean that from that time forward the boy, by the application of the prescribed discipline, gradually recovered. But we need only observe the same form of expression where it elsewhere occurs as the final sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced of the impossibility of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story of the woman who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22) καὶ ἐσώθη ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ ὥρας ἐκείνης, this will hardly be translated, et exinde mulier paulatim servabatur: it can only mean: servata est (et servatam se præbuit) ab illo temporis momento. Another point to which Paulus appeals as a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to be consummated by degrees, is the expression of Luke, ἀπέδωκεν αὐτὸν τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, he delivered him again to his father, which, he argues, would have been rather superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a recommendation to special care.

But the more immediate signification of ἀποδίδωμι is not to deliver or give up, but to give back; and therefore in the above expression the only sense is: puerum, quem sanandum acceperat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy who had fallen into the hands of a strange power—of the demon—was restored to the parents as their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to take the expression ἐκπορεύεται, goeth out (Matt. v. 21), in the closer signification of a total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18)! Thus in this case, as in every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was protracted through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously completed by one miracle: hence the fasting and prayer cannot be regarded as a prescription for the patient.

With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2 Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme difficulty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here insufficient.

Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a [435]dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already sufficiently examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with Beelzebub: as also the cure of the woman who was bowed down, in our general considerations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed daughter of the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv. 22 ff.; Mark vii. 25 ff.) has no further peculiarity than that it was wrought by the word of Jesus at a distance: a point of which we shall speak later.

According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel the demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that cures of this kind, although they contributed more than anything else to impress the multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the easiest in themselves, and even De Wette sanctions a psychological explanation of the cures of demoniacs, though of no others.89 With these opinions we cannot but agree; for if we regard the real character of the demoniacal state as a species of madness accompanied by a convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that psychical and nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical influence;—an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a prophet, and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the requisite conditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these states, according as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed itself corporeally, and the disturbance of the nervous system has become more or less habitual, and shared by the rest of the organization.