[2902] In this, as in all other instances, I can only indicate the critical results at which I have arrived. For the grounds, on which these conclusions are based, I must refer to the works which bear on the respective subjects.
[2903] St. Matt. viii. 28.
[2904] See Appendix XIII., Angelology and Demonology:' and Appendix XVI., Jewish Views about Demons and the Demonised.' Archdeacon Farrar has misunderstood the reference of Otho (Lex. Rabb. 146). The affections mentioned in Jer. Terum. 40 b are not treated as all demoniacs;' on the contrary, most of them, indeed all, with one exception, are expressly stated to be indications of mental disease (comp. also Chag. 3 b). The quotations of Gfrörer are, as too often, for a purpose, and untrustworthy, except after examination of the context.
[2905] St. Mark v. 3, 4.
[2906] Ware no clothes' (St. Luke viii. 27) may, however, refer only to the upper, not the under-garments.
[2907] St. Matt. viii. 28.
[2908] St. Mark v. 5.
[2909] In his endeavour to represent the demonised state as a species of mania, which was affected by the Presence of Christ, Archdeacon Farrar makes the following statement: The presence, the look, the voice of Christ, even before He addressed these sufferers, seems always to have calmed and overawed them.' But surely the very opposite of this is the fact, and the first effect of contact with Christ was not calm, but a paroxysm.
[2910] St. Mark v. 6; St. Luke viii. 28.
[2911] Both St. Mark and St. Luke have it: Jesus, Son of the Most High God.'
[2912] So substantially in St. Luke, as in St. Mark.
[2913] This is one of the difficulties mentioned by Dean Plumptre. Archdeacon Farrar seems to think that the man imagined 6000 devils were in possession of his soul.' His statement, that it was a thoroughly Jewish belief' that unclean spirits should pass into the swine, I must take leave to deny. One or another disease, such as rabies, were, indeed, attributed by some Rabbis to the agency of evil spirits - but there is no ground for either the general or the specific statement of Dr. Farrar as regards this Jewish belief.'
[2914] The common Rabbinic word for Legion is, indeed, Ligyon or Ligyona, but the expression (Ber. 51 a) {hebrew} (Istalginith) {hebrew} cannot mean anything else than a legion of hurtful spirits.
[2915] Ber. 51 a.
[2916] St. Mark v. 13.
[2917] The verb pitrpo is used both in the active sense of permitting, and in that of not hindering. As to the latter use of the word, comp. specially St. Matt. xix. 8; St. Mark x. 4.
[2918] This is the view of Archdeacon Farrar. The Gadara of which the poets Meleager and Philodemus were natives was, of course, not the scene of this miracle.
[2919] As this healing of the demonised may be regarded as the test-case' on the general question, I have entered more fully on the discussion. The arguments in favour of the general view taken of the demonised are so clearly and forcibly stated by Archbishop Trench (on The Miracles') and in The Speaker's Commentary' (N. Test. vol. i. p. 44), that it seems needless to reiterate them. To me at least it seems difficult to understand, how any reader of the narrative, who comes to it without preconceived opinions, can arrive at any other conclusion than that either the whole must be rejected as mythical, or else be received as implying that there was a demonised state, different from madness; that Jesus treated the present as such; bade the unclean spirits go out, and by His word banished them. The objection as to the morality of the destruction of the herd seems scarcely more weighty than the sneer of Strauss, that the devils must have been stupid in immediately destroying their new habitations. The question of morality cannot even be raised, since Jesus did not command - only not hinder - the devils entering into the swine, and as for the destruction of their new dwellings, so far from being stupid, it certainly did secure their undisturbed continuance in the country and the withdrawal of Jesus. All attempts to adapt this miracle to our modern experience, and the ideas based upon it, by leaving out or rationalising one or another trait in the narrative, are emphatically failures. We repeat: the history must be received as it stands - or wholly rejected. __________________________________________________________________