Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (779 page)
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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 oat 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 ;* 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 TTvevfta dudOaprov^ than an impure animal £wov andOaprov, like a swine ?f 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 tact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their iixed idea, rushed upon the hcrd.f It is true that Matthew’s expression anT\Wov et? TOVI; ^oipot’c, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, docs
the word eloe^Qov-eg in the two other evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine ; but also Matthew has like them before the word diri}X6ov, they entered, the expression K&XOovret; ol <5aiju.oi>£c, the demons coming out (sc. £K TWV dvOp&TTMv out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men. § 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.
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 ;* 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 TTvevfta dudOaprov^ than an impure animal £wov andOaprov, like a swine ?f 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 tact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their iixed idea, rushed upon the hcrd.f It is true that Matthew’s expression anT\Wov et? TOVI; ^oipot’c, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, docs
the word eloe^Qov-eg in the two other evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine ; but also Matthew has like them before the word diri}X6ov, they entered, the expression K&XOovret; ol <5aiju.oi>£c, the demons coming out (sc. £K TWV dvOp&TTMv out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men. § 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 ? || The conjecture, that the design of the demons in destroying the * Clem. Horn. ix. 10. f Fritzsche, in Matth. p. 322. According to Kisenmenger, 2, 447 IV., the Jews held that demons generally had a predileetion for impure places, and =- T»n,,,t 1;,,!,„„! f x 2. (Wetstein) we find this observation : Animt i’lolotru.rttM, qua “‘-><<«-•Winer, bibl. I’.ualw..
MIRACLES OF JESUS-DEMONIACS.swine was to incense the minds of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual result,* 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, f-even if” it were not opposed as wejiave 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,}: 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 O
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 ;§ 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, || that he acted with divine authority, which often sacrifices individual o;ood to higher objects, and bv liffhtninar, •
1 T ‘
1
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hail and inundations causes destruction to the property ol many men,T in which case, to accuse God of injustice would be absurd.** 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, yevo-[isvog v-b vofiov (Gal. iv. 4.), and that he made himself of no reputation eav-ov KK&VUOE (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 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 :ft 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.Jt 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. §§ It must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more justly, for when he lib* Olshausen, S. 307. f Paulus, S. 474. { Paulus, S. 485 ; Winer, ut sup. % Olsliausen, ut sup. || Ibid. f Ullmann. tiber die Unsuudlichkeit Jesu, in seinen Studien, 1, ], S. ol f.
it Paulas.
Jf Ullmann.
§§ E. g. AVoolston, Disc. I
Jf Ullmann.
§§ E. g. AVoolston, Disc. I
** Olsliausen. ut sup. n. 32 ff. r 472
THE LIFE OF JESUS.
THE LIFE OF JESUS.
crated some fish from the net, he indemnified the fishermen who had taken them.*
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 rased durinar his O
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voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, cither 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.tK. 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 events^ 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. Joscphus 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 sat 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. § In like manner it is narrated of Appollonius of Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to depart with a visible sign whereupon the demon entreated that he might overturn a statue “- «>•»- r,*.
„** Pvthaa. no. 36, ed. Kiesslmg.
f In the Abhandlung iiber
Ge-•-•-->. M,,«0,,m. i. 3. s. 410 ff.
Ge-•-•-->. M,,«0,,m. i. 3. s. 410 ff.
MIRACLES OP JESUS-DEMONIACS.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.* 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 (junpov} removed from the exerciser 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 (juucpav), 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 ralation 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 wkom 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 ?
being only a little (junpov} removed from the exerciser 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 (juucpav), 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 ralation 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 wkom 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. 14ff.; Lukeix. 37 ff.) unanimously state that Jesus, having descended with his three most confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transtip-m-ntinn frmn/ITHE LIFE OF JESUS.
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, “besides 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 lie 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 (joeth not out but by prayer and fading, 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.* 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 :\ or whether we are to suppose with Schleicr-macher 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, J that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has been supposed that the ^po-
child loas
cured from
that
veryhour,in
Matthew,and the word Idaaro he cured, placed between KireTifirjas K. T. A. Jesas rebuked the unclean spirit, and amduKE K. T. A. 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 pro* Schleiermacher, S. 150.
T Kostcr, Immanuel, 8. 197; Fritzsche, in loc.
J Da ••*”•>
*”••*
«•:„„,is
1f)1.S I’aulus, cxeg. Handb. 2, 8
it has been thought with Porphyry, J that it would rather be to the purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it has been supposed that the ^po-
child loas
cured from
that
veryhour,in
Matthew,and the word Idaaro he cured, placed between KireTifirjas K. T. A. Jesas rebuked the unclean spirit, and amduKE K. T. A. 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 pro* Schleiermacher, S. 150.
T Kostcr, Immanuel, 8. 197; Fritzsche, in loc.
J Da ••*”•>
*”••*
«•:„„,is
1f)1.S I’aulus, cxeg. Handb. 2, 8
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