Chapter IX: Miracles of Jesus (1)

§ 91.

JESUS CONSIDERED AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES.

That the Jewish people in the time of Jesus expected miracles from the Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses and the greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the national legend attributed miracles of all kinds: by later Jewish writings it is rendered probable; [1165] by our gospels, certain. When Jesus on one occasion had (without natural means) cured a blind and dumb demoniac, the people were hereby led to ask: Is not this the son of David? (Matt. xii. 23), a proof that a miraculous power of healing was regarded as an attribute of the Messiah. John the Baptist, on hearing of the works of Jesus (ἔργα), sent to him with the inquiry, Art thou he that should come (ἐρχόμενος)? Jesus, in proof of the affirmative, merely appealed again to his miracles (Matt. xi. 2 ff. parall.). At the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated by Jesus in Jerusalem, many of the people believed on him, saying, in justification of their faith, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done? (John vii. 31).

But not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the Messiah should work miracles in general,—the particular kinds of miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in accordance with Old Testament types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17): the same was expected, as the rabbins explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings vi.): the Messiah also was to open the eyes of the blind. By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been raised (1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv.): hence to the Messiah also power over death could not be wanting. [1166] Among the prophecies, Isa. xxxv. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this portion of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times: Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These words, it is true, stand in Isaiah in a figurative connexion, but they were early understood literally, as is evident from the circumstance that Jesus describes his miracles to the messengers of John (Matt. xi. 5) with an obvious allusion to this prophetic passage.

Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when, according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38, xvi. 1, parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him; when, after the violent expulsion of the traders and money-changers from the temple, the Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an assumption of authority (John ii. 18); and when the people in the synagogue at Capernaum, on his requiring faith in himself as the sent of God, made it a condition of this faith that he should show them a sign (John vi. 30).

According to the gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by his cotemporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of the evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles; not only did his disciples after his death especially call to their own remembrance and to that of the Jews the δυνάμεις (miracles) σημεῖα (signs) and τέρατα (wonders) wrought by him (Acts ii. 22; comp. Luke xxiv. 19): but the people also were, even during his life, so well satisfied with this aspect of his character that many believed on him in consequence (John ii. 23; comp. vi. 2), contrasted him with the Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed that he would not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 31). The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately after important miracles, e.g. after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii. 38; and after the feeding of the five thousand, John vi. 30. This position indeed creates a difficulty, for how the Jews could deny to these two acts the character of proper signs it is not easy to understand; the power of expelling demons, in particular, being rated very highly (Luke x. 17). The sign demanded on these two occasions must therefore be more precisely defined according to Luke xi. 16 (comp. Matt xvi. 1; Mark viii. 11), as a sign from heaven, σημεῖον ἐξ οὐρανοῦ, and we must understand it to be the specifically messianic sign of the Son of Man in heaven, σημεῖον τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ (Matt. xxiv. 30). If however it be preferred to sever the connexion between these demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that Jesus may have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile Pharisees, who had not happened to be eyewitnesses of any of them, may still have desired to see one for themselves.

That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses to comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself prove that he might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other cases, when they appeared to him to be more seasonable. When in relation to the demand of the Pharisees, Mark viii. 12, he declares that there shall be no sign given to this generation τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῇ, or Matt xii. 39 f., xvi. 4; Luke xi. 29 f., that there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, it would appear that by this generation, γενεὰ, which in Matthew and Luke he characterizes as evil and adulterous, he could only mean the Pharisaic part of his cotemporaries who were hostile to him, and that he intended to declare, that to these should be granted either no sign at all, or merely the sign of Jonas, that is, as he interprets it in Matthew, the miracle of his resurrection, or as modern expositors think, the impressive manifestation of his person and teaching. But if we take the words οὐ δοθήσεται αὐτῇ in the sense that his enemies were to obtain no sign from him, we encounter two difficulties: on the one hand, things must have chanced singularly if among the many miracles wrought by Jesus in the greatest publicity, not one fell under the observation of Pharisees (moreover Matt. xii. 24 f. parall. contradicts this, for there Pharisees are plainly supposed to be present at the cure of the blind and dumb demoniac): on the other hand, if signs personally witnessed are here intended, the enemies of Jesus certainly did not see his resurrection, or his person after he was risen. Hence the above declaration cannot well mean merely that his enemies should be excluded from an actual sight of his miracles. There is yet another expedient, namely, to suppose that the expression οὐ δοθήσεται αὐτῇ refers to a sign which should conduce to the good of the subject of which it is predicated: but all the miracles of Jesus happened equally with his original mission and his resurrection at once for the benefit of that subject and the contrary, namely, in their object for its benefit, in their result not so. Nothing therefore remains but to understand the γενεὰ of the cotemporaries of Jesus generally, and the δίδοσθαι to refer to observation generally, mediate or immediate: so that thus Jesus would appear to have here repudiated the working of miracles in general.

This is not very consistent with the numerous narratives of miracles in the gospels, but it accords fully with the fact that in the preaching and epistles of the apostles, a couple of general notices excepted (Acts ii. 22, x. 38 f.), the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown, and everything is built on his resurrection: on which the remark may be ventured that it could neither have been so unexpected nor could it have formed so definite an epoch, if Jesus had previously raised more than one dead person, and had wrought the most transcendent miracles of all kinds. This then is the question: Ought we, on account of the evangelical narratives of miracles, to explain away that expression of Jesus, or doubt its authenticity; or ought we not, rather, on the strength of that declaration, and the silence of the apostolic writings, to become distrustful of the numerous histories of miracles in the gospels?

This can only be decided by a close examination of these narratives, among which, for a reason that will be obvious hereafter, we give the precedence to the expulsions of demons.

§ 92.

THE DEMONIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY.

While in the fourth gospel, the expressions δαιμόνιον ἔχειν to have a demon, and δαιμονιζόμενος, being a demoniac, appear nowhere except in the accusations of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to μαίνεσθαι, to be mad (viii. 48 f., x. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30; Matt. xi. 18), the synoptists may be said to represent demoniacs as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. When they describe the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, they give the demoniacs δαιμονιζομένους [1167] a prominent place among the sufferers whom Jesus healed (Matt iv. 24; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a chief part (Matt. viii. 16 f.; Mark i. 39, iii. 11 f.; Luke vi. 18). The power to cast out devils is before anything else imparted by Jesus to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7; Luke ix. 1), who to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13).

Besides these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea of their peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at Capernaum is given by the Evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark i. 23 ff.; Luke iv. 33 ff.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of the self-consciousness, causing the possessed individuals to speak in the person of the demon, which appears also in other demoniacs, as for example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. parall.); on the other hand, spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This spasmodic state has, in the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt. xvii. 14 ff. parall.), reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, often in dangerous places, cries, gnashing of the teeth, and foaming, are known symptoms of that malady. [1168] The other aspect of the demoniacal state, namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amounts in the demoniac of Gadara, by whose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of these evil spirits, speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with attacks of maniacal fury against himself and others. [1169] Moreover, not only the insane and epileptic, but the dumb (Matt. ix. 32; Luke xi. 14; Matt. xii. 22, the dumb demoniac is also blind) and those suffering from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke xiii. 11 ff.), are by the evangelists designated more or less precisely as demoniacs.

The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the gospels and shared by their authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit (δαιμόνιον, πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον), or several have taken possession of them (hence their condition is described by the expressions δαιμόνιον ἔχειν, δαιμονίζεσθαι, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak through their organs (thus Matt. viii. 31, οἱ δαίμονες παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν λέγοντες), and put their limbs in motion at pleasure (thus Mark ix. 20, τὸ πνεῦμα ἐσπάραξεν αὐτὸν), until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from the patient (ἐκβάλλειν, ἐξέρχεσθαι). According to the representation of the Evangelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true that when, as a means of liberating the possessed, he addresses the demons within them (as in Mark ix. 25; Matt. viii. 32; Luke iv. 35), we might with Paulus [1170] regard this as a mode of entering into the fixed idea of these more or less insane persons, it being the part of a physical physician, if he would produce any effect, to accommodate himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be convinced of its groundlessness. But this is not all; Jesus, even in his private conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks repeatedly on a supposition of its truth; as e.g. in Matt. x. 8, where he gives the commission, Cast out devils; in Luke x. 18 ff.; and especially in Matt. xvii. 21, parall., where he says, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. Again, in a purely theoretical discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate circle of his disciples, Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea of his cotemporaries of the departure of the unclean spirit, his wandering in the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43 ff.). With these facts before us, the attempt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, such as Winer, [1171] to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on demoniacal possession, but merely accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer examination of the last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought of a mere accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators have sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by interpreting it figuratively, or even as a parable, [1172] in every explanation of which (if we set aside such as that given by Olshausen [1173] after Calmet), the essential idea is, that superficial conversion to the cause of Jesus is followed by a relapse into aggravated sin. [1174] But, I would fain know, what justifies us in abandoning the literal interpretation of this discourse? In the propositions themselves there is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable by the general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else presents moral relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions; on the contrary, whenever he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil spirits, e.g. in Matt. xvii. 21, he evidently intends to be understood literally. But does the context favour a figurative interpretation? Luke (xi. 24 ff.) places the discourse in question after the defence of Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out devils by Beelzebub: a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have seen, but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak literally—of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the above accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of a sign, together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the application, Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. This addition, it is true, gives the discourse a figurative application to the moral and religious condition of his cotemporaries, but only thus: Jesus intended the foregoing description of the expelled and returning demon literally, though he made a secondary use of this event as an image of the moral condition of his cotemporaries. At any rate Luke, who has not the same addition, gives the discourse of Jesus, to use the expression of Paulus, as a warning against demoniacal relapses. That the majority of theologians in the present day, without decided support on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction to Luke, advocate the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears to be founded in an aversion to ascribe to Jesus so strongly developed a demonology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not to be avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In Matt. xii. 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the devil, in a manner which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely figurative: but above all, the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18–20, is of such a nature as to compel even Paulus, who is generally so fond of lending to the hallowed personages of primitive Christian history the views of the present age, to admit that the kingdom of Satan was not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he believed in actual demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus here speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who themselves, according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his words are not to be explained as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their belief that the spirits are subject unto them, and describes their capability of curing the malady in question, as a power over the power of the enemy. [1175] In answer also to the repugnance of those with whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal possession is inconsistent, to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theologian justly observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false idea, prevalent among his cotemporaries, if it happen to lie out of his peculiar sphere of thought. [1176]

Some light is thrown on the evangelical conception of the demoniacs, by the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less cotemporary. The general idea that evil spirits had influence on men, producing melancholy, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among the Greeks [1177] as well as the Hebrews; [1178] but the more distinct idea that evil spirits entered into the human body and took possession of its members was not developed until a considerably later period, and was a consequence of the dissemination of the Oriental, particularly the Persian pneumatology among both Hebrews and Greeks. [1179] Hence we find in Josephus the expressions δαιμόνια τοῖς ζῶσιν εἰσδυόμενα, [1180] ἐνκαθεζόμενα [1181] (demons entering into the living, settling themselves there), and the same ideas in Lucian [1182] and Philostratus. [1183]

Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated in the gospels, except that they belong to the household of Satan (Matt. xii. 26 ff. parall.), whence the acts of one of them are directly ascribed to Satan (Luke xiii. 16). But from Josephus, [1184] Justin Martyr, [1185] and Philostratus, [1186] with whom rabbinical writings agree, [1187] we learn that these demons were the disembodied souls of wicked men; and modern theologians have not scrupled to attribute this opinion on their origin to the New Testament also. [1188] Justin and the rabbins more nearly particularize, as spirits that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who allied themselves to the daughters of men; the rabbins further add the souls of those who perished in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel; [1189] and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for, according to them also, these souls of the giants, having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies. [1190] As, however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it; [1191] while Josephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, and of the great criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only engendered by the union of the Græco-roman culture with the Hebraic: the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like,—all names for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. Now, the combination of these Græco-roman ideas with the above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to have been the source of the demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of the later rabbins; but it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to the New Testament. Rather, as this Græcised form of the doctrine in question is nowhere positively put forth by the evangelical writers, while on the contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household of Satan: there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from the unmixedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the synoptical gospels on all other subjects (apart from Christian modifications); namely, that we must attribute to them the pure and original Jewish conception of the doctrine of demons.

It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the authority of Jesus and the Evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, especially since the time of Semler, [1192] in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the evangelical supposition of supernatural causes to the prejudices of that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, insanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence: and the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the knowledge of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of facts and analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions naturally: partly that the contradiction, involved in the idea of demoniacal possession, is beginning to be at least dimly perceived. For—apart from the difficulties which the notion of the existence of a devil and demons entails—whatever theory may be held as to the relation between the self-consciousness and the bodily organs, it remains absolutely inconceivable how the union between the two could be so far dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an entrance, thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place. Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with enlightened eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones, there results the contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural causes, must in the time of Jesus have been caused supernaturally.

In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions of one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the New Testament, Olshausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both that all states of the kind in question have now a natural cause, and that they had in the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause. With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? [1193] We answer, they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as their conductor would very properly endeavour to set them right: whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those inmates would not be at all affected. With respect to the time of Jesus, this theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even by the Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference in their origin: for example, one who had become insane through an organic disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of the tongue, was not looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause of whose condition was more or less psychical. Of such a distinction in the time of Jesus, Olshausen is manifestly bound to give us instances. Whence could the Jews of that age have acquired their knowledge of the latent natural causes of these conditions—whence the criterion by which to distinguish an insanity or imbecility originating in a malformation of the brain, from one purely psychical? Was not their observation limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest character? The nature of their distinctions seems to be this: the state of an epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his delirium, especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea respecting himself he speaks in the person of another, seems to point to an external influence which governs him; and consequently, so soon as the belief in demoniacal possession existed among the people, all such states were referred to this cause, as we find them to be in the New Testament: whereas in dumbness and gouty contraction or lameness, the influence of an external power is less decidedly indicated, so that these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a possessing demon, at another not so. Of the former case we find an example in the dumb persons already mentioned, Matt. ix. 32, xii. 22, and in the woman, who was bowed down, Luke xiii. 11; of the latter, in the man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, Mark vii. 32 ff., and in the many paralytics mentioned in the gospels. The decision for the one opinion or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then the Jews, and with them the Evangelists, referred the two chief classes of these conditions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modern science, the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural.

But the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted mediation between the Judaical demonology of the New Testament and the intelligence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on his own mind—an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of personal demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the present age, endeavours to resolve the host of demons, which in the New Testament are regarded as distinct individuals, into a system of emanations, forming the continuity of a single substance, which indeed sends forth from itself separate powers, not, however, to subsist as independent individuals, but to return as accidents into the unity of the substance. This cast of thought we have already observed in the opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it appears still more decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons are too repugnant, and as Olshausen himself expresses it, [1194] the comprehension of two subjects in one individual is too inconceivable to find a ready acceptation. Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a kingdom of evil and darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince is given to it, its demons are understood to be mere effluxes and operations, by which the evil principle manifests itself. But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen’s opinion concerning demons is this: it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ;—hence he understands the question, What is thy name? (Mark v. 9) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to the man, [1195] plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the right answer—the one expected by Jesus.

If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen’s opinion, impersonal powers, that which guides them and determines their various functions is the law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation to the kingdom of light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally, the closer must be the connexion between him and the kingdom of evil, and the closest conceivable connexion—the entrance of the power of darkness into the personality of the man, i.e. possession—must always occur in the most wicked. But historically this is not so: the demoniacs in the gospels appear to be sinners only in the sense that all sick persons need forgiveness of sins; and the greatest sinners (Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The common opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is true that this opinion also, as we find for instance, in the Clementine Homilies, firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects himself to the ingress of the demon; [1196] but here there is yet scope for the individual will of the demon, who often, from motives not to be calculated, passes by the worst, and holds in chase the less wicked. [1197] On the contrary, if the demons are considered, as by Olshausen, to be the actions of the power of evil in its relation to the power of goodness; this relation being regulated by laws, everything arbitrary and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs that theologian some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to his theory the possessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from the apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position that the state of demoniacal possession does not appear in those who entirely give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal unity of disposition, but only in those in whom there exists a struggle against sin. [1198] In that case, however, the above state, being reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must appear far more frequently; every violent inward struggle must manifest itself under this form, and especially those who ultimately give themselves up to evil must, before arriving at this point, pass through a period of conflict, that is of possession. Olshausen therefore adds a physical condition, namely, that the preponderance of evil in the man must have weakened his corporeal organization, particularly the nervous system, before he can become susceptible of the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the nervous system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that the state which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its proper source, is thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that therefore the argument defeats its own object? Hence Olshausen quickly turns away from this side of the question, and lingers on the comparison of the δαιμονιζόμενος (demoniac) with the πονηρὸς (wicked); whereas he ought rather to compare the former with the epileptic and insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be thrown on the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the ground of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders the discussion concerning the demoniacs one of the most useless which Olshausen’s work contains. [1199]

Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New Testament conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern ideas;—let us rather, in relation to this subject, understand the statements of the New Testament as simply as they are given, without allowing our investigations to be restricted by the ideas therein presented, which belonged to the age and nation of its writers. [1200]

The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have been the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady was not supposed to be, as in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such as an impure fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a self-conscious being; hence it was treated, not mechanically or chemically, but logically, i.e. by words. The demon was enjoined to depart; and to give effect to this injunction, it was coupled with the names of beings who were believed to have power over demons. Hence the main instrument against demoniacal possession was conjuration, [1201] either in the name of God, or of angels, or of some other potent being, e.g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 13), with certain forms which were said to be derived from Solomon. [1202] In addition to this, certain roots, [1203] stones, [1204] fumigations and amulets [1205] were used, in obedience to traditions likewise believed to have been handed down from Solomon. Now as the cause of the malady was not seldom really a psychical one, or at least one lying in the nervous system, which may be acted on to an incalculable extent by moral instrumentality, this psychological treatment was not altogether illusory! for by exciting in the patient the belief that the demon by which he was possessed, could not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it might often effect the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that the Jewish exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 27). But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and without the appliance of any further means, he expelled the demons by his word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the gospels inform us, we are now about to examine.

§ 93.

CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMONS BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY.

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. [1206]

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 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.) [1207] and to cast the devil and his angels into the lake of fire (Matt. xxv. 41; Rev. xx. 10) [1208]: it followed of course that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on them. [1209] 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. [1210] 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 meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among the tombs, [1211] and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against himself [1212] 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, [1213] 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. [1214] 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. [1215] 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; [1216] 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 landed at such a spot: [1217] 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. [1218] 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, [1219] or excited by the words of Jesus, [1220] 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. [1221] 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. [1222]

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 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. [1223] 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 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.