This is a very odd story.
Who is this naked guy, and why is he bound with chains and shackles among
tombs? Why does he identify himself as “Legion”? What’s Jesus, a Jewish
prophet, doing near a herd of unclean pigs? And what’s all this talk about
demons and exorcism in the first place?
In one sense, this
strange account is similar to other ancient exorcism stories. The first-century
Jewish historian Josephus claims to have witnessed an exorcism performed by a
man named Eleazar. When performing exorcisms, Eleazar “set a little way off a
cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man,
to overturn it; and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the
man” (Antiquities 2.5). The pigs in Luke’s story serve a similar
function; they are evidence that the exorcism was effective. But what do we in
the twenty-first century make of such reports? While some are skeptical and
think that if this man were living today we would diagnose him with a severe
mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia, others today continue to believe that
our world is populated with supernatural beings such as angels and demons and
that this man truly suffered from demonic possession.
Whether we interpret this
story literally or metaphorically, when we read it against the backdrop of the
Roman occupation of Israel in Jesus’ day, a couple of details stand out as
potentially significant. The term legion, for instance, referred to a
unit of soldiers in the Roman army, and swine are famously considered unclean
according to the Hebrew Scriptures (Leviticus 11:7-8). Some have therefore seen
this portrayal of Jesus’ casting a legion into unclean animals and driving them
into the sea as a critique of Roman imperialism. When read in this light, this
peculiar account of possession and exorcism is transposed into what is perhaps
a more relatable story of oppression and liberation.
|
