18. Mark 5:1-13: Jesus Takes on the Empire

The Second Campaign Begins

If the disciples thought braving the sea was frightening, just wait till they get across the sea to Gentile land. Scarcely having caught their breath, a new and terrifying sight comes toward them. A cemetery-dwelling, demon-possessed man of uncommon strength approaches. In Isaiah God condemns those “who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine’s flesh” (Isa. 65:4). It is an unclean space, a place of death. Eugene Boring notes: “The man here is a picture of death, of one already banished from the land of the living, from human community that makes human life possible.” (Eugene M. Boring, Mark. NTL. [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006], 150.)

In the first campaign Jesus began with an exorcism in a synagogue (1:21-28). He begins the second campaign with an exorcism as well.

Comparison with the earlier exorcism story shows their close parallels (Myers, Say to This Mountain,58).

Conflict

          Capernaum: “Have you come to destroy us?” = scribal authority

Gerasa: They begged him not to expel them from the country = Roman military occupation

Demoniac’s challenge

          Capernaum: “What do you want with us, Jesus . . . Holy One of God!”

          Gerasa: “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son the Most High God/”

Jesus’ Command

          Capernaum: Come out of him!

          Gerasa: Come out of the man

Demon’s Defeat

          Capernaum: the unclean spirit . . . went out of him

          Gerasa: the unclean spirits came out

Crowd Reaction:

Capernaum: they were astonished

Gerasa: they were afraid

This time the exorcism is  in Gentile territory and this account is peppered with military language and imagery. Myers notes the following:

-“Legion” (Mark uses the Latin word), the name the demons give, referred in Mark’s world to a large unit of Roman soldiers.

-A wild boar was the symbol on the standard of the Roman legion stationed at this time in Palestine.

-Agele at 5:11, translated “herd,” was not ordinarily used of pigs but would have been commonly applied to a disorganized group of military recruits.

-The NRSV renders the beginning of 5:13, “So he gave them permission,” but the word is a standard military command, like our “Dismissed.”

-Later in 5:13, the swine “charge” down the steep bank and into the sea—again, the verb is commonly used in military contexts. (Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Marks Story of Jesus [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988], 191)

Josephus tells about a rebellion in Gerasa in the late 60s. Emperor Vespasian dispatched punitive expedition that destroyed the town, killing 1000 citizens. One leader of the Jewish revolt was Simon bar Giora, who hailed from Gerasa. Now Gerasa is nearly 40 miles from the  the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Other manuscripts have Gergesenes or Gadarenes as the site but they too are far from the coast. Though Gerasa is all wrong geographically, it may be perfect to symbolize Roman violence and Jewish resistance.

Gerd Theissen notes that for Mark’s earliest hearers, this story would have symbolically satisfied a desire to drive Roman legions into the sea like pigs, and would have done so in a way that hid such meanings from Roman readers (cited in Placher, Mark:1624-1632).

In this Gentile land, occupied by Roman Legions, Jesus ventured to engage the power of death the empire bred in their subject peoples in the person of the demoniac. And he defeated them, dispelled them in disarray to same fate Egypt’s army met in the sea at the first Exodus!

Mark has shown now how Jesus triumphed over the two great powers that concerned Israel: the politico-religious authorities within it and the great imperial power who controlled it from without. As Jesus continues this campaign on behalf of his New Exodus movement these two stories are benchmarks that pose his power against that of his enemies.