Marginal Christianity

Flight and alarm accompany Jesus’ exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac. This is the rest of the story. The swine herders race everywhere, probably to the herd’s owners, to tell them this incredible news. Not surprisingly, inquiring minds want to know so “people” (v.14) come to see for themselves. When they saw the former demoniac sitting with Jesus, cleaned, clothed, and in right mind, “they were afraid” (v.15). Eyewitnesses give them the gory details about the demoniac and the pigs. And they want Jesus gone! Elsewhere in Mark so far people have clamored to get to Jesus. But not here. And if we remember the demoniac story’s coded significance as prefiguring Jesus’ victory over the pagan oppressors, the Romans, it’s not hard to figure why. Messing with the Romans, tweaking their symbolic noses, does not generally end well for those who do it. This area’s residents did not want to be on the Roman’s radar for that sort of thing. Thus Jesus, with power over the infamous demoniac, terrifi...

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    ...