Note 3 — Chapter VIII · SUPPLEMENTARY MYTH

In this connection there arises for us the problem, stressed by Professor Smith, as to the significance of the stories of wholesale healing and casting out of devils. His thesis is that they were an occult way of conveying the claim that Jesus by preaching monotheism had cast out in Galilee the diseases and corruptions of polytheism, pagan deities being “devils” for the Jew. And in view of the repeated assertion, on Gnostic lines, that Jesus declared his teaching to be made purposely occult, so as not to be understood by the people, we cannot deny the possibility that some of the stories of healing may have been so intended. Professor Smith, as I understand him, argues3 that a straightforward claim of wholesale overthrowing of paganism would have offended the Roman Government; and that the claim was put by metaphor to avoid that. The difficulty arises that if the metaphor was not understood by Gentiles it missed its mark with them; while if they did understand it their susceptibilities would be particularly wounded by the metaphors of leprosy and blindness and “devils.” And there is the further difficulty that, as Professor Smith notes, the stories of casting out devils relate solely to half-heathen Galilee, while, as he also notes, there is no ultimate trace of Jesuism there.4 Why then should an allegory of casting out polytheism have been framed concerning Galilee?