Note 52 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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;52 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:53 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.54 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,55 or excited by the words of Jesus,56 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.57 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.58