Note 60 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the deep) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith, owing to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked: how can demons, admitting even that they can take possession of men,—how, we say, can they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish to enter into brutal forms? Every religion and philosophy which rejects the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the possibility of this passage of the demons into swine; and Olshausen is quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with Balaam’s ass in the Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block.60 This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the difficulty, by the observation that we are here to suppose, not an entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely an influence of all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For the expression, εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, to enter into the swine, as it stands opposed to the expression, ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, to go out of the man, cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from banishment out of the country or into the deep, but only an actual habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs, sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment, because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires;61 if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure spirit πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, than an impure animal ζῶον ἀκάθαρτον, like a swine?62 So far, therefore, it is possible that the Evangelists might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the Evangelists affirm an evident impossibility? Paulus thinks that the Evangelists here as everywhere else identify the possessed men with the possessing demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine, while in fact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their fixed idea, rushed upon the herd.63 It is true that Matthew’s expression ἀπῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, taken alone, might be understood of a mere rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must admit, does the word εἰσελθόντες in the two other Evangelists distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine; but also Matthew has like them before the word ἀπῆλθον, they entered, the expression ἐξελθόντες οἱ δαίμονες, the demons coming out (sc. ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρώπων out of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered the swine from the men.64 Thus our Evangelists do not in this instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it took from the false lights of their age; they have here a particular, which cannot possibly have happened in the manner they allege.