Note 77 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts. The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the landing of Jesus, by the storm which raged during his voyage, and when Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, either he himself or one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then believed and reported to be the fact.77 K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders imagine that the two events78 stood in the relation of cause and effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances, betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical system of interpretation with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous; we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained?