THE ASCENT: FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION. A SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM CHAPTER XIV
(St. Matt, viii 14-17; St. Mark i. 21-34; St. Luke iv. 33-41.)
It was the Holy Sabbath, the first after He had called around Him His first permanent disciples; the first, also, after His return from the Feast at Jerusalem. Of both we can trace indications in the account of that morning, noon, and evening which the Evangelists furnish. The greater detail with which St. Mark, who wrote under the influence of St. Peter, tells these events, shows the freshness and vividness of impression on the mind of Peter of those early days of his new life. As indicating that what is here recorded took place immediately after the return of Jesus from Jerusalem, we mark, that as yet there were no watchful enemies in waiting to entrap Him in such breach of the Law, as might furnish ground for judicial procedure. But, from their presence and activity so soon afterwards, [a St. Luke v. 21; vi.2; vi. 7.] we infer, that the authorities of Jerusalem had sent some of their familiars to track His steps in Galilee.
But as yet all seemed calm and undisturbed. Those simple, warm-hearted Galileans yielded themselves to the power of His words and works, not discerning hidden blasphemy in what He said, nor yet Sabbath-desecration in His healing on God's holy day. It is morning, and Jesus goes to the Synagogue at Capernaum. [1 The accounts of this given by St. Mark and St. Luke chronologically precede what is related in St. Matt. viii. 14-17. The reader is requested in each case to peruse the Biblical narratives before, or along with their commentation in the chapters of the present work.] To teach there, was now His wont. But frequency could not lessen the impression. In describing the Influence of His Person or words the Evangelists use a term, which really means amazement. [2 The following are the passages in which the same term is used: St. Matt. vii. 28; xiii. 54; xix. 25; xxii. 33; St. Mark i. 22; vi. 2; vii. 37; x. 26; xi. 18; St. Luke ii. 48; iv. 32; ix. 43; Acts xiii. 12.] And when we find the same word to describe the impression of the 'Sermon on the Mount,' [b St. Matt. vii. 28.] the inference is naturally suggested, that it presents the type, if it does not sum up the contents, of some of His Synagogue-discourses. It is not necessary to suppose that, what held His hearers spell-bound, had necessarily also its effect on their hearts and lives. Men may be enraptured by the ideal without trying to make it the real. Too often it is even in inverse proportion; so that those who lead not the most moral lives even dare to denounce the New Testament standpoint, as below their own conceptions of right and duty. But there is that in man, evidence of his origin and destiny, which always and involuntarily responds to the presentation of the higher. And in this instance it was not only what He taught, but the contrast with that to which they had been accustomed on the part of'the Scribes,' which filled them with amazement. There was no appeal to human authority, other than that of the conscience; no subtle logical distinctions,
legal niceties, nor clever sayings. Clear, limpid, and crystalline, flowed His words from out the spring of the Divine Life that was in Him.
Among the hearers in the Synagogue that Sabbath morning was one of a class, concerning whose condition, whatever difficulties may attach to our proper understanding of it, the reader of the New Testament must form some definite idea. The term 'demoniacal possession' occurs not in the New Testament. We owe it to Josephus, [a Comp. Delitzsch in Riehm's Hand-worter-buch.] from whom it has passed into ecclesiastical language. We dismiss it the more readily, that, in our view, it conveys a wrong impression. The New Testament speaks of those who had a spirit, or a demon, or demons, or an unclean spirit, or the spirit of an unclean demon, but chiefly of persons who were 'demonised.' [1 The word 'spirit'or 'spirits' occurs twice in St. Matthew, thrice in St. Mark and twice in St. Luke; with the addition 'evil,' twice in St. Luke; with that of'unclean,' once in St. Matthew, eleven times in St. Mark, and four times in St. Luke. The word in singular or plural occurs once in each of the Synoptists; while in singular or plural, occurs nine times in St. Matthew, three times in St. Mark, fourteen times in St. Luke, and six times in St. John. The expression 'the spirit of an unclean demon' occurs once in the St. Luke, while the verb 'to be demonished' occurs, in one form or another, seven times in St. Matthew, four times in St. Mark, once in St. Luke, and once in St. John. Comp. also the careful brochure of Pastor Nanz, Die Besessenen im N.T., although we differ from his conclusions.] Similarly, it seems a strange inaccuracy on the part of commentators to exclude from the Gospel, of St. John all notice of the 'demonised.' That the Fourth Gospel, although not reporting any healing of the demonised, shares the fundamental view of the Synoptists, appears not only from St. John vii. 20, viii. 48, 52, but especially from viii. 49 and x. 20, 21. [2 Comp. also Weiss, Leben Jesu i. p. 457.] We cannot believe that the writer of the Fourth Gospel would have put into the mouth of Jesus the answer 'I am not a demon,' or have allowed Him to be described by His friends as not one 'demonised,' without a single word to show dissent from the popular view, if he had not shared the ideas of the Synoptists. In discussing a question of such very serious import in the study and criticism of the Gospels, the precise facts of the case should in the first place be clearly ascertained.
The first question here is, whether Christ Himself shared the views, not indeed of His contemporaries (for these, as we shall see, were very different), but of the Evangelists in regard to what they call the 'demonised'? This has been extensively denied, and Christ represented as only unwilling needlessly to disturb a popular prejudice, which He could not at the time effectually combat. But the theory requires more than this; and, since Christ not only tolerated, but in addressing the demonised actually adopted, or seemed to adopt, the prevailing view, it has been argued, that, for the sake of these poor afflicted persons, He acted like a physician who appears to enter into the fancy of his patient, in order the more effectually to heal him of it. This view seems, however, scarcely worth refuting, since it imputes to Jesus, on a point so important, a conduct not only unworthy of Him, or indeed of any truly great man, but implies a canon of'accommodation' which might equally be applied to His Miracles, or to anything else that contravened the notions of an interpreter, and so might transform the whole Gospel-narratives into a series of historically untrustworthy legends. But we will not rest the case on what might be represented as an appeal to prejudice. For, we find that Jesus not only tolerated the popular 'prejudice,' or that He 'adopted it for the sake of more readily healing those thus afflicted', but that He even made it part of His disciples' commission to 'cast out demons,' [a St. Matt. x. 8.] and that, when the disciples afterwards reported their success in this, Christ actually made it a matter of thanksgiving to God.
[b St. Luke x. 17, 18.] The same view underlies His reproof to the disciples, when failing in this part of their work; [c St. Matt. xvii. 21; comp. also xii. 43 &c, also spoken to the disciples.] while in St. Luke xi. 19, 24, He adopts, and argues on this view as against the Pharisees. Regarded therefore in the light of history, impartial criticism can arrive at no other conclusion, than that Jesus of Nazareth shared the views of the Evangelists as regards the 'demonised.' [1 This is also the conclusion arrived at by Weiss, u. s.]
Our next inquiry must be as to the character of the phenomenon thus designated. In view of the fact that in St. Mark ix. 21, the demonised had been such 'of a child,' it is scarcely possible to ascribe it simply to moral causes. Similarly, personal faith does not seem to have been a requisite condition of healing. Again, as other diseases are mentioned without being attributed to demoniacal influence, and as all who were dumb, deaf, or paralysed would not have been described as 'demonised,' it is evident that all physical, or even mental distempers of the same class were not ascribed to the same cause: some might be natural, while others were demoniacal. On the other hand, there were more or less violent symptoms of disease in every demonised person, and these were greatly aggravated in the last paroxysm, when the demon quitted his habitation. We have, therefore, to regard the phenomena described as caused by the influence of such 'spirits,' primarily, upon that which forms the nexus between body and mind, the nervous system, and as producing different physical effects, according to the part of the nervous system affected. To this must be added a certain impersonality of consciousness, so that for the time the consciousness was not that of the demonised, but the demoniser, just as in certain mesmeric states the consciousness of the mesmerised is really that of the mesmeriser. We might carry the analogy farther, and say, that the two states are exactly parallel, the demon or demons taking the place of the mesmeriser, only that the effects were more powerful and extensive, perhaps more enduring. But one point seems to have been assumed, for which there is, to say the least, no evidence, viz., that because, at least in many cases, the disease caused by the demon was permanent, therefore those who were so affected were permanently or constantly under the power of the demon. Neither the New Testament, nor even Rabbinic literature, conveys the idea of permanent demoniac indwelling, to which the later term 'possession' owes its origin. [1 The nearest approach to it, so far as I am aware, occurs in Pirqe de R. El. c. 13 (ed. Lemberg, p. 16 b, 17 a), where the influence of Satan over the serpent (in the history of the Fall) is likened to that of an evil spirit over a man, all whose deeds and words are done under the
