I just realized that I can no longer recall exactly how I understood this passage when I was a believer. I think that the story leaves enough questions unanswered that there is much for the reader to fill in. What I fill in now is probably different than what I understood then.
It seems the man is host to a very large number of demons (a Roman Legion was 6,000 men if I am not mistaken, and they possessed 2,000 swine afterwards). I honestly do not understand the mechanics of spirit-possession, but this text makes clear that the demons were able to not only control the man's actions, they lent him considerable physical strength (perhaps in the same way that god's spirit lent inhuman strength to Samson).
It seems the demons recognized the Christ (though we are not told by what specific means) and had to respect the power or influence he wielded over them. Yet it seems that though Jesus was commanding them to come out of the man, they were able to resist and he tried a different tack. Yet in the next verse they are again begging for mercy and asking permission to possess the swine. Jesus allows this...
...and the demons decide to make a right unholy mess of things by causing the swine to mass suicide, which most likely would have been a significant burden (economically and ecologically) for the locals, who were not very impressed by what they saw and asked Jesus to please take his act somewhere else. Did Jesus foresee this action? Did he allow it, as an object lesson to a spiritually weak community?
I do know that my belief at the time would have been that the demons survived the mass pigicide, being spirits who could release their grip on organic minds at any time. Thus it was really just a demonstration that Jesus was god (or his agent) and that he had authority even over the evil spirits regardless of his own human condition.
It seems the man is host to a very large number of demons (a Roman Legion was 6,000 men if I am not mistaken, and they possessed 2,000 swine afterwards). I honestly do not understand the mechanics of spirit-possession, but this text makes clear that the demons were able to not only control the man's actions, they lent him considerable physical strength (perhaps in the same way that god's spirit lent inhuman strength to Samson).
It seems the demons recognized the Christ (though we are not told by what specific means) and had to respect the power or influence he wielded over them. Yet it seems that though Jesus was commanding them to come out of the man, they were able to resist and he tried a different tack. Yet in the next verse they are again begging for mercy and asking permission to possess the swine. Jesus allows this...
...and the demons decide to make a right unholy mess of things by causing the swine to mass suicide, which most likely would have been a significant burden (economically and ecologically) for the locals, who were not very impressed by what they saw and asked Jesus to please take his act somewhere else. Did Jesus foresee this action? Did he allow it, as an object lesson to a spiritually weak community?
I do know that my belief at the time would have been that the demons survived the mass pigicide, being spirits who could release their grip on organic minds at any time. Thus it was really just a demonstration that Jesus was god (or his agent) and that he had authority even over the evil spirits regardless of his own human condition.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
