One of the most extraordinary scenes in Mark's Gospel is the cure of the Gerasene demoniac (5:1-20). Jesus and his disciples reach the country of the Gerasenes, in largely pagan territory, and a man with an unclean spirit comes out of the tombs towards Jesus.

'No one could secure him any more, even with a chain; because he had often been secured with fetters and chains but had snapped the chains and broken the fetters, and no one had the strength to control him.'

The man runs out and falls at the feet of Jesus and shouts at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear by God you will not torture me!' - For Jesus is saying to him, 'Come out of the man, unclean spirit'.

'What is your name?' Jesus asks. 'My name is legion,' he answers, 'for there are many of us,' and he earnestly begs Jesus not to send them out of the district. There is a herd of pigs on the mountainside. The unclean spirits beg Jesus, 'Send us to the pigs, let us go into them'. Jesus gives them leave and the spirits go into the pigs and they charge down a cliff and into the lake where they are drowned.

Amazement
The swineherds run off and tell their story to everyone and the people come to see what has really happened. They find the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his full senses, and they are afraid. They beg Jesus to leave the district and he gets into a boat to leave the area.

As he does so, the man who was possessed begs to be allowed to stay with him but Jesus refuses, saying to him, 'Go home to your people and tell them all that the Lord in his mercy has done for you'. So the man goes off and spreads the news throughout the Decapolis all that Jesus has done for him. And everyone is amazed.

Imagination
This story raises many issues that are problematic. Mark places the location of the story in the region of the Gerasenes, a pagan territory. The trouble with this location is that it is thirty-three miles from the Sea of Galilee where the panicky pigs have their dip in the deep!

As Meier points out, 'the gruesome description of the demoniac's alienation from self, neighbour, and God is truly gripping, but for that very reason one must reckon with the possibility of a powerful imagination making a powerful theological as well as narrative point.

Certainly, as the story now stands in Mark, it serves the theological purpose of symbolizing the bringing of the healing, liberating message of the Christian gospel to the unclean Gentiles.' (A Marginal Jew. Rethinking The Historical Jesus. Volume Two. John P. Meier. Doubleday. 1994.)

Narrative basis
We don't have to accept that cases of demonic possession as reported in the Gospels are necessarily factual, historical accounts. To think that a 'historical' demon speaks to Jesus, not to mention the story of the panicky pigs jumping into the Sea of Galilee, strains credulity.

What may well lie at the back of the story is that Jesus once performed an 'exorcism', a healing of a very tortured individual, near Gerasa, and the fact that it took place at a good distance from the Sea of Galilee, and in pagan territory, outside the normal scene of Jesus' activity, may have remained in the collective minds of Jesus' disciples precisely because of the unusual venue.

Perception of evil
In order to make sense of the story, it is necessary to say something about differing world-views: the world-view of Jesus' time and the scientific world-view of our own. Jesus, by driving out 'demons' in his process of healing, indicates that sickness is not simply a bodily ailment but a manifestation of evil.

The Jews, after the exilic period, and probably influenced by the Persians, did believe in both a principal force of evil - the devil, Satan or whatever - and in demons that sometimes possessed people, whatever about pigs! When one considers some of the atrocities of the modern era such as the Holocaust, it is difficult not to believe in some principal force of evil at work even in the world today.

The New Testament writers, and Jesus being a man of his time, shared that view. Whenever people were 'not themselves' and appeared to have lost control, then it was regarded as quite obvious that some demon had got into them. The pathological behaviour of a mentally ill person would have been conceptualized as possession by an evil spirit. The demoniac who lived among the tombs would probably be classed today as a raving maniac. 'No one could secure him any more, even with a chain... No one had the strength to control him,' Mark tells us.

Opposing kingdoms
Jesus in his humanity did not possess modern scientific knowledge but he did see that sickness was not merely a bodily, or psychological ailment but a manifestation of evil in the world. Sufferings, disasters and psychological illnesses represent both alienation from God and the existence of evil. The coming of God's reign means an end to such evils and Jesus simply dealt with these issues as a man of his time.

Today we don't have to accept the Jewish outlook but, at the same time, one is not free as a Christian to dismiss the religious import of the narrative. Rather, we should try to see what Jesus was doing and proclaiming and translate that into the language of the twenty-first century.

It is almost impossible to understand Jesus' words and deeds about the coming of the kingdom without understanding, at the same time, the opposition that comes from a kingdom of evil in our world. Deliberate resistance by evil to God's word and human goodness is not something that belongs solely to the world-view of the first century!

The essential point of the story about the demoniac is that Jesus cures him and so God's reign is being made manifest. The panicky pig story, whereby unclean spirits go into unclean, gentile pigs is probably an addendum to the story, a jibe at those unclean Gentiles who refused Jesus' message and who thought that the Jewish custom of not eating pork was comic.

Animals excluded from the Hebrew diet were those hallowed in pagan worship as having a role in sacrifice, magic, or superstitious practices. For example, pigs were used in sacrifice to the Babylonian god Tamuz. Of course, hygiene and natural abhorrence may also have affected Hebrew custom and legislation.

Christian missionary
At the end of the story the cured man is told by Jesus to go home and tell his people all that the Lord in his mercy has done for him. (This is unusual in Mark where Jesus normally instructs those he cures not to tell others about what he has done.)

Mark tells us that the man goes off and proceeds to spread throughout the Decapolis all. that Jesus has done for him.' The Decapolis was an area in northern Transjordan consisting of ten cities of heavily Hellenistic character, an area outside the traditional boundaries of the land of Israel. So the cured demoniac, in obedience to Jesus' command, becomes one of the first Christian missionaries to a non-Jewish area.