Friday, January 18, 2008

Mark, chapter 5

12 The demons begged Jesus, "Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them." 13 He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

So the demons didn't want Jesus to send them simply forth (why not? do they need hosts to survive?) but asked to be 'transferred' into the swines. Who then get crazy, jump into the sea and drown. That makes sense. But can demons be drowned in the first place? And, oh, the pig farmer will probably thank Jesus many times for killing his herd of 2000 pigs!

But I guess Jesus didn't like the pig farmer in the first place since he wasn't a Jew and therefore didn't care about destroying his livestock ...

18 As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 19 Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

So Jesus doesn't just want anyone to go with him. Especially not ex-crazy guys ... Maybe because one never knows when the demons will be back? And it's surprising that he said to him that he should tell his family about what happened since at other places in the texts he always tells the people not to say anything.

25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. 30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"

So even though Jesus wasn't aware of her, she was healed simply because she had touched the magic cloak! Awesome. Too bad that cloak doesn't exist anymore. And although Jesus seems to have healing power sensors that indicated that somebody 'stole' some healing power from him, he obviously didn't have omnivision nor omniscience and therefore had to asked who touched his cloak. Hm ...

And it's also a not very veiled attack on doctors and medicine. But, thank God!, we've still got doctors today because magical cloaks have become somewhat rare though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

1) Dr House would have healed the women in no time! ;-)
2) What about the scary "their number was legion"-thingy. Isn't that worth a comment?

Daldianus said...

fireball:

1. Probably, hehe.
2. Agreed, that's weird too. Maybe it was a word play supposed to mean that Jesus wasn't trying to drive out the demons but the Romans?