I took this pic when I went on holiday to Israel . we were standing at the same location where Jesus was when he healed a demon possessed man. Today, the level of the lake has dropped, but one can still make out the edge of a cliff, where once, the water came right up to the foot of the precipice, it now appears further back. but this is where the Gaderene swine rushed into the sea.
This incident, like so many incidents in Christ's life were not just set in the ' long ago and far away', or 'once upon a time' . The gospel writers put in so much detail that we can accurately place the time of Christ's ministry to the years 30 to 33AD, and you can still visit the spot where Jesus meets a man who is an outcast.
According to mark, who is our earliest Gospel writer, the man says that he is possessed by many evil spirits - so many in fact that in Mark , chapter 5, when Christ asks the man his name, one of the demons answers "My name is Legion , for there are many of us ".
Jesus orders them to leave the man, and they entreat Jesus not to destroy them and entreat him to cast them into a herd of swine instead. Jesus does this and the swine stampede over the precipice into the sea. The man , who previously wandered among the tombs around the area, slashing himself with sharp stones and howling and shrieking, is now in his right mind and goes throughout the Decapolis and tells people about Jesus.
Of course, today , many people don't believe that evil spirits or demons exist in any real sense. Some would argue that it was simply the noise and commotion that startled the pigs and caused them to stampede over the cliff. On the other hand , there are those who take a very literal view of the Bible's account here. For them , the Devil and the Demons that he rules over are real indeed. So let us examine what Scripture says and see what conclusions we can reach.
If the first mention we get of Satan is in the book of Job , we get the demons much sooner. Genesis 6; 2 tells us that the Angels looked down from heaven and saw that the daughters of men were good looking , and they lusted after them . Now here, it does not say so explicitly, but genesis is referencing an Apocryphal work, the book of Enoch. in Enoch we get the same story , but with more detail. the Sons of God, the angels, lie with the daughters of men and have unnatural offspring - and they also teach the sons of men the arts and crafts, teaching them to make weapons of warfare like swords and shields. Not gunpowder weapons, you will notice. Or Greek fire, or any such things as were known in the ancient world - no, just swords and shields. You would have though that they could do better than that .
Also note that they lusted after mortal women. I have to ask why. i mean , Ii find women attractive , but I'm a human male who was biologically designed to mate with them. Why would a discarnate entity find female humans attractive? if it was sex they were after, well, rabbits have a lot more sex than humans , I reckon, and serious scientific study has revealed that woman are capable of having more intense orgasms than men - and they can have them more often! It just doesn't add up.
One suggestion is that the whole Legend of the Watchers, as found in Enoch , is simply a way for Hebrews to explain all the pagan myths around them. The Unnatural offspring are "the Mighty Ones, the men of fame". Ok, you come across pagans who claim a mighty hero like Hercules, you say this was down to the Fallen Angels. The thing is that The Devil does not appear in this myth. The Satan/ Lucifer myth does not mesh with this one, and you would think they would, but no. Not here.
In the NT , we find that Jude and Peter reference the story themselves. ( Jude 6&7, and 2Pet. 2;4). I know that Jack Chick insists that the NT writers in the Bible do not cite Apocryphal works, but he is wrong here, as are all those who insist that the Bible is totally separate from secular sources. Just like they borrow the pagan myth of Helel ben Shachar, they now borrow Enoch and fiit the two together. Interesting , huh ?
Such people will tell you that the Flood of Noah was sent to purge the world of the angel / human hybrids called the Nephilim, and that the Angels shed their bodies of flesh and reverted to being spirits again to save themselves from drowning in the Flood. However, they were not allowed back into heaven alongside the other angels and were instead cast out from god's presence and took to living in the shadowy realms between heaven and earth. From there, they plague mankind by haunting buildings and trying to gain possession of human souls.
But the whole story sounds so implausible. No scientific evidence for a global flood, all the available evidence seems to point to a complete lack of a global catastrophe at the point when Noah was supposed to have built his ark - and as we have already discussed, the idea of sex mad angels doesn't stand up to scrutiny, nor does Satan appear involved. in Enoch , they do it off their own bat.
So what did Jesus encounter by the sea of Galilee? What else do non biblical traditions have to tell us about evil spirits and how does this help fill in the gaps in our knowledge? before we go plunging off into the deeper waters of myth and folklore, I would like to pause and allow anyone who wishes to comment or ask questions. But the answers will be given in part 2. At least , I will try to offer what I feel may be a possible answer to the conundrum; not only explaining what happened back there, but even attempting to explain a lot of what goes on today that we might deem ' paranormal'. Just my own theory, mark you . However, I would like to submit it for peer review.
In the next part, more will be revealed and the whole question wrapped up, I hope.
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