Aquinas and Apologetics

Conversation Side Conversation
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No, you deliberately cut off the end of the sentence, and treated the remaining section as if it was all I had written.

Irrelevant, not the topic under discussion. Socio-historical context always informs the author’s writing, and is a sine qua non for interpreting the text.

Irrelevant, this is not evidence that the writers of the Synoptics did not participate in the same community as John and Paul.

No, you were just constructing a straw man (as usual), and making a snide attack on someone who disagrees with your exegetical conclusions (as usual), because you see them as “modernist”.

How unsurprising. It’s remarkable how little familiarity you demonstrate with actual academia, given your repeated bombastic claims about your involvement in it. If you had actually read the paper of mine to which I directed you previously, you would have a better understanding of the answer to this question. The visionary interpretation, for example, is so old that even Aquinas knew about it and wrote against it, and it was common among the Reformers.

Special pleading. The wilderness pericopes are also “integrated into narratives that appear to be not symbolic, midrashic, etc., but straightforward tellings of what Jesus did, when, where, etc”.

Because we’re using the same definition of “fundamentalist”. It’s significant that you attack the standard definitions of “fundamentalist” which are used in scholarship, when it is demonstrated that you meet those definitions.

None of that is evidence that you’re not a fundamentalist. Ken Ham attacks other fundamentalists, despite being (in your words), “the leading fundamentalist of today”.

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This is uncalled for. You are imputing a dishonest motive to me. The principle of charity which Christians are supposed to live under is to take the best possible rather than the worst possible construction of someone’s motives. But perhaps not all Christians or Christian sects accept that principle. In any case, there was no dishonesty involved. My answer took into account your qualification – Mark directly tells us that demons exist, that they can be driven out of a human being and transferred into the body of animal. So Gospel writers do sometimes affirm the reality of demons, and not merely report objective events that might bear a demonic interpretation, or report the words of characters who believe in demons. That’s the plain meaning of the narrator’s words, and any other construction is forced – unless one is willing to be much more radical than you are being, and argue that the whole narrative of the Gadarene demoniac is somehow symbolic or midrashic or whatever. But that’s not what you’re arguing. You’re arguing that the narrative is essentially historical, but that the explicit historical statement about demons “doesn’t count” as historical. And that’s simply not on.

Pure historicism. You write as if historicism has not been questioned, as a hermeneutical principle, by some of the leading social and political theorists of the past century. And that calls into question your familiarity with scholarship.

I made no snide attack. I merely pointed out that Ferngren’s statement is easily falsified by New Testament passages, one of which happens to be in the chapter of Mark I was talking about. I made no snide characterization of Ferngren himself. I believe he’s a good historian of science. But that doesn’t make him an accurate Biblical scholar.

I’m fully aware of the existence of this interpretation. I’m even attracted to it. But you didn’t ask me whether I had heard of the interpretation; you asked me how many Christians held to it. And I don’t know the % of Christians who hold to it, so I said that I didn’t know. And you still haven’t told me.

You don’t understand what I mean by a literary unit within a Gospel. You appear to have spent much less time on the literary than on the historical side of Biblical studies.

I’ve attacked not only Ham but fundamentalism in general, as anyone who reads my posts can see. And besides, the moderators here have told you more than once to stop charging me with being a fundamentalist.

I’m not a fundamentalist, and therefore I don’t say that Mark teaches the existence of demons because I’m a fundamentalist. I don’t even like the doctrine of demons. But Mark says they exist. I’m just honestly reporting what the author clearly says and appears to intend. I don’t give myself the privilege of overruling what a Biblical writer teaches in order to sustain a personal or sectarian theology. If someone wants to say that the Synoptic Gospel writers promoted an error by writing as if demons were real, I have no intellectual problem with that. What I do have an intellectual problem with is butchering the natural sense of the Gospels so that they teach only what one’s own theology allows.

The proper method of Biblical assessment is: (1) First establish what the author teaches; (2) Then decide whether that teaching is true. The wrong method is: “The true theology (i.e., my theology) says that X can’t possibly be real, so if a text appears to teach that X is real, I must find some alternative to the plain and natural meaning of this text so that it conforms to the true theology.” Unfortunately, many if not most Christians employ the second method more often than the first.

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No, I am simply describing what you did. Your edit of my sentence misrepresented my argument, to which you did not respond.

Mark never makes any statements about whether demons exist or not. Again, you’re completely avoiding the second half of my sentence.

This is exactly the same kind of argument that fundamentalists make about the Genesis flood narrative; “We should just read the “plain meaning” of the text, if you try to read it any other way then you end up turning it all into just a symbol or metaphor or whatever”. You and they need to justify this hermeneutic before applying it.

No that is not what I am saying. I am not saying that any part of it “doesn’t count as historical”. As with the Genesis flood narrative, it all counts as “historical”. It just doesn’t mean what you think it means. Again, your argument is like Ken Ham telling Hugh Ross “You’re arguing that the narrative is essentially historical, but that the explicit historical statement about the scope of the flood “doesn’t count” as historical”.

Why? Can you justify this statement?

No, not at all. Again I see you simply handwaving instead of actually providing evidence. Again I see you rejecting the historico-critical method.

Of course you did. You insinuated that he would dismiss the record as invented, and then made an invalid slippery slope argument, “And if so, what other words of Jesus might he have invented?”.

It’s clear you don’t know who he is. He’s actually a historian of religion and medicine. He also researches the relationship of religion to science. He is not a historian of science.

Irrelevant. You are trying to change the subject and ignoring the issue under discussion.

That’s what Ken Ham says about the Genesis flood narrative. Like you do with Mark, he just reads the English on the page; nothing else is necessary, apparently.

This is yet another tactic straight out of the fundamentalist playbook; an interpretation which disagrees with yours is charactized as someone “overruling what a Biblical writer teaches in order to sustain a personal or sectarian theology”, and “butchering the natural sense of the Gospels”. How is this any different to what Ken Ham says?

Yes. But you haven’t done this. You haven’t even started step one. You’ve just said “It says X in English, so I believe Y”.

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This is just silly. If you mean, there is no sentence in Mark such as “Demons exist,” or “There really are demons,” or the like, then you are correct, but it’s a petty victory. He doesn’t have to state “Demons exist” as a proposition in order for him to indicate that they exist. A historian of France doesn’t have to state “Napoleon was a real person who actually existed” in order for us to be certain that the historian regarded Napoleon as really existing. We know from the story about the swine that Mark represents the demons as being transferred into the swine – and that is incoherent unless there are in fact demons to be transferred. Your resistance on this point is baseless.

If Mark wanted to leave any doubt about the existence of the demons, he could have easily done it. He could have written: "And those who saw what happened to the swine said, ‘Jesus transferred the demons from the madman into the swine.’ " That would have shifted the responsibility for the “demonic” interpretation off of Mark and onto the village folk, and would have left open the possibility that Mark thought the beliefs of the village folk were dubious. But he didn’t do this; he wrote in his own narratorial voice. You have given no textual exposition to account for why Mark wrote what he wrote, if he himself did not believe in the existence of demons, or doubted the existence of demons. Instead, you have jabbered on about “scholarship” and avoided tackling the Greek text of Mark yourself. I will not speculate about why you refuse my challenge to exposit the passage yourself. But the fact that you won’t do so means that you cede the exegetical field by default.

And you did impute a dishonest motive to me. You said that I cut out part of your argument “deliberately” – implying that I intended to misrepresent your argument. And I had no such intention. You owe me an apology – though I won’t hold my breath waiting for it.

Well, that’s enough of that; Christmas is upon us, and I intend to celebrate it. End of wrangling.

A Merry Christmas to all at Peaceful Science!

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It isn’t a petty victory, because it supports precisely the point I made previously, in the sentence you cut in half.

I agree.

But I have. Unfortunately I couldn’t explicate it very far, because as soon as I started you began dismissing completely the hermeneutical methods I was using, such as the historical critical method and lexicography. You also dismissed outright the views of any scholars who disagree with you, while appealing to the authority of those you prefer.

Additionally, when presented with two of my papers which demonstrate my exegetical method and how I have applied it to the Synoptics and to the Apostolic Fathers, you didn’t comment on either (in fact it seems you didn’t even read one of them). Until this changes, there’s absolutely no point in me explicating further, since you don’t even accept standard hermeneutical methods used in current scholarship.

I did say you cut it out deliberately; it couldn’t have been an accident, and you even acknowledged that you had done so. However I didn’t attribute a dishonest motive to you. I didn’t attribute any motive to you at all. I just highlighted what you had done, and pointed out that as a consequence you hadn’t addressed my argument.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Is Eddie a Fundamentalist, Part III

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As I’m in a good mood during this festive season, I offer a little Christmas gift to Jonathan.

He tells me that I don’t read historical-critical literature, or read it but dismiss it, etc. Well here is a passage from a book of mine which I have frequently consulted, with some profit:

“It is evidently the intention of the writer [of the Mark passage on the demoniac and the swine] that the man was possessed by a host of demons, and that this host of demons – no less would be required – entered into the herd of (two thousand) swine.”

The writer? E. P. Gould. The work? His commentary on Mark. The series? The International Critical Commentary, edited by Driver, Plummer, and Briggs, a series devoted to promoting the historical-critical approach.

Apparently, being onside with historical-critical scholarship does not preclude the conclusion that when it comes to demons, a Biblical author can say what he means, and mean what he says.

Merry Christmas, Jonathan.

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I didn’t say that you don’t read it. I said you dismiss it, which you’ve done even in this very thread.

Yes, you will happily lift bits and pieces from works you find here and there, if you like what they say.

This is not remotely surprising, and is entirely in character with your approach to the Bible. Firstly, Gould’s volume was published in 1896, over 120 years ago; as usual, you prefer to read incredibly dated commentary rather than anything current. Secondly, Gould’s exposition is very traditional, which is also why it appeals to you.

Thirdly, Gould has an entire chapter entitled “Recent Critical Literature” in which he makes a brief review of contemporary historical-critical works on the gospels, and identifies his disagreements with them. Gould himself is comfortable with text criticism, and to some extent also source criticism, but he applies actual historical criticism very lightly in his own work. Ironically he is prepared to accept that the wilderness temptation pericopes may not be describing a strictly historical account.

The historicity of the account of the temptation is attacked with some plausibility. There are certain things about it on which a just historical criticism throws some doubt. There is a concreteness about the appearance of Satan, and of the angels, an air of visibility even, an impression of actual transportation through the air, and the introduction of a typical number (forty) , which can, however, easily be eliminated without touching the essential history.

He thus treats this narrative very much as I do, and very much as I treat the demons/pigs narrative (except that I don’t say either of these narratives are unhistorical).

Of course it doesn’t. No one said it did.

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“Within the textual world of Mark, there really are evil, invisible supernatural beings taking
over people’s minds and bodies and causing them to suffer, for reasons unspecified.[20] In Mark, and therefore here for present purposes, the demons and evil spirits possessing people are real and literal.”

Footnote [20]:
See Burkitt (1963) 45-59; Sabourin 150-153; Dunn and Twelftree 211-212; Sanders 135-143, 149-154; Hendrickx 4-5; Berger 44-46; Collins (1992) 46-52; Telford (1993) 88-90; Rousseau 129-153; Neyrey (“Miracles, In Other Words,” 1999) 21-29.

That’s not a quote from a commentary written in the year 1896. Rather, it’s a quote from a fairly recent (2007) M.A. thesis dissertation titled, “The Representation and Role of Demon Possession in Mark,” by Eliza Rosenberg, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University.

If you want something even more recent, you can have a look at “The Function of Exorcism Stories in Mark’s Gospel” by Andreas Hauw (Wipf & Stock, Euegene, Oregon, 2019). Hauw is an Indonesian New Testament scholar who defines exorcism as “the expulsion of evil spirits” - a definition which, he says, “is in accordance with the first century CE understanding” (p. 4). Hauw’s discussion is learned and scholarly. Hauw contends that both Mark 1:21–28 and 3:20–30 highlight Jesus as a teacher and as an eschatological exorcist.

There can be little doubt that Mark’s Gospel teaches the reality of demons. Whether you believe in them or not, it is abundantly evident that Mark thought and taught that demons are supernatural, malevolent beings.

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I’m not sure what this is supposed to be addressing.

I own plenty of recent commentaries saying the gospel writers believed in, and taught, the reality of demons, as commonly understood in mainstream “orthodox” theology, and as is the mainstream scholarly consensus. This is not under debate.

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If it’s “not under debate,” then why, in post 44 above, did you write:

and

It seems to me it’s very much “under debate” between you and all these mainstream scholars whether or not Mark etc. believed in and taught the reality of demons, possession, and exorcism. You seem to be saying (a) that the majority of mainstream scholars hold the view that Mark believed in and taught the reality of demons, and (b) that this majority is wrong, because Mark etc. did not believe in or teach the reality of demons etc. Is that not exactly what is under debate?

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Thanks, Vincent.

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Please read what I wrote carefully. What is not under debate is that the mainstream scholarly consensus is that “the gospel writers believed in, and taught, the reality of demons, as commonly understood in mainstream “orthodox” theology”.

We are not debating here whether or not that is the scholarly consensus. No one here is contesting that this is not the scholarly consensus, least of all me. Obviously I am contesting that consensus, but I am not denying that it exists.

So what we are debating is whether or not that consensus is correct. I stand with the minority of scholarship which says it is not correct, or that it is at the very least uncertain.

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Good. That’s clear. So now: Given that you have just admitted that many recent (not 1896) commentaries support the view I’ve been endorsing, and given that you even call it “the scholarly consensus,” the relevance of your complaints about my argument in particular becomes virtually negligible. Even if I were guilty of all that you say I am (of using dated scholarship, of refusing to take into account historical-critical approaches, etc.), that would not matter, because the scholarly consensus of which you speak was arrived at by people who (for the most part) have great respect for the historical-critical approaches you endorse, and who have been writing about these questions recently. So it’s not about me; it’s about the fact that the view I endorse is widespread, and that you wish that it weren’t.

Something about the text of the Synoptic Gospels keeps driving all kinds of interpreters (including those who adopt methodological approaches you generally support) toward the conclusions that I have reached, that Gould reached in 1896, that the great classical commentators reached, and that the majority of Christians in the pews have always reached. If the Synoptic writers did not believe in the existence of demons, they were very poor communicators – since they were misunderstood almost universally, within the very Christian community they helped to form, from very early Christian times up to the present.

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That was not an admission. As I pointed out, it was never in dispute. In my own writings on this subject it’s a fact I always lead with. However it has no impact on the relevance of my opposition to your argument in particular.

Which you are.

You’re missing the fact that I never once said anything like “You quote old commentaries, therefore your views on demons wrong”, or “You reject the historical critical method, therefore your ideas about demons are wrong”. I didn’t make any such connection. You’re attacking a straw man.

Yes but that’s ok, it’s going to die out, just like the other antiquated interpretations did. The global flood interpretation, all the crazy talk about witches, the immortal soul, going to heaven and hell, infant baptism, illness being caused by satanic and demonic possession, penal substitutionary atonement, they’ve all had their day.

The mainstream consensus has altered radically on these issues, and it’s going to continue to alter on the subject of satan and demons as well. I can wait. Apart from the minority scholars to whom I’ve already alluded, the recent work by Amos Yong, James Smith, and in particular David Bradnick, demonstrates that some mainstream Pentecostal theologians are now stating to take reality seriously, and as a result they now understand that their satanology, demonology, and pneumatology generally, require radical revision. The cracks in the wall are already visible. What a time to be alive.

This is the same argument Bellarmine used against Galileo. It is also the same argument Ken Ham uses with regard to Genesis 1-3, and the flood narrative. It remains your only argument; “Just read the text literally, in English”. Such an argument requires no further comment.

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No, but you left the strong impression that I held the conclusions that I held because of allegedly dated and faulty scholarship and interpretive methods – without mentioning that exactly the same conclusions were reached by most mainstream scholars whose articles are not dated and who accept your view of the high value of historical-critical approaches. The constant juxtaposition in your posts of “Your scholarship is outdated and methodologically flawed” with “your conclusions about demons in the Synoptics are wrong” left it to the readers here to make the connection between the two, even if you never explicitly made it yourself. I therefore drew attention to your misleading conversational procedure.

In your dreams.

Even if it has some similarity to Bellarmine’s line of reasoning, the similarity is superficial, for reasons already explained. The astronomy which Bellarmine says is implied in the Bible is never the main point of the Biblical stories where astronomical notions are discussed, whereas in at least some cases the demonic possession and exorcism is the main point of the Biblical story. There is a huge difference between “incidental beliefs about the cosmos, having in themselves nothing to do with God, Jesus, salvation, etc., which the ancient Biblical writers probably held” and “beliefs about Jesus, demons, possession, and exorcism which the writer of the particular passage explicitly endorses.” I take Galileo’s side against Bellarmine regarding the cosmology because Bellarmine’s conservatism in astronomy is based on an unnecessarily mechanical reading of incidental background given in the Bible, but if Bellarmine had defended belief in demons and possession against Galileo, I would have taken Bellarmine’s side. There is simply no plausible way of reading Mark 5 without drawing the conclusion that Mark personally believed in demons and wanted to promote that belief among his readers.

You are welcome to prove me wrong, by providing a line-by-line commentary on the first part of Mark 5, showing me how it can be coherently read if written by an author who thought demons to be superstitious nonsense. If you had spent as many years studying the Greek text of Mark 5 as you have spent studying the secondary literature on Mark, you would be able to provide such a commentary – if you are correct in your reading. But given the option of presenting your exposition, you decline. So here is where the situation sits: The vast majority of the Fathers, the Medievals, the classic Reformers, modern scholars on Mark, the people in the pews, etc. take the traditional and most obvious reading that Mark really believed in demons; on the other side, you and the Christadelphians (and perhaps some other sectarians whose numbers are very small) affirm that Mark didn’t mean what he seems to mean. The onus is on you and your handful of allies to provide the daring new coherent exegesis to justify your belief. If you don’t, the Christian world will go on holding to the same interpretation. And rightly so.

Note that this has nothing to do with the question whether or not demons exist. The question I have focused on is whether Mark endorses their existence. Because you are religiously and theologically and scientifically certain that demons do not exist, you must prove that Mark does not endorse their existence, or you have to admit that certain passages in Mark (and in other parts of the New Testament) endorse falsehoods. And the second option is not an option for you, so you have to fight to your dying breath to deny that Mark believes in demons. Not an enviable position to be in, and I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.

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@Jonathan_Burke, for all the talking past each other and (predictable) pushing of each other’s buttons, I do think @Eddie is right here that we’d all benefit from getting from you a (at least somewhat) detailed interpretation of the relevant portion of Mark 5 (verse 1-20). Your tendency seems to be to poke holes in everyone else’s thoughts and interpretations, but I don’t often see you put forward your own in any detail. I personally can understand that if you’re unsure, but you often seem quite confident so I’m assuming you can articulate your own views. I honestly don’t care so much about citations, etc. as @Eddie might want, and I don’t want to argue with you, I just genuinely want to know how you actually read it.

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I linked to two full length papers of mine (one which has been published), which explain how I approach texts discussing satan and demons, both in the New Testament and in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. They contain my own interpretations. Is that what you meant by “I don’t often see you put forward your own in any detail”?

As I have said before, if you really want to understand my hermeneutic and how I apply it to specific texts, you need to start here and here.

In contrast, Eddie has given these reasons for his interpretation.

  1. It’s the traditional interpretation.
  2. The text says “demons” in English.

I guess that’s a hermeneutic, of sorts? I guess that’s enough detail from him, kind of?

I have articulated my views. As I said before, I read it as Mark reporting what was believed, while not believing it himself. I also cited a specific hermeneutical approach which I use. I also quoted two scholars using that exact same approach as an example of how I use it. Would you prefer me to give a two point interpretation like Eddie did?

As I said before, I read it as Mark reporting what was believed, while not believing it himself. I also previously identified my hermeneutical basis for this interpretation. This is what I explained previously.

  1. The socio-historical context. To explain this, I both quoted and linked to one of my papers in which I demonstrate that contrary to popular opinion, it is demonstrable that not all the New Testament writers believed in a supernatural satan and demons, so such an interpretation cannot simply be assumed when a text is read; it must be derived legitimately from the text.

  2. Lexicography. To explain this, I linked to two of my papers in which I demonstrate that Greek words typically understood to refer to the traditional understanding of satan and demons, not only have a range of meanings but during the first century were typically not understood as referring to the satan and demons of later periods.

  3. Demythlogization. To explain this, I quoted Twelftree and Dunn as an example of how this is applied to demonic possession in the New Testament by people like myself (and by them). Note that I did not appeal to their authority in an attempt to say this interpretation is correct, I quoted them as an example of how this is applied to demonic possession in the New Testament. What did you think of Twelftree and Dunn’s argument? I also linked to a paper of mine in which I quoted Dunn saying that the apostle Paul himself applied demythologization. That same paper of mine also identifies demythologization in a number of second century Christian texts, demonstrating how it was used by early Christians to reject belief in a supernatural satan and demons.

I realise all this is very likely shockingly new to you, and theologically very confronting. Given the visceral reaction people here have to unorthodox theology, I certainly don’t want to overwhelm you. But do let me know if you want to know more, after you’ve read the work of mine to which I linked previously.

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I have not given these as the reasons for my interpretation. I have said that my interpretation is the traditional one, but I don’t argue that it should be accepted because it’s traditional. And I haven’t said that we should rely on the English text, and have in fact many times said we should be looking detail at the Greek.

The Greek term used throughout the story for the entity possessing the madman is pneuma akatharton (“unclean spirit”). The term is sometimes in the singular, sometimes in the plural. However, there are grounds for translating this as “demon” or “demons”: the term daimonion (generally rendered as “demon” in NT writings) in other Synoptic passages appears to refer to exactly the same unclean spirits; and in this episode (5.15-5.18) the verb daimonizomai is used several times. It means “to be possessed by daimonia”. Thus, the man with the unclean spirits is the man possessed by daimonia (demons).

That said, my interpretation does not rest on the used of the word “demon” in either Greek or English. It rests on the narrative sequence. Something (demons, unclean spirits, whatever they are to be called) asks Jesus for permission to leave the man and enter the swine; Jesus nods to their request (literally “turns toward them”); they enter the swine, and the swine immediately stampede into the lake and are drowned. The Greek words for the transfer are: “having exited [the man], the unclean spirits entered into the swine.”

(Some Greek manuscripts add the adverb “immediately” to the statement of Jesus’s assent, indicating either (a) that Jesus agrees with the demons’ request immediately or (b) if “them” refers to the swine rather than the demons, that Jesus effected the transfer to the swine immediately.)

Note what Mark does “not” say. He could easily have written: “And there was a herd of swine nearby, and after the man possessed by demons frantically entreated Jesus not to send the demons out of the country, the swine stampeded into the lake, and were drowned. And many of those standing by said that Jesus had sent the unclean spirits into the swine.” Had Mark written that, he would clearly have distanced himself from any popular opinion that the pigs had been possessed by demons. But he chose to write what he wrote, and what he wrote says that the pigs were in fact possessed by the unclean spirits which had left the man. It is a straightforward past tense Greek sentence, like the other past tense Greek sentences in the account.

The overwhelming impression of the narrative is that the man was inhabited by a being/beings that were personal agents of some kind, and that these agents were transferred into the pigs. This impression is so strong that the onus is on the person who has the alternate interpretation to show how that interpretation cashes out in the actual Greek words that Mark uses.

I have not asked Jonathan Burke to do anything beyond what Greek scholars routinely do, i.e., interpret passages in accord with the vocabulary, grammar, syntax, idiom, and literary structure. He claims great expertise in scholarship, yet he does not seem to be aware that the core of scholarship (as opposed to an ancillary duty of scholars) is not reading thousands of articles in the secondary literature, but the mastering of one’s primary text. I await his detailed account of the primary text. Until his alternate interpretation is provided, I don’t see how the discussion can get any further.

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So I went back and read through your papers, and to be frank, I didn’t actually see where you put what you actually think or what the passages mean to you. I see a lot of extensive research, lots of citations of what scholars think, etc. so don’t take it as an insult, but I was more actually just looking for a straightforward, in-your-own-words type paraphrase. Or if you aren’t interpreting the actual text differently, what is the author’s intent? What do you get out of the passage? I’m not asking for hermeneutical method, I’m asking for more like a paraphrase/commentary/coffee conversation.

I’m pretty sure I understand how @Eddie takes the passage, it’s your views that I don’t feel clear about. I’m not interested in a hermeneutical “pissing contest” (pardon the term), I simply what to understand how people read the same text differently and what it means to them.

Thanks, this didn’t exactly come out clearly in the previous posts. Can you expound on this a bit more? Mark didn’t believe in demons/demon possession/demonic causes for illness, why? Why did Mark not believe it but the other people did? Why did he report it if he did, was he just accommodating them or?

I read through your papers and you seem pretty thorough and well-read. I know very little of the relevant scholarship and methodology so I’m certainly not judging your scholarship. But I confess I didn’t came away thinking that you made an obvious case for Mark not believing in demons, only that it was plausible that he meant something else by the words. In other words, I see you making room for the plausibility of an alternative interpretation, but I don’t see you 1) making a positive case for that interpretation of Mark 5, or 2) making a strong case that the “orthodox” interpretation isn’t at least as plausible.

It then seems to me that “I read it as Mark reporting what was believed, while not believing it himself” then falls a bit flat because you haven’t taken the time to explain it. This was my original criticism, you and @Eddie spend most of your time making “noise” and then gloss over the real issues, it seems to me.

The idea that some Christians don’t believe in Satan/demons, etc. isn’t new. Theologically I don’t find it particularly confronting, partially because it seems rather academic so far. My English “plain reading” of Matthew 5:1-20 is that a guy was demon-possessed, Jesus got rid of them, and they entered pigs. It’s a creepy story but I take at face value. If I’m wrong, oh well, wasn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last time. So far though, I’m not convinced of anything other than that some people see it differently. I’d be interested in knowing more about what you think about the passage (like the questions I posed above) but there’s no way I can go through paper upon paper of what scholars think. You’re gonna have to break it down for me. :frowning: