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They fell down (3:11)

Here we seem to have what is called possession in modern mythology: an evil spirit has full control of a person's body. We know this because Mark describes the unclean spirit as falling down, when it must have been a human being actually grazing their knees on the ground. 

I cannot pretend to find this an easy read and I have not come across anything like this myself. However I do have friends I trust who could tell a story or two, so I am loathe to reject it out of hand. I have read those learnėd commentaries that try and filter out all the less believable stuff in the gospels, but they are even less believable than the stuff they filter out, being founded on the 'we know better now' principle that would see Jesus turned into a rather pale imitation of Gandhi. No, I'm pretty sure we must deal with the text as it is, and either accept it or reject it wholesale, not cherry-pick the bits we like or find acceptable or fit our preferred reconstruction. The disciples saw what they saw. They saw someone who knew what he could not know and acted as he should not act when faced with the person of Jesus. No one pretended this kind of thing happened all the time. Only in the presence of Jesus did the secret reality become visible to all. 

So now we know why people are frightened of meeting Jesus. When we meet him for real, our true selves come rushing out, or worse, that which is not our true selves but controls our lives comes rushing out, and we fall down in fear or worship.




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