The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical / Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

by C. A. Row

“We find indications of these superstitions throughout the Gospels.” To this observation I invite the reader's attention. Is it meant to be affirmed that any indication can be found in the Gospels that the writers believed that a demon inhabited every private closet in the world? Two instances only are referred to in the text, in one of which the demoniac of Gadara is represented as dwelling among the tombs, and as having been driven into the wilderness; and the other the parable of the unclean spirit going out of the man, and finding no rest when walking through dry places. Do these two cases prove the truth of the sweeping assertions above referred to? Does the parabolic representation that the expelled demon found no rest in dry or clean places prove that the disciples of Jesus believed that they took especial delight in foul or offensive ones? Does the fact that the demoniac of Gadara had been driven by the evil spirit into the wilderness prove that it was a universal belief that deserts and graves were haunted by demons?

In proof also of these assertions we are referred in a note to five passages in the Gospels, viz. Matt. viii. 28; xii. 43; Mark v. 3-5; Luke viii. 27-29; xi. 24. Five passages are very few to justify the assertion that we find indications of these superstitions throughout the Gospels. On examining them, however, the five references are reduced to two, three belong to the account of the demoniac at Gadara, reported by each of the Synoptics; and two to the twofold report of the same parable as given by Matthew and Luke! This is a very slender foundation on which to ground the assertion that the followers of Jesus believed that “demons [pg 219] took especial delight in foul and offensive places, that they inhabited every private closet in the world, and that they haunted deserted places, graves, ruins, and certain kinds of trees, and that we find indications of these superstitions throughout the Gospels.”

Still more extraordinary is the next reference. “Demons haunted springs and fountains,” says the author. To this he adds, “the episode of the angel who was said to descend at certain seasons and trouble the water of the pool of Bethesda, so that he who first stepped in was cured of whatsoever disease he had, may be mentioned in passing.”

Why, I ask, mention it at all? Is the visit of an angel to this particular pool for the purpose of working a miracle, a proof that the followers of our Lord believed that demons inhabited springs and fountains?

But our astonishment at the author's reference to it is increased when we read the following words: “Although the passage is not found in the oldest manuscripts of the Fourth Gospel, and it is certainly a late interpolation.”

I must put the question again in real earnestness. This being so, why mention it here? The author admits that it formed no portion of the original Gospel of St. John, and that it is certainly a late interpolation. Now the Gospel of St. John, according to the opinion of the most eminent unbelievers, was not published before a.d. 170. If this was the case (the author himself evidently assigns to its composition a very late date) a late interpolation could not have found its way into its pages until about the year 250, at the earliest 200. What then is the nature of the reasoning before us? We are referred for proof that the followers of Jesus held these opinions to an authority which the author himself admits to have been a late interpolation, [pg 220] which could not have been introduced into this Gospel earlier than 180 years after the ministry of our Lord, as a proof that his original followers believed that demons inhabited springs and fountains. Such reasonings furnish their own refutation.

The exposure of one more fallacy of this description will be sufficient. We are told that, “Not only one evil spirit entered into a body, but many took possession of the same individual. There are many instances mentioned in the Gospels, such as Mary Magdalene, out of whom went seven demons, and the man whose name was legion, because many demons had entered into him.”

I ask, where are these “many instances”? The plain fact must be stated, that the two here referred to, constitute the only ones which are mentioned as facts by the Evangelists. Besides these there is the parable of the unclean spirit going out of the man above alluded to, who, when he could find no rest returned to his former habitation in company with seven other spirits more wicked than himself. It should be observed that in two of the cases the number given is the mystical number “Seven”; and that one of them occurs in a parable, the moral of which is, to warn the Jews, that although they had got rid of the evil spirit of idolatry, they were in danger of falling into the greater evil of Phariseeism and hypocrisy.

But to return to the argument. The great mass of the author's citations for the purpose of proving that the Jews at the time of the Advent, and among them the followers of Jesus, were a prey to these grotesque beliefs respecting the action of demons, are made from authors who are separated by an interval of centuries from the ministry of our Lord. I submit, therefore, that such authorities are utterly valueless to prove that [pg 221] His disciples and early followers were a prey to these gross delusions. Nor has he adduced an atom of valid proof from the New Testament itself. The references above referred to have either been made in a most careless manner, or have been used to assist in proving a foregone conclusion.

But let us suppose for the sake of argument that the Jews at the time of our Lord did generally entertain these monstrous demoniacal beliefs: to what conclusion, I ask, would such a fact, if true, indubitably point? Credulous and superstitions people, invariably invent stories that are the counterparts of their own credulity. This is proved by the whole mass of existing mythology. Mythological inventions give us the precise measure of the beliefs of those who have originated them. If then the demonology of those who have elaborated these portions of the Gospels was of the character that this writer and others assert it to have been, the Gospels would have contained an embodiment of such demoniacal beliefs as those which the author has so industriously collected, and has endeavoured to fasten upon their writers.