The Prodigal Demoniac

Matthew's demoniac is an apostate Jew, unrestrained through sin and/or misfortune from the bonds of the Mosaic Covenant, and civilised society.

Relief #35 from Bronze Cross by C. Malcolm Powers

On the parallels between the Gadarene Demoniac and the Prodigal Son
The following is excerpted from my recent exegetical study on the Gadarene Demoniac event (Mt 8:28–9:1, Mk 5:1–20, Lk 8:26–39). All English Scripture quoted below is from the ESV, unless quoted by another author, or otherwise indicated.

Passage Structure: Details of the Common Matthean Triple Tradition (TT) Material
With regards to the Gadarene pericope, Matthew’s abbreviated version is a wonderful distillation of the common TT material found in the longer accounts of Mark and Luke. For the sake of clarity, since only one of Matthew’s demoniacs is common to all three Gospels,¹ and all three have multiple demons (albeit, in Mark and Luke, prior to the man’s introduction of the name “Legion,” Jesus only addresses a single “unclean spirit”), singular pronouns are used below for the former, and plural for the latter.

1.  Setting is now “the country of the Gadarenes” (Mt 8:28b).
2.  Unrestrainable, demonized man (v. 28ce).
3.  He is living in the tombs (v 29d).
4.  He recognises Jesus (v. 29).
5.  Many pigs “feeding” (v. 30).
6.  The demons seek permission to enter the pigs (v. 31).
7.  Jesus grants permission (v. 32a).
8.  They enter the pigs (v. 32b).
9.  The pigs run to their deaths (v. 32c).
10.  The swineherds flee (v. 33a).
11.  They report the incident (33bc).
12.  The towns people react to the report (v. 34b).
13.  The towns people react to Jesus (v. 34d).
14.  The healed/saved man stays behind (9:1).

Common Details Analysis

  Setting is now “the country of the Gadarenes.”

The change of setting, from Capernaum in the Galilee, across the lake that Israelis today call “Kinneret,” to “the country of the Gadarenes” (or Gerasenes² ), clearly plays a significant part in this story, given that all three Synoptists say Jesus returned to the Capernaum shore immediately afterwards (Mt 9:1; Mk 5:21; Lk 8:37). That nothing else happens on this visit to the other side of the “Sea of Galilee” suggests this event is functionally paradigmatic, that is, it appears in the Gospels because, like those involving Samaritans (Lk 9:51–56; 17:11–19; Jn 4:4–42; cf. Ac 1:8; 8:1; 4–25; 9:31; 15:3.), its details make it ideal as a representative Salvation Narrative of Jesus’ messianic activity in the apostate areas of Palestine.

Located in the northern part of the Decapolis, in the eastern portion of land allotted to the tribe of Manasseh,³ the “district of Gadara”⁴ was an even more disreputable area than the Galilee, according to the more naionalist Judeans, who took it as read that, since it was populated by gentiles and apostate Jews, it was teeming with demons.⁵ The Gadarenes in all three versions of this story do nothing to mitigate these pejorative characterisations of the area's inhabitants. In fact, they are each arguably respective representatives of them: The swineherds, gentiles; the demoniac, apostates; the unclean spirits, demons.

  Unrestrainable, demonized man / He is living in the tombs.

Matthew’s description of the demoniac’s debased state is succinct. The demonised wild man roams an infamously evil land, (“the country of the Gadarenes”), wherein, for reasons unstated, he has come into contact with corpses (“coming out of the tombs”), making him ritually unclean as he charges at Jesus (Nm 19:16). Like a beast, he is aggressively antisocial, chasing away everyone who comes near him, regardless of their intent (“so fierce that no one could pass that way”).

The mention of the demoniac coming from the “tombs” might simply be the recounting of an evocative, but narratively unimportant detail. However, its inclusion in Matthew’s abbreviated account suggests that it might prove more significant if read paradigmatically, as a detail in a representative healing/salvation narrative. Within the pericope’s Salvation theme, the tomb’s implication of ritual uncleanness requiring priestly expiation implies a deeper theological relationship between the demoniac, Jesus as Messiah, and the Law of Moses, in much the same way that leprosy does in other healing/salvation events in the Gospels (Mt 8:1–4; Mk 1:40-45; Lk 5:12–14; c.f. Lv 13:45-46). Perhaps, as suggested above, the demoniac is not a gentile lunatic, as many suppose from the setting, but rather an apostate Jew, who has become unrestrained through sin and/or misfortune from the bonds of the Mosaic Covenant, and therefore, from civilised society.

In this light, “living in the tombs,” as Mark and Luke have it, means the demoniac, while alive physically, is spiritually “dead in [his] sins and trespasses … following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ep 2:1–2). Like the prodigal son in the midst of his disobedience (Lk 15:11–32), the demoniac is a sheep among a herd of swine, a rebel to the Covenant of his father; lost and dead, oblivious to his eventual rescue and resuscitation (Lk 15:32).

  He recognises Jesus.

Additional support for the proposition that the demoniac is a “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24) is found in the Synoptic unanimity regarding the recognition of Jesus' true identity. In all three accounts, it is the demoniac, not the demons, who expresses this recognition in Messianic terminology: “Son of [the Most High] God” (v. 29; Mk 5:6–7; Lk 8:28).⁶ That Matthew's dual demoniacs are speaking is less obvious, given their concomitant third person plural verbs, but both Mark and Luke’s grammar is decisively singular (“he saw Jesus … he ran and fell down … he cried out/crying out … he said … ‘What have you to do with me … I adjure/beg you … do not torment me’”). However, Matthew does mark the change in speaker after this initial dialogue, as do the other two Synoptists. When the request to be sent into the pigs is made, Matthew replaces his plural substantive participle, “the demonised,” as the antecedent of the pronoun “we,” with the introduction of the plural noun “the demons,” indicating that until this moment, his demoniacs had been doing all the talking (v. 31). Mark and Luke signal this change in speaker through the simple expedient of inserting third person plural verbs into their narratives, “they begged him” (Mk 5:12; Lk 8:32).

  Many pigs “feeding”.

As with the mention of the “tombs,” that the herd of pigs is said to be “feeding” could simply be the author relaying an incidental detail of the event, one that reasonably accounts for the presence of the swine on that hill, on that day. Similar to the “tombs” mention, too, the “feeding” detail is redundant, perhaps even more so. It has no real bearing on the outcome of the event, and would not have been missed if excised from Matthew’s account altogether. So, like the mention of the “tombs” again, the inclusion of such an ultimately unnecessary detail in Matthew’s distilled version indicates that it might have paradigmatic value.

First, remember that the thing that makes pigs unclean is that they do not eat the grass that grows from the land (Lv 11:7–8; Dt 14:8). Thus, they have been placed by gentiles on land situated within the boundaries of Yahweh’s providence, while being unable to draw sustenance from it. In fact, whether they eat and live, or die and are eaten, is wholly dependent on those who are not recipients of Yahweh’s providence. The impression this gives is of creatures who absolutely do not belong where they stand; they are aliens, just like the gentiles who feed them, and who feed on them. What an obscene image: A herd of unclean animals, snorting up their unclean food, provided by their unclean owners, churning over the ground that God provided for his sheep to gather on, and trampling down the grass he provided for his sheep to graze upon.

Now consider this image in the context of the food/doctrine motif operating throughout the Gospels, such as is seen in Jesus’ metaphorical caution, “Beware of the leaven[ed bread] of the pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt 16:6). There, the meaning of “the leaven of,” or, “the food provided by,” means “the doctrine of,” or “the teaching provided by” (v. 12). Leavening agents, such as bread yeast, add air bubbles to rising dough. Jesus’ image of “adding leaven to bread” is used to express the puffing up of the divinely provisioned “bread of God,” or, rather, “his divine Doctrine (delivered by his holy breath/spirit),” with “human breath” (unclean spirit). This unrighteous leavening makes the bread of God “softer” (easier to chew, to hold in the mouth), “more flexible” (easier to twist), and “more absorbent” (easier to corrupt). From this we can see how, metaphorically, the “feeding” pigs are a symbol of the doctrinally malnourishing gentile presence of that area, and how corrupting an influence such a debased environment would have on those suited to it in its original condition.

Now, take note of how the demoniac tolerated the pigs, but is completely set apart, wilfully and aggressively, from the humans who rear them, and who eat them. Like most nationalist Jews of the day, he harbours an enculturated antipathy to gentiles, but unlike most of these Jews, he has inured himself to their defiled environment. His toleration of the pigs is a feature of his degenerate condition, his ferocious repulsion of non-Jews a demonised assertion of his ethnic independence. Note, too, there is no suggestion in any of the Gospel accounts that he consumes pork. The mention of the tombs is the only detail given that suggests the man would be ritually unclean, were he a Jew estranged from the Law of Moses, which is precisely what these TT details (the tombs, the demoniac's use of messianic terminology, the pigs feeding) are pointing to: The demoniac is an apostate Jew whom Jesus has come to save from his sinful rebellion, and to bring back under civilised obedience to the covenant of Moses.

If, for the sake of argument, we accept that the demoniac is indeed an apostate Jew, we can then see an interesting set of thirteen parallels between the Synoptic accounts of his salvation, and that of the titular subject of another gospel passage in which pigs feature: Luke’s parable of the “Prodigal Son” (Lk 15:11–32). The existence of these parallels (two of which were introduced above) not only supports the idea that the demoniac is an apostate, but also strongly undergirds the contention made above, that the demoniac event is a paradigmatic story, a representative Salvation Narrative of Jesus’ messianic activity in the apostate areas of Palestine.

As you read these parallels, take note of how in the figurative parable, the conditions or states are mostly literal, while in the literal event, they are mostly figurative:

1.  They both reside in “far off (gentile/foreign) lands.”
2.  They are both living beside feeding pigs.
3.  They both have uncongenial relations with the owners of pigs.
4.  They are both starving (the son literally, the demoniac doctrinally/spiritually).
5.  They are both suffering more than the pigs and gentiles.
6.  They both look to the pigs for relief from torment.
7.  They both come to their senses, or right mind.
8.  They are both finally humble/repentant before their Lords (the son before his father, the demoniac
  before the Son of God).
9.  They both return home (the son to his father’s house, the demoniac to his people).
10.  They both recognise they’ve also sinned against God (the son explicitly, the demoniac implicitly).
11.  The sin/cause/frame of mind of their rebellion is abandoned with the pigs.
12.  They are both dead/lost, then found/made alive (the son explicitly, the demoniac implicitly).
13.  They are both believed to stand condemned, by self-righteous Jews (the son explicitly, by his brother;
  the demoniac presumably, by those of his day), in contrast to their respective Lords.

1.  “This is one of a number of [such] doublings in Matthew.” John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2005), 375. Nolland’s footnote to this comment reads, “For other healings see Mt. 9:27; 20:30. In 26:60 there is an extra witness (cf. 18:16). Jesus rides two animals in 21:7.”
2.  “We lack information about the precise boundaries of the territories claimed by any of the cities in the region, but there is nothing improbable in the suggestion that the sovereignty of Gadara reached the lake and that there was a settlement there with a name that could be corrupted into “Gergesa” and perhaps “Gerasa” (cf. the modern Khersa), so that all three names entered the tradition.” Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, PNTC (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; IVP, 1992), 208.
3.  “The tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim are treated as tribes of Joseph (e.g., Josh 16:4). In addition, Manasseh is called a half-tribe (Josh 1:12; 4:12; 12:6), because half of the tribe took an inheritance from the east side of the Jordan River and the other half took territory to the west of the Jordan (Josh 13:1–14, 29–33).” Chris Stevens, and J. A. Crutchfield, “Israel, Tribes of”, LBD (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
4.  Kenneth S. Wuest, Mark in the Greek New Testament for the English Reader, Vol. X (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1950), 100.
5.  “Expositors [Bible commentary], quoting Grotius, says that Decapolis, full of Hellenistic Jews, was loved by the demons.” Wuest, Mark, 104.
6.  On the title “Son of the Most High” used by the angel Gabriel in the Annunciation to Mary (Lk 1:32), Marshall notes, “But the title is more than a name; it indicates the true being of the person so called. [It] is equivalent to the more common ‘Son of God’. … and while it is true that it was used for Greek deities, it had a Semitic background. … The context suggests that we are to think of a title given to the Messiah.” I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1978), 67.