And at first it was kind of interesting. After a while, though, you start asking yourself: Is this what I came to Hell for, to hand different kinds of pliers to a demon? I started wondering if I should even have come to Hell at all.
Maybe I should have lived my life differently, and gone to Heaven instead. I decided I had to get away—the endless lines, the senseless whipping, the forced sing-alongs. I wandered off. I needed some me time. I came to a cave and went inside. Maybe I would find a place to meditate, or some gold nuggets. I saw Satan. For many, the emergence of modern science called such beliefs into question. In the late 19th century, Christians who sought to retain belief in demons and miracles found refuge in two separate but interconnected developments.
Dispensationalist theologians argued that the Bible was a book coded by God with a blueprint for human history, past, present and future. Miracles were assigned to earlier dispensations and would only return as signs of the end of the world.
For dispensationalists, the Bible prophesied that end of the world was near. They argued that end would occur through the work of demonic forces operating through human institutions. As a result, dispensationalists are often quite distrustful and prone to conspiratorial thinking. For example, many believe that the United Nations is part of a plot to create a one world government ruled by the coming Antichrist. Such distrust helps explain why Christians like Immanuel might believe that reptilian creatures work in the U.
Meanwhile the end of the 19th century also saw the emergence of the Pentecostal movement, the fastest growing segment of global Christianity. Pentecostalism featured a renewed interest in the work of the Holy Spirit and its manifestation in new signs and wonders, from miraculous healings to ecstatic speech. The enclosed space was divided into several courts. The largest one was the court of the Gentiles, where everyone could have access to; it was separated from the other spaces by a balustrade prohibiting the Gentiles to pass to the other courts.
Subsequently, follows the court of the women that was five steps above the court of the Gentiles; the women could not pass beyond this area. The next court was of Israel, or court of the men, followed by the court of the priests, and then the Holy of Holies or Sanctus Sanctorum The verbal aspect indicates an action in progress in the past that is not finalized yet or completed 45 , so «Jesus was contemplating». However, the Greek text is clearly an imperfect indicative signifying an action in progress as it is also showed in the Vulgata: «sedens Iesus contra gazofilacium aspiciebat was seeing quomodo turba iactaret aes in gazofilacium» What does Jesus see?
According to the Mishnah Shekalim there were in the temple «thirteen chests» in the form of trumpets upon which were inscriptions specifying the purpose of the offering. Jesus contemplates according to the eyes of God, divine capability that allows him to perceive not the quantity of money but what is hidden beneath the offering made.
The meta-physical seeing of Jesus is confirmed in the instructions imparted to his disciples in vv. The reason for such affirmation is based upon the spiritual and personal observation of the widow who put in everything that she had, meaning her entire wealth and way of living. The total self-giving to God cannot be unperceived by the one who sees everything. The Lord continues to see what is lacking in those that apparently give much more money from what abounded to them, and what is rich in the heart of a poor nameless widow.
The initiative comes from Jesus, especially in the pericope of sequela. Jesus' seeing is the first step of the vocation, becoming the primary step of selection that motivates the action of calling This phenomenon becomes an uncommon practice within the Semitic culture, since it was the disciple who aspires to be accepted by a particular Rabbi or rabbinic school of the time.
The summoning of the disciples turns out to be an original and creative manner of Jesus which creates some kind of discontinuity with the culture of his time At this point it is convenient to allude to K. Barth who making a paraphrase of the famous Descartian expression «Cogito ergo sum» affirms «Cogitor ergo sum», meaning that in the moment that «I» am thought or perceived by God, in that instant I exist, I am.
The initiative belongs to the divinity who always wants to reach out to a person out of love and kindness Jesus' seeing is intuitive and personal. He sees the totality of a person scrutinizing every aspect of the spiritual essence. His sight captures everything that would be hidden to a simple human eye.
His seeing goes beyond the physical limitations, penetrating the earthly masks, seeing the spiritual or supernatural dimension. This also highlights that His seeing is not casual.
It has authority and purpose in the dynamic behavior of Jesus: it becomes the preamble that initiates a calling, act of mercy, teaching, miracle, exorcism or healing. Therefore his seeing is effective, this means that the action that follows immediately after his special perception is already contained in his seeing, e. Thus, the reader can conclude that Jesus' seeing in Mark turns out to be more than human, since it corresponds to the supernatural seeing of God.
The New Testament does present demons as being real Matt 4,1. They are the entities who oppose the action of God, being the contrasting forces that want to destroy the economy of salvation. The demons influence and manipulate the body and soul of a person demoniac , inflicting a variety of physical manifestations that can be per ceived as illness or infirmities in the Semitic mindset like dumbness Matt , blindness Matt , epilepsy Mark , and insanity Mark ; on the other hand, a close reading of Mark's Gospel helps to identify the differentiation of a demoniac from those who are afflicted with ordinary bodily maladies, i.
In Mark's narrative, it is crucial to draw attention to three important passages that can summarize the constant pattern of behavior of the demons, specially to determine the manner of their «seeing» in the context of demoniac possessions and exorcisms: Mark ; ; Taking in consideration this verbal aspect, most of the English versions translate the verb as it would be an aorist: «beheld» and «saw» accompanied with the adverb of time «whenever» or «when», to express the habitual character of the imperfect.
Therefore the summary passage contained a pattern of behavior that can be described as a spiritual perception which is typical of supernatural beings. Thus such a way of seeing subsists implicitly in every encounter of a demoniac with Jesus narrated in Mark's Gospel. A parallel reading of the three texts mentioned above makes possible to the reader to determine the following pattern of conduct of the unclean spirits:.
The first one to see is the unclean spirit. Mark makes explicit in his narrative that the first perception comes from the demoniac: ; and They are the subject of the verb that communicates a habitual action or a vision in progress expressed in participle ; The direct object of their vision is Jesus. These passages connote, therefore, the image of the prostration before a superior authority as it can be seen in other texts as Gen ; Dan ; Matt ; Mark's author, speaking of the agency of the demon rather than of the victim, states that they never run away from the presence of Jesus, becoming an outstanding characteristic in the narrative, because it would be easier to think of a demon that flees from the perturbing and dominant presence of Jesus rather than remaining and humbling themselves.
But the Gospel is clear in this aspect, they stay and prostrate, indicating that there is no escape from the presence of God and his absolute power capable of overcoming them The demons usually have the capacity to speak in their own persons Mark ; ; also see Matt , however, when they face down before Jesus, their deed is complemented with a profession of faith that reveals the true nature of their seeing: «you are the Son of God» Mark or «Jesus, Son of the Most High God» Mark ; also This ultimate truth about Jesus reveals a high Christological confession, already announced by God in Mark ; and now put in the lips of a supernatural entity, but hidden from everybody else in general Such statement demonstrates that they can also observe behind the different layers of human appearances, being able to see without difficulty what others could not see: his divine nature.
As representatives of a supernatural dimension, the demons possess a knowledge and visual perception superior to that of the disciples, followers or any other human in Mark's narrative.
Therefore there is a profound irony in the gospel narratives when the reader notices that the ones who Jesus came to combat are the first ones to recognize Him for what he truly is. On the other hand, the scribes are the one who affirm that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebub, and by the prince of demons He is driving out demons Mark Consequently, the demonic confession of the Christological identity exhibits a simple proclamation of the truth of His eschatological lordship which does not imply an embrace of faith, love, and trust in Jesus Distinctive of their behavior are the violent reactions, indicators of the overwhelming power emanated from Jesus that torments the unclean spirits.
The acknowledgment of Jesus' divine nature is expressed with a loud scream krazein in Mark , heightening the drama of pain which is an echo of the exorcisms of the demoniac of Capernaum see Mark The violent reactions continued while Jesus is present until the moment of his command of leaving the boy in v.
At the end of every encounter of the unclean spirits with Jesus the outcome results to be a liberating experience, a restoration of the wholeness that was lost because of the evil presence, which evidences the supremacy of the power of Jesus over the demoniac forces, e.
This dominance can be seen overtly in the permission asked by the demons to go into the pigs in Mark , which was granted by Jesus causing the deliverance of the man who had been possessed, restoring his natural condition of being a social person capable of having a harmonious life again As a consequence of what was explained, it can be concluded that the demons' seeing can be regarded as meta-physical since they are considered spiritual entities who perceive what is proper of the supernatural realm, and therefore one can be in agreement with the words of Athanasius in his work entitled On the Incarnation of the Word The episodes of visual perception treated previously exhibit different semantic levels of comprehension connected with the aspect of seeing.
The demons, for example, who are the characters that function in the narrative as the antagonist of the hero, present a spiritual seeing capable of perceiving the divine manifestation hidden under the human condition; in the same way Jesus sees with the eyes of God catching sight of what is hidden to the human eye, but the outcome and the effects of their seeing are radically opposed. The spiritual seeing of these personages, therefore, manifest diverse semantic levels that are incorporated in contexts of exorcisms, healing, divine manifestation of God, vocation, instruction, etc.
For this reason, as manner of a conclusion, it is possible to highlight five lines of semantic dimension in which the action of the «spiritual seeing» remains intrinsically related to different fields of understanding of the text. Right from the beginning of Mark's Gospel the double celestial object of Jesus' vision and the hearing of the divine voice of God the Father established the pattern of the divine sonship of Jesus, a Trinitarian dimension that qualifies his Christological identity Mark The encounter with the demoniacs continue the same line of theological thought, manifested in the demons' voice as part of their characteristic reaction which starts always with a «seeing» that leads to the acknowledgement of the superior power of God.
Their proclamation expresses the truth about Jesus that begins with the spiritual visual perception. But their oral manifestation is not totally equivalent to the divine voice of the. Father in , because the demoniac reacts out of fear, expressing only the objective divine truth about the Son of God in Jesus, while the voice of the Father is expressed out of love.
In this manner the interaction becomes dynamic, producing effective results that have a positive outcome, thanks to the presence ofJesus who functions as the source of power and goodness In the cases where the initiative belongs to Jesus, the reader recognizes that his seeing implies a personal connection with his interlocutors that provokes a reaction manifested in distinct forms of responses positive and negative through the calling to experience a sequela Christi.
In the episodes of exorcism, the initiative of the seeing belongs to the demons, who are the first ones to recognize the divine presence of the Son of God in the human appearance of Jesus. The double interrelational movement starts with the demons, who always provoke a reaction in Jesus that ends up with the complete healing and restoration of the possessed person. The dynamic of the encounter narrated according to the human level manifests the divine reality hidden in the human appearances.
The episodes described in Mark ; ; display a clash of the two basic forces: good and evil, which at the same time transport the reader to an eschatological level that incarnates the eternal battle of the universal cosmic forces where always the power of God and of Jesus prevails against the evil forces that pursue the destruction of harmony and balance in the human state The demons destroy the harmonious balance of living and communication that a person had during the pre-possessed state, to the point of isolating him or her from other persons and from God himself.
Thus the context of exorcism becomes at the same time episodes of healing since they describe the re-establishment of the ideal state of communication and functionality in the social community and with the personal God of Jesus.
Other episodes of healing are the ones characterized by the absence of demons: the paralytic man in Mark and the anonymous woman with hemorrhages in Mark In both cases the process of healing also begins with Jesus' seeing which implies more than just a physical perception of the reality in front of him. The narrative does not describe a context of exorcism or healing. Jesus simply observes «how» the people were putting their offering. His persistent and spiritual contemplation of the human condition motivates him to impart an instruction to his closest friends, the disciples a.
The purpose of the didactic communication described in a direct style discourse of b , is to educate the disciples to «see» as God «sees», this means to grow in the capacity to perceive the reality with the spiritual eyes in order to discover what is hidden to the human sight, because man looks to the outward appearance of every situation, but Jesus, which is the evident proof of God's seeing, perceives the soul and heart.
This attitude of Jesus echoes the instruction of Yhwh to Samuel during the moment of choosing David, when the Lord said to Samuel, «do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart» 1Sam In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel " The Master and Margarita " first published in Moskva magazine, , the devil appears as a smart but secretive stranger, who is accompanied by a talking cat.
Scratch Satan fights for his right to a man's soul in a court of law. But even these modern depictions of Lucifer as a lawyer have their origins in the Middle Ages.
In an article from the journal la Revue de l'histoire des religions, Karl Shoemaker, a historian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, described a medieval court drama in which "the devil and his hellish council selected a demon learned in the law and sent him to the court of heaven in order to sue for a legal title to the human race.
This article was adapted from a previous version published in All About History magazine, a Future Ltd. To learn more about some of history's most incredible stories, subscribe to All About History magazine.
All About History is the only history magazine that is as entertaining as it is educational. Bringing History to life for readers of all ages. Live Science. Jump to: 1. The serpent 2. The fallen angel 3. Satan as the beast 4. The winged devil 5. Satan with horns 6. The devil as an Adonis 7.
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