What evidence is there that the possessed people healed by Jesus were allegory of Zealots?
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2020 3:43 am
As from thread.
Investigating the roots of western civilization (ye olde BC&H forum of IIDB lives on...)
https://earlywritings.com/forum/
One curious issue related to this question is the setting for the Gospel story of the exorcism of the demoniac and the suicide of the pigs that get the demon. The Gospel story is set either (A) at Gadara or (B) at Gerasa, which is near Gadara, or (C) at Gergesa, which is on the Sea of Galilee. That is, different manuscripts say one or the other, according to Wiktionary.... as the Gadarens saw the inclination of Caesar and of his assessors, and expected, as they had reason to do, that they should be delivered up to the king, some of them, out of a dread of the torments they might undergo, cut their own throats in the night time, and some of them threw themselves down precipices, and others of them cast themselves into the river, and destroyed themselves of their own accord; which accidents seemed a sufficient condemnation of the rashness and crimes they had been guilty of; whereupon Caesar made no longer delay, but cleared Herod from the crimes he was accused of.
But someone else on Reddit cast doubt on Brojangle's claim that Mark was mistakenly calling it Gerasa: "Had you opened up your trusty Nestle-Aland at page 102, you would have seen that Gadarene was indeed a textual variant for Gerasine in Mk 5:1. (In no lesser sources than the Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus.)"Josephus does relate an anecdote about some Gadarenes throwing themselves into a river (not the Sea of Galilee), but Mark's version of the demoniac is the original one, and Mark said Gerasa. Matthew changed that to Gadara (possibly because Gerasa was 30 miles away from the lake. Gadara was closer but still 12 miles away from the lake. Mark often shows a confused or erroneous understanding of Palestinian geography)