Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 9:33 - 9:33

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Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Matthew 9:33 - 9:33


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33. ἐκβληθέντος τοῦ δαιμονίου. An expression like this raises the question of demoniacal possession. We ask whether the instances described by the Evangelists point of forms of disease recognised in modern medical practice or to a distinct class of phenomena.

Jewish belief indeed appears to have attributed diseases, cases of insanity and even bodily infirmities such as dumbness, to the agency of indwelling personal evil spirits or δαιμόνια. The distinguishing feature of such demoniacal possession may be described as the phenomenon of a double consciousness. The occult spiritual power became as it were a second self ruling and checking or injuring the better and healthier self.

But on the other hand the use by the evangelists of a word or expression with which a theory is bound up, or even vivid and picturesque description in accordance with it, does not necessarily imply their acquiescence in that theory much less the actual truth of it. Accordingly the adoption of the word δαιμόνιον and its cognates cannot be considered as decisive on the point of the real existence of personal spiritual agents in disease. A hundred words and phrases implicitly containing false theories, are yet not rejected by correct thinkers. Christ left many truths to come to light in the course of ages, not needlessly breaking into the order by which physical facts are revealed.

At the same time not only is there nothing in the result of science (which does not deal with ultimate causes) inconsistent with some form of the belief in demoniacal possession, but certain phenomena of madness and infatuation are more naturally described by the words of the evangelists in their accounts of demoniacal possession than by any other; and our Lord’s own words, ‘This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,’ seem more than a mere concession to vulgar beliefs; for it is obvious a less definite expression might have been used if the belief itself was mistaken.

In the classical writers δαιμόνιος is used of acts, agencies, or powers that lie beyond human control or observation. Demosthenes e.g. in a striking passage speaks of the divine power or force which he sometimes fancied to be hurrying on the Hellenic race to destruction: ἐπελήλυθε καὶ τοῦτο φοβεῖσθαι, μή τι δαιμόνιον τὰ πράγματα ἐλαύνῃ, Phil. III. § 54. Of the return of Orestes, Electra says δαιμόνιον τίθημʼ ἐγώ, Soph. El. 1270. The δαιμόνιον of Socrates was the divine warning voice which apart from his own reasoning faculties checked him from entering upon dangerous enterprizes. Again δαιμόνιον had the meaning of a divine being or agent, a divinity or demi-god. The enemies of Socrates in their indictment used the word in this secondary sense not intended by him. He was charged with introducing καινὰ δαιμόνια (cp. Act 17:18). It is in this sense of demigods or intermediate divine agencies that δαιμόνια is used 1Co 10:20-21, where the argument is obscured by the rendering of the A.V. ‘devils.’ As a classical word δαιμόνιον never means ‘evil spirit.’