<p>8:33 <i>And the demons came out from the man, and entered into the swine, and the herd rushed down the hill into the lake and were drowned</i>- Why did the pigs run over the cliff, and why did the Lord Jesus agree to the man's request for this? Because mental illness features intermittent episodes, it's understandable that the Lord sought to comfort those cured that the change He had brought was permanent. Thus the Lord tells the 'spirit' assumed to be tormenting the mentally afflicted child: &quot;I command you, come out of him, <i>and enter no more</i> into him&quot; (Mk. 9:25). It's in the same vein that He drove the pigs into the lake as a sign that Legion's cure was permanent. I suggest that it was a kind of visual <i>aide memoire</i>, of the kind often used in the Bible to impress a point upon illiterate people. I suggest that's why in the ritual of the Day of Atonement, the scapegoat ran off into the wilderness bearing Israel's sins. As the bobbing animal was watched by thousands of eyes, thousands of minds would've reflected that their sins were being cast out. And the same principle was in the curing of the schizophrenic Legion- the pigs were made to run into the lake by the Lord Jesus, not because they were actually possessed by demons in reality, but as an <i>aide memoire</i> to the cured Legion that his illness, all his perceived personalities, were now no more. Mental illness is typically intermittent. Legion had met Jesus, for he recognized Him afar off, and knew that He was God's Son (Mk. 5:6); indeed, one assumes the man probably had some faith for the miracle to be performed (Mt. 13:58). He comes to meet Jesus &quot;from out of the city&quot; (Lk. 8:27) and yet Mt. 8:28 speaks of him living in the tombs outside the city. He pleads with the Lord not to torment him (Mk. 5:7)- full of memories of how the local folk had tied him up and beaten him to try to exorcise the demons. Probably Legion's greatest fear was that he would relapse into madness again; that the cure which he believed Jesus could offer him might not be permanent. And so the Lord agreed to the man's request that the demons he perceived as within him should be permanently cast out; and the sight of the herd of pigs running over the cliff to permanent death below, with the awful sound this would've made, would have remained an abiding memory for the man. Note how the 'demon possessed' man in Mk. 1:23 sits in the synagogue and then suddenly screams out (Mk. 1:23)- showing he was likewise afflicted by intermittent fits.</p><p>The madness may have been an infection in the brain of the trichina parasite, commonly found infecting the muscles of pigs - and transmissible to humans in undercooked pork.&nbsp; The infected man would likely have been&nbsp;forced by poverty to eat this kind of food, and likely associated his &quot;problem&quot;&nbsp;with it because of&nbsp;the prohibition of pork&nbsp;under the Mosaic Law.&nbsp; This approach is confirmed by medical observations such as the following:</p><p>&ldquo;Neurocysticercosis is the most common parasitic disease in the world which affects the central nervous system&hellip; A 25 year old, illiterate married Hindu male&hellip; presented with a three month history of gradual change in behavior in the form of irrelevant talk &hellip; On mental status examination, he was well oriented to time, place and person, cooperative, communicative and responded well to questions asked&hellip; Delusions of persecution and reference were present&hellip; he accepted the illness but attributed the cause to evil spirits&hellip; histopathology report of subcutaneous nodule confirmed the diagnosis of cysticercosis cellulosae&hellip;. Significant improvement in psychiatric symptoms was also observed following albendazole (an anti-parasitic drug) therapy. Delusions of persecution and delusions of reference were not found on mental status examination. Insight also improved; instead of attributing the illness to evil spirits, the patient accepted having a physical illness.&rdquo; (&ldquo;Neurocysticercosis Presenting as Schizophrenia: A Case Report&rdquo;, B. Bhatia, S. Mishra, A.S. Srivastava, <i>Indian Journal of Psychiatry</i> 1994, Vol. 36(4), pp. 187-189).</p><p>The&nbsp;desire to see the disease return to the&nbsp;herds of swine probably stemmed from a need to know that his affliction had been cured in a rather permanent sort of way. And the Lord went along with this. The idea of transference of disease from one to another was a common Semitic perception, and it&rsquo;s an idea used by God. And thus God went along with the peoples' idea of disease transference, and the result is recorded in terms of demons which was how they understood illness going from one person to another. Likewise the leprosy of Naaman clave to Gehazi (2 Kings 5:27). God threatened to make the diseases of the inhabitants of Canaan and Egypt to cleave to Israel if they were disobedient (Dt. 28:21,60). Here too, as with Legion, there is Divine accommodation to the ideas of disease transference which people had at the time.</p><p>Death in the sea was seen as condemnation; the same figure is used of Babylon's final condemnation.&nbsp;The Legion incident &quot;proves too much&quot; if we are to insist on reading it on a strictly literal level. Do demons drown? Presumably, no. And yet the story as it stands requires us to believe that demons drown- if we are talking about literal 'demons' here. Clearly, Legion was mentally ill. We therefore have to face the hard question: Was that mental illness caused by demons, or, as I am suggesting, is the language of demon possession merely being used to describe mental illness? If indeed mental illness is caused by demons, the observations of T.S. Huxley are about right: &quot;The belief in demons and demoniacal possession is a mere survival of a once universal superstition, its persistence pretty much in the inverse ratio of the general instruction, intelligence, and sound judgment of the population among whom it prevails. Demonology gave rise through the special influence of Christian ecclesiastics, to the most horrible persecutions and judicial murders of thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women, and children... If the story is true, the medieval theory of the invisible world may be and probably is, quite correct; and the witchfinders, from Sprenger to Hopkins and Mather, are much-maligned men&hellip; For the question of the existence of demons and of possession by them, though it lies strictly within the province of science, is also of the deepest moral and religious significance. If physical and mental disorders are caused by demons, Gregory of Tours and his contemporaries rightly considered that relics and exorcists were more useful than doctors; the gravest questions arise as to the legal and moral responsibilities of persons inspired by demoniacal impulses; and our whole conception of the universe and of our relations to it becomes totally different from what it would be on the contrary hypothesis&rdquo; (T. S. Huxley, <i>Science and Christian Tradition</i> (New York: Appleton, 1899) p. 225).</p>