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This reading engages two important and related dimensions of Mark's scene of Legion entering the pigs. First, is the name Legion to be understood as signifying numbers (Gundry), or as a largely nonintegrated or secondary military detail (Marcus, Collins), or, as will be argued here, a military reference that is, along with other military terms and motifs, central to the scene? Second, how might we understand the demon's unusual request to enter the pigs? Seeking to integrate a military meaning for the name "Legion" with an explanation for the demon's request to enter the pigs, and employing imperial-critical, masculinity, and sociopolitical-narrative approaches, this paper highlights the scene's polyvalent gendered and military-imperial language that has often been neglected since Derrett's brief but undeveloped 1979 reference to it. My argument is that the scene inscribes Jesus's hegemonic masculinity even while it mocks Roman power as an out-of-control, demonic, militaristic, and (self-)destructive masculinity, and fantasizes Rome's defeat as womanly weakness at Jesus's superior, commanding, masculine hands. Attention to the scene's cross-gendering, which draws from imperial-critical and gendered perspectives, has been ignored in previous work.
This article engages two matters of significance for reading Mark's "exorcismof-Legion" scene (5:1-20). The first concerns the contribution of the nomenclature of "Legion." Is the term about numbers,1 or a largely nonintegrated or secondary military detail,2 or is it a military reference that is, along with others, central to the scene?3 This reading develops the third approach.
The second matter concerns how we read the unusual request of the demon named Legion to enter into the pigs (Mark 5:12). Earlier twentieth-century interpreters regularly offered theological explanations for this request:4 God defeats Satan and Jesus tricks the demons-at least partially though not yet fully; or, much less commonly, the demons trick Jesus; or the drowned pigs display Jesus's miraculous exorcistic powers. More recent twentieth- and twenty-first-century studies- even those with more historical-critical interests-tend to take the request in their narrative stride, seeing it as a win-win bargaining situation for exorcist and demons, though claims of Jesus's victory do not seem far away.5
This article builds on this narrative turn but finds the frequent spiritualized/ theological approaches neglectful of important dimensions of the scene. Seeking to integrate the name "Legion" with an explanation for the...