The Lonely Road

By Themba Gamedze

It is here also that we get a glimpse of the potentially debilitating effect that the execution of John the Baptiser had on Jesus and explore the following drivers of the events of this phase of Jesus’ ministry:
The pilot ministries of The Twelve and then The Seventy; Jesus’ off-grid ministry trip beyond the borders of Israel; Jesus’ increasingly intense premonitions of death; the totally cosmic Transfiguration incident and Jesus’ less well-understood late 29 CE dress rehearsal ministry tour in preparation for what would eventually prove to be his final trip to Jerusalem the following year.
Since this really is a continuation of the same story, author, Themba Gamedze has made every effort to remain faithful to the look and feel of the first two volumes in his portrayal of the central character of the Canonical Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth, whom he has continued to refer to as Y’shua.

An essential resource for a comprehensive study of the Gospels

Themba Gamedze BA Hons, MSc, FASSA
Themba Gamedze is an actuary who combines an interest in renewable energy generation with a passion for developing a non-confrontational framework for discussing the content and modern relevance of the Canonical Gospels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Themba Gamedze
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005002343

Book preview

Editor’s Comments

Editor’s comment on The ATOGA Kingdom Series Volume III: The Lonely Road…

This was an absolute gem - brilliant! It is an extremely important addition to the body of knowledge of reading behind and beyond the biblical text. Your research clearly comes out as absolutely solid, which makes your assumptions insightful and intriguing. The way you use current examples and also socio-economic trends (e.g. in gender) ensures that you drive home your points so carefully made on the Gospel writers and Jesus/ Y’shua Himself. The reader is in for a real treat as you give personality and insight into the Gospel writers as people, and as you paraphrase with such character what you believe could have been said by various personas.

Editor’s comment on The ATOGA Kingdom Series Volume I: The Kingdom Awakens…

A thoroughly interesting read which presents a fascinating and refreshing angle on a topic well worth investigating. One is left with a sense of having visited with real people in a real context and experiencing the unfolding of real events. This certainly makes for enlightening and enjoyable reading, with plenty of room for further discovery.

Editor’s comment on The ATOGA Kingdom Series Volume II: The Promise of New Life…

I have edited many, many Christian books over the years, and this work is by far – by a truly immense margin! – the BEST I have ever set eyes on. It is more informed than anything I have seen before, more helpful in getting to know Y’shua the man, gave me far more food for thought, and was more inspiring than any of the over-emotional (even soppy!) works that I have seen, could ever hope to be. This work deserves an international readership! I regard it as a landmark work.

Special dedication

I dedicate this particular volume, which explores Y’shua’s discipleship-formation strategy, to both my paternal grandparents, Mbulawa and Sarah (nee Shongwe) Gamedze and my maternal grandparents, Timothy and Eunice (nee Gumbi) Mbata whose stories of faith, dedication and raw spiritual power are the closest I am ever likely to come in my appreciation of what actually happened during the Missions of the Twelve and of the Seventy.

Introduction

This is a portrayal of the Canonical Gospels (the Gospels) through a little-explored but extremely enlightening approach. I have consolidated all the events recorded in the four Gospels and placed them in strictly sequential order. In fact, the acronym ATOGA arose from the description, A Time-Ordered Gospel Account.

There is an increasing body of research and analysis in the area of Biblical Chronology to which readers may wish to make reference as part of their own background reading. The most recent example at the time of writing is a 2008 Thomas Nelson publication: The Chronological Study Bible have also come across a detailed Chronological Gospel with extensive commentaries on the website www.chronologicalbible.org. I discovered these some four years after I began my study and was therefore rather unfortunate not to be able to take full advantage of the monumental work they represent. The approach I have followed can therefore no longer be described as unique. Nevertheless, I am quite convinced that the way I have presented the material has the potential to inspire the reader in a dynamically fresh new way.

It is not difficult to work out that one could end up with a number of different sequential orderings of these events, each of which are consistent with the Gospel record. As I see it, that fact does not diminish the value of this process at all. The important thing by far is the tantalising prospect of reconstructing any chronological framework at all. Unlike many other religious writings, the Canonical Gospels do not simply represent a stream of consciousness based on spiritual concepts and wise teachings. Most of the content is linked inextricably with objective reference points. These are explicitly named places, seasons and times, and even specified individuals. In studying the Gospels, there is no escaping the sense that one is reading the copy of four journalists writing for newspapers representing disparate worldviews. They therefore also provide a logical template for investigating the level of factual consistency across the Gospels. In that simple process, I believe that the ATOGA Kingdom Series achieves one very important result: it removes the cop-out option of rejecting the Gospel record out of hand as fanciful myth, legend and folklore or as being full of contradictions. Indeed, I would say that introducing the extra dimension of time brings in an element of rigour into the study of the Gospels that has very far-reaching implications. However, the sword cuts both ways. This framework has occasionally challenged the orthodoxy of one or two of my own long-held and much-taught beliefs.

The ATOGA Kingdom Series could be fairly described as a Gospel Commentary. The major differences from the commentaries currently available are the following:

• The ATOGA Kingdom framework encompasses a cross-cutting approach by incorporating the Gospel record as a whole. This is in contrast to the traditional method of following the content of individual Gospels, an example of what could reasonably be described as a silo approach;

• As the focus of my remarks, I have concentrated much more on aspects of the narrative that are easily overlooked if one follows a silo approach. These features are easily accessible to anyone following our approach and do not appeal to non-intuitive or esoteric interpretation; and

• A direct consequence of using this template is that it makes it impossible to avoid having to face up squarely to any potential discrepancies between the different Gospel accounts.

There are many excellent commentaries written by top biblical scholars who have spent many decades of their lives on their studies in this area. This eclectic commentary by an amateur makes no attempt to emulate their exceedingly thorough hard-core analysis of scripture. I have therefore restricted my focus to the above priorities. The approach I have used throughout is to compare and contrast the accounts presented by the different Gospel writers in their portrayal of the central figure. In order to highlight his out and out Jewishness, I will refer to him as Y’shua, rather than by his Hellenised name of Jesus. Ultimately what emerges is the closest thing to what some would call the story of Jesus – and what a story it is!

In volume I of the ATOGA Kingdom Series I shared a few of my thoughts on the priorities of these Gospel writers as I now understand them. I also tried to delve a bit deeper into their various accounts to see whether or not it is at all possible to detect something of their individual personalities buried in the events they have recorded.

In my opinion, the way each of these writers related to their subject matter has left a personality trail that has not been dulled over 2,000 years of history and even from the trauma of translation.

The way they reported the events; the details they emphasised, glossed over or even ignored; and finally, even those events they left out completely provide an intriguing set of clues. Together they serve as a sort of psychological genome trail leading back inexorably to those long-dead 1st century eye-witnesses and their confidantes.

My priority therefore has not been so much on the content recorded by the writers, but rather on a holistic combination of that content with two other specific ingredients. These are the discernible, but nevertheless subtle, shadow of the Gospel writer and the nature of Y’shua himself. All of these elements have been investigated as an integral part of Y’shua’s quite extraordinary diary, as it emerges from the analysis.

In trying to put all this together, it was absolutely critical not to remove these events from their special historical context. I have done my best not to stray from this aim. However, retaining a continual sense of the 1st century Jewish, but politically highly fractious, post-Hellenic socio-economic environment ruled from Rome has not been an easy task. We really are products of our times and I have no doubt that there are many 21st centurisms buried in here, despite the care I have taken.

The ATOGA Kingdom Series

The complete series will eventually be structured as the following five separate volumes:

Volume I: The Kingdom Awakens: Events 1-51

Preamble to The 2nd miracle at Cana

Volume II: The Promise of New Life: Events 52-106

The long-term invalid to The calming of the mega-storm

Volume III: The Lonely Road: Events 107-141

The Demoniacs of Gilead to Martha and Mary

Volume IV: The Countdown Begins: Events 142-192

I and the Father are One to Anointing II

Volume V: Clash of Empires: Events 193-242

Procession to the Temple to Postscript

The ATOGA Kingdom Series is ultimately best described as a tool for Gospel Study.

In my mind, I see the reader with the Gospels open side by side with the ATOGA Kingdom Series. This permits each reader to check independently for any discrepancies between the Gospel text and comments I have made in the ATOGA Kingdom Series.

May all who will take up this challenge to deepen both their understanding and their appreciation of the Gospels receive every blessing and a lasting renewal of faith.

Acknowledgements

I must recognise the immense value of a book that I had access to when I began this journey, courtesy of the Begbie-Kloppers in East London in the Eastern Cape. Jesus and the Four Gospels by John Drane served as an excellent primer for a non-theologian like me.

To avoid excessive clutter, I have not explicitly referenced quotations of scripture, as these are simply too numerous to itemise one by one. However, I think it appropriate to mention my extensive use of the search tools, especially Strong’s Concordance, on www.blueletterbible.org.

Almost all factual information on the Jewish background of the ATOGA Kingdom Series has come from Jewfaq.org and Hebcal.com. These sources provided the content and timetable of the regular readings of the Jewish scriptures, the timing of the religious festivals in each relevant year around Y’shua’s lifetime and a number of key cultural aspects of Judaism in 1st century Israel. I would also like to mention my use of a truly useful reference about the personalities who lived around the time of Y’shua. It is called Who’s who in the age of Jesus by Geza Vermes and is packed full of insights into political and religious figures, as well as other more esoteric personalities, such as ascetics and other charismatic leaders of the time. Finally, I would like to recommend to you the Holman Bible Atlas by Thomas Brisco which provides a wonderful sense of both the geographical scale and the historical context for the events under discussion.

Dedication

I dedicate the work as a whole to my wife Shirley and my children Londi, Thandi, Asher, Thuli and Nomsa.

During the initial six months of my research, I remember each of the children asking me, in one way or another, the question: Are you writing a new Bible? This was such a gloriously abandoned inquiry, given the enormous implications in terms of orthodoxy and potential for heresy embedded so innocently in such a question, that it warms my heart even now as I write.

It certainly re-establishes my faith in the beautiful innocence of children, and causes me to smile wistfully about the transience of all things.

And just for the record, I am not writing another Bible at all, although I may perhaps end up with suggestions for a Consolidated Gospel. I would envisage such a work as an aggregation of the different Gospel accounts into a single paraphrase-type record annotated appropriately.

I want to acknowledge publicly the value I place on my wife’s incredible reserves of patience. She allowed me to withdraw even more than I normally do from our shared responsibilities of parenthood and my sincere hope is that she will see the end result as having been worth the extra burden that this has placed upon her.

Thank you so much, Shirley.

Author Themba Gamedze

Place Johannesburg, South Africa

Time November 2018

Ode to Y’shua

What do you give to the heir of all things?

Third movement That yearning was for you

What do you give to the Heir of all things?

What can you offer the One for whom it all exists, in whom it all finds its meaning –

The One before whom myriads of angelic beings fall in ordered rank - in lordly adoration?

What gift is worthy of the Creator of universes –

Planter of floral forest glades – virgin to the presence of man – yet intimately known to Him

Designer of ocean depths, forever to present mysteries to the sons of earth?

He was eager to come to our world, sin cursed as it was – the result of the shame of the race of Adam.

But he came with a desperation, even to delve into the toxic spiritual wasteland we call our world

His urgency could not be held back, with a reckless zeal He came

To seek and find a bride – bone of His bone – flesh of His flesh.

But what a place to begin a search for such beauty!

What could He hope to find of any value on a ruined planet – full of discarded and despoilt humanity?

But find it, He did; in unexpected places, in unexpected times, in unexpected races

Not where you or I would search, not where we would go, He searched through space and time.

But that’s where He found it, His Pearl of great price –

For which He would gladly give up all His kingdoms, all His riches, His whole inheritance.

For which He indeed did give it all up and lay it aside – to seek the true prize He longed for!

Not all in one place did He find it, not all in one race did it lay

Nay – not all in one period of time did He gather.

Piece by piece was it garnered, nowhere was too far to go, no age in time too remote for Him.

He searched until he Had found each unworthy scrap, each tiny human life

Drawn to Him by forces incomprehensible – deep calling to deep – none of these was to be lost

No. Not for so important a task as fashioning His own bride, His eternal bounty.

You are indeed the bride that He yearned for

The treasure long desired

Through aeons of time, buried beneath the mists of ages long gone.

His sole purpose was to find you – to bring you proudly back to present to His Father

To parade before His angels, to show off to the ends of space, to the ends of time itself.

You. Transformed by the warmth of His intoxicating gaze –

You. Changed through the working of His redeeming power –

You. Radiantly cleansed – transfigured into His very own likeness

Until you are indeed – flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone.

How it all began

It may be hard to believe, but this document began when, to my delight, and to my wife’s subsequent shock, she innocently bought me a copy of The Da Vinci Code. This was given to me as a birthday present in 2005.

I must admit that the hype had got to me too. Furthermore, the joy of delving into the facts of a controversy does appeal to the adventurer in me. Yes, I know that the existence of such an alter-ego may be hard to imagine and even more difficult for many to accept. After all, we are talking about someone who decided that the best way to cocoon himself from too interesting a life was to qualify as an actuary! Anyway, I remember immediately expressing surprise at how desperate she must have become for ideas for presents because she now had to resort to trafficking in heresy. You should have seen the look on her face at that description of a book many had thought of up to then as just a thriller!

However, having begun as I have, I must apologise sincerely for raising any expectations of huge controversy. The contents of The Da Vinci Code are not in fact directly a matter for the ATOGA Kingdom Series. Nevertheless, having said that, Dan Brown’s book did make me think afresh about the basis of my faith.

…And so it all began!

So, whatever anyone else may say, and no matter how distorted or illogical I found the content, thank you Mr Brown!

As a result of carrying out the research for the ATOGA Kingdom Series, I have developed a far deeper passion for the Gospels. This has also extended to a much closer affinity with their focal point, the historical figure of Y’shua of Nazareth, than I had before. My hope is that by sharing my thoughts on the Gospels, I may be able to reignite, in all who read these books, the hope and longing for a better world that most of us hold dear.

My personal interest in such an outcome is based on the fact that I have two brothers who are each regarded by many as authorities in their specific areas of ministry. One is a Christian preacher in the Kingdom Teaching stream of the Pentecostal movement, ministering in South Africa. The other is a Jewish Rabbi, in the Hasidic tradition. He has lived in Israel since 1989 and converted to Judaism not long after that.

I find it quite ironic that both of my brothers have access to and could find themselves commenting on the whole Bible, a book probably written entirely by Jews. The likelihood, however, is that while one brother is teaching from the New Testament letters, the other is probably expounding the Tanakh (Old Testament scriptures). My hope is that perhaps in the Gospels, we may find an area of common discussion and genuine sharing between us all.

Book 7

Sowing your life as a seed

Part 1

Reaching the top of his game: Events 107-114

Event 107

The Demoniacs of Gilead: 29 CE, February

Meditation

Readings: Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8: 26-39

Suggestion: After the readings, spend a while imagining yourself in or near the scene. Perhaps, you are a distant observer, just getting a sense of what is happening. Or, maybe you are part of the scene itself. There are several options available to you. A friend of the centre of attention, one of the disciples, a concerned representative of the religious establishment or even Jesus himself.

Your meditation, your choice!

The story so far…

In our last scene, Y’shua, exhausted by an extremely turbulent and busy day in Capernaum, following an equally hectic period of ministry in the Galilean interior, found himself being loudly and roughly awoken from a desperately needed sleep.

Looking up, all he must have seen was a blur of movement and the cacophony of his disciples crowding around him, shouting all at once in a state of absolute panic as they anticipated the worst. Still half-asleep, Y’shua had managed to stumble to his feet and gather his wits rapidly, so that with just a few words of quiet command, he was able to calm the savage fury of the mega storm.

As he sank back into peaceful oblivion, his disciples must have gathered in a hyper-excited huddle of amazement, in awe of what had just happened.

They were of course perfectly familiar with the sudden squalls that swept across the lake from time to time, and like all men of the sea, retained a healthy respect for the raw power of nature. They were certainly also used to staying out on the lake all night fishing and, once their animated chatter has died away, settling down on the boat to rest until daybreak presented no problems for them.

However, with the approach of dawn they find themselves drifting towards the south-eastern section of the lake, unaware that their progress was being watched from afar by two very troubled men.

Comparative Gospel Analysis

There are those who try to make much of the fact that neither Gadara, currently about 15 kilometres from the shore, nor Gerasa, about 50 kilometres from shore, are within immediate proximity of the lakeside.

Such commentators appear to ignore completely the actual wording of the text which talks about "the region of the Gadarenes (Matthew) or the region of the Gerasenes" (Mark and Luke).

By the time of Y’shua’s ministry, these two cities were part of a very large area known at the time as the Decapolis. However, the area in question is probably best described by using its more traditional name of Gilead. The fact that Gilead was indeed at one time all referred to as the region of Gerasa (see http://www.bible-history.com/geography/ancient-israel/gerasa.html), explains Mark and Luke’s preference although it is in fact the city of Gadara (rather than Gerasa) that was closer to the lake.

The main issue of importance therefore is the specific use of the term region, which simply refers to an empty tract of land as opposed to a built-up area.

None of the Gospel writers claim that the incident happened near either of these cities. They were simply locating the section of the lake as that lying between the eastern and the southern shores, rather than on the more populous western and northern shores.

Coming to the incident itself, once again some have tried to present the discrepancy between Matthew’s two demon-possessed men… met him and Mark and Luke’s comment that Y’shua was met by a man with an evil spirit as some kind of contradiction.

The logical fact of the matter is that if there were two (or even more) demon-possessed men involved, then all these records could still be absolutely correct.

Mark and Luke simply chose to focus on one of the men, probably the more vocal or extreme of the two. However, Matthew, the 1st century accountant and arch hero-worshipper of Y’shua, rarely misses out on any opportunity to point out Y’shua’s accomplishments in full, wherever possible.

We see this again much later on near the end of Y’shua’s ministry at Jericho when Matthew is at pains to make sure that the reader appreciates the fact that Y’shua heals two blind men, where the other Synoptic Gospel writers are happy to focus their attention only on the one called Bartimaeus.

Indeed, one of the main reasons for this book is precisely to explore this kind of nuance that demonstrates the different priorities of the Gospel writers in their choice of events to cover and the level of detail they choose to reveal about those incidents.

This incident therefore provides a prime opportunity to take note of what have been for me a series of very intriguing findings that have resulted from this kind of study.

An economic diversion

Before we get to the incident itself, some of you may be interested in the likely economic implications of losing a herd of 2,000 pigs.

If this were a modern situation, at the time of writing, the farmer could normally expect anything between USD 1-2 per kilogram for his pigs. Free range pigs such as these are likely to grow to anything between 100-150 kilograms. The economic value therefore of this herd of 2,000 could therefore be around USD 200-300,000.00, depending on how much of the pork can actually be used. For us in South Africa, this is around R2,5-3,5 million, depending on exchange rates.

So, regardless of the exact amounts, if this incident was to have taken place in our day, we would be talking about quite a tidy sum of money to lose in a single morning!

Now, returning to the context of 1st century Judea, it is fairly crucial to note that food security generally was not the issue it is now. In normal (i.e. non-drought) times, the supply of agricultural produce would have far exceeded demand. The cost of purchasing a pig would almost certainly not have been in anyway comparable to the purchasing power implied by the numbers above.

A more relevant measure of the effect of the loss could possibly be related to the time required to replace the loss.

I see it as instructive to note that the response of the owners reported in the Gospel record seems to be more consistent with perceiving this incident more as an annoyance rather than anything close to representing financial ruin.

However, I suspect that they were somewhat more concerned that if Y’shua stayed around any longer in the region this could be repeated, perhaps over and over again. Under those circumstances, their livelihood could quite correctly have been perceived, potentially, to be under long-term threat.

A sow reaches maturity between 8 to 18 months after birth and produces a litter of between 6 and 12 piglets after a gestation period of about 4 months.

Since sows come into oestrus every 21 days if not mated, a sow could easily be expected to produce at least two litters a year. In round terms, this results in the birth of about 16 piglets annually. The 2,000 pigs lost could therefore be replaced within a single year by just 125 sows, that would easily be owned by, say, six to eight households.

The number of pigs lost is obviously large in absolute terms. However, the high rate of fecundity of pigs means that the loss was relatively insignificant at a practical level.

Before we complete our orders of magnitude calculations, I must express the view that I would be very surprised if the villagers would have taken the risk of grazing all their flocks together.

So, as large as this herd seems to be, it almost certainly did not represent the entire porcine population of the villages in question.

For the purposes of this discussion, I shall assume that this herd of 2,000 represents only part (say half or a third) of the total number of pigs owned collectively by the community. The rest would either be at home in their pens or perhaps grazing at other sites.

If these assumptions represent anything like the reality of the day, then a herd of 2,000 pigs could be recovered completely over the next month or two from the litters of the remaining herd of between 2,000 and 4,000 pigs (including say, 1,000-2,000 sows, each producing an average of 1,6 piglets a month) owned by the town and its surrounding villages.

This sort of logic that considers replacement potential rather than market price would then be entirely consistent with the local farmers’ interpretation of this incident as being somewhat irritating, but not financially disastrous.

Sequence of events

So, to the event itself…

Any rigorous analysis of this incident must have regard for the exact sequence of events presented in the combined Gospel record of this scene. I have listed this sequence from the time that the boat landed ashore:

1. The demoniacs approach Y’shua and at least one of them falls to his knees before him.

2. Y’shua notices the demonic possession and commands the demonic force to come out of the men.

3. The exorcism does not seem to take place immediately!

a. This issue is introduced rather elliptically by both Mark and Luke and (very predictably) not mentioned at all by Matthew.

b. While Matthew includes Y’shua’s (final) command to the demons to Go at a point just before the demons left the man, the general wording is fairly vague. In particular, Matthew is careful not to draw attention to the fact that Y’shua issued two separate commands to the demons: one was to come out of the possessed men and the other was to enter the pigs. I suspect that this is deliberate and allowed Matthew to downplay the fact that Y’shua’s initial command to the demons was not immediately obeyed.

c. The possibility of a misinterpretation of this fact of detail was apparently a bit of a worry to Matthew, as it raises the possible implication of an element of weakness in his hero.

4. Perhaps surprised to find themselves still in possession of the men, the demons begin negotiations with Y’shua about their fate, obviously accepting that their time of rule over their unfortunate hosts is indeed over.

5. Y’shua seeks to reach past the demons by asking the spokesman of the two men to tell him his name. I am convinced that apart from telling demons to leave their human hosts or to be quiet, Y’shua did not engage in conversation with demons.

6. The demons answer through the man and (presumably as the opening salvo of their negotiation strategy) point out their numerical advantage.

a. They continue their negotiations, begging neither to be sent to the Abyss, nor to be sent out of the area.

b. Eventually they make a very specific request to be sent into the herd of pigs close by.

7. Y’shua agrees to this request and the exorcism is finally completed.

For me this incident raises at least two interrelated and very interesting questions:

Firstly, what can we learn from the interaction between Y’shua and the demons and secondly, why did Y’shua accede to the demons’ request?

The first question:

• What can we learn from Y’shua’s interaction with the demons?

Perhaps the most astonishing implication of the interchange is that these demons had their request accepted. These are in effect the demons that got their prayers answered!

The implication here must surely be that the demons’ request was completely in line with Y’shua’s ultimate strategic intentions.

It is clear from the text that the demons anticipated an eventual consignment to a fearful place they refer to as the Abyss. Without trying to develop that theme too much here, they seem to be referring to a realm mentioned unambiguously in just two places in the New Testament. These are 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 which both convey the sense of a gloomy, apparently subterranean setting for dungeons designed to hold rebellious angels prisoner until the Day of Judgement.

The Synoptic Gospel writers also mention the demons’ very real fear of torment to come. The Greek word here derives literally from the word basanos, a special stone called the touchstone.

This was used in antiquity to assess the purity of precious metals, mainly silver and gold. Soft metals rubbed across the rough surface of a touchstone leave a visible trace on the stone. That trace can then be compared to a range of marks left by test alloys to assess the purity of the original metal.

Despite its limited number of appearances (18) in the New Testament, the term is used in a large number of very different contexts (13). We can see this clearly from the following table of examples:

While the use of this word in the context of the torture rack does appear elsewhere (e.g. in 2 Maccabees 7:13) it does not appear at all in that specific context in either the Jewish Tanakh or the New Testament.

The equivalent concept in the Tanakh is the Hebrew word bachan, from which the Greek word basanos is apparently derived. An in-depth study of the use of the word bachan reveals very similar usage of the concept, in keeping with the references included above from the New Testament. It is also interestingly used occasionally in the context of the idea of men testing God Himself (e.g. Psalm 95:9). Malachi 3:10 expresses the same idea except that there we see it as a challenge set by God.

At the risk of generalising too much, I would describe this concept as resulting in an intensely close examination of a person’s core essence.

This particular type of examination is also associated with the anxiety of being on trial. Think of the effect of sulphuric acid (a close derivative of the burning sulphur mentioned in the book of Revelation) on impure metals. While it will dissolve away rust and most metals, it does not react at all with silver or gold, for example.

Imagining yourself, for a moment, as a lump of metal with feelings may help with understanding the concept.

On the one hand, the pure lump of gold has nothing to fear at all from the process and will pass through completely unaffected.

At the other extreme, the lump of rusty iron will be completely dissolved. There would therefore be lots to fear from a process that in essence could lead to complete destruction. No wonder the demons were so anxious about their encounters with Y’shua.

In particular, it is clear that they were especially at pains to remind him that any judgement enforced right then would be premature.

This is in my opinion a very instructive observation on their part in respect of seeking to understand more about both the supernatural world and the afterlife, particularly in respect of debunking quite well-used doom-laden expressions such as: "He is going straight to hell". In particular, this expression completely ignores the critical and non-negotiable importance of the process of judgement, during which all humans will be made accountable for their actions, before the possibility of hell can ever be considered.

Finally, the gold and iron alloy should logically speaking anticipate the sulphuric acid trial with mixed feelings.

There is the glorious prospect of the final removal of all impurities to reveal the pure gold within. However, the process itself would not be entirely painless, as it would melt away what was once considered to be an integral part of one’s composition.

The best reference to this in the New Testament is in I Corinthians 3:13-15, which talks about works being tested by fire. It then introduces the idea of a person’s unworthy works being burnt up, even if the person himself is saved, as if through fire.

In my understanding, demons are creatures that have chosen a path that has made them implacably and irrevocably evil beings. They can therefore only expect the most harrowing of experience of judgement to come in respect of the process we have outlined above.

The rough touchstone of God’s searching gaze is destined to rake through every part of their being, in a final attempt to establish the presence of even the tiniest scrap of good.

Such an examination must surely be absolutely terrifying to these demonic beings, as it will reveal to them the full extent of their evil and can only have one possible outcome in a universe under God’s absolute authority: irreversible destruction.

The second question:

• Why did Y’shua accede to the demons’ request?

I think pointing out that the end result (in which the demons were consigned to the depths of the sea) effectively made the demons’ request ultimately irrelevant is fudging the issue somewhat.

Furthermore, I do not recall another miracle in which Y’shua effectively imposed the cost of his intervention on others. In this particular case, the demon-possessed men’s healing led directly to a not inconsiderable financial cost for the owners of the pigs lost in the lake.

We should however also take cognisance of the fact that if, as I assume, the owners of these pigs were Jews, then they should probably not have been raising pigs in the first place (and would have been keenly and guiltily aware of this).

The closest related precedent I can think of is in the two cleansings of the Temple mentioned in the Canonical Gospels.

However, even in those cases the substantive financial effect was confined mainly to (admittedly still very unwelcome) business interruption rather than a major loss of goods. Nevertheless, the overturning of tables of cash, the possible release of doves and the driving out of sheep may also have resulted in some relatively small actual irrecoverable loss to the vendors.

One possible answer could be that in this particular event under discussion, as he was in the cleansing of the Temple events, Y’shua was exercising his prerogative of imposing deliberate judgement in anticipation of his eventual role as the ultimate judge.

However, if that really is the case, I find it odd that none of the Gospel writers have recorded any words of explanation whatsoever about that possibility in respect of this particular event. This is in stark contrast to the careful commentary provided, more or less in mitigation, in respect of the Temple cleansings.

In my view, an intervention of judgement makes no sense at all if not explained.

As such, I am therefore not very convinced even by this answer.

In fact, the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee would have been even more cosmopolitan than the province of Galilee and there is a real possibility that at least some of the pigs belonged to Gentiles!

This would therefore appear to me to reduce the force of the argument that as King of the Jews, Y’shua was within his rights to act in the way that he did.

The explanation that seems to make at least some sense to me is simply that Y’shua had been drained of most of his physical and spiritual resources.

In this context, therefore, I see some similarities with the two-phase healing of the blind man recorded in Mark 8:22-26.

You will see that I also attribute that result to burnout resulting from excessive work pressure over a prolonged period. Y’shua did indeed end up healing the blind man, but there is no way in which we are talking about an imperious wave of the hand here. In my current understanding, Y’shua seems to have had to dig really deep to achieve that particular miracle.

In the same way, here, it is clear that this time around, the demons simply did not budge at Y’shua’s initial command.

They stayed in the man and even managed to negotiate an exit strategy!

I am increasingly of the opinion that Y’shua simply had not yet had time to replenish his reserves through prayer. This exorcism, especially as it involved possibly thousands of demons, was going to tax Y’shua to the very last ounce of his currently low reserves of spiritual power.

The apparent willingness therefore of the demons to leave the man and enter the pigs could well have represented the less intense option for Y’shua. The alternative was a full blown spiritual power encounter and battle of wills between a weakened Y’shua and a rather aggressive demonic legion.

If this was indeed the case, then Y’shua must have decided that the consequences to the owners of the herd of pigs would just need to be dealt with after the event.

It is in fact a practical (although potentially rather cynical) reality that in exercising executive authority it is sometimes better to beg for forgiveness (afterwards) than ask for permission (beforehand).

This may possibly in essence have been Y’shua’s stance here.

In the context of the owners’ possible sense of guilt at the way they made their livelihood, the increased level of security they would enjoy from the demoniacs’ restoration and also the rapid replacement of the lost pigs, I presume that Y’shua was hoping to get off fairly lightly.

The fact of the matter is that he got off very lightly indeed, with neither a warning nor a lawsuit against him and certainly no legal prosecution or monetary fine imposed upon him.

Mark and Luke

The general content presented by Mark and Luke is very similar, with much more in common between them than with Matthew. However, even then, there are a number of differences in detail that are worth mentioning and can be summarised as follows:

• They went across the lake (Mark). Luke the man of detail insists that they sailed!

• They landed in the region of the Gerasenes. We have already discussed this issue in some detail.

• Y’shua got out of the boat (Mark). Luke prefers to say it rather more elegantly by saying that Y’shua stepped ashore.

• Y’shua was met by "a man with an evil spirit (Mark). This description retains a stronger sense of the person rather than his condition. Luke’s description, a demon-possessed man" shows that his focus is far more on the medical condition with which Y’shua was presented rather than the person himself.

• On the same theme, it is interesting to note that Mark describes the man as coming from the tombs. This immediately has the effect of painting the