Jesus does admit that he is possessed,
though not by Beelzebul, as evidenced by the ensuing discussion for the
“unforgivable sin”: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins
and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy
Spirit and never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (3:28-29). Mark follows Jesus’s statement with an explanatory note: “for they
had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit’” (3:30). The combined Beelzebul and
“unforgivable sin” narratives demonstrate, according to the Second Gospel,
Jesus was possessed by the “Holy Spirit.” Jesus’s empowerment by the indwelling
Holy Spirit likely goes back to his baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended
upon Jesus “like a dove” (1:9-11), and which then led him into the wilderness
for his temptation by Satan (1:12-13).
The Holy Spirit’s indwelling of
Jesus’s body seems to take a form similar to that of demonic possession.
Giovanni Bazzana notes, for example, that the language the Gospel uses for
Jesus’s baptizing “in the holy spirit” (1:8, εν πνευματι
αγιω) closely parallels the language used for
demoniacs being “in an impure spirit” (1:23, εν πνευματι
ακαθαρτω; cf. 5:2). Jesus’s possession by the holy
spirit would also explain the mechanism behind its “driving” (εκβαλλει) of Jesus into the wilderness (1:12). In this
way, both disability and the power of cure disability are explained through
paradigms of possession: just as the Gospel of Mar explains the impairments of
demoniacs through recourse to (demonic) possession, so also the Second Gospel
explains the potency of the exorcist’s body through (benevolent) spirit
possession. These paradigms bring to the fore how ideas regarding (dis)ability
and the demonic in the Gospel of Mark take shape in tandem with understandings
of the human body. The threat of demonic possession, for example, makes clear
that for the Second Gospel, the human body is an entity liable to possession by
external spirits. The power required to combat such possession, however, stems
from the human body’s ability to host a benevolent divine spirit. (cf.
Mark 13:11. On the Holy Spirit and inspiring speech, see Num 24:2-9; 2 Sam
23:2; 1 Kgs 22:24; Isa 11:1-2; 42:1; 61:1-2; Joel 2:28; Acts 4:8, 31; 13:9-10)
At every turn in the Gospel of Mark, therefore, the human body’s impairments
and potencies emerge through its posited liability to be penetrated by external
nonhuman spirits. At every turn in the Gospel of Mark, therefore, the human
body’s impairments and potencies through its posited liability to be penetrated
by external nonhuman spirits.
In this way, the Second Gospel,
constructs the human body, including that of Jesus, as a particularly porous
entity. We encounter similar themes in the narrative that follows soon after
the Gerasene Demoniac, where the Gospel relates that “a woman who had been
suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years . . . came up behind [Jesus] in the
crowd and touched his cloak” (5:25, 27). Miraculously, her bleeding stopped
(5:29). Jesus, however, becomes “aware that power had gone forth from him,” and
inquires who made contact with him (5:30). After the woman presents herself and
falls at his feet, Jesus blesses her and affirms his (apparently inadvertent)
healing (5:34). Canida Moss has called attention to how this narrative presents
both the woman and Jesus as “leaky” and “porous” bodies: the woman leaks blood
uncontrollably form her body, while Jesus involuntarily has power flow from his
body to the woman. (Candida Moss, “The Man with the Flow of Power: Porous
Bodies in Mark 5:25-34,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129.3 [2010]:
507-519 [515]) In this way, the Second Gospel aligns with broader ancient
understandings of the body, which held that the “surface of the body was not a
sealed boundary; it was a permeable membrane through which manifold hostile
objects could enter the body and wreak havoc in it.” (Ibid., 513)
Those bodies that failed to thwart
external penetration, however, were typically configured as sickly, and,
according to ancient gender stereotypes often characterized as too “feminine.”
(Ibid., 514) In this context, the Second Gospel’s construal of Jesus as
porous—both in his possession by an external spirit and his “leakage” of
power—runs the risk of portraying Jesus as “feeble” or lacking in the standard
markers of idealized masculinity. (Ibid., 516) The Gospel of Mark elsewhere
reconfigures such porosity, however, as a positive indication of Jesus’s
divinely sanctioned authority. In the famous transfiguration of Jesus’s
divinely sanctioned authority. In the famous transfiguration scene, for
example, Jesus is “transfigured before [Peter and Jaems and John], and his
clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them”
(9:2-3). Moses and Elijah then appeared next to Jesus, prompting Peter to
suggest that they construct three “dwellings” for Jesus and each of the
Israelite prophets (9:5). “He did not know what to say,” the Gospel explains,
“for they [i.e., the disciples] were terrified” (9:6). Peter’s suggestion to
build of a kind of shrine to Jesus, as well as the disciples’ fearful response
to Jesus’s transfiguration, suggest parallels to ancient “epiphany” narratives,
wherein gods traveling in human guise would divulge their true identity in an
exhibition of grandeur. Jesus’s “porous” body, therefore, leads to “divine
light flooding through the confines of the fragile form,” underscoring Jesus’
divine sanction and power. (Moss, “Flow of Power,” 518) In this way, Moss
argues, “the story implicitly undercuts the association between porosity and
weakness so prevalent in the ancient world. The porosity of Jesus serves a
positive function; it . . . stands as a marker of a hidden, divine identity.”
(Ibid., 519)
The Second Gospel’s positive
reconstrual of Jesus’s porosity has significance, in turn, for our
interpretation of Jesus’s self-assertion of penetrability in the Beelzebul
incident. As noted previously, many ancient gender stereotypes held that
women’s bodies were more porous, and thus more liable to possession by external
forces such as divine or demonic spirits. It is significant, therefore, that in
responding to the scribes’ Beelzebul charge, Jesus positions himself as the one
who can restrain “the strong man” (i.e., Satan/Beelzebul) so as to enter and
“plunder” his house (3:27). Rebecca Solevåg notes the gendered implications of
Jesus’s response, pointing to how the “strong man” metaphor “draw[s] on ideas
about masculinity in terms of control and protection of land and property,”
thus demonstrating that Jesus “conforms to protocols of masculinity.” (Solevåg,
Negotiating the Disabled Body, 104-5) Jesus’s exorcisms, as physical
manifestations of his ”binding” the strong man, “undergird notions of
masculinity,” therefore, “by presenting Jesus as powerful, as a householder
expelling what does not belong, and as a military leader defeating . . . his
enemy by sheer physical force.” (Ibid., 104) In this way, Jesus’s
trans-corporeal possession by the holy spirit ultimately shores up his own
claims to masculinized ritual power, distancing the Nazarene exorcist from
charges of feminine porosity and foreignness by disproving the “disability
invective” of the Beelzebul charge. In ways similar to his followers, therefore,
Jesus’s corporeal nature emerges from its interconnection with the disavowals
of demonic (dis)embodiment. (Travis W. Proctor, Demonic Bodies and the Dark
Ecologies of Early Christian Church [New York: Oxford University Press,
2022], 44-47)
