Why would anyone in first century Roman-occupied Palestine use a name like “Legion” to refer to a herd of two thousand demon-possessed pigs? Do you remember reading or hearing that passage from the Gospel of Mark and wondering….Legion??
When Jesus got out of the boat,<sup class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-24367C" value="(C)”> a man with an impure spirit<sup class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-24367D" value="(D)”> came from the tombs to meet him. 3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me,<sup class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-24372E" value="(E)”> Jesus, Son of the Most High God?<sup class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-24372F" value="(F)”> In God’s name don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”
9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,”<sup class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-NIV-24374G" value="(G)”> he replied, “for we are many.” 10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13 He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
—the Gospel of Mark 5:2-13
Excerpt from: EarlyChristianWritings.com
A general range of dating for the Gospel of Mark can be suggested with reference to the external evidence. If the tradition of Markan authorship is accepted, Irenaeus implies that the Gospel of Mark was written after the death of Peter, traditionally set in Rome c. 65 CE. If the tradition is not accepted, as Nineham states (op. cit., p. 41), “Those who are cautious about accepting the Papias tradition can hardly put the lower limit much earlier, for they must allow time for the oral tradition to have developed in the way described above.” The terminus ad quem is set by the incorporation of Mark into the Gospel of Matthew and into the Gospel of Luke. If the Gospel of Matthew was written in the last two decades of the first century, the most probable range of dating for the Gospel of Mark is from 65 to 80 CE.
This range can be further qualified by an examination of the internal evidence.
Mark’s “Little Apocalypse” in chapter 13 is usually regarded as speaking of the events of the First Jewish Revolt, which took place 66-70 CE. The events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple left a deep impression on the Jews of the time. Jerusalem and the Temple were the center of religious life for Palestinian Jews, and the war with the Romans had ravaged the countryside and left thousands dead. Thus, it is understandable that some would associate these horrible events with the end times. An exegesis of Mark 13 shows how the author’s description corresponds with the calamities of the First Jewish Revolt.
The destruction of the Temple, which happened in 70 CE, is mentioned in v. 1-4. Leaving the temple area, a disciple said: “Teacher, look at the huge blocks of stone and the enormous buildings!” Facing the temple, Jesus responds: “You see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another – all will be torn down.” Peter and some others then question Jesus about the signs of the apocalypse privately, a tell-tale sign of Mark’s redactional hand (instead of earlier well-known tradition).
In v. 5-8, the author speaks of “wars and rumours of wars,” but “this is not yet the end.” If ch 13 is speaking of the First Jewish Revolt, this indicates that some had predicted earlier that the end would come during the war, a view which the author must deny (or perhaps slightly modify, cf v. 24) after the fighting has ended. The author speaks of “famine” during this time when nation is rising against nation, and Josephus reports the horrors of pestilence and famine during the First Jewish Revolt.
Concerning v. 9-13, Robert Funk writes in The Five Gospels: “The sayings in Mark 13:9-13 all reflect detailed knowledge of events that took place – or ideas that were current – after Jesus’ death: trials and persecutions of Jesus’ followers, the call to preach the gospel to all nations, advice to offer spontaneous testimony, and the prediction that families would turn against one another are features of later Christian existence, not of events in Galilee or Jerusalem during Jesus’ lifetime. The note about children betraying their parents may be an allusion to the terrible calamities that took place during the siege of Jerusalem (66-70 C.E.)”
Verse 14 says: “When you see the ‘Abomination of Desecration’ standing where it should not be – let the reader take note! – those in Judea must flee to the mountains.” The parenthetical comment to “let the reader take note” underscores the fact that this speech was written for the Christians of Mark’s time. The contemporary audience of Mark would understand very well what he was talking about, although the ‘Abomination of Desecration’ is a cryptic reference to us. The phrase is borrowed from Dn 9:27, where it refers to Antiochus profaning the Temple of Jerusalem c. 165 BCE (probably with an image of Zeus), although it has been adapted to the evangelist’s times. In the context of the First Jewish Revolt, this probably refers to the profanation of the Temple by the Romans. Josephus tells us that the victorious soldiers raised their imperial standards and worshiped them in the holy place (Wars of the Jews 6.6.1).
Randel Helms comments on the reference to Daniel in the Gospel of Mark (op. cit., p. 8):
So Daniel’s “time, times, and half a time” is three and a half years, or twelve hundred and ninety days. The author of Daniel was referring, with the “abomination of desolation,” to the altar to Zeus that Antiochus IV established in the Jerusalem temple in December, 167 B.C.E., as I Maccabees 1:54 tells us. But in Mark’s eyes, Daniel really was speaking of Mark’s own time, the “time of the end,” when another “abomination of desolation” was set up in the Jerusalem temple. For according to Josephus, the regular offering ceased in the temple in July, 70, the temple was burnt in August, and later that month the imperial Roman eagle was set up in the temple precincts and sacrifice was offered to it; then in September the temple was razed to the ground (Josphus, The Jewish War, Chapters 6, 7). Three and a half years thereafter would be early in the year 74. It should not be surprising that a first-century author might apply the Book of Daniel to the Jewish War; Josephus himself did so, he tells us, in the summer of the year 70, at the height of the seige (Josephus, 309).
Helms goes on to argue that the reference to the messianic pretenders in 13:21-22 suggests that the author of Mark wrote shortly after 70 rather than a few years before. Josephus tells us about Menahem, the son of Judas, as well as Simon, the son of Gioras, “both of whom were striking messianic pretenders.” Helms states, “As far as Mark was concerned the Jewish War was over; there remained only the cosmic disorder and the Second Coming.”
Josephus refers to false prophets during the final phase of the Roman assault on the Temple as it was engulfed in flame: “A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction, who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day, that God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance. Now there was then a great number of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose on the people, who denounced this to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God; and this was in order to keep them from deserting, and that they might be buoyed up above fear and care by such hopes.” (Wars of the Jews 6.5.2)
Possibly the inspiration for v. 15-18, Christians abandoned Jerusalem before the siege began and fled to the city of Pella according to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 3.5.3).
The horrors of the war seem to be vivid in the author’s memory (v. 19), and the tribulations are probably still ongoing in the aftermath, as the author wishes for an end to them (v. 20). Although the author rejects the claims of others who recently said that the Lord will return during the war (v. 7), he adapts this by saying that the day of the Lord is ‘near, even at the door’ during this period of tribulation (v. 28-29). He assures his readers that they will see the Parousia before the first Christian generation passes away (v. 30). This indicates that Mark was written shortly after the fall of Jerusalem that occured in 70 CE.
J.D. Crossan writes in The Historical Jesus that Jesus “said, according to Mark 13:24, that there would be a clear but not prolonged interval between the Temple’s destruction and his own return. Mark’s community was living in that interval, having rejected those false but Christian prophets who, in 13:5-8 and 21-23, had proclaimed Jesus’ return at…the destruction of the Temple in the First Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 C.E. Mark, in other words, clearly and deliberately separates all that led up to the parousia of Jesus in 13:24-37. And all is placed on the prophetic lips of Jesus himself. That, says Mark, was what he actually said.”
Paul J. Achtemeier writes (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 4, p. 545): “the assurance that one cannot calculate by historic events when the risen Christ would return in glory, found again and again in chap. 13, may have been designed to head off discouragement when the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was not immediately followed by that return.”
Robert Eisenman writes (James the Brother of Jesus, p. 56): “From the same internal textual considerations already noted, it is possible to show that Mark, too, was written after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE. The whole nature of its anti-Jewish polemic and opposition to the family and brothers of Jesus on the one hand and its pro-Peter orientation on the other distinguish it as having appeared after the destruction of the Jerusalem centre – in particular, after the attempt by the Roman Community to represent itself as the legitimate heir to Jesus and the Messianic movement he represented, however absurd, historically speaking, that might have seemed to any objective observer at the time.”
Eisenman comments (op. cit., p. 56): “There are, in fact, several veiled references to events of this kind in the Gospel of Mark, for instance, in the introuduction to the Little Apocalypse, where Jesus is made to predict the utter destruction of the Temple (13:1-2) and in the Apocalypse itself, when the Pauline Mission is anticipated (13:9-10) – but, even more importantly, in the depiction of the rending of the Temple veil at his death (Mark 15:38 and pars.). This veil was more than likely damaged in the final Roman assault on the Temple or in the various altercations and the turmoil preceding this. Josephus specifically refers to it, along with its replacement materials, as having been delivered over to the Romans after the assault on the Temple. It was doubtless on display in Rome, damaged or otherwise, along with the rest of the booty Josephus describes as having been paraded in Titus’ Triumph.”
Many scholars see another historical allusion in Mk 5:8-13 to a ‘Legion’ which had a pig as its emblem and which Josephus tells us remained in Jerusalem in the war’s aftermath (Wars of the Jews 7.1.3). William Harwood writes in Mythology’s Last Gods: “Since the fall of the city a few months earlier [in 70 C.E.], Jerusalem had been occupied by the Roman Tenth Legion [X Fretensis], whose emblem was a pig. Mark’s reference to about two thousand pigs, the size of the occupying Legion, combined with his blatant designation of the evil beings as Legion, left no doubt in Jewish minds that the pigs in the fable represented the army of occupation. Mark’s fable in effect promised that the messiah, when he returned, would drive the Romans into the sea as he had earlier driven their four-legged surrogates.”
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