“Legion is my name, because we are many”: exorcism and political resistance in Mk 5,1-20

Abstract

The text of Mk 5:1-20 combines narration of common exorcism with resistance to the Roman power. With beautiful literary art, the reader is led to the ways of an integral liberation. The aim of this paper is to discuss the contributions of historical-critical method to identify the likely reasons agglutination between exorcism and criticism of the Roman power in markan text. We shall take into consideration the proposals of scientific exegesis on the relationship between text, context and author in the appropriate update of the biblical material views