NOTES TO VOLUME II.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

a According to the traditions of the Rabbis, Joshua, on his distribution of the country, had made the fishing in the Lake of Galilee free to all, so that their nets, etc., did not interfere with the navigation.-Bava Kama, lxxxi. 1, 2. Nowadays the fishing is a monopoly of the Turkish Government, and is virtually extinct.

Jerome translates Capernaum as "The Lovely," from D

(Kephar Naim). Origen, on the contrary, translates it, "The Village of Consola

.(כְפַר נָהוּם) י tion

as

b Had He gone with Peter, He would have cured the Apostle's motherin-law, without waiting till after He came from the synagogue next day. The Jews, in their extravagant way, spoke of "possession having characterized all ages, but there is no notice of it in the Old Testament, unless the case of Saul be supposed to be an instance of it, which is doubtful.

a Ha! is the proper translation of ea, which is not the imperative of áw, but an interjection.

hy didáσkwv, en didaskōn (Mark i. 22), marks the continuance of His teaching, as a stated practice.

The New Testament leaves us in no doubt of the belief on the part of Jesus and the Evangelists, in the reality of these demoniacal possessions, and to my mind this at once closes the question. Modern criticism has sought to attribute the phenomena associated with "possession," to physical or mental causes only, but the fact that disease takes the same forms from apparently natural causes as it assumed from the action of evil spirits, leaves the possibility of its being associated with their presence in the cases recorded in the New Testament, wholly untouched. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. To quote the foolish superstitions of the Rabbis respecting the relations of demons to our race, as a reason for discrediting the belief in "possession" in any case, is as absurd as to urge the fantastic notions of the ignorant respecting the spirit world at large, as a ground for turning Sadducee and denying the existence of spirits altogether. Nor is it worthy of more weight to trace the belief among the Jews, in spirits good and bad, in greater or lesser measure to Eastern sources. It would be as reasonable to reject belief in the immortality of the soul, because it was more clearly held in Egypt than in Palestine.

Truth is truth, from whatever quarter it may reach us, and that would be a narrow theology which would limit revelations, for untold ages, to the uplands of Judea. The light may have shone most brightly there, nor is it a question that it did so; but who can tell how many rays shone down on other lands through rifts in the clouds that only too darkly covered them?

The fact, corroborated by the widest evidence, that there are still seen in half-enlightened countries, such as India, phenomena which seem explicable only on the theory of "possession," is striking. Take, for instance, the following extract descriptive of a scene witnessed in India by the writer: "The circle is formed; the fire is lit; the offerings are got ready-goats, and fowls, and rice, and pulse, and sugar, and ghee, and honey, and white chaplets of oleander blossoms and jasmine buds. The tom-toms are beaten more loudly and rapidly, the hum of rustic converse is stilled, and a deep hush of awe-struck expectancy holds the motley assembly. Now, the low rickety door of the hut is quickly dashed open. The devil-dancer staggers out. Between the hut and the dark shadow of the sacred banyan, lies a strip of moonlit sand; and as he passes this, the devotees can clearly see their priest. He is a tall, haggard, pensive man, with deep-sunken eyes and matted hair. His forehead is smeared with ashes, and there are streaks of vermilion and saffron over his face. He wears a high conical cap, white, with a red tassel. A long robe, or angi, shrouds him from neck to ankle. On it are worked, in red silk, representations of the goddess of small-pox, murder, and cholera. Round his ankles are massive silver bangles. In his right hand he holds a staff or spear, that jingles harshly every time the ground is struck by it. The same hand also holds a bow, which, when the strings are pulled or struck, emits a dull booming sound. In his left hand the devil-priest carries his sacrificial knife, shaped like a sickle, with quaint devices engraved on its blade. The dancer, with uncertain staggering motion, reels slowly into the centre of the crowd, and there seats himself. The assembled people show him the offerings they intend to present, but he appears wholly unconscious. He croons an Indian lay in a low dreamy voice, with drooped eyelids and head sunken on his breast. He swings slowly to and fro, from side to side. Look! You can see his fingers twitch nervously. His head begins to wag in a strange uncanny fashion. His sides heave and quiver, and huge drops of perspiration exude from his skin. The tom-toms are beaten faster, the pipes and reeds wail out more loudly. There is a sudden yell, a stinging, stunning cry, an ear-piercing shriek, a hideous abominable gobble-gobble of hellish laughter, and the devil-dancer has sprung to his feet, with eyes protruding, mouth foaming, chest heaving, muscles quivering, and outstretched arms swollen and straining. Now, ever and anon, the quick sharp words are jerked out of the saliva-choked mouthI am God, I am the true God!' Then all around him, since he and no idol is regarded as the present deity, reeks the blood of sacrifice. Shrieks, vows, imprecations, prayers, and exclamations of thankful praise, rise up, all blended together in one infernal hubbub. Above all, rise the ghastly guttural laughter of the devil-dancer, and his stentorian howls-I am God, I am the only true God!' He cuts and hacks and hews himself, and not very unfrequently kills himself there and then. Hours pass by. The trembling crowd stands rooted to the spot. Sud

"Demonolatry," by R. C. Caldwell, Esq., Contemporary Review, Feb., 1876.

denly the dancer gives a great bound into the air; when he descends he is motionless. The fiendish look has vanished from his eyes. His demoniacal laughter is still. He speaks to this and that neighbour quietly and reasonably. He lays aside his garb, washes his face at the nearest rivulet, and walks soberly home, a modest, well-conducted man!"

66

The Jewish superstitions respecting demons were very curious. The chief of the diabolical empire was Beelzebub, a Phenician god, but the Persian Aeschma Daeva also was transferred to Judaism as Asmodeus, and with him an endless crowd of other spirits, or devs," Asahel, Sammael, and the like, who were unknown to earlier and purer ages.Ewald's Geschichte, vol. iv. p. 269. Gfrörer, vol. i. p. 395. Henoch, c. 6, ff. Keim, Jes. v. N., vol. ii. p. 187. According to the Book of Henoch, the demons are the souls of the giants who corrupted themselves with the daughters of men, but Josephus regarded them as the spirits of dead men.-Bell. Jud., vii. 6. 3. They were so numerous that every man has 10,000 of them on his right hand, and 1,000 on his left. It was their delight to work all possible evils on men and even on beasts, and hence all the sicknesses and calamities that happened to living creatures were ascribed to them. Even headaches had a special demon who caused them.

The casting out of these demons was, thus, a main task of Jewish professional life, though evil spirits trembled especially before the Rabbis, as they knew the secret names of God. The angels had told Noah the cures of all the diseases caused by demons, and their modes of temptation, and how the virtues of plants could overcome them; and Noah had written them in a book known to the Rabbis.-Jubilees, 10. In all cases, however, it was the name of God in the exorcism that was supremely potent. Forms of words were used, which acted as spells. One of many such formulæ, preserved in the Talmud, is as follows:"O thou demon who art hidden; thou son of foulness, thou son of abomination, thou son of uncleanness, be thou cursed, crushed, anathematized, as Schamgas, Marigas, and Istemaa."-Shabbath Bab., 67a. Strange gesticulations, burnings of incense, tying and unloosing of knots, and the use of certain plants, were among the other aids of exorcism. "Take incense," says Raphael to Tobit, "and lay part of the heart and the liver of the fish on it, and burn the incense, and the demon will smell it and fly away, and come back no more."-Tobit vi. 16, 17. The root Baara, which grew near Machaerus, and was red like flame, throwing out fiery gleams by night, was a great remedy. When any one tried to pull it up, it shrank into the ground, and, if he left any part of it in the earth, he died. Those who gathered it, therefore, wisely tied a dog to it, and forced him to drag it up. When the root broke the dog died; but the root could now be handled with safety. When brought near one possessed with a demon, the demon fled, and the sick man got better.-Bell. Jud., vii. 6. 3. Josephus also tells another mode of exorcism which he saw employed before Vespasian, his sons, his staff, and many of his soldiers, by a Jew named Eleazar. The magician put a ring that had in it a root of one of the plants mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the possessed man, and after doing so he drew out the demon through his nostrils. When the man forthwith fell down, he abjured the devil to return to him no more, still making mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he had composed. And when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had

such a power, he set, a little way off, a cup or basin, full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let all know that he had left the man, which he did.-Ant., vii. 2. 5. Compare with this the grand simplicity of the Gospels when the Word of Jesus alone is used; and does not one see the contrast between reality and superstitious wildness?

See Langen's Judenthum, pp. 297-331; Winer's R.W.B., Art. Besessene; Bibel Lex., Art. Besessene; Herzog, Art. Dämonische; Trench on Miracles, pp. 151 ff.; Keim, Jesu v. N., vol. ii. pp. 188-204; Hausrath, vol. i. pp. 110, 112, etc., etc., etc.

A passage from Canon Tristram's Great Sahara bears curiously on this interesting subject. I append it, with a letter I have had the honour of receiving from him respecting it. The scene was Algiers; the dramatis persone members of a fanatical Mussulman sect.

"The floor of the centre was paved with bright tesselated tiles. In the midst squatted the dervishes, or Beni Yssou. Round three sides the musicians sat on the ground, beating large tambourines and swinging their heads as they accompanied their voices in a low measured chant, which never varied more than three semitones. Nothing could sound to our ears more monotonous than this unvaried wailing cadence, no music less capable of inspiring frenzy. The fourth side of the square was occupied by a young man sitting cross-legged before a low table, on which lay a bundle of papers and a long lighted candle. Near him was a chafing-dish over which he frequently baked the tambourines. One of the musicians, in lieu of a tambourine, held a huge earthen jar, with a parchment cover stretched over its mouth, which, by incessant drumming produced a bass groan deeper even than the other instruments. Shrouded spectators occupied the background; and a few Moors, and one or two Frenchmen, the front and sides, without the pillars. We were accommodated with a form, and courteously supplied with coffee and pipes from time to time. Meanwhile the courtyard filled, and became a vapour-bath. The dervishes having now worked up the steam, a huge negro, with grizzled-grey moustache, rose, plunged forward with a howl, and swayed his body to and fro. He was supported by the attendants, stripped of his turban and outer garments, and accommodated with a loose white burnous; he then danced an extempore saraband in front of the lights. Meanwhile, he had been anticipated in his excitement by a little boy in the rear, whom we had noticed on the stairs behind, for the last twenty minutes, gradually working himself into an ecstasy, rolling his head and swaying himself on his seat, apparently unconscious and unobserved. The black had now become outrageous; his eyeballs glowed and rolled as he grunted and growled like a wild beast. The musicians plied the sheep skins with redoubled energy, and the din became deafening. The negro craved for aliment. They brought him a smith's shovel at a red heat. He seized it, spat on his fingers, rubbed them across its heated edge, found it not sufficiently tender, blew on it, and struck it many times with the palm of his hand. He licked it with his tongue, found it not yet to his taste, and handed it back to the attendants with evident disgust; squatted down again, glared carnivorously, and was gratified by an entremet of a live scorpion. This he ate with evident relish, commencing carefully with the tail; but his voracity was still unabated. Next, a naked sword was handed to him, which he tried to swallow, but failed, the weapon being slightly curved, and about a

yard long. He recommenced the saraband, brandishing the naked sword after a fashion very promiscuous, and not at all satisfactory to the spectators, as he cut the candle to pieces, and made the musicians dive to avoid him. He then attempted to bore his cheek with the point; then to pierce himself in the abdomen; setting the hilt at times against a pillar, then against the ground. A friendly fanatic assisted him by jumping on his shoulders, but all to no purpose. He was evidently, for the nonce, one of the pachydermata; his hide would rival the sevenfold shield of Ajax. Now several maniacs simultaneously howl, stagger forth to the centre, and repeat the same extravagances; not omitting the dainty taste of scorpions. Three of them at length kneel before the presiding Marabout, or chief of the dervishes, who benevolently feeds them with the leaf of the prickly pear, which they bite with avidity, and masticate in large mouthfuls, spines and all. Others repeat the shovel exploit; and one sturdy little fellow, a Marocain, naked to the waist, balances himself on his stomach on the edge of a drawn sword, held up, point and hilt, by two men. Then he stands on it, supporting a tall man on his shoulders. Altogether, the din of the musicians, the pleased 'Sah, sah' of the spectators, the howls of the maniacs with their waving figures and dishevelled hair (for the dervishes do not shave), the heat and stench of the apartment, the wild confusion of the spectacle, might make a visitor fancy he was looking on some mad, unearthly revel, where fanaticism had turned fiendish, and demoniac worship domineered it over men."-The Great Sahara, by H. R. Tristram, M.A. London, 1860, pp. 12-15.

The following is an extract from Canon Tristram's letter, to which I have referred :

"I need hardly say that I thoroughly agree with your views on demoniacal possession, but I fear I cannot aid you by supplying any facts with which you are not already familiar. In the first chapter of my book, The Great Sahara, I gave a full description of what I witnessed, certainly not overdrawn, but I have nothing to add to it. I certainly never received any rational physical explanation of the eating of pricklypear leaf, the extraordinary hardness of the skin, muscles, etc.; and the whole is in complete accord with what we read of demoniacs in the New Testament.

"One thing is certain, these feats are not jugglery. Jugglers are well known in these countries, and perform as they do here, but no native ever dreams of confounding the two. The dervish performs only when wrought up to this state of frenzy, and cannot do anything extraordinary at other times; and the people all believe it to be by a species of supernatural possession. I never heard of the exhibition except as a religious one. There are yet stranger stories told of the feats of these 'possessed' dervishes; but I only state what I have myself seen. was not that the spine of the prickly pear, etc., did not hurt them; it did not prick them. I am not prepared to affirm that it is demoniacal possession, but I should be very far from denying it. If we believe, as we do, that we are living in the midst of a spirit world, who shall say what manifestations may not be possible, if God permit them?"

It

f The Rabbis say, He who meditates on the Law of God by "day," and spends the night in prayer, will never hear evil tidings.-Berachoth, f. 14. 1.

VOL. II.

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