My name is Legion; for we are many

A Language of God Reflection

In Mark chapter 5, Jesus and his disciples met a man who lived among the tombs in the country of the Gerasenes. The conversation gets a little tricky with the referents for the pronouns:

8 For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

9 Then he asked him, “What is your name?” And he replied to him, “My name is Legion; for we are many.”

10 And he implored him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

First of all, would it have killed Mark to be a little more clear with all the “hims”? Most English translations turn some of them into “Jesus” even though the Greek doesn’t use it here. Greek like lots of other languages doesn’t have to use “he” at all when saying “he asked him”; it only has to use a third person singular verb, and the “he” is implied. Most commentators on the book of Mark talk about what a fast pace it uses. So OK, Mark was in a hurry and didn’t want to have to say “Jesus asked him” when simply saying “asked him” would suffice.

The trickier part, though, are the pronouns referring to the man and the unclean spirit — which turns out to be many spirits? In v. 8 Jesus said to “him” which is presumably the man, but he’s not telling the man to coming out of himself, so it’s more like “he said toward the man while actually addressing the spirit, come out of the man”.

Then in v. 9 Jesus asks “him” his name. Maybe Jesus didn’t know the man’s name (we won’t worry about omniscience here), but he wasn’t really asking for the man’s name, was he? We could translate the response as “it replied to him” because it’s just a third-person verb without an explicit subject. That would be less confusing, but “it” goes on to say: “My (singular) name is Legion; for we (plural) are many”.

And in v. 10, should we translate “it implored him” or “he implored him” (3rd person singular verb) not to send “them” (plural) out of the country? If it weren’t for v. 9 where the spirit responds with “my” and “we” both referring to itself/themselves, I’d think the “he” in v. 10 might be the man, who for some reason doesn’t want the unclean spirit(s) that have been possessing him to be sent out of the country. Maybe you could rationalize that interpretation by saying even though the man came to Jesus looking for help, he couldn’t really bring himself to be rid of the spirit(s)? But given the spirit(s) itself/themselves using both singular and plural pronouns for itself/themselves, I suspect it’s better to interpret v. 10 as the spirit saying don’t send “us” out of the country.

I don’t know. There’s probably not too much important theology depending on this. Maybe it’s just hard for spirits to differentiate their number? What is it that distinguishes one from another? I’m guessing there is a not a spatial limitation, as though one could bump into another and displace it. Are all spirits about the same size and shape?? Sounds like a category mistake.

But we hear on the Language of God episode that came out today, that we might suffer from a similar difficulty. Praveen Sethupathy, a genetics professor at Cornell (and BioLogos board member) tells us that “slightly more than half of the cells in the human body aren’t human at all.” Most of them are bacteria. And it’s not like these are just along for the ride in places we haven’t washed properly. Our bodies couldn’t function without them. Bacteria ЯUs.

So what am I? I too am legion. I implore you not to send us into exile (or at least not to use too much antibacterial soap!).