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Power of the Demons Over the Demonised

Our next inquiry must be as to the character of the phenomenon thus designated.  In view of the fact that in St. Mark ix. 21, the demonised had been such ‘of a child,’ it is scarcely possible to ascribe it simply to moral causes.  Similarly, personal faith does not seem to have been a requisite condition of healing.  Again, as other diseases are mentioned without being attributed to demoniacal influence, and as all who were dumb, deaf, or paralysed would not have been described as ‘demonised,’ it is evident that all physical or even mental distempers of the same class were not ascribed to the same cause:  some might be natural, while others were demoniacal.  On the other hand, there were more or less violent symptons of disease in every demonised person, and these were greatly aggravated in the last paroxysm, when the demon quitted his habitation.  We have, therefore, to regard the phenomena described as caused by the influence of such ‘spirits,’ primarily, upon that which forms the nexus between body and mind, the nervous system, and as producing different physical effects, according to the part of the nervous system affected.  To this must be added a ceratain impersonality of consciousness, so that for the time the consciousness was not that of the demonised, but the demoniser, just as in certain mesmeric states the consciousness of the mesmerised is really that of the mesmeriser.  We might carry the analogy farther, and say, that the two states are exactly parallel–the demon or demons taking the place of the mesmeriser, only that the effects were more powerful and extensive, perhaps more enduring….

The Life & Times of Jesus the Messiah, Volume 1 by Alfred Edersheim( Chapter XIV)

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