As for your interpretation-- I don't think that there is one specific meaning that we're supposed to derive from any of these stories. I suspect that it begins with the Gospel writer simply recording what he heard-- or witnessed. If you approach it on that level, you're already in a different world-- one in which an exorcised demon may pray to be sent into the body of a pig, and the request is granted, and all of this is perfectly reasonable. And in fact it's more than reasonable-- it's the sort of thing a divine being would do. If you simply encounter it on that level and allow yourself to live in that world, you'll already have taken an enormous step toward shaking your mind loose from the grip of the spirit of this age.
But the practice of looking for deeper layers of meaning in these stories is ancient, and it goes back to the very beginning. If you see the pigs as representations of a certain type of person you're in good company; others have said the same. The point is to do two things-- First, ask yourself, if you view the pigs as metaphors for pig-ish people (recalling, perhaps, what we've already been told about pearls and swine) how does that shape your view of the world, and your view of Christ and his mission? Second, don't stop there, or assume that you've found "the meaning." "The meaning" is something that high school teachers tell their students that poems have. They're wrong about poems and even more wrong about myths. As in every great myth, every passage in the Gospel admits of many layers of interpretation-- it's a well without a bottom, and the test of a given interpretation isn't whether it's "the right one" according to some particular standard, but in how it shapes the soul of the interpreter.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-11-01 06:39 pm (UTC)As for your interpretation-- I don't think that there is one specific meaning that we're supposed to derive from any of these stories. I suspect that it begins with the Gospel writer simply recording what he heard-- or witnessed. If you approach it on that level, you're already in a different world-- one in which an exorcised demon may pray to be sent into the body of a pig, and the request is granted, and all of this is perfectly reasonable. And in fact it's more than reasonable-- it's the sort of thing a divine being would do. If you simply encounter it on that level and allow yourself to live in that world, you'll already have taken an enormous step toward shaking your mind loose from the grip of the spirit of this age.
But the practice of looking for deeper layers of meaning in these stories is ancient, and it goes back to the very beginning. If you see the pigs as representations of a certain type of person you're in good company; others have said the same. The point is to do two things-- First, ask yourself, if you view the pigs as metaphors for pig-ish people (recalling, perhaps, what we've already been told about pearls and swine) how does that shape your view of the world, and your view of Christ and his mission? Second, don't stop there, or assume that you've found "the meaning." "The meaning" is something that high school teachers tell their students that poems have. They're wrong about poems and even more wrong about myths. As in every great myth, every passage in the Gospel admits of many layers of interpretation-- it's a well without a bottom, and the test of a given interpretation isn't whether it's "the right one" according to some particular standard, but in how it shapes the soul of the interpreter.