Jonathan Robinson: Exorcism in Antiquity

Jonathan Rivett Robinson, Markan Typology: Miracle, Scripture and Christology in Mark 4:35-6:45 (London: T&T Clark, 2023), 126:

For many Jews and Greeks in antiquity exorcism was primarily a form of healing; that is, it was not associated with any specific cosmology or eschatological expectation (1 Sam 16:14-23; Josephus, Ant. 6.116-69; LAB 60; Tobit 6). In the rabbinic literature, Hanna ben Dosa’s encounter with the demon queen Agrath (b. Pesah. 112b) and Simeon ben Yose’s exorcism of Ben Temalion (b. Me’il. 17b) feature confrontations with evil spirits which have no eschatological significance. Genesis Apocryphon 20, where Abraham delivers Abimelech from a pestilential spirit provides another example of an evil spirit without eschatological significance. The evil spirit is sent by God, not Satan, and the spirit is not personal, there is no speech interaction with the spirit.

In Mark, however, the exorcisms relate to a dualistic cosmology where Satan is the primary power behind the evil spirits (3:22-23) and connect to an eschatological expectation of judgement for evil (1:24; 5:; cf. 1 Enoch 55:4). This renders Mark’s exorcism accounts an apparently unprecedented hybrid between eschatological evil spirits (serving Satan, offspring of fallen angels, destined for destruction) like those of 1 Enoch and Jubilees, and traditional exorcisms (healing/deliverance of afflicted individuals) like those recounted in 1 Sam 16:14-23 and Tobit 6.