The sixth episode of the third season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (June 12, 2019). You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

SHOW NOTES

This episode is based on Acts 16:16-34 in the New Testament of the Bible. (Click the references to read the original texts). Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the episode.

A different kind of retelling

This is a different and somewhat experimental episode, which is why I am posting outside of my regular schedule. I felt that a modern setting for this story could help us to relate to it in some very interesting ways. So much of the setting in the Book of Acts makes the story feel strange to us. We do not practice slavery. Most of us probably don’t believe in demon possession or divination. These things have changed but there was just so much about the story that doesn’t seem to have changed — in particular, we are just as obsessed with profits as the slave owners in the story, and just as willing to sacrifice any victim we can find to protect our profits. I think that this modernization of the setting could be an approach that might prove very fruitful for some future episodes, but I’d definitely like to know what you think.

About demon possession

We have come to understand that many of the conditions that were seen as demon possession in the ancient world are actually diagnosable medical and mental health issues: epilepsy, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and so on. We have come to understand that, though these conditions do have social and spiritual dimensions to them, it is not helpful and actually very harmful to speak of these things in terms of demon possession.

At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that not all phenomena that were called demon possession in the ancient world were what we would call medical conditions. In many ways, the fear of demons was used to enforce social norms and behaviour. If you could call rebellious slaves demon possessed, it was just easier to marginalize and demonize them. The same strategy would also work with women who refused to marry or refused the advances of men.

Casting out demons was an activity that both Jesus and the early Christians engaged in. There seems to be no denying that. What effects did such activities have? I don’t really have trouble believing that, in some cases, what they did had positive effects on people who struggled with medical or mental health issues. I know that there are mechanisms in healing that are not entirely explained by modern medical intervention. I also suspect that, in many cases, these Christian interventions serviced to ameliorate the social and spiritual side effects that people labelled as possessed struggled with. And, in some cases, when rebellious people were being labelled as possessed as a way of demonizing them and their radical ideas (like equality or freedom), Christian exorcism may have served as a powerful challenge to some of the fundamental assumptions of ancient society.

Power of the name of Jesus

Clearly, the power of the name of Jesus is a major theme of the story that is told in the Book of Acts. It is the name of Jesus that sets the unnamed slave girl free from her demon and the jailer is told that he must believe on the same name to be saved. In a world that took for granted the demonic influences on people’s lives, the power of the name of a deity had a particular meaning and we may not understand that power in exactly the same way today. When Paul casts the demon out of the slave girl, the name of Jesus functions almost like a magic spell, especially in the way that it works instantly.

Another reason why I wanted to retell this story in a modern context was that I wanted to explore how we could understand the power of such a name today. I am grateful to have found a new perspective on that issue in the retelling.

Another thing I would note is that the notion of salvation has taken on a very particular meaning in the Christian tradition. When Christians speak of salvation, they usually mean something very specific — being saved from sin or death or perhaps hell. Therefore, when the jailer says, “what shall I do to be saved,” we tend to assume that we know exactly what kind of salvation he is talking about. I hope that, in my retelling, I have been able to remind us all that salvation can mean many different things depending on what particular dangers a person is facing in the moment.