Luke 8:26-39

10. The Healing of the Demoniac: Luke 8:26-39.

This portion brings before us a storm no less difficult to still, and a yet more striking victory. Luke and Mark mention only one demoniac; Matthew speaks of two. The hypothesis of a common written source here encounters a difficulty which is very hard for it to surmount. But criticism has expedients to meet all cases: according to Holtzmann, Matthew, who had omitted the healing of the demoniac at Capernaum, here repairs this omission, “by grouping the possessed who had been neglected along with this new case” (p. 255). This is a sample of what is called at the present day critical sagacity. As if the evangelists had no faith themselves in what they wrote with a view to win the faith of others! Why should it be deemed impossible for the two maniacs to have lived together, and for the healing of only one of the two to have presented the striking features mentioned in the following narrative? However it was, we have here a proof of the independence of Matthew's narratives on the one hand, and of those of Mark and Luke on the other.