Theme of the Double (Multiple Personality) in The New Testament: Jesus’s Exorcism of Two Demoniacs in The Gospel According to Matthew

Dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) is defined as a “disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession” (1, p. 292).

The most famous case of possession in The New Testament is that of the Gerasene demoniac, described in Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39.

In Mark: “Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’”

In Luke: “Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him.”

However, in Matthew, when Jesus came, “two demoniacs met him” (2).

Thus, Mark and Luke represent multiple personality as one person who has more than one identity. But Matthew, in describing the same event, uses the literary device known as the theme of the double, in which two identities of one person are incarnated as separate people, as in Dostoevsky’s The Double.

Of course, by the time Matthew used the theme of the double, it was already an old literary device, having been used by Euripides in his play Helen—Helen of Troy had multiple personality—as mentioned in a past post.

1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

2. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (Editors). The Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version Containing the Old and New Testaments. New York, Oxford University Press, 1962.