Spirit Possession (Multiple Personality) in The Gospel According to Mark: Jesus is possessed by the Holy Spirit, enabling him to exorcise unclean spirits

Previously, my citation of The New Testament had focussed on Mark 5:1-20, in which Jesus exorcises the Gerasene demoniac, who had been named Legion, because he’d been possessed by a legion of demons. I cited it as an example of multiple personality disorder from two thousand years ago.

But since this blog is primarily about a normal version of multiple personality, I went back to Mark to see if it also described a normal version of spirit possession. It does.

At the beginning of Mark, Jesus is possessed by the “Holy Spirit” (1:8, 10, 12), which first makes him go into the wilderness, where he is tempted by Satan, and then empowers him to heal people who have been possessed by “unclean spirits” or “demons.”

When, later, Jesus is accused of being possessed by Beelzebul, he asks, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (3:23), meaning that since he exorcises Satan’s demons, he must be possessed, not by Satan, but by the Holy Spirit.

In short, The Gospel According to Mark posits two kinds of spirit possession: good, clean, spirit possession by God’s Holy Spirit, and evil, unclean, spirit possession by Satan’s demons.

Thus, the distinction between good possession or multiple personality and problematic possession or multiple personality goes back thousands of years.