Five-minute study · Day 292 · Mark 5
Mark 5:9
A word worth stopping on: Legion Λεγιών legion
'And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.' A Roman legion at full strength numbered 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers. In occupied Palestine, the word carried the weight of iron boots on stone roads, of centurions collecting taxes at swordpoint, of crucifixions along the highway pour encourager les autres. Jesus asked a demoniac living among the tombs on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee for his name, and the answer came back in Latin military vocabulary. Legion. The man had lost his own name. What answered was a number so large it borrowed the language of the empire that had colonized his homeland.
Word study: Legion
- Greek
- Λεγιών
- Pronounced
- legion
- Strong's
- G3003
- Definition
- A Roman military unit of 5,000-6,000 infantry soldiers plus cavalry, engineers, and support personnel. Used metaphorically to indicate an overwhelmingly large number. A Latin loanword (legio) absorbed into Greek.
Legion (legeon) appears four times in the New Testament: Mark 5:9, Mark 5:15, Luke 8:30, and Matthew 26:53 (where Jesus says the Father could send twelve legions of angels). BDAG defines it as 'a Roman military unit, legion' and notes its metaphorical extension to mean 'a very large number.' The word is a Latin loanword, one of several military and administrative terms that entered Greek during the Roman period (others include centurion/kenturion, denarius/denarion, and praetorium/praitorion).
Myers's study 'Binding the Strong Man' reads the Gerasene demoniac episode (Mark 5:1-20) as layered with political symbolism. The setting is the Decapolis, a league of ten Greco-Roman cities on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. The region was Gentile territory. The man lived among the tombs (a place of ritual impurity), was naked, cut himself with stones, and could break chains and shackles. The detail about chains is repeated: the community had tried to bind him many times and failed every time. Myers notes that the language of binding and breaking carries significance in Mark's broader narrative, where Jesus has already declared his mission to 'bind the strong man' (Mark 3:27).
The name 'Legion' is the pivot of the encounter. Jesus asked for a name, a standard exorcism practice in the ancient world (knowing the name of a spirit was understood to give authority over it). The answer came in Latin military terminology. Myers observes that in occupied Palestine, the word 'legion' was loaded with political resonance. The Legio X Fretensis (Tenth Legion of the Sea Strait) was stationed in the region and would later be instrumental in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Its standards bore the image of a boar. The demons leave the man and enter a herd of approximately 2,000 pigs, which then rush into the sea and drown. Myers notes the symbolic density: Roman military vocabulary, pigs (the boar was a legionary emblem), and drowning in the sea (echoing Pharaoh's army in Exodus 15). Whether Mark intended all of these connections is debated, but the resonances are present in the text.
BDAG notes that the use of a Latin military term in a Greek gospel composed for a Roman audience (Mark is traditionally associated with Rome) would have been immediately understood. The audience knew what a legion was. The metaphor communicated both the scale of the man's affliction and the nature of the power that held him.
Historical context · The Roman occupation of Palestine from Pompey's conquest in 63 BCE through the first century CE; the Decapolis region east of the Sea of Galilee; the ministry of Jesus approximately AD 28-30; the Legio X Fretensis stationed in Syria-Palestine
Roman Legions in Palestine and the Gerasene Demoniac
Rome's military presence in Palestine began with Pompey's siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE. By the time of Jesus's ministry, Roman control was exercised through a combination of client kings (the Herodian dynasty), Roman prefects (Pontius Pilate governed Judea from AD 26-36), and military garrisons. The nearest major legionary base was at Antioch in Syria, but detachments were stationed throughout the region. The Legio X Fretensis, which would later play a central role in the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, was based in Syria during the early first century. Its emblem was a boar, a bull, and a dolphin-and-galley motif (referencing the Battle of Actium).
The Decapolis, where the Gerasene demoniac episode takes place, was a group of ten (later more) Hellenized cities east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee. Pliny the Elder (Natural History 5.16) lists the original ten: Damascus, Philadelphia (modern Amman), Raphana, Scythopolis (the only one west of the Jordan), Gadara, Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa (modern Jerash), and Canatha. These cities had significant Gentile populations, Greek institutions (theaters, gymnasiums, temples to Zeus and Artemis), and a relationship with Rome that gave them a degree of autonomy from the Jewish tetrarchies.
Myers places the Gerasene episode in this political geography. Jesus crosses the sea from Jewish territory to Gentile territory. He encounters a man whose affliction is described with vocabulary that resonates with imperial violence: chains, shackles, breaking free, crying out, self-harm. The man's answer, 'My name is Legion,' uses the occupier's own military term. Myers argues that the episode functions on multiple levels simultaneously: as an exorcism narrative (a man is freed from spiritual oppression), as a political parable (the language of empire is named and expelled), and as a preview of Jesus's authority extending beyond Jewish boundaries into Gentile territory.
The herd of pigs, approximately 2,000 (Mark 5:13), rushes into the sea and drowns. Pig herding was a Gentile practice forbidden to Jews. The number 2,000 is close to a third of a legion's infantry strength. The drowning in the sea has been connected by multiple commentators to the Exodus narrative. Myers is careful to note that these connections are suggestive, not conclusive. Mark does not spell out the allegory. The text simply records what happened: a man named himself after a military unit, the demons entered pigs, and the pigs drowned. The listeners and readers supply the connections from their own experience of life under Rome.
For reflection
Legion. Five thousand soldiers compressed into one man's answer when Jesus asked his name. The man had been living in the tombs, naked, cutting himself, breaking every chain the community tried to put on him. When asked to identify himself, he could not find his own name. What answered was the word for an occupying army. Myers reads the political resonance: in occupied Palestine, 'legion' was the sound of boots on pavement, of taxes extracted at spearpoint, of crosses lining the road out of town. The man had been so thoroughly colonized by what afflicted him that his identity was gone. Jesus did not flinch at the number. He asked for the name, received a military term, and gave the order. The man was found afterward, sitting, clothed, in his right mind (Mark 5:15). His own mind. His own name restored, even though Mark never records what it was. What has taken your name? What do you call yourself when the affliction answers for you? Jesus asked the question because the naming was the beginning of the liberation.
Legion: a Roman military unit of 5,000-6,000 soldiers. Latin loanword in Greek. BDAG notes the metaphorical extension to 'very large number.' Myers reads the Gerasene episode as layered with political symbolism: Roman military vocabulary, the boar emblem of the Tenth Legion, pigs drowning in the sea.
Sources: BDAG; Myers, 'Binding the Strong Man'