Legion (demons)

Jesus encounters a possessed man and calls on the demon to emerge, demanding to know its name – an important element of traditional exorcism practice.

The Gospel of Matthew shortens it more dramatically, changes the possessed man to two men (a particular stylistic device of this writer) and changes the location to "the country of the Gadarenes".

According to Michael Willett Newheart, professor of New Testament Language and Literature at the Washington, D.C. Howard University School of Divinity, in a 2004 lecture, the author of the Gospel of Mark could well have expected readers to associate the name Legion with the Roman military formation, active in the area at the time (around 70 AD).

[5] The Biblical scholar Seyoon Kim, however, points out that the Latin legio was commonly used as a loanword in Hebrew and Aramaic to indicate an unspecified but large quantity.

It is the latter sense that has become the common understanding of the term as an adjective in modern English (whereas when used as a noun it indicates the Roman military number, between 3,000 and 6,000 infantry with cavalry; cf.