# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 41

[The oxen] and sheep therefore did not run away from their owners, even though they were driven out; the doves, however, would have flown away if Christ had wished to open the containers in which they were kept. He therefore merely commanded them to be carried away, because he did not wish anyone to lose his property. As for the moneychangers, it says: 'He poured out the changers' money and overthrew the tables.' ... We rightly distinguish these two actions. Since the moneychangers did not wish to go away at once, he poured their money out for them on the tables still standing. For since they presumably had the various kinds of coin before them in separate bags and little boxes, this pouring together prevented them from beginning their usual business of exchanging again at once. Each will thereupon have snatched his money together in haste, and then followed the second action, when Jesus overturned their counting-tables and thereby gave to understand that this equipment did not belong in the temple at all."

Jesus in the Region of the Gadarenes.
(Matt. 8:28-34. Mark 5:1-20. Luke 8:26-39.)

Contradictions have also been wished to be found in the story, reported by Matthew, Mark and Luke, of the possessed men among the Gadarenes: 1. in that according to Matthew two, according to the two other accounts one possessed man was healed; 2. in that here one can hear from the mouth of Satan, who is called a father of lies in John 8:44, a whole series of truths, for example that Jesus is God's Son and that a torment still awaits the devils; and 3. in that here a punitive miracle happened through Jesus, who otherwise always used his miraculous power for the welfare of people, by which the people of the Gadarenes were quite severely harmed in their property and lost a whole herd of swine, two thousand in number.

The first is indeed striking. In Matthew it says: Two possessed men ran to meet Jesus, and at the end, after the swine have perished in the sea, the herdsmen run into the city and tell everything, also how it had gone with the possessed. In Mark and Luke, however, there is always only talk of one possessed man, out of whom Jesus bids the devils depart, who after the healing sits clothed and in his right mind at the feet of Jesus and is still seen there by the people who come from the city to Jesus and ask him to depart from their border. But even if this is startling, one need not on that account assume with Osiander in his Harmony of the Gospels a double event, that Jesus healed once one possessed man and later once more two at Gadara on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. One would have the right to that only if the time-indications of the evangelists allowed it, and if all the incidental circumstances cited did not agree so exactly with one another.