Deviled Ham :Mocking the Roman Empire in Mark 5

Great article, HT Don Berg:

Deviled HamMocking the Roman Empire in Mark 5By Trent VothHave you heard the one about the Rabbi and a man infested by a legion of demons that are on the beach near the Decapolis? The Rabbi orders the legion out of the man and into a couple thousand grazing pigs. The pigs march into the sea and drown. The townspeople tell the Rabbi to get lost, and he tells the disinfected man to go tell all that the Lord has done for him. So the man goes and tells all about the Rabbi!Pigs, legions and lords—it’s an inside joke. Get it? No?I don’t blame you. Comedy, like Greek, is hard to translate, especially comedy from a different culture, worldview and political context. Age it over two millennia and you end up with a story that seems more scary than funny. The setup becomes the emphasis and the punch line is brushed aside and forgotten. That’s the problem with a 2,000-year-old joke—timing.Missed the punch line?In Mark 5:1-20, Jesus casts demons into a herd of swine, emancipating the overrun man from the demons. We habitually view this as the culmination of the story. But what if we’ve celebrated prematurely? What if we have misidentified the victorious moment, thereby missing the punch line and misunderstanding the climax of this story of mockery for a weird moment of collateral damage and property destruction?Maybe we have totally missed the joke, and it’s about the pigs. The deviled ham, the soggy hoggy—that’s the joke, and for Mark’s audience it was therapeutic comedy gold. Two thousand pigs near the Decapolis in 1  CONTINUED HERE