Luke 8:30

And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered into him.

What is thy name ...? Jesus had already commanded the demon to come out (Luke 8:29); and the command was not repeated. Therefore we must disagree with Barclay that Jesus failed, at first, to cast him out.[15] The request of the demons that they should be permitted to enter the swine shows that they recognized the absolute necessity of doing what Jesus commanded. The question regarding the name of the possessed was not asked by Jesus "in order to procure power over the demon," but for the purpose of helping the afflicted to affirm and maintain his personal identity.

Legion ... simply has the meaning of "many," a Roman legion of those times ranging in numbers from 4,000 to 6,000. Jesus did not, therefore, get the names of all those thousands of demons in order to be able to cast them out. As a matter of fact, Jesus did not ask the demons their name at all, but the name of the man; and the usurping demons responded, not by giving their several thousand names, but by the boastful claim that they were "many"! Therefore, how absurd is such a comment as the following:

Jesus seems to have shared the belief of the time that to defeat a demon it was essential to know his name. The "name" of a person possessed a mysterious power in itself so that to get hold of it was half the battle![16]

The critical schools have certainly overreached themselves by such "explanations." Is one to suppose that the demons cooperated with Christ by willingly supplying their names?

[15] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 118.

[16] E. J. Tinsley, The Gospel according to Luke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 92.