Legion in a ‘Living Landscape’: Contextual Bible Study as a Disruptive Tool (Luke 8:26–39 Interpreted in Owamboland,Namibia) 1

I. Contextual Bible Study

Contextual Bible Study (hereafter, CBS) as a methodological approach is very often directed toward (a) confessional and (b) liberationist ends.13 That is to say that the motivations of the practitioner are very often (a) religious (reading/interpreting as a Christian, and with Christians, toward Christian outcomes) and (b) socio-political (reading for liberating outcomes, aspiring to achieve social justice and the betterment of the social context in which the groups are interpreting).

Here, however, it is used purposively and exclusively in the service of biblical interpretation. I do not have a confessional or advocacy agenda. I employ (a version of) CBS for the opportunities it offers to dialogue with marginal voices rather than speak for them, and to focus on the expertise of those embedded in cultural settings other than my own, so that I might ‘respectfully learn cross-culturally’.14 I hope that by dialoguing with grassroots interpreters in other cultural contexts—particularly those whose voices are rarely heard on the academic stage—I might be better able to reflect on my own interpretive context and the contextual interpretations of dominant voices in the Academy. In those respects, my approach is, like CBS, ‘resolutely contextual and dialogical’,15 focusing on dialogue both between scholar and grassroots interpreters in the group interactions, as well as that between the grassroots interpretations gathered and those found in professional biblical scholarship.

CBS is paired with an anthropological approach in order to benefit from cross-cultural interpretations of biblical texts. Ethnographic contextualisation of the interpretations, alongside CBS and fieldwork, avoids the pitfall of drawing inappropriate comparisons between the grassroots context and the worldviews and practices depicted in biblical texts.16 The focus, then, is on the fruitful engagement of voices and methodological avenues beyond the normative core of biblical studies. Throughout this article, the theme of landscape17 will illustrate the value of interpreting with Cross-Cultural (Grassroots) Biblical Interpretation Groups (CCBIGs). I will refer to CCBIGs rather than CBS to draw what I see as an important distinction: I am specifically focused on the cross-cultural encounter as a powerful stimulant to biblical interpretation, and I espouse a methodological approach focused on dialogue with grassroots interpreters. CCBIGs, then, may be seen as a version of CBS, employed in partnership with anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic research.

II. Iihongo Landscapes: Domestic, Gravesites, and Wilderness

The topics of ‘Space’ and ‘Place’ are prominent in contemporary academic discourse in the social sciences, so I felt it appropriate to investigate this theme in the Iihongo context.18 The frequency of spatial referents in the Legion narrative led to significant discussions on landscapes in those sessions. In particular, we reflected on the participants’ understandings of aspects of their own landscape. We then moved to consider Legion’s flight from home territory, his subsequent occupation of a gravesite, and his wanderings in the wilderness.

What was particularly striking in the responses returned was the extent to which Iihongo perceptions of the landscape and the wider environment vastly expanded what I might have considered to be the social world. In the first instance, this was apparent in reference to the domestic environment: the homestead and its surrounding agricultural land (together, the egumbo). Extracts from the transcripts of CCBIG meetings will illustrate some of the views conveyed by the participants:19

Memekulu Maria Kondo:20 If [the deceased] used to come into the homestead [as a restless spirit], they slaughter a chicken and make oshimbombo [porridge] and they put that food at the place he liked to be during the evening, and in the morning you find nothing left. Even nowadays. That is the only method to say goodbye. After he has eaten he is gone forever.

Hileni Iiyambo: Aathithi [ancestors] are our forefathers who died long ago but their spirit is good, not like the iiluli [restless spirits] who disturb you. According to the story from our grandmother, aathithi are spirits of the deceased, staying in some areas. For example, if you drive the car where the aathithi [ancestors] are staying you have to make a hoot. If you do not hoot, then your car will get stuck. And for the woman, if you carry something like a clay pot of omalovu giilya [traditional beer], then you stop and pour some out on the ground. If you do not do that the pot would fall and break. They are not disturbing anyone. They do not enter into the homestead. They just stay where they are. For example, in the field. But you cannot go into the field of aathithi and build your house. Then they will deal with you.

These contributions suggest that domestic sites—homesteads and surrounding land—are understood to be populated not just by the living community, but also by the recently- and long-deceased. In this milieu, the homestead is the safest place to be: it is protected by a palisade fence, within which there are ‘labyrinthine passages’ that ‘weave in and out to confuse a stranger or an evil spirit’.21 Although restless spirits do occasionally visit, their presence is not welcome and their departure is effected through food rituals. Indeed, several participants referred to people waking up in the night sensing themselves being strangled by evil spirits, and church officials confirmed to me that they also received such reports.

Less threatening would appear to be the ancestors, whose presence in the locality is benevolent, unless living members of the community encroach on their land. Nevertheless, as Memekulu Maria Kondo suggested, ‘[the deceased] is in his or her own area. They have a right to be there’. This goes some way to illustrate that Iihongo is a setting in which people live their lives in and amongst a complex of rooted spirits. Both the deceased homestead members (who might return temporarily as iiluli, restless spirits) and the unnamed ancestors (aathithi) are ‘placed’.

Considering the above understanding of the domestic environment, a dramatic contrast is immediately brought out for me with the dichotomous understanding that I hold of social world versus natural world, community and culture versus landscape and nature, one which Gieseking et al. suggest is not uncommon:

For most, this non-human environment is the “natural” world, and “nature” is largely imagined as something prior to and separate from human activity. Yet there really is no natural environment in the sense of being untouched, and we are increasingly recognizing the impact people have upon the earth and well beyond.22

Through the encounter with the Iihongo interpretations, of which I have presented just a fraction, my own interpretive lenses have been disrupted and shown to be highly contextual. Landscape understandings in Iihongo seem to tend more toward a fusion of the worlds: the social world in and of the natural world. The social world, the community, is expanded as a result of incorporating the landscape’s spirit community, residing in and around the domestic hub. Certainly, the human impact on the landscape that Gieseking et al. refer to above is readily apparent: burying community members affects how member of Iihongo view the landscape. However, I would also highlight the reciprocal and ensuing impact that the landscape then has on the living community by virtue of the spiritual presences therein: the relationship would appear to be a circular one. This perception of the social world in the natural world continues when we considered burial and wilderness sites.

Despite the fact that spirit presences would be expected in domestic landscapes in Iihongo, the participants understood that Legion’s spirits would desire to take him elsewhere, somewhere even more suitable for spirit presences. They reported that a gravesite would be one such place, due to that fact that it, too, is heavily populated:

Tatekulu Laban Iyambo: Iiluli [restless spirits] sometimes like to wander near the graveyard or in the bush [because] that is the proper place for them to live. Omayendo [graveyards] are where the bodies live. It is their home area. They just wander in the bush and come back to their home area of omayendo.

Spirits, then, would not appear to be just a presence on domestic land. Whilst the ancestors might be ‘placed’ in the fields, Tatekulu Laban understands iiluli to be ‘placed’ in the graveyard. Perhaps it is to the graveyard that they are banished through the provision of the ritual meal described above. Certainly, there is a clear link here between the location of the corpse and the perceived ‘home’ of the spirits.

Several participants also discussed pockets or groves in the wilderness or bush that were inhabited by personal, potent agencies:

Loide Petrus: There is an area of bush called Shambulumbulu. When you go there, if you are two people, one of you will disappear.

Elizabeth Imbondi: There is a certain area where the elders will tell you not to move around there because there is a mysterious spirit. This is Oshilulu. There are a lot of Marula trees and snakes. And it is a dangerous place.

Christa Iyambo: There is an area called Okuti where a person will call you and give you food but it will be poisonous and you will die.

Memekulu Hilma Lugambo: There is a certain place called Okadhulu. It is a dangerous place. If you go there you will see something like oompwidhuli [wild/evil spirits]. If you don’t see something you will feel it.

Whereas the restless spirits and ancestral spirits in and around the homestead, agricultural land and graveyards were explained with reference to deceased members of the community, whether recently or long dead, the origin of the wilderness agencies was unclear from our discussions. However, contextualising the comments using ethnographic literature is instructive in attempting to understand from where such beliefs might stem.

III. Ethnographic Contextualisation of the ‘Living Landscape’

At this point, I wish to explore the Owambo (ethnographic) landscape briefly, starting with the homestead, traversing burial sites, and moving beyond into wilderness sites. This will serve to situate the comments above and bring together the idea of the living landscape.

Meredith McKittrick describes the fenced homesteads in Owamboland as ‘the most visible symbols’ of a concern with security, with protection against the invasion of ‘visible and invisible forces’.23 The occupants might attempt to keep out these forces by ritually ‘closing’ the homestead, or areas therein,24 and by avoiding making breaks in the fence line.25 Klaus Nürnberger makes a similar point about Southern African homesteads in general:

As one approaches the periphery the world becomes more dangerous. There are clear demarcations between inside and outside. They can take the form of walls or fences, or they can be invisible for a stranger, but they always have the force of ritual markings.26

Not only would external forces be a threat to the homestead and its occupants (whether cattle-raiders, thieves, wild animals, witches, evil spirits, etc.) but there is, as we saw above, the threat from restless spirits. Nowadays, the deceased are buried in graveyards (omayendo), but prior to Christianisation in the region, commoners were buried within the homestead or on its perimeter.27 If the burial instructions of the deceased were not followed, they could return as an oshiluli, a situation referred to both in ethnographies28 and our CCBIG sessions (here, the children discussing Luke 24):

Okanona ANON3: Such persons, in order to die and not come back, sometimes they may instruct the family: If I am dead, bury me in the egumbo [homestead] or at the ehale [entrance] and if this is ignored they may come back.

Loide Petrus: And sometimes people may instruct to cut off the tip of the tongue or the nose and if you don’t do that they are angry and they come back.

Translator (Rev. Uushona): Because he knows he is a witch and that is how you stop him coming back, to reduce his power.

There is a clear connection thus far, then, between the location of the corpse and the resulting spirit presence, with participants and ethnographies confirming that the place of burial, as well as its proper execution, roots the spiritual presence (be that in the homestead or graveyard). And to be rooted in death is desirable: ‘to be a homeless spirit because of neglected funeral rites’ would be disastrous.29 Royal graves (oompampa) illustrate the association between corpse and spiritual presence/potency further. The corpse of the Ondonga king would be wrapped in a pure black ox hide and set in a sitting position on the ground of his cattle kraal. It would then enclosed by a pyramid or rings of wooden stakes, and became a ritually potent site with its own attendant spirits.30 It might act as a site for offerings, pleas for rain, engagement with the ancestors, or even as a place of sanctuary for those seeking shelter from persecution.31 But what of the potent sites in the wilderness, which the participants in my study did not explicitly link to burials?

Ethnographies report that the bodies of those who perpetrated anti-social behaviours (murder, witchcraft), as well as victims of starvation or bewitching, were denied burial and therefore entry into the Kingdom of Death. Instead, their corpses were cast out into wild space to be eaten by wild animals. Perhaps the potent sites in the wilderness landscape that the CCBIGs discussed might trace their origins back to such corpse-disposals. In this context, the ‘wandering’ spirit presences in the bush (those spirits who have the graveyard as their ‘home area’) only add to the perception of the wilderness as a populated, and sometimes threatening, place. Indeed, the participants specifically characterised the wilderness as ‘dark’, ‘dirty’, and ‘dangerous’.32 In that regard, it is the concentrations of spirit activity at the site of burials and corpse-disposals, whether in wild or domestic settings, that lead me to interpret the contributions as pointing to a living landscape.

However, it is not only negative spirit presences that populate this living landscape. Positive spirits are associated with the East (notably, the direction of the main entrance of all Ndonga homesteads), whilst bad spirits align with the West.33 The ancestral spirits, too, were viewed very positively and their burial grounds were to be shown great respect (by offering libations and abstaining from construction). It was hoped that they would maintain their restful state, and act as ‘helpers, protectors and guides’.34 Of course, the ancestors of other groups were, by definition, ‘other’ and potentially threatening. There were also particular sites in the landscape—the king’s grave, and those sites imbued with power by ritual specialists—that had positive potency as sacred groves or refuges.35 Missionary ethnographers suggest that there was a historic ritual of ‘putting the forest to sleep’,36 and that a termite stack was ‘regarded as a residence of spirits’ and was used in the initiation of novice diviners.37 All of these factors contribute to the sense that the land, whether in the perceptions of the CCBIG participants or in the ethnographic record, may be seen to be ‘alive’ and as having agency.

IV. Possession in Context: Literal Possession in a ‘Living Landscape’

It follows that Legion’s possession (flight from home, occupation of tombs, and wanderings in the wilderness), at least for the Iihongo interpreters, cannot reasonably be interpreted without a focus on the land itself, so bound up are ideas of landscape with spirit presences. The following extract gives us a flavour of that:

Tatekulu Theophelus Iiyambo: The evil spirit is the one who is controlling the man and taking him wherever it wants him to be. So, the man has no fear of being in the burial cave because it is according to the will of the demon. We are nearby the graveyard. For example, [imagine] my house is nearby the graveyard and I am the pastor in the congregation. I go to sleep in my house but when I wake up I am not in my house but in the graveyard. But why do we have to wonder why [Legion] stays in the graveyard if this happens also in our community? Sometimes a pastor transfers to another congregation and the reason for that is that they sleep in the graveyard. The graveyard is a place of deceased persons, not for the living. Therefore, living people fear to go there because the people there are dead. You are with the dead.

The man went there in the wilderness according to the will of the demon, not his own will. The demon chose the wilderness because it wanted to take the man to a dirty place, because the demon itself is also dirty.

All of the sample voices from Iihongo suggest that Legion is not just wandering through an inert landscape, as I might envision; he is wandering through heavily populated terrain. He abandons the safety of the domestic sphere, populated in the majority by the living (with the additional presence of positive ancestral spirits and the occasional restless spirit). To leave, as Legion does, would appear to be undesirable, and even reckless. The explanation offered across the groups makes sense of this: Legion cannot have been acting on his own initiative. He is a ‘slave to the demon’ (Tatekulu Theophelus Iiyambo), who drew him to the gravesite, a place where he is out of reach: ‘there is nobody there to assist the man’ (Okanona ANON6). As a man, a member of the living community, he is indeed out of place in that burial site and wandering in the wilderness. However, as a demoniac (and that is how he is introduced), he is very much in place and at home in such landscapes. As he moves through the gravesites and the wilderness, he traverses the living landscape of the dead community.

This points toward the wider scheme that I have attempted to present: that of the social world in and of the natural world. It jars with my own dichotomous understanding of the social world versus the natural world, thereby presenting me with alternative ways of understanding the text. A cross-cultural encounter such as this engenders a sense of ‘culture shock’. In turn, this delivers a reflexive prompt that allows me to see my own worldview for what it is—highly contextual—and thereby fully appreciate the original interpretive insights of the CCBIGs.

V. Luke 8:26–39 in Western-centric Professional Biblical Scholarship: Spirits, Space, and Place

Having recognised my own contextual standpoint, I now find myself in a position to ask how these interpretations might engage with and nuance professional biblical scholarship. I have already noted that to me, the landscape is something of an inert stage upon which Legion’s narrative plays out: what Halvor Moxnes in his study Putting Jesus in his Place has called the ‘obvious, visible’ landscape.38 However, my understanding of the narrative is nuanced when viewed through the eyes of those whose worldview includes ordinary lived experience of spirit encounters and for whom community and landscape—social and natural worlds—are intimately connected. This supports Moxnes’s suggestion that exorcisms like that of Legion might be seen as functioning in a spatial context. If I have understood the Iihongo participants’ correctly in my presentation of the living landscape, it would initially appear to fit with what Moxnes refers to as ‘the deeper meaning of the land’, ‘governed’ as he says it is ‘by spiritual powers’.39

However, on closer inspection it becomes clear that Moxnes does not always consider the lived experience of spirit encounters, more often conceiving of spirits and exorcisms as being ‘placed’ in “spaces of representation” (drawing on Harvey), with the realms of the spirits, God and Satan being mere ‘figures of speech’40 overlaid onto the ‘obvious’ landscape. Here Moxnes’ treatment gives in to the tendency in unreflexive Western scholarship to personify or present as metaphorical biblical references to spirit forces. In the present case, it is possible that this has led to neglect of the landscape. Western scholarship tends to ignore what is in or of the land, focusing instead on what is on the land: the characters. I suggest here, however, that we might fruitfully consider the land itself as a character. For the participants in my study, at least, the land, with its various spirit presences, acts on the people, at least as significantly as the other way around.

VI. Luke 8:26–39 in Western-centric Professional Biblical Scholarship: Spirits and the Colonisers

Richard Horsley interprets Legion’s demons as manifestations of colonial anxiety; they are ‘superhuman evil forces’ to be blamed for misfortune, so that the people might avoid blaming God for sufferings and avoid focusing on ‘the “real” political-economic forces affecting them’.41 Whilst the argument for terminological associations with and allusions to the Roman army is persuasive, to limit interpretation of the narrative to the symbolic-political (and implicitly present spirits or demons as the polarised ‘unreal’ element) seems to me a reductionist approach. Horsley acknowledges what he calls the ‘concrete experiences’ of possession in the Gospels,42 and yet explains possession as a symptom of colonial oppression. It remains unclear why possessions, such as that of Legion, cannot be interpreted (at least initially) as lived realities explicable within alternative worldviews, and without suggesting that Jesus has unique insight into the ‘real’ meaning of possession and exorcism. The communities in which Jesus operated were in some way primitive or ignorant, Horsley seems to suggest, for it is only through the exorcism of Legion that the ‘demystification of (the belief in) demons and demon possession’ takes place.43

What is notable is that this socio-political reading distances the demons from the places in which they are found: it negates the agency of the land. That is, it sidelines what the Iihongo interpretations suggest is as an organic link between the evil spirits and sites within the landscape (the tombs and the wilderness). The possession of Legion was understood in Iihongo as literal occupation of land and person, not metaphorically in relation to a colonial or postcolonial setting, despite its history. Namibia is a postcolonial context, having suffered under successive occupations by Germany and South Africa. The independence of Namibia was formally recognised in 1990, drawing to a close the period that had begun with Germany’s colonisation of the land during the Scramble for Africa. As far as the Iihongo interpreters were concerned, it was possession that caused the social ills associated with oompwidhuli (wild/evil spirits).44 It was not, as with postcolonial interpretation, a socio-political situation being ‘acted out’ in possession. Indeed, in not one of the CCBIG sessions conducted did any participant refer to the region’s or Namibia’s colonial/postcolonial setting.45 Rather, and as has been illustrated, encounters with (and possession by) spirits is feature of contemporary, lived experience in Iihongo. The participants saw no need to read as metaphorical Legion’s spirits/demons precisely because the spirits literally occupy the land.

VII. Conclusions

Identifying the spirits in Luke 8:26–39 as ‘symbolic’ or as necessarily the ‘acting out’ of the colonially oppressed arguably serves to sanitise or flatten the landscape in the narrative. Such interpretations draw us away from spirits as part of the genuine, lived experience of communities in ancient and contemporary societies (amongst them believing communities in Western settings), and the possibility of the land as characterful, as an agent. The Iihongo interpretations (in a postcolonial setting) did not align with symbolic or postcolonial interpretations emanating from the Academy. Therefore, they brought to the fore the more straightforward interpretation of Legion being plagued by spirits, those that might form an integral part of his social and natural world.

The findings here (and in the wider study) lead me to suggest that greater attention could be devoted in mainstream biblical studies to interpretations informed by other worldviews, as well as interpretations from grassroots interpreters. Espousing elements of ethnography and CBS has, in this instance, brought such interpretations to the fore. Learning about and learning from those worldviews and interpreters has allowed me to engage professional biblical scholarship in productive dialogue, and appreciate the extent to which a ‘Western Worldview’ inflects unreflexive, historical-critical professional biblical scholarship.

In the example given, the participants’ interpretations certainly disrupted my own view of landscapes as tabula rasa, an inert stage for human action. When brought into dialogue with professional scholarship, they challenged Moxnes’ interpretation of the spatial realms of spirits, Satan and God—connections between land and the supernatural—as mere ‘figures of speech’. Additionally, despite living in a postcolonial context, the interpreters in Iihongo did not link Legion’s experience with colonial oppression, as Horsley would suggest. In Iihongo, Legion’s spirit affliction was understood as just that: spirit affliction.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Disruptive Elements to the Cross-Cultural Biblical Interpretation Group Approach

This is but one example of how dialogical, contextual interpretative approaches might result in disruption to professional interpretations. Cross-Cultural Biblical Interpretation Groups can challenge and nuance, here bringing spirits and the landscape to the fore. A spirit-imbued worldview delivers an interpretation based upon a living landscape in which Legion is literally possessed. The interpretations gathered highlight mainstream Western professional biblical studies scholarship’s own highly ‘contextual’ nature, which draws on its origins in post-Enlightenment, demythologised, and apparently ‘rationalist’ discourse. As a result, mainstream historical-critical scholarship delivers an interpretation based on a tabula rasa landscape, which is only symbolically controlled, or which stages human action (colonising forces). On that landscape, Legion’s ‘spirits’ are reduced to the behaviours of a colonial subject ‘acting out’, and the actual landscape is acted upon, being of minimal significance as an agent in the narrative. In that case, the symbolic and socio-political takes precedence over the reality of spirits and the agency of land(scapes) in other worldviews. The effect of one’s context on interpretation of the text, which has been made so apparent here, is not always unacknowledged in Western historical-critical scholarship. CCBIGs offer an opportunity to benefit from cross-cultural encounters in biblical interpretation, to generate possible alternative interpretations, and to bring more diverse voices into the conversation. Disrupting biblical studies in this way might foster a more broad-reaching reflexive turn in the biblical studies academy.