What Is Thy Name?
Is there a significant reason for Jesus asking the name of the man/ spirits?
Mark 5:9 - And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
What Is Thy Name? (Hover)
Why do they need an identity? It is clear that from the response there were too many of them to even be identified. I also considered that maybe Jesus was really asking the man his name for the exorcism, but to show how overpowered he was the demons answered instead.
Now perhaps one more versed then I can fill in some of the blanks, in my thoughts. From what I have read and studied and spoke of to my minister on possessions or casting out of demons there are cautions to have.
If the demon leaves it is far from dead and certainly is not about to return to the one who caste it into our domain. So if you chase out a spirit where will it go? Into another or perhaps it will attack your self.
To prevent this it is to my best understanding that you must command it where to go upon being removed from the person it is now in. Not to mention asking for divine protection.
To complete this task would one not need to know the name of the thing you are trying to command? Also it is a common thought that they have ranks of power so to know the name is to know what efforts you must take. I am unsure why the casting into the pigs that then were killed. I question if this was not an attempt of legion to make his return home appear not to be his own doing or perhaps a passage of release for the unclean spirit to a better place though I doubt it.
But that thought is not backed up by Mark 1:21-28 where he just commanded the evil spirt to leave and it did. Was legion more powerful thus requiring a different process or was it because Jesus could see the evil spirit in Mark1. Where legion was many and he could not identify thus not send the unclean spirts back.