Luke8chapter 8

Luke alone names the women who funded the work, and one name is politically striking: Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod Antipas's household manager. A senior official's wife in the tetrarch's own administration was supporting this movement out of her own means. Wealthy women acting as patrons of a teacher or a cult was a recognised pattern in the Greco-Roman world; that they travelled with the group was not.

Mary called Magdalene is introduced here as one of them, out of whom seven demons had gone. Luke says nothing linking her to the unnamed woman of the previous chapter, and the popular identification of the two is a later tradition, not something the text states.

The lake crossing runs into the squalls that country is known for — cold air spilling from the heights onto water nearly seven hundred feet below sea level, kicking up dangerous waves fast.

The far shore is Gentile territory, which is why a herd of pigs was grazing there. The man lived among the rock-cut tombs, and the name the spirits give is a Roman army formation of some five to six thousand men. Back on the Jewish side, Jairus holds a real office — ruler of the synagogue, responsible for the building and the ordering of worship, a title known from inscriptions across the empire.