Originally Posted by
bawang
there was a diverse flowering of competing jewish sects and there was no unity in judaism at that time. the big factions were mentioned in the bible. just a few hundred years before the jews were still polytheists.
jesus was part of the teacher guru trend that became rabbinic tradition, and part of the miracle worker trend, which were very popular at the time.
Indeed, there were 3 primary sects:
Essenes, Sadducees and Pharisees and of these, only the Pharisees survived the destruction of the temple in 70 Ad.
Sure there was some crossover between expression of the Hebrew faith BUT there were some views that simple did not mesh together ( like the sadducees rejection of the resurrection).
Jesus probably was most identifiable with the Pharisees, probably why He targeted them the most ( they were the most influential and they should have been doing a better job).
Jesus' proclamation that the Kingdom of God was here, went directly against the temple system and that is what, in terms of orthodox judaism, was the real issue they had with him.
Anyway, I digress.
In terms of exorcisms ( all Abrahamic faiths accept the possibility of demonic possession by the way), the supernatural element MUST be there for it to be recognised as a possession and by that, like i mentioned before, I mean evidence that can NOT be explained by medical science and not just ONE pieces of evidence but multiple.
And example would be a person being able to do a feats of strength that PHYSICALLY are not possible for them AND having knowledge they simply can NOT have AND being able to speak in languages they can NOT know AND, well you get the point and the point is NOT that they must show SOME of these signs, they most shoe ALL of them and more.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !