ABSTRACT
Casting out evil spirits was part of the work of the historical Jesus according to the opinion of the majority of the New Testament (NT) scholars. About no other person in antiquity were there told so many exorcism stories as there were about Jesus. That both men and women were liberated from demons is backed by the further development of exorcism stories in church history. In 1921 Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich published his book Die Besessenheit. In this book he provides stories about possession in history from antiquity to his own time in Europe and the areas where Christian missionaries had acted. An examination of the New Testament miracle stories, however, shows that there is no NT miracle story at all that describes a woman being possessed and freed from possession. Mary Magdalene is called by name and described as a person who had been possessed; the number of seven demons probably means a very severe possession.
