Conclusions

Abstract

This concluding chapter illustrates some of the major ways in which a critical aspect of spirit possession can emerge in texts of the early Christ movement. It does so with the help of appropriate insights drawn from anthropological literature. A starting point here is the effort to treat the “spirits” involved in cases of possession seriously and not merely as mythical and metaphorical representations, as several earlier studies have done. Such a move naturally raises a host of complex questions concerning notions of ontology and agency. After all, the latter's allocation to nonhuman entities does collide with the established modern paradigm of the autonomous human individual as the only rightful possessor of agency.