Jody A. Barnard 14 to cure. The gravity of his condition and the quantity and power of the demons makes Jesus’ ability to expel them all the more important. There can be no doubt, therefore, that we have reached the high point and climax when the demons “came out of the man and entered the pigs, which rushed down the hillside into the lake and drowned” (v. 33). Jesus transforms the situation by allowing the demons’ entry into the herd of pigs and his power is climactically demonstrated by the effortless resolu- tion of a particularly profound case of demonic possession. This entire climactic incident, however, is exclusively reported in the aorist tense (ἐπέτρεψεν ... ἐξελθόντα ... εἰσῆλθον ... ὥρμησεν ... ἀπεπνίγη). It is highly unlikely that Luke is drawing no attention to Jesus’ climac- tic victory over such a powerful enemy. Despite his agreement that the severity of the demoniac’s condition serves to elevate the importance of the exorcism, Klutz continues to maintain the validity of Porter’s pro- posal in this passage44. Although many of the aorists could be classified as background, his uncritical acceptance of Porter’s hypothesis seems to have blinded him to the appropriation of the aorist at the most significant juncture in the story. Assuming Mark was Luke’s source for this story it is very intriguing that in place of Mark’s imperfect ἐπνίγοντο (cf. Mk 5,13) Luke has subs- tituted an aorist ἀπεπνίγη but, as we have seen, it is unlikely that Luke was reducing the prominence. It is more likely that he wanted to stress the completeness of the action, hence the perfective aspect. The use of the stative aspect in this passage is also intriguing. Accor- ding to Porter, the stative aspect reports “frontground” narration and carries the highest degree of prominence. The first and last use of this as- pect, however, occurs during an episodic flashback (v. 29.38), and such an interruption to the chronological time line typically reports background narration45. It might be significant that these two verbs are conjugated in the pluperfect tense (συνηρπάκει, ἐξεληλύθει), which concurs with Levinsohn’s observation that this tense always reports background na- rration46. Contrary to Levinsohn’s beliefs about aspectual prominence, however, these flashbacks also include aorist tense forms. Of the remaining uses of the stative aspect, ἱματισμένον (v. 35) comes closest to illustrating Porter’s view of the discourse function of this as- pect. Klutz is probably correct to understand the use of the stative aspect in this instance as underscoring “the change from nakedness (8,27) to Klutz, Exorcism, 107. 44 Callow, Discourse, 55; cf. Bock, Luke, 1:773. 45 Levinsohn, “Addenda to Discourse Features of New Testament Greek”, re p. 173. 46