The evidence from the first century about the spiritual world allows us to have a more nuanced understanding of this challenging pericope in Mark. The Qumran material discussed by Marcus suggests that the individual can be seen as the locus of a cosmic struggle between good and evil, i.e., the individual is inhabited by spirits; Levison has shown in first-century thought that spirits can get inside of a human being and can cause their person’s conscious mental faculties to be rendered inactive, so that the spirit’s own words may be spoken; and the work of Davies suggests that the possessed person would not be seen as culpable for his/her actions when under the power of a spirit. Further, Mark presents to his audience a worldview in which spiritual inhabitation is common. Jesus is inhabited by the Holy Spirit. The preeminent disciple, Peter, correctly proclaims that Jesus is “the Christ.” However, for Mark, Peter is, at least in part, able to make this proclamation because he is inhabited by Satan. Peter misunderstands the true nature of Jesus as messiah by denying his suffering and death. In that denial, Jesus senses not only Peter, but also Satan, and in some sense rebukes both of them. To suggest that such failure is beyond Peter is to forget the obvious fact that all four gospels record what is perhaps Peter’s biggest failure, i.e., his denial of Jesus after the arrest in the garden (Mark 14:66-77 and parallels). It is rather unlikely that the denial of Jesus would be a fabrication.49 Nevertheless, Peter rose to be a prominent member of the early church, so can we not consider the possibility that Mark 8:27-33 presents Peter somewhat negatively without vilifying Peter?50 Given the argument presented above, I believe that we can and should reconsider the way we read Mark 8:33, not to vilify Peter, but to do justice to Mark. Through such reconsideration, I believe that we may also unlock new ways of understanding how the ancients understood the relationship