Umm Qais: Encyclopedia II - Umm Qais - The Miracle

Umm Qais - The Miracle

A controversy exists regarding the site found in all three of the synoptic Gospels, where Jesus healed the demoniacs and cast the demons into a herd of swine which ran into the sea. The Gospel accounts record that Jesus, along with His disciples, stepped upon the shore and “immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man” possessed by demons named Legion (Mark 5:2). Jesus then spoke to the demons and demanded them to depart, sending them into a nearby “herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain” (Luke 8:32). The possessed pigs, “ran violently down the steep place into the sea” and “those who kept them fled and went away into the city” (Matt. 8:32-33). Based upon the Gospel accounts, the location of the miracle had to have a nearby port, tombs for the men to live in, an area for pigs to graze, a nearby city to which the men could flee, and most importantly, a steep bank for the herd to rush down.

The problem that has yet to be dealt with however is the site’s topography. Origen initially rejected Gadara for its lack of high ridges and steep slopes down which the pigs “ran violently down into the sea” (Matt 8:32). Above the port there are multiple hills which could potentially match up with the biblical account. The most likely site is found at the end of a chain of hills that has a bank descending into the sea. The bank is the modern site of Tell es S’alib located near the New Testament Gadaran suburb of es-Samrah (Laney 1977: 141). A visual representation of the location of this tell can be seen in Mendel Nun’s work The Land of the Gadarenes (1989: 5). Although this tell may not have had as steep a slope as that found at Kursi, it does have a hill that runs into the sea and could accommodate a “large herd of swine numbering about 2,000” (Mark 5:11). In addition to the slope, other features of the site make it match up well with the biblical account of the miracle. In excavations by B. De Vries completed in 1973, a Roman tomb from the time of Jesus was found in a valley nearby es-Samrah (Holm-Nielson 1992: 867). This could account for the tombs in which the demoniacs lived. Also, there is needed a nearby site where the swine would have grazed and “the groves of oak trees on the plateau above would have provided the acorns they favored” (Walking in their Sandals: 2). Thus, the site of Gadara can align both textually and geographically with the biblical account of the demoniacs and the herd of swine.

The city of Gadara is represented today by the ruins of Umm Qais on the heights south of el-Ḥummeh - the hot springs in the Yarmūk valley - about 6 miles Southeast of the Sea of Galilee. It may be taken as certain that the jurisdiction of Gadara, as the chief city in these regions, extended over the country East of the Sea, including the lands of the subordinate town, Gerasa. The figure of a ship frequently appears on its coins: conclusive proof that its territory reached the sea.Josephus also makes reference to the territory of Gadara “which lay on the frontiers of Tiberius and formed the eastern boundary of Galilee,” again placing the region of Gadara along the coast of the Sea of Galilee (Laney 1977: 134). The place might therefore be called with propriety, either “land of the Gerasenes”, with reference to the local center, or “land of the Gadarenes”, with reference to the superior city.

(NOTE - The Textus Receptus of the New Testament reading. τῶν Γεργεσηνῶν, tṓn Gergesēnṓn, “of the Gergesenes”, must be rejected (Westcott-Hort, II. App., 11).)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Miracle", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki