The existence of any place called Gergesa, however, is declared by the
weightiest authorities whom I have consulted to be very questionable;
and no such town is mentioned in the list of the cities of the
Decapolis, in the territory of which (as it would seem from Mark v.
20) the transaction was supposed to take place. About Gerasa, on the
other hand, there hangs no such doubt. It was a large and important
member of the group of the Decapolitan cities. But Gerasa is more than
thirty miles distant from the nearest part of the Lake of Tiberias,
while the city mentioned in the narrative could not have been very far
off the scene of the event. However, as Gerasa was a very important
Hellenic city, not much more than a score of miles from Gadara, it is
easily imaginable that a locality which was part of Decapolitan
territory may have been spoken of as belonging to one of the two
cities, when it really appertained to the other. After weighing all
the arguments, no doubt remains on my mind that "Gadarene" is the
proper reading. At the period under consideration, Gadara appears to
have been a good-sized fortified town, about two miles in
circumference. It was a place of considerable strategic importance,
inasmuch as it lay on a high ridge at the point of intersection of the
roads from Tiberias, Scythopolis, Damascus, and Gerasa. Three miles
north from it, where the Tiberias road descended into the valley of
the Hieromices, lay the famous hot springs and the fashionable baths
of Amatha.
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