Umm Qais - Exact Location of The Miracle

Exact Location of The Miracle

Uncertainty exists regarding the exact site in the country of the Gadarenes or Gerasenes where Jesus healed the demoniac and sent the demons into a herd of swine which ran into the sea of Galilee. The three Synoptic Gospels indicate that it was a site where, when Jesus and his disciples stepped ashore, there met Him "out of the tombs” a man possessed by demons (Mark 5:9) whom Jesus sent into a nearby herd of "many swine feeding there on the mountain” (Luke 8:32) - swine which ran "down the steep place into the sea”; at which point those who kept them fled "and went away into the city” (Matt. 8:32-33). Thus the three Gospel accounts indicate that the location was near a port, near tombs (for the men to live in), near an area for pigs to graze, near a town (to which the men could flee), and most importantly, near a steep bank (for the herd to rush down).

Now, Umm Qais has high ridges and steep slopes, down which pigs could have run "violently down into the sea” (Matt 8:32). Above the port are hills which match 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 site of Tell es S’alib near the suburb of es-Samrah (Laney 1977: 141). A visual representation of this tell can be seen in Mendel Nun’s The Land of the Gadarenes (1989: 5). Although this tell may not have 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). Other features of this site match the Gospel accounts. In excavations by B. De Vries in 1973 a Roman tomb from the time of Jesus was found in a valley near es-Samrah (Holm-Nielson 1992: 867): this could correspond to "the tombs" in which the Gospels' demoniac lived. Also there is a nearby site where 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 aligns topographically with the Gospel accounts of the demoniac and the herd of swine.