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.
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