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GADARA*, GADARENES
City of the Decapolis and its inhabitants, mentioned only once in the better manuscripts of the NT. Jesus had crossed to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and healed the demoniac named Legion, whom he encountered in “the country of the Gadarenes” (Mt 8:28). Mark’s account in 5:1 and Luke’s in 8:26, 37 read “Gerasenes.” (The KJB, following the Textus Receptus, has variant names here; in Matthew 8:28 it reads “Gergesenes,” and in Mark and Luke it reads “Gadarenes.”) The variant names among the Gospel writers may be due to the fact that Gerasa was the wider geographical area of which Gadara was a chief city. Geographers conclude that the most likely location for the leap of the swine into the sea would have been a strip of steep coastline near Gergesa, a smaller, less important town of the area. This would fit another suggestion that Matthew was a native of the region and so he pinpointed the precise place, while Mark and Luke intended to point out the general location for their Greek and Roman readers, since Gergesa was small and relatively unknown, while Gadara was a Greek city of some importance.
The name Gadara indicates that the city was of Semitic origin. It was located five to six miles (8 to 10 kilometers) southeast of the Sea of Galilee, and its territory included the hot springs of el Hamme, north of the Yarmuk River. The first reference to it in history was when it was captured by Antiochus III (218 BC). Later, it was taken by the Jews under Alexander Janneus (103 BC), and the inhabitants were enslaved and forced to receive the law of Moses. The city was demolished by the Jews, but when the area was reconquered by Pompey, it was rebuilt (63 BC). It became a free city under Pompey and joined the federation of Greek cities in the Transjordan known as the Decapolis. Augustus Caesar added Gadara to the territory of Herod the Great (30 BC), and at Herod’s death it was annexed to Syria (4 BC). During the Jewish rebellion (AD 66–70), Vespasian took the city, and it continued to flourish for many years. It was the seat of a Christian bishopric from AD 325 until the Muslim conquest. See Decapolis; Gerasa, Gerasenes; Gergesa, Gergesenes.