Question
Where was the Decapolis?
The Decapolis, the “ten cities”, was a group of Greek cities east and south-east of the Sea of Galilee, most of them beyond the Jordan in today's Jordan and Syria, with one, Scythopolis, west of the river in Israel. It was a region rather than a single place: the map's point for it stands about 23 km east-south-east of the middle of the lake, a little north-east of Gadara. The cities came under Rome in 63 BC, when Pompey freed them from Hasmonean rule.
Great multitudes followed Jesus "from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan". The man freed from a legion of devils on the far shore of the lake "began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him", and returning from Tyre and Sidon Jesus "came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis". The manuscripts name the country of the swine differently, Gadarenes, Gergesenes or Gerasenes: the KJV and the Synodal text read Gergesenes in Matthew and Gadarenes in Mark and Luke.
Pliny the Elder lists ten cities, though he notes that not all writers give the same ones: Damascus, Philadelphia (Rabbah, today's Amman), Raphana, Scythopolis (Beth-shan, which Josephus calls the largest), Gadara (Umm Qais, about 10 km south-east of the lake), Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa (Jerash, more than 50 km from the lake) and Canatha. Gerasa, with its oval plaza and colonnaded streets, is now one of the best preserved Roman cities of the Near East. When the revolt of AD 66 broke out, Jewish bands attacked Gadara, Philadelphia and other cities, and the Greeks of Scythopolis killed the Jews of their own town.
Scripture: Matt 4:25; Mark 5:1; Mark 5:20; Mark 7:31; Matt 8:28; Luke 8:26
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 5.74 (the cities of the Decapolis)
- Josephus, Antiquities 14.75 and Jewish War 1.155 (Pompey and the cities); Jewish War 2.458-468 (the attacks of AD 66 and the Jews of Scythopolis); 3.446 (Scythopolis the largest of the Decapolis)
- B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed., 1994), on Matt 8:28, Mark 5:1, Luke 8:26
- C. H. Kraeling (ed.), Gerasa: City of the Decapolis (1938)
- Th. M. Weber, Gadara Decapolitana (Gadara-Umm Qes I, 2002)
- Region point and straight-line distances between the places' points: OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data (CC BY 4.0)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.