Gadarenes

Gadarenes is the name used in the Gospels for the inhabitants of the country around Gadara, a Greek city of the Decapolis lying southeast of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus healed a demon-possessed man and the expelled spirits entered a herd of pigs that then rushed into the sea.

The text names the place differently across accounts. Mark 5:1 reads "the country of the Gadarenes," while Matthew 8:28 reads "the country of the Gergesenes." As a matter of established textual history, ancient manuscripts of the Gospels vary among three forms — Gadarenes, Gerasenes, and Gergesenes — and the same variation appears in the parallel passages, so the difference is not a discrepancy between evangelists alone but a copying question as well. Geographically, Gadara is usually identified with Umm Qais, roughly ten kilometers southeast of the lake; Gerasa is Jerash, some fifty kilometers away and awkwardly distant for the narrative; and a site on the eastern shore near Kursi, where a steep slope drops to the water and a Byzantine monastery was later built, is favored by many as the setting the stories describe. How far Gadara's territory reached toward the shore remains debated.

What the accounts narrate is consistent in substance. Mark 5:5 describes a man living among the tombs, crying out night and day and cutting himself with stones; asked his name he answers, "My name is Legion, for they are many" (Mark 5:9). The spirits enter a herd of about two thousand pigs that drown in the sea (Mark 5:13), and the townspeople, seeing the man "sitting, clothed, and in his right mind" (Mark 5:15), are afraid and beg Jesus to leave their region (Mark 5:17; compare Matthew 8:34). The healed man asks to accompany him and is instead sent home to tell what was done for him (Mark 5:18–19). The presence of swine indicates a Gentile setting, which fits the Decapolis cities, and "Legion" is a Latin loanword naming a Roman military unit.

Interpretive readings diverge. One way to read the episode is as a demonstration of Jesus' authority over unclean spirits, with the pigs' destruction showing the demons' own destructive intent rather than Jesus' judgment; another is as a mission turning point, since a Gentile region receives the gospel from the healed man himself (Mark 5:19). Among traditions, some see in the drowning of the swine a judgment on pagan impurity or on economic idolatry, others stress the man's commissioning as the first witness to Gentiles, and others read "Legion" as a pointed allusion to Roman occupation. The variation in place names is treated by most as a textual and geographical problem, though some read it as deliberate emphasis on the Gentile character of the region.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.