1When he came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. 2Behold, a leper came to him and worshiped him, saying, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me clean.”
3Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I want to. Be made clean.” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4Jesus said to him, “See that you tell nobody; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”
5When he came into Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking him for help, 6saying, “Lord, my servant lies in the house paralyzed, grievously tormented.”
7Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”
8The centurion answered, “Lord, I’m not worthy for you to come under my roof. Just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I am also a man under authority, having under myself soldiers. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and tell another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and tell my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to those who followed, “Most certainly I tell you, I haven’t found so great a faith, not even in Israel. 11I tell you that many will come from the east and the west, and will sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, 12but the children of the Kingdom will be thrown out into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13Jesus said to the centurion, “Go your way. Let it be done for you as you have believed.” His servant was healed in that hour.
14When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 15He touched her hand, and the fever left her. So she got up and served him. 16When evening came, they brought to him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, 17that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
18Now when Jesus saw great multitudes around him, he gave the order to depart to the other side.
19A scribe came and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
20Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
21Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.”
22But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”
23When he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. 24Behold, a violent storm came up on the sea, so much that the boat was covered with the waves; but he was asleep. 25The disciples came to him and woke him up, saying, “Save us, Lord! We are dying!”
26He said to them, “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was a great calm.
27The men marveled, saying, “What kind of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
28When he came to the other side, into the country of the Gergesenes, two people possessed by demons met him there, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that nobody could pass that way. 29Behold, they cried out, saying, “What do we have to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” 30Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding far away from them. 31The demons begged him, saying, “If you cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of pigs.”
32He said to them, “Go!”
They came out and went into the herd of pigs; and behold, the whole herd of pigs rushed down the cliff into the sea and died in the water. 33Those who fed them fled and went away into the city and told everything, including what happened to those who were possessed with demons. 34Behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged that he would depart from their borders.
The exact place of where Jesus allowed demons to leave two men and go into a heard of swine has never been exactly located, mostly due to variations of the name used by the Gospel writers, and textual variants within the copies of the Gospels. There are several locations that the church, scholars, and archaeologists have argued is the place of this event.
Part of the issue is where the “country of the Gergesenes” is located. There are three different principle readings in the manuscript copies: Gadarenes, Gerasenes, and Gergesenes. Normally the earliest and most reliable manuscripts are the preferred reading. However, the three readings here in 8:32 and in the parallel passages to this (Mark 5:1 and Luke 8:26) are spread across several important manuscripts. Although the copy with “Gerasenes” is considered one of the best manuscripts, it is all but impossible that Gerasa (Jerash) was the area where Jesus performed the miracle because it is over thirty miles from the Sea of Galilee (in Jordan), and has no church tradition of being the site. Some have argued for Gadera (located five miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee) based on slightly better textual attestation, as well as the testimony of Josephus and numismatology (the study of ancient coins). Josephus says that the “villages of Gadara” were “situated on the borders of Tiberias,”[1] that is, the Sea of Galilee. Coins from Gadera sometimes featured ships.[2]
The oldest and probably best church tradition locates the Gergesenes at a village near the eastern shore of the Sea, opposite Tiberias. Church fathers identified this place as Gergesa, today known as Kursi or Kersa.
Kursi is located at the mouth of the Wadi Samak, also known as the Valley of Kursi. The area is said to “provide excellent grazing areas, particularly for hogs, which are best suited to these rocky hills.”[3] The slopes of the hills in the area run steeply down to the Sea, and it is the only area around the Sea of Galilee that satisfies the geographical criteria of the Gospel account. All three accounts of the miracle say the area where it took place was “on the other side” of the lake (Luke 8:22, Mark 5:1) from the area where Jesus was previously ministering.
The area was excavated and surveyed from 1970-1973 and again in 1980. Other excavators returned to the site again from 2001-2003. In Kursi itself excavators discovered a large Byzantine monastery area, probably built in the early sixth century. Small Roman and Byzantine settlements were discovered on the ridge above the site, and many caves were found in the slopes above Kursi. Near the shore, a Roman-era fishing village was also discovered.[4]
Archaeologists also excavated a site approximately 650 feet south of the Byzantine monastery and halfway up the slope of a steep hill. The site appears to have been a chapel constructed at the same time as the monastery, around a large boulder, and may have commemorated the likely spot where Jesus cast the demons into the swine. The chapel was oriented so that pilgrims could look at the boulder and the sea while sitting on a circular bench under a shelter carved into the rock of the hillside.[5]
The Kursi site appears to have been abandoned during the end of the eighth century after the Muslim conquest and a severe earthquake.
[1] Josephus, Life, 9.42.
[2]See Bruce Metzger, et al. Eds., A Textual Commentary of the New Testament, 2nd Ed.(New York: United Bible Societies, 1994)18. Metzger says the committee only gave this reading a tentative preference with some difficulty coming to a decision.
[3] Vassilios Tzaferis, “A Pilgrimage to the Site of the Swine Miracle” BAR Vol. 15, N0. 2 (March/April 1989) Online: http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=15&Issue=2&ArticleID=1 (accessed March 3, 2010).
[4] Vassilios Tzaferis, The Excavations of Kursi-Geresa, ‘Atiquot, English Series, Vol. 16 (Jerusalem, 1983)
[5] Vassilios Tzaferis, “A Pilgrimage to the Site of the Swine Miracle” BAR Vol. 15, N0. 2 (March/April 1989): 44-51.