Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
The common consent of the synoptic Gospels affirms that the miraculous
transference of devils from a man, or men, to sundry pigs, took place
somewhere on the eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias; "on the other
side of the sea over against Galilee," the western shore being,
without doubt, included in the latter province. But there is no such
concord when we come to the name of the part of the eastern shore, on
which, according to the story, Jesus and his disciples landed. In the
revised version, Matthew calls it the "country of the Gadarenes:" Luke
and Mark have "Gerasenes." In sundry very ancient manuscripts
"Gergesenes" occurs.
The existence of any place called Gergesa, however, is declared by the
weightiest authorities whom I have consulted to be very questionable;
and no such town is mentioned in the list of the cities of the
Decapolis, in the territory of which (as it would seem from Mark v.
20) the transaction was supposed to take place. About Gerasa, on the
other hand, there hangs no such doubt. It was a large and important
member of the group of the Decapolitan cities. But Gerasa is more than
thirty miles distant from the nearest part of the Lake of Tiberias,
while the city mentioned in the narrative could not have been very far
off the scene of the event. However, as Gerasa was a very important
Hellenic city, not much more than a score of miles from Gadara, it is
easily imaginable that a locality which was part of Decapolitan
territory may have been spoken of as belonging to one of the two
cities, when it really appertained to the other. After weighing all
the arguments, no doubt remains on my mind that "Gadarene" is the
proper reading. At the period under consideration, Gadara appears to
have been a good-sized fortified town, about two miles in
circumference. It was a place of considerable strategic importance,
inasmuch as it lay on a high ridge at the point of intersection of the
roads from Tiberias, Scythopolis, Damascus, and Gerasa. Three miles
north from it, where the Tiberias road descended into the valley of
the Hieromices, lay the famous hot springs and the fashionable baths
of Amatha. On the north-east side, the remains of the extensive
necropolis of Gadara are still to be seen. Innumerable sepulchral
chambers are excavated in the limestone cliffs, and many of them still
contain sarcophaguses of basalt; while not a few are converted into
dwellings by the inhabitants of the present village of Um Keis. The
distance of Gadara from the south-eastern shore of the Lake of
Tiberias is less than seven miles. The nearest of the other cities of
the Decapolis, to the north, is Hippos, which also lay some seven
miles off, in the south-eastern corner of the shore of the lake. In
accordance with the ancient Hellenic practice, that each city should
be surrounded by a certain amount of territory amenable to its
jurisdiction,[101] and on other grounds, it may be taken for certain
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