Mark 5:1 — Gadarenes, Gerasenes, or Gergesenes? Locating the Demoniac’s Country

“They came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.” — Mark 5:1

The boat reaches the eastern side of the lake, but the manuscripts disagree over the country’s name: Gadarenes, Gerasenes, or Gergesenes. The Textus Receptus reads Gadarenes. Most modern critical texts prefer Gerasenes. A third tradition, associated in part with Origen’s geographical reasoning, reads Gergesenes.

The narrative needs a shore, steep terrain, tombs, grazing swine, and a nearby settlement whose people hear the news. It does not say that the principal city named by the regional adjective sat at the water’s edge.

City name and district name

Gadara was an important city of the Decapolis. Its civic territory could extend toward the lake, allowing “country of the Gadarenes” to describe a broader district. English readers can make the same distinction between a city proper and the region administered by or associated with it.

Gerasa, by contrast, is usually identified much farther southeast. Defenders of that reading can treat the adjective broadly or appeal to another locality with a similar name, but the best-known Gerasa does not solve the topography automatically. “Gergesa” has been connected with a lakeside site and explains the steep bank attractively; its manuscript history, however, looks partly like a learned geographical correction.

The Synoptic parallels exerted pressure on every form. Matthew’s dominant reading is Gadarenes, while Luke often agrees with Gerasenes. Copyists could align one Gospel with another, repair a name they thought impossible, or confuse unfamiliar place names. This is precisely the kind of unit in which a famous codex is not a map.

The miracle’s historical core is stable in all three forms. Jesus crosses the sea, confronts the legion, permits the demons to enter the swine, and restores the man. Geography should be studied rather than used to dissolve the event.

A future geographical record should distinguish the ancient city, its civic territory, the modern archaeological site, and the adjective used in each Gospel. Collapsing those layers creates false certainty. The present variant record intentionally stops short of assigning exact coordinates to the landing place. Its claim is that “country of the Gadarenes” can be historically coherent as a regional expression, not that every proposed shoreline identification has been proven.

The received name remains defensible and should not be displaced merely because Gadara itself was inland. A regional designation answers that objection, agrees with the Matthean tradition, and has deep Greek support. Gergesa may help identify the immediate shore, while Gerasa bears early witnesses; neither fact requires erasing Gadarenes from Mark’s text.

Sources and further reading

• F. H. A. Scrivener, ed., The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text Followed in the Authorised Version (Cambridge, 1894).
• Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010), text and apparatus.
• Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., notes on the stated passage.
• Matthew 8:28–34; Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39.