Matthew 8:28

Matthew 8:28 Gadarhnw/n {C}

The healing of the demoniacs is recounted by all three Synoptic Gospels, and in each account there are three principal variant readings referring to the place at which the miracle occurred: Gadarhnw/n( Gerashnw/n, and Gergeshnw/n. The evidence of the chief witnesses for the three accounts is as follows:

Gerasa was a city of the Decapolis (modern Jerash in Transjordan) located more than thirty miles to the southeast of the Sea of Galilee and, as Origen perceived (Commentary on John, v, 41 (24)), is the least likely of the three places. Another Decapolitan city was Gadara, about five miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee (modern Um Qeis). Although Origen also objected to Gadara (which, he says, was read by a few manuscripts) because neither lake nor overhanging banks were there, Josephus (Life, IX, 42) refers to Gadara as possessing territory “which lay on the frontiers of Tiberias” (= the Sea of Galilee). That this territory reached to the Sea may be inferred from the fact that ancient coins bearing the name Gadara often portray a ship. Origen prefers Gergesa, not because it occurs in manuscripts — he is silent about this — but on the dubious basis of local tradition (it is the place “from which, it is pointed out, the swine were cast down by the demons”) and of the still more dubious basis of etymology (“the meaning of Gergesa is ‘dwelling of those that have driven away,’” and thus the name “contains a prophetic reference to the conduct shown the Savior by the citizens of those places, who ‘besought him to depart out of their territory’”).

Of the several variant readings the Committee preferred Gadarhnw/n on the basis of (a) what was taken to be superior external attestation ((a*) B C^txt (D) Q syr^{s, p, h} geo¹ mss known to Origen al), and (b) the probability that Gergeshnw/n is a correction, perhaps proposed originally by Origen, ¹⁷ and that Gerashnw/n (which is supported only by versional evidence) is a scribal assimilation to the prevailing text of Mark ( Mark 5:1) and/or Luke ( Luke 8:26, Luke 8:37).

¹⁷ For the part that Origen may have had in disseminating the reading Gergeshnw/n, see Tj. Baarda, “Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Gergesenes and the ‘Diatessaron’ Traditions,” in Neotestamentica et Semitica, Studies in Honour of Matthew Black, ed. by E. Earle Ellis [and] Max Wilcox (Edinburgh, 1969), pp. 181—197, especially 185 ff.