By Roy B. Blizzard
Our study for this week is not so much a passage in translation as it is a geography lesson precipitated by our newest slide program on the city of Jerash.
One of the special and most interesting things about the Biblical text is the history contained therein. If one is acquainted with the history and geography of the country when one reads the text, and a city or place is mentioned in the text, that whole mental image comes alive in one’s mind. Although the city of Jerash is not mentioned as such in the Biblical text, there is little doubt that Jesus visited there – maybe even more than once.
We pick up the story I want to relate in Mark 6:45 with the statement relative to Jesus and His disciples being at Bethsaida, which today we know was on the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. And then, in verse 53, He crosses the Sea of Galilee and comes to the land of Gennesaret, or Gennesar as it is also known, on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. After teaching there, He left and journeyed all the way north to the cities of Tyre and Sidon in what today is Lebanon on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and it was there that He met the Syrophoenician woman and ministered unto her daughter.
And then, in Mark 7:31 it says "And He returned and left from the borders of Tyre and Sidon and came to the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the borders of the ten cities." In the English translation, it says "He went into the region of the Decapolis," and the question with which I wish to deal is, "What was the Decapolis and where were the cities located?"
Decapolis comes from two Greek words: deca and polis which means ten cities. The Decapolis refers to a district that was dominated by ten associated Greek cities. It actually began at Scythopolis or Bet Shean, which is also one of the slide programs on our Web site. Bet Shean was the only city of the Decapolis west of the Jordan River. All of the rest were located east of the Jordan, mainly in modern Jordan and Syria. Those ten cities included Jerash (our new slide program), Bet Shean, Hippos or Sussita, Gadara, Pella, Dion, Canatha, Raphana, Philadelphia (which is known today as Amman, the capital of Jordan), and Damascus, the capitol of Syria. There very well may have been others that were included in the associated Greek cities, as other lists will often include other cities. But, the point of importance is that the area of the Decapolis is mentioned three times in the New Testament text: here in Mark 7:31, also in Mark 5:20 and in Matthew 4:25.
Although the New Testament text never mentions many of these cities specifically, it does, nonetheless mention Jesus passing through the territory of the Decapolis and ministering to the inhabitants of the territory. In Matthew 4: 24-25, we have a hint of just how widespread and what a large territory Jesus’ ministry covered when we read that His fame spread throughout all Syria and that multitudes followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, from Jerusalem, Judea and beyond the Jordan. I think that it will make our new slide program on Jerash as well as the previous slide programs that much more meaningful if you realize as you are viewing the slides that in all probability, Jesus Himself visited there.
