The Healing of the Demoniac

Mark For Everyone

MARK 5.1–20
The Healing of the Demoniac...

...The east side of the Sea of Galilee, rising steeply up to the Golan Heights, is still disputed territory, 2,000 years on from this story. For many years, it belonged to Syria; the Israelis took it in the war of 1967; it’s a bargaining counter in the long- drawn-out peace process, and successive politicians all try to do something about it. It would be nice to think that by the time you read this book everything will be agreed, but I fear the story looks like going on for some while yet.

The politics of Jesus’ day were every bit as complicated as those of our own. After the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, when the country was divided up between his sons, Philip got the bit to the north-east of the Sea of Galilee. But the bit to the south-east, where this story takes place, had never really been Jewish territory. It was called the ‘Decapolis’, which means ‘Ten Towns’, even though different writers even in the ancient world could never agree which ten they were talking about. In the same way, the scribes who copied the manuscripts of Mark couldn’t agree about whether this incident took place near Gerasa, Gergasa or Gadara – hence the variations which you’ll find in different translations of verse 1....

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright