Legion is a group of demon

Demon

call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...

s referred to in the Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

. The New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 outlines an encounter where Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 healed a man from Gadarenes possessed

Demonic possession

Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...

 by demons while traveling, known as Exorcising the Gerasenes demonic

Exorcising the Gerasenes demonic

Exorcising the Gerasenes demonic is one of the miracles of Jesus attested in the Gospels. It is recorded in the three Synoptic Gospels, specifically in Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, and Luke 8:26-39...

.

In the Bible

The Gospel of Mark

Gospel of Mark

The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...

, 5

Mark 5

Mark 5 is the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It relates the story of three miracles of Jesus; an exorcism, a healing, and a possible resurrection.- Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac :...

:9, describes the following in the country of the Gadarenes:
The Gospel of Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

, Luke 8:30, describes the following in the country of the Gadarenes:
The Gospel of Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

, Matthew 8:28-34, has a unique version of the story:
The demons comprising the Legion are given the appearance of fearing Jesus in the King James Version, Mark 5

Mark 5

Mark 5 is the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It relates the story of three miracles of Jesus; an exorcism, a healing, and a possible resurrection.- Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac :...

:10:
The Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 word chora

Chora

Chora can mean one of several things:Localities* Chora District in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan* Chora , a district in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia* The Chora Church, a Byzantine church in Istanbul...

(χωρα) is used in the original Greek, translated "country" in the King James Version, but it can also be defined as meaning "the space lying between two places or limits" or "an empty expanse". In Luke 8:31, the word abyssos

Abyss (religion)

Abyss refers to a bottomless pit, to the underworld, to the deepest ocean floor, or to hell.The English word "abyss" derives from the late Latin abyssimus through French abisme , hence the poetic form "abysm", with examples dating to 1616 and earlier to rhyme with "time"...

(αβυσσος) is used, meaning "bottomless pit". Although none of the words translated "Hell

Hell

In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

" in the Bible, those being sheol

Sheol

Sheol |Hebrew]] Šʾôl) is the "grave", "pit", or "abyss" in Hebrew. She'ol is the earliest conception of the afterlife in the Jewish scriptures. It is a place of darkness to which all dead go, regardless of the moral choices made in life, and where they are "removed from the light of God"...

, Gehenna

Gehenna

Gehenna , Gehinnom and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom ; one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and...

, Haides, tartaros, were used in the passage it can be interpreted that they begged to be spared from being sent back to Hell. Jesus casts the demons out of the man, granting their request, and allows them to dwell in a herd of pigs. The pigs then drowned themselves in the Sea of Galilee

Sea of Galilee

The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias , is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. The lake has a total area of , and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m...

.

Location

John Dominic Crossan

John Dominic Crossan

John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American religious scholar and former Catholic priest known for co-founding the Jesus Seminar. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual and higher criticism. He is also a lecturer who has appeared in...

 believes the story may be considered a parable of anti-Roman resistance.

Other authors give the ruins of Umm Qais

Umm Qais

Umm Qais is a town in Jordan located on the site of the ruined Hellenistic-Roman city of Gadara . The town was also called Antiochia or Antiochia Semiramis and Seleucia...

 as the location of Gadara.
Based upon the Gospel accounts, the location of the miracle had to have a nearby port, tombs for the men to live in, an area for pigs to graze, a nearby city to which the men could flee, and most importantly, a steep bank for the herd to rush down.

The site’s topography has high ridges and steep slopes down which the pigs “ran violently down into the sea” (Matthew 8:32). Above the port there are multiple hills which could potentially match up with the biblical account. The most likely site is found at the end of a chain of hills that has a bank descending into the sea. The bank is the modern site of Tell es S’alib located near the New Testament Gadaran suburb of es-Samrah. A visual representation of the location of this tell can be seen in Mendel Nun’s work The Land of the Gadarenes. Although this tell

Tell

A tell or tel, is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides.-Archaeology:A tell is a hill created by different civilizations living and...

 may not have had as steep a slope as that found at Kursi

Kursi

Kursi may refer to:*Arabic word for throne, as in the Tunisian title Bey al-Kursi*Hindi and Urdu word for chair, may also be used for an official title, such as that of a president or chairman*Alternative name for the Curonians...

, it does have a hill that runs into the sea and could accommodate a “large herd of swine numbering about 2,000” (Mark 5:11). In addition to the slope, other features of the site make it match up well with the biblical account of the miracle. In excavations by B. De Vries completed in 1973, a Roman tomb from the time of Jesus was found in a valley nearby es-Samrah. This could account for the tombs in which the demoniacs lived. Also, there is needed a nearby site where the swine would have grazed and “the groves of oak trees on the plateau above would have provided the acorns they favored” (Walking in their Sandals: 2). Thus, the site of Gadara can align both textually and geographically with the Biblical account of the demoniacs and the herd of swine.

External links

• EarlyChristianWritings.com Gospel of Mark, see discussion at bottom of page