The Decapolis #73

The Decapolis, from the Greek words for “ten cities,” was a loose group of Greek-style cities lying mostly east and south of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. The name appears only three times in the New Testament, always in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, yet it points to a region where Jesus’ fame spread widely and where non-Jewish people heard about him.

Biblical Significance

Matthew reports that as Jesus’ reputation spread, “there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan” (Matthew 4:25). The list is telling, because it gathers Jewish regions with a largely Gentile one, showing how far his ministry reached.

The Decapolis comes into focus in Mark’s account of the man freed from an unclean spirit on the eastern side of the lake, in the region called the country of the Gerasenes or Gadarenes. After the man’s healing, Jesus told him to go home and tell his friends what the Lord had done for him, “and he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel” (Mark 5:19-20). The man became, in effect, a missionary to a region where Jesus himself had been asked to leave.

Later, Mark records that Jesus “again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis” (Mark 7:31). There, in the same region, he healed a man who was deaf and could hardly speak (Mark 7:32-37). The account of the feeding of the four thousand follows immediately after (Mark 8:1-9), and many interpreters place it in the same largely Gentile area, though Mark does not name the location.

The Decapolis was not a political state. After the Roman general Pompey took over the region in 63 BC, a group of cities with strong Greek culture were given a degree of self-government and shared trade and defense interests. Ancient writers do not agree completely on the members of the list, but the Roman author Pliny the Elder names Damascus, Philadelphia (modern Amman), Raphana, Scythopolis, Gadara, Hippos, Dion, Pella, Gerasa, and Canatha. Scythopolis, the ancient Beth Shean, was the only one west of the Jordan.

Today

Many of the Decapolis cities are now major archaeological sites. Gerasa, modern Jerash in Jordan, is among the best-preserved Roman provincial cities in the world, with a colonnaded street, temples, and theaters. Gadara at Umm Qais, Pella, Hippos on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee, and Scythopolis at Beth Shean all preserve theaters, streets, and public buildings from the Roman period. Damascus and Amman remain large modern cities.

The Decapolis shows that the world of the Gospels was not only Jewish villages and the Temple but also a Greek-speaking, Roman-ruled culture that lay only a short boat ride from Capernaum, and that the message of Jesus reached it early.