© 2006 Jan Herca (license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)
The name Kheresa is very confusing. This town appears in different sources under very different names: sometimes it is translated as Jeresa, Gergesa, but more recently as Kursi or Chorsia. The latter are more reminiscent of the English transcription of Kheresa, which is Kheresa.
Whatever the origin of this location, it must be sought in Mt 8:28-34 (UB 151:6.1). Here the evangelist tells us: “When they came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs came out from the tombs to meet them.” Then he recounts the well-known miracle of Jesus in which he casts out a legion of demons and puts them into a herd of pigs, which rush into the lake.
However, the parallel accounts in Mk 1:5-20 and Luke 8:26-39 say “Gerasenes” rather than “Gadarenes,” opening up the possibility of three locations: Gadara, present-day Hammat Gader, a town a few miles southeast of the lake on a rise; Gerasa, present-day Jerash, located inland in Jordan; and finally Kursi, a site six miles north of Kibbutz En Gev on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
The sites of Gadara and Gerasa seem to be ruled out if we believe the Gospel account. Both towns are a few kilometres from the sea, Gerasa quite a bit further. It is therefore impossible that the herd of pigs would have fallen into the sea from a cliff. However, the last site, Kursi, was given further validity when during the construction of a road in the 1970s, remains of an ancient Byzantine monastery were discovered in the area. Finally, all experts have agreed that Kursi is the location of the ancient town referred to in the Gospels.
¶ Archaeological findings
The site is located at the mouth of a stream in the Sea of Galilee, called nahal Shamak. The valley is therefore called the Shamak Valley, and is also often referred to as the Kursi Valley. This valley opens up a fairly flat area between the steep hills on the eastern shore of the lake, which drop rather abruptly into the sea. The discovery of this site was due to a stroke of luck by the Sea of Galilee expert, Mendel Nun, while he was observing the progress of the road construction. During the prolonged drought of the 1980s, he was also able to observe the remains of a breakwater and a pier, which were evidence of an ancient fishing village.
The remains of a hundred weights used in Jesus’ time to weight down nets and a water storage tank about 3 metres on each side, apparently used to keep fish alive (a fish farm perhaps?), as well as very clear remains from the Roman period, left no doubt that we were looking at a site from the time of Jesus.
All this, together with the discovery of the well-preserved remains of the Byzantine monastery, with mosaics commemorating Jesus’ miracles of healing the demoniac and multiplying the loaves and fishes, seem to indicate that the place was considered from ancient times to be the site of the miracle of the demoniac.
The stories of ancient pilgrims attest to the existence of this monastery. It was built in the 5th century. Next to the monastery facilities, a bathhouse has been found, a type of building not common in Byzantine monasteries, at least in Israel. Archaeologists think that it may have been part of an inn for pilgrims, but speculations are diverse and inconclusive.
The monastery was attacked and destroyed during the Persian invasion in 614. Later (636), Christians were allowed to return to the site and continue living according to their customs. It was finally destroyed in an earthquake on 18 January 749 and abandoned.
The latest archaeological excavations (2001-2003) have focused exclusively on the monastery and its surrounding buildings. However, hardly anything has been excavated of the ancient city that must have existed here. It is another of those settlements on the lake that have been erased over time. So how can we imagine this ancient settlement?
¶ The Kheresa of Jesus’ time
First of all, I should say that I call it Kheresa because that is the name used by The Urantia Book in its 1993 Spanish edition. The name used in the 2009 edition is Jeresa. Both are equivalent designations. Furthermore, it is a name that avoids confusion with Gadara or Gerasa. The English name, Kheresa, is also even closer to the current name of the site, Kursi.
“Kursi” seems to recall the Arabic “kursa”, meaning chair, perhaps because the valley opens a gap between the hills in that shape. The Greek choiros, which could also be related to the town, means “pigs”, and we are told that there was a pig farm in the region.
To the uninformed reader it may not be surprising, but the fact that the Gospels mention pig breeding in this region is quite indicative of the type of population that Kheresa may have been in Jesus’ time. The pig was one of the animals prohibited in the diet by Jewish religious law. Therefore, pigs were only fattened in Gentile cities, whose population, Greeks, Syrians and Romans, valued the meat of these animals.
Thus, Cheressa was almost certainly a predominantly Gentile town, and was also close to Hippos and Gadara, two important towns that were part of the capitals of the Decapolis, the league of independent Gentile cities located in the heart of Jewish territory. The influence of these nearby towns must have been obvious.
From all this I tend to conclude that Cheresh was a small Gentile town, with Western customs, with a certain Jewish and Greek mix. However, I see it not as a large city, but rather as a fishing village, in the style of Capernaum. The stone from which the Byzantine monastery is built, of dark basaltic type, is identical to that used in the houses of ancient Capernaum. In addition, the pig farms would not have been located near the city, because of the smells. Rather, from the gospels we deduce that they were located on top of the nearby hills, far from the population centers. But the fact that these farms existed in the vicinity shows that there was a certain Gentile permissiveness towards this type of industry.
One somewhat strange aspect of the Gospel account is the precision with which the event of the pigs is recounted. We are told that “the whole herd rushed over the cliff into the lake, and the pigs were drowned” (Mt 8:32). The other evangelists express themselves in a similar way. But how was this possible? I have studied the orography of the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and I find no cliff with the waves of the lake breaking at its feet. The hills to the east are indeed quite steep, but they drop off and then there is a strip of flat land. Moreover, the drop is not vertical. It is a kilometer from the upper plain to the water’s edge. Did the pigs roll down the whole kilometer? I find this totally unlikely.
Did the Sea of Galilee once have cliffs along the water? According to geological evidence provided by archaeologists such as Mendel Nun, the water level in Jesus’ time was a few metres below the current level, as evidenced by the remains of jetties from that time. According to this researcher, there has also been no significant erosion of the surrounding hills that would justify the removal of ancient cliffs. However, other authors, such as the archaeologists working with Rami Arav on the et-Tell excavation, claim that changes in the coastline of the Sea of Galilee have been very noticeable and heterogeneous in different parts of the coast.
The Urantia Book further emphasizes the idea that there was a cliff that fell into the water:
Although most of the near-by eastern shore of the lake sloped up gently to the highlands beyond, at this particular spot there was a steep hillside, the shore in some places dropping sheer down into the lake. UB 151:6.1
As the swine herders rushed into the village to spread the news of the taming of the lunatic, the dogs charged upon a small and untended herd of about thirty swine and drove most of them over a precipice into the sea. UB 151:6.6
Everything seems to indicate that the waves of the lake undoubtedly broke at some point on the coast against a cliff with an almost vertical slope. Although this is surprising when we consider the current orography. Furthermore, if this were the case, the eastern edge could only be flanked by climbing a zigzag path to the summit, and then descending on the other side of the cliff. If this ravine really existed, it must have cut off any possible road that linked the eastern coast.
An unanswered topic that I leave open for future research, when we get to the point in the story regarding Jesus’ miracle.
¶ References
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Kursi Excavation Project, 2001 report, 2002 report