On the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Gennesareth), a Christian site of major significance, buried for centuries, has been excavated by Israel’s Department of Antiquities, and has been imaginatively restored by the National Parks Authority. Around it, a park with trees, lawns and public facilities has been laid out for the convenience of pilgrims and tourists. The ruins of the partially reconstructed Byzantine basilica and of the hillside chapel, and the landscaping of the area, create a setting conducive to meditation and prayer at the site where Jesus miraculously rid the tormented madman of the demons that plagued him.
The incident is related, with some variations, in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 8, Mark 5, Luke 8). Jesus, together with his disciples, having crossed by boat from the western to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee to the land of the Gadarenes (or Gerasenes), was accosted by a demented, demon-plagued man, who had been living in caves and graveyards on the hillside. Under the influence of the demons, he tried to hinder Jesus from entering the territory which the demons considered as their own. Jesus cast the demons out, allowing them, however, to enter a large herd of swine that had been pasturing in the hills nearby. The animals, to the astonishment of the swineherds, rushed head-long down the slope to drown in the waters of the lake below.
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In the days of Jesus, the Semak Valley, which runs east from the Sea of Galilee, was the dividing line between the Land of Israel (Gaulanitis, the Tetrarchy of Philip) and the Hellenistic Decapolis. Mark, according to Father Pixner, conceives of that geographical-political division as reflecting a spiritual one: God reigned to the north of the Valley, while Satan held sway over the pagan south. On Satan’s side, on the very edge of the Decapolis, lay the town of Gerasa (or Gergasa, according to Origen, the Gospels’ land of the Gadarenes, Gerasenes, or Gergesenes, also called Gorsa in the Middle Ages, and Kursi today). It belonged to the district of Hippos (Susita). The cities of the Decapolis had been detached from the Hasmonean kingdom by the conquering legions of Pompey in 63 BC, and granted the autonomous status of Hellenistic cities.
According to the Gospel account, it was here that Jesus made his first attempt to penetrate pagan land. The story is highly symbolic. The demons, who answered to the name of ‘Legion’ (Legio-Roman power), and the swine, the biblically unclean animal par excellence, are symbols of the power of Satan over the land and its inhabitants. As in the mission of Jonah to pagan Nineveh, the event is preceded by a storm at sea. On shore, an even more fearful storm awaits Jesus and the apostles. Satan is described as making use of the madman, of whom he had taken possession, to stem the tide of the kingdom of God approaching the land over which he held sway.
Both symbols of paganism are defeated by the power of God: the possessed man is cured and becomes the first messenger of the gospel in pagan land; the herd of swing is drowned in the lake.
Soon after the death of Jesus, Christianity spread into this country, as evidenced by the fact that the heads of the Church of Hippos appear regularly on the lists of the Bishops attending the first Church Councils. Apparently, a commemorative chapel was soon built on the hillside, near the caves which were believed to be the home of the cured man of Gerasa. The knife-sharp flintstones abounding on that hill lend support to the Gospel’s remark (Mark 5:5) that the poor madman had been cutting or bruising himself with stones. When, in the fifth century, a larger group of monks settled in the area, and the mountain shrine had become too small for them, they must have built the monastery on the plain close by.
Cyril of Scythopolis tells us that in AD 491, the great founder of the lauras, Mar Saba, visited ‘Korsia’ and prayed there. And in 723, St Willibald, who mentions the Gospel story, says that the
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Christians had a church there in which he prayed. He, however, mistakenly called the site ‘Chorazin’, a confusion of identity common in that period.
The site also appears on a 1681 reproduction of a more ancient map. It is designated as being on a hill east of the village of Kursi (the ‘Kurshi’ of the Mishna and Talmud, a Jewish village on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee engaged in fishing and farming, from which the madman was sent off to live in the caves among the hills).
We know that the monastic settlement founded in the fifth century was visited by numerous pilgrims and flourished until the Persian invasion of the Holy Land in 614 when its numbers dwindled. In the wake of the Arab invasion 20 years later, pilgrimages to the site were discontinued and Kursi was almost entirely abandoned. At the beginning of the eighth century, the church was destroyed in an earthquake, and at the end of the century the monastic settlement finally became extinct.
For hundreds of years, the ruins of the monastery and church lay preserved under earth and rocks.
In 1970, when digging the foundations for a new road from Kibbutz Ein Gev to the village of Skofieh on the Golan Heights, the ruins of a Byzantine church with a beautiful mosaic floor were uncovered, as well as a large, fortified monastery and a protective, rectangular circumvallation, 145 by 123 m, preserved to a height of three m, together with its surrounding moat. Attached to one side of the church was a small chapel, and standing on the other side was an olive-oil press. At the entrance to the chapel, a stone trapdoor led down to a barrel-vaulted tomb 6.25 m long by 2.40 m wide, which contained six burial troughs. The 44 skeletons found, all of middle-aged males except for one of a child, were, no doubt, those of the inhabitants of the monastery. (See ‘Site of Christ’s Miracle Identified,’ Bible and Spade, Summer 1972, pp. 79-81.)
In 1979, Israel’s National Parks Authority began restoration of the church and of the surrounding walls. The pillars, capitals and arches were unearthed and re-erected, and the arch above the altar was reconstructed.
In the course of the work, a projecting rock, surrounded by Byzantine construction, was examined on the slope of the overlooking hill. Dr. Vassilios Tsaferis, of the Government Department of Antiquities and Museums, who was in charge of the
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Reconstructed ruins of Byzantine basilica at Kursi.
Kursi dig, assisted by Don Gluck, excavated around the rock and uncovered the small, ancient chapel which had probably marked the cave-dwelling of the madman. Leading up to the chapel were steps bordered by a plastered wall on which crosses were discovered, as well as branches, probably the netzer symbol1 that appears on many Christian monuments in the Golan Heights. A very large number of such finds are on display in the new, beautifully arranged museum in the town of Katzrin in the central Golan.
The chapel floor consisted of two layers of mosaics, each with several crosses. The presence of the crosses on the superimposed mosaic floors seems to indicate that the chapel was originally erected long before the year AD 427, when Emperor Theodosios II forbade the use of crosses as floor designs, so as to avoid their desecration by being trodden on. The chapel contained several pillars and an apse with a semicircular stone bench (synthronon) for the officiating clergy.
About a kilometer to the south of the site stands a rock protrusion known as el-Kafze, on the northern slope of which, it is believed, the swine of the Gospel story were grazing before rushing
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down the precipice into the lake. Origenes, as far back as ca. AD 248, reports that ‘a rock lying close to the lake is shown there, from where the pigs under the power of the demons rushed down.’ It is not sure which rock was meant — the rock of el-Kafze, or the one on which the hillside chapel stands.
The ruins of the chapel were partially restored and a path to them laid up the slope of the hill. (Pilgrims — or, at least those spry enough — would be grateful if the path were extended to the rock-cave a little further up the hill. The cave was probably regarded by the monks who built the chapel as having been one of those inhabited by the madman.)
Below, in the vicinity of the restored monastery and church, a parking area and rest-room facilities have been laid out, approach roads paved, grass sown and hundreds of trees planted.
The olive-press from that period, which is still in working order, was handsomely restored. It is quite possible that the Byzantine monks used to distribute vials of the oil to pilgrims as a venerated memento of their visit, as is still the practice in some Oriental shrines today.
Restored olive-press of the ancient monastery.
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The restoration of the monastery, church and hillside chapel, and the landscaping round about were carried out by the National Parks Authority, in cooperation with the Israel Government Tourist Corporation and the Golan District Council, under the archaeological supervision of the Government Department of Antiquities, at a cost of some two million shekels.
Since being opened to the public at the end of September 1981, the site has been daily frequented by hundreds of pilgrims and other visitors.
(Prepared from reports provided by Father Bargil Pixner, osb, of the Dormition Abbey, Dr. Vassilios Tsaferis of the Israel Dept. of Antiquities and Museums, Architect Dan Tanai, who was in charge of the reconstruction at Kursi, and Mr. David Levinson, Deputy Director of Israel’s National Parks Authority. Reprinted by permission from Christian News From Israel, Vol. XXVII, No. 4, 1982.)