JERASH, A CITY OF THE DECAPOLIS

"When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes; two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. . ." (Matthew 8:28)

1-15-08

The text is about Gadara, another city of the Decapolis. It was in that region that Jesus healed the gadarene-demoniacs. I wanted to point out that Jesus performed a miracle in a similarly sized and sophisticated community as Jaresh. Jaresh was a city of Roman design and culture; a city of about 30,000 people. A couple of things impressed me about Jaresh that I found to be true in other Roman ruins as well. Unless the geography forced otherwise, the streets were laid out true north/south and east/west. The stones in the streets were laid in a diagonal pattern so that a wheel would not impact it full-force. The Romans also put in an expansion strip in the streets every 20 feet.

The other matter that impressed me about Jaresh was their theater. It is one of the ways that we know that Jaresh was a community of about 30,000 for the theater had seats for 3,000. This is another example of excellent Roman engineering. Each of our group had an opportunity to stand at the echo center of the theater and speak. No matter where anyone was positioned in the theater, the speaker could be heard. When I had the opportunity to speak from the echo center, it was just like someone put a microphone in my hand and I was speaking through a good PA system. If I stepped one step in any direction, the amplification was gone. Virtually all of us asked, "Why can't we build this way today?"

The 15th began at 5 a.m. because we were to leave Jordan and cross over into Israel. It meant packing all of our baggage into the bus. We packed, ate breakfast and were on the road by 7:30.

After Jaresh, the day was only half over. I will tell you about that tomorrow.

Grace&Peace,

Tom