Gadarenes

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. The people who lived in Gadara, an ancient city east of the Jordan River in the Decapolis region
2. Residents of the ancient Hellenistic city of Gadara, mentioned in the New Testament Gospels in connection with a healing miracle
3. Natives of Gadara, a city in the Decapolis of the Roman era, located in what is now northern Jordan

Etymology: The word comes from Gadara, an ancient city in the Decapolis, a group of Greco-Roman cities east of the Jordan River, in the region of today's northern Jordan. The city's name is from Greek "Gadara," and the plural "Gadarenes" (Greek "Gadarenoi") was used for its inhabitants. English took the term from the Greek New Testament, where the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke tell of Jesus casting demons out of a man and into a herd of swine, which then rushed into the sea. Matthew's account places the scene in "the country of the Gadarenes," while Mark and Luke name the Gerasenes, and the variation between manuscripts is why scholars think the episode's location was uncertain even in antiquity. The English word is therefore largely a term of biblical scholarship and church usage, and it appears in English with the sense of a person from Gadara or in reference to that gospel passage. The adjective "Gadarene" is also used in a related way, most famously in the phrase "Gadarene swine," meaning a headlong rush toward ruin, though that figurative sense comes from the story rather than from the city's history.