🔼The name Gerasenes: Summary
- Meaning
- Outcasts, Exiles
- Etymology
- From Gerasa, from the verb גרש (garash), to drive or cast out.
🔼The name Gerasenes in the Bible
The name Gerasenes (of people who live in Gerasa) occurs in some versions of Matthew 8:28, Mark 5:1, Luke 8:26 and 8:37 only, in the story of the Miracle of the Swine. In our article on the name Gadarenes we explain why the names Gerasenes, Gadarenes and Gergesenes are used interchangeably, although not entirely legitimately. The more original version of the story appears to have been designed to comment on Decapolis (Ten Town), or use Decapolis metaphorically to refer to the Ten Tribes, their consistency and their subsequent demise.
The cities Gerasa and Gadara were indeed signature cities of the Decapolis federation but Gergesa wasn't, and the redaction of the story for geographic convenience is clearly indicative of a more fundamental ignorance of the early church fathers in regards to the purpose, function and reality of Biblical narrative (see our article on Gog and Magog for more on that).
Today, Gerasa of Decapolis is called Jerash and is situated in northern Jordan, close to the borders with Israel and Syria. But since the story of the Miracle of the Swine is strongly allegorical, it's prudent to note that everybody in the original audience of the gospels was aware of another city named Gerasa, which was rather situated close to Jerusalem in Judea. Josephus mentions that it was destroyed by the armies of Vespasian during the Great Revolt (Wars 4.9.1).
🔼Etymology of the name Gerasenes
The name Gerasa would have certainly reminded any Hebrew or Aramaic speaker in the first century of the verb גרש (garash), to drive or cast out:
גרש
The verb גרש (garash) means to drive away or expel. Noun גרושה (gerusha) means expulsion. Noun מגרש (migrash) denotes lands and secondary villages surrounding a city; the outliers. Noun גרש (geresh) means produce, perhaps because they pertain to the urban outliers, or else because veggies are things thrust up out of the ground.
🔼Gerasenes meaning
Particularly in a story as obviously allegorical as that of Legion, whose demonic infestation got transferred onto a herd of suicidal pigs, the name Gerasenes would have sounded like Outcasts, implying that the man named Legion was actually the whole population, or even Exiles with a nostalgic wink to the "lost" tribes of Israel, who were lost in idolatry long before they were lost in exile.