Subject: Gergesenes and tc

From: Don Wilkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 1996 14:04:36 +0000

I'm very new to the list. One of the hats I wear is that of a Bible 
translator, and recently I discussed the issue of the Gergesenes vs. 
Gadarenes vs. Gerasenes with a good friend who does archaeology 
in the Holy Land. In the process he sent me a copy of Mendel Num's 
new pamphlet on _The Land of the Gadarenes_. Nun seems to think 
that the disciples' boat must have landed on the northeast Galilean 
shore (Kursi, land of the Gergesenes), and that Matthew's Gadarenes 
was a mistaken reference to the southeast shore, over which (he 
argues) the Gadarenes truly did have control.
My problem of course is that I see no way to reject 
Gadarenes/Gerasenes using good tc principles, so that the 
temptation is to assume there must have been a territory on the 
shore that was known as the land of the Gerasenes, which 
overlapped that of the Gadarenes. I should add that I hold to 
inerrancy, so I cannot accept Dalman's conclusions that the synoptic 
writers were mistaken. Does anyone have any thoughts about this 
particular problem, and about the more general problem of 
reconciling biblical archaeology/geography with textual criticism? I 
don't see how we could simply let current archaeological research 
dictate our choices for readings in relevant passages. (By the way, 
please forgive me if I happen to be covering some old ground.)

Don Wilkins
UC Riverside