Arguments of Ignorance IV: The Fastest Demonic Pigs in History

Mark 5:1-13 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Skeptics reading the account of Jesus casting the demons who were called Legion into the pigs/swine were long on skepticism and short on faith. Reading the Biblical account most would say the pigs would have had to run for miles to reach the lake in a crazed demon possessed state to drown themselves. 

Mark says Jesus crossed the lake, freed a man from a legion of demons, and a herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the steep bank into the sea. Unbelievers laugh because the town the Gospels name was miles away inland. Then a modern road crew cutting along the east shore of the Sea of Galilee hit stone walls. Under the dirt was the biggest ancient monastery ever found in the Middle East built to mark the miracle of the casting out of the Legion. Right behind it, a steep hill drops down almost to the water. A monastery lost to history until it was unearthed in 1969, the year I was born. It was built in the 5^th century about 400AD.

Kursi, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, is widely identified with Gergesa, a reading found in some manuscripts of the Gospels (others read Gadarenes or Gerasenes; Gadara and Gerasa were the larger cities whose lands reached this region). Do note that the Bible says, region not town, city/polis in Greek. Critics pointed out that Gerasa lies some 30 miles from the lake but its ‘region’ extends significantly farther just as the suburb of Santa Monica is technically Los Angeles County. In 1969-1970 workers building a road along the shore uncovered a 5th-century church and the largest Byzantine monastery found in Israel, its wall enclosing about 145 by 123 meters, later excavated by Vassilios Tzaferis. A small chapel stood on the steep hillside just above it, and Christian pilgrims marked the spot as the place of the miracle.

So, as it turns out, the pigs weren’t as winded as one would expect from the sprint to their premature demise.