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Updated: June 17, 2025
O my God, my life runneth away like a river: Guide me, I beseech thee, in a pathway of good: Let me flow in blessing to my rest in thee. I never heard of Jerash until my friend the Archæologist told me about it, one night when we were sitting beside my study fire at Avalon. "It is the site of the old city of Gerasa," said he. "The most satisfactory ruins that I have ever seen."
From Seetzen's description, Dscherrasch would appear to be identical with the ancient Gerasa, a town which up to that time had been erroneously placed on the maps.
There he spent a year, till a change of fortune came to him. During the year 68, Vespasian captured the two chief cities which the Jewish national party held to the east side of the Jordan, Gadara and Gerasa. He then prepared to lay siege to Jerusalem. But hearing of the death of Nero and of the chaos at Rome that followed it, he stayed operations to await events in Italy.
Gently sloping, rock-strewn hills surround it; through the centre flows a stream, with banks bordered by trees; a water-fall is flashing opposite to us; on a cluster of rounded knolls about the middle of the valley, on the west bank of the stream, are spread the vast, incredible, complete ruins of the ancient city of Gerasa.
Here, as in Hauran, the doors were of basalt." Seetzen had scarcely arrived at the village of Gerasa and enjoyed a brief rest, before he was surrounded by half a score of mounted men, who said they had come by order of the vice-governor of Hauran to arrest him.
As the waters of thy stream flow on to the Sea of Death, so has the tide of life which swept through thy streets passed on to the grave and oblivion. "Up Into the Mountains" Passing out over the fallen western wall of Gerasa we are immediately in the ancient cemetery, which extends for a mile, or nearly so, from the city.
Yet I think I never experienced greater joy on entering my own home than on that night when entering and riding through the crooked, narrow lanes of that miserable village of Gilead. "At Gerasa" Though in the village, and therefore relieved of the feeling of special danger, yet we had much difficulty in securing lodging for the night.
The ten cities which originally composed this confederacy for mutual defence and the development of their trade, were Scythopolis, Hippos, Damascus, Gadara, Raphana, Kanatha, Pella, Dion, Philadelphia and Gerasa. Their money was stamped with the image of Cæsar. Their soldiers followed the Imperial eagles. Their traditions, their arts, their literature were Greek.
The Hellenistic population outnumbered the Jews in the Herodian foundations of Caesarea, Sepphoris, Tiberias, Paneas, etc., as well as in the old Greek cities of Doris, Scythopolis, Gerasa, Gadara, and the rest of the Decapolis.
Mark v. 1, and Luke viii. 26, name Gadara or Gerasa instead of Gergesa. Gerasa is an impossible reading, the evangelists teaching us that the town in question was near the lake and opposite Galilee. As to Gadara, now Om-Keis, at a journey of an hour and a half from the lake and from the Jordan, the local circumstances given by Mark and Luke scarcely suit it.
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