Decapolis

Crowds came to Jesus from a region the Gospels call Decapolis. Matthew 4:25 lists it with Galilee, Jerusalem, Judaea and the far side of the Jordan, so the news had spread well beyond one town. In Mark 5 a man Jesus had helped is told to go home, and instead he “began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.” Mark 7:31 later has Jesus passing through the middle of its borders. The man in Mark 5:18-20 is the story to find.

3 verses

Matthew

Matthew 4:25

And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.

Mark

Mark 5:20

And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.

Mark 7:31

And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis.

From Easton's Bible Dictionary

Matthew George Easton, 1897

Ten cities=deka, ten, and polis, a city, a district on the east and south-east of the Sea of Galilee containing “ten cities,” which were chiefly inhabited by Greeks. It included a portion of Bashan and Gilead, and is mentioned three times in the New Testament (Matt. 4:25; Mark 5:20; 7:31). These cities were Scythopolis, i.e., “city of the Scythians”, (ancient Bethshean, the only one of the ten cities on the west of Jordan), Hippos, Gadara, Pella (to which the Christians fled just before the destruction of Jerusalem), Philadelphia (ancient Rabbath-ammon), Gerasa, Dion, Canatha, Raphana, and Damascus. When the Romans conquered Syria (B.C. 65) they rebuilt, and endowed with certain privileges, these “ten cities,” and the province connected with them they called “Decapolis.”

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