Mendel Nun

Steep cliffs led from the village of Kursi down to the harbor, where the larger boulders that once made up the 10-foot-tall breakwater are still visible. In the 1970s, a bulldozer unearthed a Byzantine church built on the hill to accommodate pilgrims to Kursi (called Gergesa, Gadara or Gerasa in the New Testament and other ancient manuscripts), the traditional location of Jesus’ swine miracle. According to the Gospel of Luke 8:33, when Jesus freed a tormented man afflicted with demons, “the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank and into the lake and was drowned.”