New dives off Kursi, Israel, reveal a 1st-century port where every detail of the Legion demon exorcism and drowning pigs matches the Gospel accounts.
Newsroom (18/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) A team of biblical archaeologists has identified the precise location on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus most likely performed the exorcism of the demoniac possessed by “Legion” and sent the unclean spirits into a herd of swine that plunged into the water – an event recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Dr Scott Stripling, director of excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research (ABR), announced that the ancient fishing port at Kursi satisfies every geographical requirement in the Gospel texts within a tight 200-metre radius.
“From the harbour, every biblical detail fits,” Stripling said during a presentation of the findings. The three explicit geographical markers in the accounts – Jesus arriving by boat, a steep hillside immediately adjacent to the lake, and nearby tombs – converge only at Kursi.
A partially submerged Roman-era harbour, complete with massive stone breakwaters and a large fish-holding tank, was rediscovered by Stripling’s team using 1985 excavation reports and aerial photography. Divers in the remarkably clear water located twin piers formed by dressed stone blocks typical of first-century construction.
“We felt the stones before we saw them,” Stripling recounted. “They were enormous worked blocks – classic port engineering.”
The site lies in the historical region of the Decapolis, a league of ten Greco-Roman cities where pig husbandry, though forbidden to Jews, was commonplace to supply nearby Roman garrisons. The Tenth Legion’s emblem was a boar, adding a layer of symbolic confrontation many scholars had previously noted.
“This was Gentile territory,” Stripling explained. “The pigs were not ordinary livestock; they were part of the Roman military supply chain. When Jesus permitted the demons – who named themselves ‘Legion’ – to enter the herd, the herd, it became both an act of deliverance and a vivid demonstration of authority over the forces of occupation.”
Christian tradition has long identified Kursi (ancient Gergesa) as the miracle site. A large 5th-century Byzantine basilica, sometimes called the “Chapel of the Miracle,” stands on the hillside above the harbour, and fragments of its mosaic floor appear to depict pigs.
Stripling emphasised the aftermath recorded in Mark 5: after being healed, the formerly possessed man begged to follow Jesus. Instead, Jesus commissioned him: “Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you.”
When Jesus returned to the Decapolis a year later (Mark 6), crowds flocked to meet him – evidence, Stripling argues, that the man’s testimony triggered a regional spiritual awakening.
“His obedience changed an entire area,” Stripling said.
The new underwater survey, combined with earlier land excavations, provides what ABR describes as the strongest archaeological corroboration yet for the historical reliability of the Synoptic Gospels’ account of the miracle of the Gadarene (or Gerasene) swine.
- Rju Hasmukh with files from Zenit News
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