Kris: No.
Me (surprised: Kris knows
everything there is to know about history, modern or ancient, but, apparently,
not this): I looked it up. It means The Ten Cities and refers to these ten
cities in what would now be the Jordan area that amounted to the main Greek and
Roman cities in that area in the early Common Era. That means the non-Semitic
cities.
Kris: What about it?
Me: Well, it says in
Matthew’s gospel that, when Jesus started going around healing, people from
not only Galilee and Jerusalem and Judea
followed him but also people from the Decapolis .
That's Greeks and Romans. Right from the beginning. That's, like, people from far away.
(I went and got my Bible
and showed him: “Large crowds from Galilee, the
Decapolis, Jerusalem , Judea and the region
across the Jordan
Kris: Yes, we tend to
think Jesus healed people to help them, but actually he did it so that people everywhere would believe.
Me: But he told a lot
of the people he healed not to tell anyone, so he couldn’t have healed them to spread the word.
Kris: No, he healed those
ones out of compassion.
Me: Ah.
What about it? - That makes it sound like if Kris doesn’t already know about it then it isn’t worth knowing. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI thought A Case for Christ was a good book. One of the rationales he gives for why the Gospels are believable is that the Jewish community never attempted to refute Christian claims that Jesus performed amazing miracles. This is pretty significant since the Jews in general and Josephus in particular made a pretty through historical record of that time. Jesus' miracles were well known and undisputed.