ContradictionsReading order 255Bible context 4 min read
Where did Jesus drown the pigs?
The accounts name different regions for the same distinctive story of spirits entering swine and the herd drowning.
Textual conflict
Interpretive tension
The passages pull in different directions, but the conflict depends on how their wording, scope, or narrative context is read.
Importance
Supporting
A supporting event, teaching, or biographical claim.
The distinctive shared swine episode has different regional labels, but no supplied boundaries prove those geographical descriptions mutually exclusive.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
Matthew places the swine episode in Gergesene country
And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes
. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and
the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea
, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.
And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.) And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.
Matthew 8:28-32 places Jesus in the country of the Gergesenes, where two possessed men approach him. After he permits the spirits to enter swine, the herd runs down a steep place and dies in the sea. Mark 5:1-13 and Luke 8:26-33 name the country of the Gadarenes and center the encounter on one man.
The transfer into the herd and its rush into water identify the shared episode, but the geographical labels differ. Mark additionally supplies about two thousand animals; Luke calls the water a lake. The excerpts provide no regional boundaries or distances, so they cannot establish a specific geographical impossibility. They do establish inconsistent place naming alongside differing accounts of the human participants.