Did You Know?
Gadara, in Biblical times, was a steep hill town just southeast of the Sea of Galilee. In the account given in the Book of Matthew (8:28), Jesus, on a visit there, exorcised the demons from two possessed persons and sent the demons into some nearby swine. The possessed swine ran in a mad dash down a steep bank into the Sea and drowned. "Gadarene," an adjective used to describe a headlong rush, made its first plunge into our lexicon in the 1920s. The swine sometimes make an appearance as well, as when an imprudently hasty act is compared to "the rush of the Gadarene swine."
