GADARA
(es-Salt) Jordan.
This a village
NE of Jericho, near Tell Gedur, which preserved the ancient name of the place. Obodas I, king of the Nabateans,
defeated Alexander Jannaeus here (
Joseph. AJ 13.356).
From the 1st c. B.C. on it was part of the Jewish region of
Peraea, and also its capital. It was conquered by Vespasian in A.D. 63, but Jews still lived there in the Byzantine period.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. M. Abel,
Géographie de la Palestine
II (1938) 324; M. Avi-Yonah,
The Holy Land (1966)
84, 156, 179.
A. NEGEV