Jerash Essay

This essay is going to discuss the ancient city of Jerash (Gerasa) that is in modern day Jordan, with particular emphasis on the Christian community and their churches. Along with the rise of the Christian community in Jerash, there was rapid increase of the building of multiple churches in the fifth and sixth centuries, and why this may have occurred in such a small amount of time. This culminated in the last church being erected just before 611 AD, which was before the city started on a slow decline beginning with a Persian invasion. Next the essay will discuss the Muslim invasion which happened after the Persian invasion and how this impacted on the Christian community within Jerash. Following on from this there appears to have been natural disasters which speeded up the decline of Jerash and the city’s fortunes and ending with the total abandonment by the 12th century.

The name, Gerasa (Jerash) which was how it was written by the Greeks, is a Semitic word. However there have been no traces of a settlement which is older than the Hellenistic

This would link into the previous paragraph with thanks to the Byzantine Christians, Jerash remained in the fold and helped rejuvenate the city. As well as a little later, Jerash is mentioned by the Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis as the scene of an annual miracle; every year on the day of the Epiphany (January 6th) which was also the anniversary of the miracle in Cana of Galilee, the water of the fountain in the church at Jerash was turned into wine (Crowfoot, 1931, 2). This is important to the history of Christianity in Jerash because it demonstrates that by this time there was a fully functioning Christian community celebrating religious festivals which was noteworthy enough to be recorded by famous historical figures such as Bishop Epiphanius of