11 Facts About Decapolis

Decapolis was a group of ten Hellenistic cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in the southern Levant in the first centuries BCE and CE.

Decapolis was a center of Hellenistic and Roman culture in a region which was otherwise populated by Jews, Nabataeans and Arameans.

Except for Scythopolis, Damascus and Canatha, the Decapolis cities were by and large founded during the Hellenistic period, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and the Roman conquest of Coele-Syria, including Judea in 63 BCE.

Decapolis was a region where two cultures interacted: the culture of the Greek colonists and the indigenous Jewish and Aramean cultures.

Under Roman rule, the cities of the Decapolis were not included in the territory of the Herodian kingdom, its successor states of the Herodian tetrarchy, or the Roman province of Judea.

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The imperial cult, the worship of the Roman emperor, was a very common practice throughout the Decapolis and was one of the features that linked the different cities.

The Decapolis was probably never an official political or economic union; most likely it signified the collection of city-states which enjoyed special autonomy during early Roman rule.

New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention that the Decapolis region was a location of the ministry of Jesus.

The Decapolis was one of the few regions where Jesus travelled in which Gentiles were in the majority: most of Jesus' ministry focused on teaching to Jews.

Decapolis came under direct Roman rule in AD 106, when Arabia Petraea was annexed during the reign of the emperor Trajan.

Roman and Byzantine Decapolis region was influenced and gradually taken over by Christianity.