DALMANUTHA. – A locality where, according to Mark 8:10, Jesus landed with His disciples after the second multiplication of the loaves (Matt. 15:32–35; Mark 8:1–9), of which no trace remains in tradition. In the parallel text of Matt. 15:39, however, instead of D., the name Magadan or Magada appears, which critics consider a Hellenistic transcription of the Hebrew Mighdal (cf. Josh. 15:37 in the Septuagint: cod. A Magdal, B Magada), corresponding to the city of Magdala (q.v.), the home of Mary Magdalene, today el-Megaleh, 5 km south of Tiberias, on the western shore of the lake, at the beginning of the plain of Gennesaret (el-Guwer). The site of D. was perhaps located in the vicinity or territory of Magdala, possibly at Tell el-Hunud or Tell en-Nasarah.
Sickenberger (Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 57 [1934], pp. 281–85) has advanced the hypothesis that the original reading of Mark was also Magada, but that a marginal gloss intended to correct the ending (δὰς, ὁδὰ “not from, but from the”), having entered the text, combined with the beginning of the word read or transcribed as *man* formed the name D.
The ancient opinion of Eusebius and St. Jerome that Magadan was near Gerasa (Onom., 134), like that of some recent critics who locate it in Transjordan and far from the lake, surviving in the modern villages of Ma'ad (= Magadan) and el-Delhemijeh (= D.), is hardly reconcilable with the text and context of the Gospel narrative, which requires the place of Jesus’ landing on the western shore of the lake at Magdala or in its vicinity.