Dalmanutha

DALMANUTHA. - Locality where, according to Mk. 8:10, Jesus landed with his disciples after the second multiplication of the loaves (Mt. 15:32-35; Mk. 8:1-9), of which no trace has remained in tradition. In the parallel text of Mt. 15:39, instead of D. stands the name of Magadan or Magedan, which critics regard as a Hellenistic transcription of the Hebrew Mighdal (cf. Josh. 15:17 in the Septuagint: codex A Magdal, B Magada), corresponding to the city of Magdala (v.), birthplace of Mary Magdalene, today el-Megdal, 5 km. south of Tiberias, on the western shore of the lake, at the beginning of the plain of Gennesaret (el-Guwèr). In the vicinity or territory of Magdala there must have been, perhaps at Tell el-Hunàd or Tell en-Nasàrah, the site of D.

Sickenberger (Zeitschr. des deutschen Palästina-Vereins, 57 [1934], pp. 281-85) advanced the hypothesis that the original reading of Mk. was also Mays82a, but that a marginal gloss intended to correct the ending (82, 03 82 = not da, but dal), having penetrated into the text, formed the name of D. with the beginning of the word read or transcribed as man.

The ancient opinion of Eusebius and of St. Jerome that Magadan was near Gerasa (Onom., 134), like that of certain recent critics who recognize its survival in Transjordan and far from the lake in the present-day villages of Ma'ad (= Magadan) and el-Delhemijjeh (= 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.