“Mark 5:1, 13 betrays confusion about the distance of Gerasa from the Sea of Galilee (n. 17 above). Mark 7:31 describes a journey from Tyre through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the Decapolis. In fact one goes SE from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee; Sidon is N of Tyre, and the description of the Sea of Galilee in the midst of the Decapolis is awkward. That a boat headed for Bethsaida (NE side of the Sea of Galilee) arrives at Gennesaret (NW side: 6:45, 53) may also signal confusion. No one has been able to locate the Dalmanutha of 8:10, and it may be a corruption of Magdala. In judgment on confused directions as a criterion of origin, however, one must admit that sometimes even natives of a place are not very clear about geography.” Raymond brown intro to NT

The author of the Gospel of Mark does indeed seem to lack first-hand knowledge of the geography of Palestine. Randel Helms writes concerning Mark 11:1 (Who Wrote the Gospels?, p. 6): “Anyone approaching Jerusalem from Jericho would come first to Bethany and then Bethphage, not the reverse. This is one of several passages showing that Mark knew little about Palestine; we must assume, Dennis Nineham argues, that ‘Mark did not know the relative positions of these two villages on the Jericho road’ (1963, 294-295). Indeed, Mark knew so little about the area that he described Jesus going from Tyrian territory ‘by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the territory of the Ten Towns’ (Mark 7:31); this is similar to saying that one goes from London to Paris by way of Edinburgh and Rome. The simplest solution, says Nineham, is that ‘the evangelist was not directly acquainted with Palestine’ (40).”