•It- '-w*i^ t^'ii *■ ■ 't •^ ' -t ~ -'^ ,;•".» :i--«4 _"A^ i.^_^ tihravy of ti\e theological ^emmarjp PRINCETO?^ • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY The Estate of Rockv;ell S. Brank 0 (^cJLu.dJL ^, (okx^k^-^- L^^p^i^ Lati?y^^ 7-K. (2U<-^ QiA^LyU^r // ^/. THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND fO^ '<^ 1^ K \ ^ ■'5# — : ^ E A THE ^ OCT 20 V)^ ^ HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL AND OF THE EARLY CHURCH BY THE VERY REV. SIR GEORGE ADAM SMITH, M.A., D.D., LL.D., LiTT.D., F.B.A. VICE-CHANCELLOR AND PRINCilAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN WITH SIX MAPS RICHARD R. SMITH, Inc. NEW YORK Marie and Printed in Great Britain. T. and A. Consiabll Lii>., i'rinters, Edinburgh. TO MY FATHER PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION To this Edition two^jnew_jfeatures have been added One is an Index of Scripture_References ; the other is a series of Additional Jjotej. The latter are similar to those published with the Second Edition. They record the more important researches and discoveries in Pales- tine during the past two years ; the changes in the political and social condition of the country; and the recent contributions to the literature of its history and exploration. In the text of the volume I have made a few altera- tions in accordance with the suggestions of various scholars who reviewed the First Edition, and even where I have retained my own views on points in dispute I have been careful to record theirs in the Additional Notes. One of the alterations will be found on pp. 634 f., where in face of the arguments of Professor Ramsay and Mr. W. E. Crum — which I have summarised in an Additional Note on p. 68a— I have felt obliged to modify the contrast I had drawn between Pagan and Christian epitaphs on the east of Jordan. I have to direct special attention to the Additional Note on Aphek (see p. 675); and to the very valuable account which viii The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Dr. Bailey, late of Nablus, has kindly sent me, of the peculiar virtues of the water of Jacob's Well. This goes far to explain why an artificial well was required and used in a region so rich in open streams. I have printed Dr. Bailey's account as an Additional Note on p. 676. I have given a number of references to Buhl's im- portant book on Die A lie Geographie Paldstinas, just published in the series known as Grundriss der Theol Wtssenschaft. In the department of the literature of the subject, I have to express my great obligations to Dr. Benzinger's annual records which appear in the Zeitschrift des Deutschen Paldstina- Vereins. GEORGE ADAM SMITH. Glasgow, Nov. i>i^6. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION There are many ways of writing a geography of Palestine, and of illustrating the History by the Land, but some are wearisome and some are vain. They do not give a vision of the land as a whole, nor help you to hear through it the sound of running history. What is needed by the reader or teacher of the Bible is some idea of the main outlines of Palestine — its shape and disposition ; its plains, passes and mountains ; its rains, winds and temperatures ; its colours, lights and shades. Students of the Bible desire to see a background and to feel an atmosphere — to discover from ' the lie of the land ' why the history took certain lines and the prophecy and gospel were expressed in certain styles — to learn what geography has to contribute to questions of Biblical criticism — above all, to discern between what physical nature contributed to the religious development of Israel, and what was the product of purely moral and spiritual forces. On this last point the geography of the Holy Land reaches its highest interest It is also good to realise the historical influences by which our religion was at first nurtured or exercised, as far as we can do this from the ruins which these have left in the country. To go no further back than the New Testament — there are the Greek art, the Roman rule, X The Historical Geography of the Holy Land and the industry and pride of Herod. But the remains of Scripture times are not so many as the remains of the centuries since. The Palestine of to-day, as I have said further on, is more a museum of Church history than of the Bible — a museum full of living as well as of ancient specimens of its subject East of Jordan, in the in- destructible basalt of Hauran, there are monuments of the passage from Paganism to Christianity even more numerous and remarkable than the catacombs or earliest Churches of Rome ; there are also what Italy cannot give us — the melancholy wrecks of the passage from Christianity to Mohammedanism. On the west of the Jordan there are the castles and churches of the Crusaders, the im- pression of their brief kingdom and its ruin. There is the trail of the march and retreat of Napoleon. And, then, after the long silence and crumbling of all things native, there are the living churches of to-day, and the lines of pilgrims coming up to Jerusalem from the four corners of the world. For a historical geography compassing such a survey, the conditions are to-day three — personal acquaintance with the land ; a study of the exploration, discoveries and decipherments, especially of the last twenty years ; and the employment of the results of Biblical criticism during the same period. I. The following chapters have been written after two visits to the Holy Land. In the spring of 1880 I made a journey through Judsea, Samaria, Esdraelon, and Galilee : Preface to the First Edition xl that was before the great changes which have been produced on many of the most sacred landscapes by European colonists, and by the rivalry in building between the Greek and Latin Churches. Again, in 1891, I was able to extend my knowledge of the country to the Maritime Plain, the Shephelah, the wilderness of Judaea, including Masada and Engedi, the Jordan Valley, Hermon, the Beka', and espe- cially to Damascus, Hauran, Gilead, and Moab. Unfor- tunately— in consequence of taking Druze servants, we were told — we were turned back by the authorities from Bo§ra and the Jebel Druz, so that I cannot write from personal acquaintance with those interesting localities, but we spent the more time in the villages of Hauran, and at Gadara, Gerasa and Pella, where we were able to add to the number of discovered inscriptions. 2. With the exception of the results of early geographers, admirably summarised by Reland, the renewal of Syrian travel in the beginning of this century, and the great work of Robinson fifty years ago — the real exploration of Pales- tine has been achieved during the last twenty years. It has been the work of no one nation ; its effectiveness is due to its thoroughly international character. America gave the pioneers in Robinson, Smith, and Lynch. To Great Britain belong, through the Palestine Exploration Fund — by Wilson, Warren, Drake, Tristram, Conder, Kitchener, Mantell, Black and Armstrong — the splendid results of a trigonometrical survey of all Western, and part of Eastern, Palestine, a geological survey, the excavations at xii The Tiistorical Geography of the Holy Land Jerusalem and Tell el Hesy, very numerous discoveries and identifications, and the earliest summaries of natural history and meteorology. But we cannot forget that this work was prepared for, and has been supplemented in its defects, both by French and Germans. The French have been first in the departments of art and archaeology — witness Waddington, Renan, De Vogu6, De Saulcy, Clermont-Ganneau, and Rey. In topography, also, through Gu^rin and others, the French contributions have been important. To Germany we owe many travels and re- searches, which, like Wetzstein's, have added to the geo- graphy, especially of Eastern Palestine. The Germans have also given what has been too much lacking in Britain, a scientific treatment of the geography in the light of Biblical criticism : in this respect the work of Socin, Guthe, and their colleagues in the Deutsche Talastina-Verein, has been most thorough and full of example to ourselves. The notes in this volume will show how much I have been indebted to material provided by the journals of both the British and German societies, as well as to other works issued under their auspices. I have not been able to use any of the records of the corresponding Russian society. Recent American literature on Palestine is valuable, chiefly for the works of Merrill, and Clay Trumbull. But the most distinctive feature of the work of the last twenty years has been the aid rendered by the European inhabitants of Syria. Doctors and missionaries, ihe chil- dren of the first German colonists and of the earlier Preface to the First Edition xiil American missionaries, have grown into a familiarity with the country, which the most expert of foreign explorers cannot hope to rival. Through the British and German societies, ChapHn, Schumacher, Schick, Gatt, Fischer of Sarona, Klein, Hanauer, Baldensperger, Post, West and Bliss have contributed so immense an amount of topo- graphical detail, nomenclature, meteorology and informa- tion concerning the social life of the country, that there seems to lie rather a century than a score of years between the present condition of Syriology and that which pre- vailed when we were wholly dependent on the records of passing travellers and pilgrims. During recent years a very great deal has been done for the geography of Palestine from the side of Assyrian and Egyptian studies, such as by the younger Delitzsch, Maspero, Sayce, Tomkins, and especially W. Max Muller, whose recent work, Asien u. Eiiropa nach den alt-dgypti- schen Denkmalern, has so materially altered and increased the Egyptian data. I need not dwell here on the informa- tion afforded by the Tell-el-Amarna tablets as to the condition of Palestine before the coming of Israel. On the Roman and Greek periods there have appeared during recent years the works of Mommsen, Mahaffy, Morrison, Neubauer, Niese's new edition of Josephus, Boettger's topographical Lexicon to Josephus, the collec- tion of Nabatean inscriptions in the Corpus Inscriptioyiiim Semiticarum, and Schurer's monumental History of the feivish People in the Time of Christ. I have constantly xiv The Historical Geography of the Holy Land referred to the latter on the Maccabean and Herodian periods ; and where I have ventured to differ from his geographical conclusions it has always been with hesitation. The last fifteen years have also seen the collection and re-publication of the immense pilgrim literature on Pales- tine, a more thorough research into the Arab geographies, of which Mr, Guy Le Strange's Palestine under the Moslems affords the English reader so valuable a sum- mary, and a number of works on the Crusades and the Frank occupation and organisation of Palestine, of which the chief are those of Rey, Rohricht and Prutz. The great French collection of the Historians of the Crusades, begun as far back as 1843, largely falls within this generation. From one source, which hitherto has been unused, I have derived great help. I mean Napoleon's invasion of Syria and his conduct of modern war upon its ancient battle-fields. It is a great thing to follow Napoleon on the routes taken by Thothmes, Sennacherib, Alexander, Vespasian, and the Crusaders, amidst the same difficulties of forage and locomotion, and against pretty much the same kind of enemies ; and I am surprised that no geographer of the country has availed himself of the opportunity which is afforded by the full records of Napoleon's Asiatic campaign, and by the journals of the British officers, attached to the Turkish army which fol- lowed up his retreat. Of all these materials I have made such use as con- Pi'eface to the First Edition xv tributed to the aim of this work. I have added very few original topographical suggestions. I have felt that just at present the geographer of Palestine is more usefully employed in reducing than in adding to the identifications of sites. In Britain our surveyors have been tempted to serious over-identification, perhaps by the zeal of a portion of the religious public, which subscribes to exploration according to the number of immediate results. In Ger- many, where they scorn us for this, the same temptation has been felt, though from other causes, and the Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palastina-Vereins has almost as many rash proposals as the Quarterly Statement, and Old and New Testament Maps, of the Palestine Exploration Fund. I have, therefore, ignored a number of identifications and contested a number more. If the following pages leave the reader with many problems stated rather than solved, this has been done of purpose. The work of explorers and critics has secured an enormous number of results which cannot be reasonably doubted. But in many other cases what has been achieved is simply the collection of all the evidence that exists above-ground — evidence which is conflicting, and can be settled only by such further excavations as Messrs. Flinders Petrie and Bliss have so happily inaugurated at Tell-el-Hesy. The exploration, of Western Palestine at least, is almost exhausted on the surface, but there is a great future for it under-ground. We have run most of the questions to earth : it only remains to dig them up. xvi The Historical Geography of the Holy Land 3. But an equally strong reason for the appearance at this time of a Historical Geography of Palestine is the recent progress of Biblical Criticism. The relation of the geo- graphical materials at our disposal, and the methods of historical reconstruction, have been wholly altered by Old Testament science, since, for instance. Dean Stanley wrote his Sinai and Palestine. That part of criticism which consists of the distinction and appreciation of the various documents, of which the Books of Scripture are composed, has especially contributed to the elucidation and arrange- ment of geographical details in the history of Israel, which without it had been left by archaeology in obscurity, I heartily agree with most of what is said on the duty of regulating the literary criticism of the Bible by the archaeology of Syria and the neighbouring countries, but we must remember there is a converse duty as well. We have had too many instances of the embarrassment and confusion into which archaeology and geography lead us, apart from the new methods of Biblical Criticism. And to those among us who are distrustful of the latter, I would venture to say that there is no sphere in which the helpfulness of recent criticism, in removing difficulties and explaining contradictions, has been more apparent than in the sphere of Biblical Geography. In this volume I have felt forced by geographical evidence to contest some of the textual and historical conclusions of recent critics, both in this country and in Germany, but I have fully accepted the critical methods, and I believe this to be the first geo- Preface to the J^irsl Mdtiion xvii graphy of the Holy Land in which they are employed. In fact, at this time of day, it would be simply futile to think of writing the geography of Palestine on any other principles. It is as a provisional attempt to collect old and new material from all these sources that I offer the following pages. I have not aimed at exhausting the details of the subject, but I have tried to lay down what seem to me the best lines both for the arrangement of what has been already acquired, and for the fitting on to it of what may still be discovered. There are a few omissions which the reader will notice. I have entirely excluded the topo- graphy of Jerusalem, the geography of Phoenicia, and the geography of Lebanon. This has been because I have never visited Phoenicia, because Lebanon lies properly outside the Holy Land, and because an adequate topo- graphy of Jerusalem, while not contributing to the general aim of the volume, would have unduly increased the size of a work which is already too great. I was anxious to give as much space as possible to Eastern Palestine, of which we have had hitherto no complete geography. Portions of Chapters vii, viii, xii-xiv, and xx, most of Chapters X, xv-xvii, xix, and XXI, and all Chapter XVIII, have already appeared in The Expositor for 1892-93. With regard to maps, this volume has been written with the use of what must be for a long time the finest illustration of the geography of Palestine— the English b xviii The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Survey Maps, both the large map of Western Palestine, on the scale of an inch to the mile, and the reduced map of all Palestine on the scale of three-eighths of an inch to the mile. The latter, in its editions of 1891 ff., though over- crowded by 'identifications,' is by far the most useful map ever published for students or travellers ; one might call it indispensable. Mr. Armstrong has lately put this map into relief; the result is a most correct, clear and impres- sive reproduction of the shape and physical varieties of the land. If students desire a cheap small map, brought down to date, they will find it in Fischer and Guthe's ad- mirable map of Palestine, published by the German society. The six maps for this volume have been specially prepared by the eminent cartographer, Mr. John George Bartholomew, of Edinburgh, and my hearty thanks are due to him for the care and impressiveness with which he has produced them. The large map and the three sectional ones (the latter on the scale of four miles to an inch) have this distinction, that they are the first orographical maps of Palestine, representing the whole lie and lift of the land by gradations of colour. The little sketch-map on p. 51 is to illustrate the chapter on the form and divisions of the land : while the map of the Semitic World has been prepared, under my directions, to illustrate Syria's place in history, and her influence westwards. Through the courtesy of the engineers, Mr. Bartholomew has been able to indicate the line of the new Acca-Damascus Railway. Preface to the First Edition xlx During my work on this volume, I have keenly felt the want, in English, of a good historical atlas of the Holy Land. I have designed one such, containing from thirty to forty maps, and covering the history of Syria from the earliest epochs to the Crusades and the present century ; and preparations are being made by Mr. Bartholomew and myself for its publication by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. In conclusion, I have to thank, for help rendered meat various times, both in travel and in study. Dr. Selah Merrill ; Rev. W. Ewing, late of Tiberias, whose collec- tion of inscriptions is promised by the Exploration Fund ; Dr. Mackinnon and Rev. Stewart Crawford of Damascus ; Rev. Henry Sykes of the Church Missionary Society at Es-Salt ; Rev. C. A. Scott of Willesden ; and Professors Ramsay and Kennedy of Aberdeen. I have been greatly assisted by two collections of works on the Holy Land : that made by Tischendorf, now in possession of the Free Church College, Glasgow ; and that made by the late Mr. M'Grigor of Glasgow, now in the Library of Glasgow University. My wife has revised all the proofs of this volume, and, with a friend, prepared the Index. GEORGE ADAM SMITH. iS>lh April 1S94. CONTE NTS rACB PREFACE, ........ vii LIST OF PLATES, xxiv CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE xxv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, Etc., , , , . xxvii Book I —THE LAND AS A WHOLE CHAr. I. The Placr of Syria in the World's History, , i I. The Relation of Syria to Arabia, ... 7 a. The Relation of Syria to the Three Continents, . II 3. Syria's Opportunity Westward, ... 21 4. The Religion of Syria, .... 28 II. The Form of the Land and its Historical Con- sequences, ...... 43 III. The Climate and Fertility of the Land, with THEIR Effects on its Religion, . . 61 I. The Climate, . . . . . . 6 1 a. The Fertility, ...... 76 IV. The Scenery ok the Land, with its Reflection in the Pobtrv of the Old Testament, , .. 90 V. The Land and Questions of Faith, . , 105 VI. The View from Mount Ebai., , . . 117 XXll Contents Book II.— WESTERN PALESTINE CHAP. VII. The Coast, ..... VIII. The Maritime Plain, .... IX. The Philistines and their Cities, . i X. The Shephelah, ..... XI. Early Christianity in the Shephelah, XII. jDD.tA AND Samaria — The History of their Frontier, .... XIII. The Borders and Bulwarks of ]vv>ak, I. East : The Great Gulf with Jericho and Engedl— The Entrance of Israel, a. The Southern Border : The Negeb, . 3. The Western Border : The Defiles, . 4. The Northern Border : The Fortresses of Benjamin, XIV. An Estimate of the Real Strength of Jud-«a, XV. The Character of JUDi«A, XVI. Samaria, . . • . XVII. The Strong Places of Samaria, XVIII. The Question of Svchar, XIX. Esdrari.on, XX. Galilee, .... XXI. The Lake of Galilkr, . XXII. The Jordan Valley, XXIII. The Dead Sea, . Contents xxiil CHAr. XXIV. Book III.— EASTERN PALESTINE Over Jordan : Gknkral Features, . . , 517 XXV. The Names and Divisions of Eastern Palestine, 531 1. The Three Natural Divisions, . . 534 2. The Political Names and Divisions To-day, . . 535 3. In the Greek Times : the Time of Our Lord, . 538 4. Under the Old Testament, .... 548 XXVI. Moab and the Coming of Israel, . , . 555 XXVII. Israel in Gilead and Bashan, , . $73 XXVIII. Greece over Jordan : The Decapolis, . . 593 XXIX. Hauran and its Cities, . , , , 609 XXX. Damascus, ...... 639 APPENDICES L Some Geographical Passa<;es and Terms of the Old Testament, . . • . . 651 II. Stade's Theory of Israel's Invasion of Western Palestine, . , . . . , 659 III. The Wars against Sihon and Og, . , . 662 IV. The Bibliography of Eastern Palestine, , 665 V. Roads and Wheeled Vehicles in Syria, . . 667 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 683 INDEX OF AUTHORITIES, ... 698 INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES, - . 703 LIST OF PLATES I. General Map OF Palestine, . II. Map of the Semitic World, . III. Physical Sketch Map, . . , IV. Jdd^ea, the Shbphelah, and Philistia V. Samaria, VI. Esdraelo.n and Lowkk Galilee. . f/n (.he Pocket at the l end of the Volumt , , Frontispitct , . on page 5 • , . to face page 167 r • %% 321 r . >. 377 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE of Karkar, Entrance of Israel into Palestine, Deborah and her Song, ) Gideon, j Saul anointed, . , David, King, . . » Solomon, King, . . Disruption of the Kingdom and invasion by Shishak Elijah, .... Israel comes into touch \vith Assyria : Battle Elisha, ..... First Writing Prophets : Amos, Hcsea, {Uzziah dies. Northern Israel falls, . Deliverance of Jerusalem, ^Discovery of Book of Law. Death of Josiah at Megiddo, Fall of Assyria : Rise of Babylonia, First Great Captivity of Jerusalem, ^Second „ „ „ TFall of Babylonia : Rise of Persia, Isaiah I ^^^""^ of Jews from exile, iTempIe Rebuilt, Ezra and Nehemiah, . Erection of Temple on Geriziin, Alexander the Great in Syria, . Beginning of Seleucid Era, Kingdom of Parthia founded, . Rome defeats Antiochus the Great at Magnesia, Jeremiah Ezekiel -! area before circa B c. noo 1075 1030 1000 970 870 854 850-800 750 740 721 701 621 608 606 597 587 538 536 51S 457-440 360 332 312 250 192 xxvi Chronological Table The Maccabees, t . . . John Hyrcanus, . Alexander Janneus, .... Arrival of Pompey : Roman Province of Syria, Parthians invade Syria, Battle of Actium, .... Herod the Great, ... His kingdom divided among Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip, .... Judaea under Roman Procurator, B.C. 166-135 135-105 104-78 64 40 31 37-4 on front Archelaus banished Death of Philip, Banishment of Antipas, Agrippa i., . Agrippaii., Jewish Rebellion against Rome, Siege of Jerusalem, Formation of Roman Province of Arabia by Trajan, Final overthrow of the Jews under Bar Cochba by Hadrian, Origen in Palestine, .... Decian Persecution, .... Diocletian's Persecution, Eusebius, Archbishop of Caesarea, Constantine the Great, Final overthrow of Paganism in Palestine, . The Hejra ..... Death of Mohammed, .... Moslem conquest of Syria, Omeyyade Khalifs make Damascus their capital. Invasion of Seljuk Turks, First Crusade and Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Battle of Hattin won by Saladin, Third Crusade, Richard of England, . Sultan Bibars, and overthrow of the Franks, Mongol Invasions, the last by Timur, • Napoleon in Syria, .... 6 34 39 37-44 50-100 66 70 106 135 218 250 303 . 3^5-318 • 323-336 circa 400 622 632 . 634-638 661 1070-1085 1098-1187 1 187 I191 circa 1270 1240, 1260, 1400 1799 ABBREVIATIONS Baudissin, Stud.—StudienzurSemitUchen Religionsgeschichte. Boha-ed-Din, Vit Sal., ed. SchuU= Vita Saladinis, with excerpts from the geography of Abulfeda, ed. Schultens. See p. 17, n. 2. Budde, Ri, u. Sa. or Richt. Sam. = Die BiUher Richter u. Samuelis. C./.S. = Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, cf. p. 15, n. I. Conder, 7\]V.'=Tent Work in Palestine. De Saulcy, Num. de la T.S.=Numismatique de la Tirre Saintt. Ctog. Gr. Min. = Gtograpki Graeci Minores, edd. Hudson and Miiller. See p. 16. Hend. Pal. = The Historical Geography of Palestine , by Rev. A. Henderson, D.D. 2d ed. In ' Handbooks for Bible Classes.' Clark, Edinburgh Jose hvis, Antl.= Antiquities. ,, JVars= IVars of the Jews. iT./tf.T'. = Schrader's Keilinschriften u. das Alte Testament. Neubauer, Giog. Tal.=.La Geographie du Talmud, Paris, 1868. P E.F. Mem. —Memoirs of the PaUitine Exploration Fund. P.E.F.Q. = Quarterly Statement of Palestine Exploration Fund. P. E.F. Red. Map = Reduced Map of Palestine Exploration Fund, edd. 1890 f. /'./'. 71 = Palestine Pilgrims Text Society's Series of Publications. Robertson Smith, O. T.J. C. = Old Testament in the Jewish Church, ed. 2, 1892. Robinson, B.R. or Bib. Res.— Biblical Researches, London, 1 841. ,, L.R.=- Later Researches, London, 1852. Siegfried-Stade = Siegfried and Stade's Handworterbuch. Stade, G.V.I, or Gesch. — Geschichte des Volkes Israel. Wadd. = Le Bas and Waddington, Inscriptions Grecques et Latines recuiUiti en Grice et en Asie Mincure. See p. 1 5, o. i. Wetz. = Wetzstcin. Z.A. T. W. =Zeitschriftfur Alt-testamentliche Wissenschaft. Z.D.M.G. — Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft. Z.D.P. V. = Zeitschrift des Deutschen Paldstina- Vereins. M.u.N.D.P.V. = Mittheiluugen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Paldstina Vereins. In the transliteration of Hebrew and Arabic words ^AUph is usually ren- dered by a light, *Ayin by a rough, breathing; but in well-known names they are s«ometimes omitted ; Qoph by K', Sade usually by 5. In ancient names Gimel is rendered by G (hard), in modem names by/. BOOK I THE LAND AS A WHOLE CHAPTER I THE PLACE OF SYRIA IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY 4 The Histo7'ical Geography of the Holy Land which they call the southern side El Yemen, or ' The Right.' 1 The name Palaistind, which Josephus himself uses only of Philistia, was employed by the Greeks to distinguish all Southern Syria, inclusive of Judaea, from Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria. They called it Syria Palaistin6, using the word as an adjective, and then Palaistin^, the noun alone. From this the Romans got their Palestina, which in the second century was a separate province, and later on divided into Palestina Prima, Secunda, Tertia. It still survives in the name of the Arab gmid or canton — Filistin.2 These were foreign names : the much older and native name Canaan is of doubtful origin, perhaps racial, but ^ Syria, as a modern geographical term, is to be distinguished from the Syria and Syrians of the English version of the Old Testament. The Hebrew of these terms is Aram, Arameans, a northern Semitic people who dwelt in Mesopotamia, Aram-Naharaim, and west of the Euphrates — as far west as the Phoenician coast, and south to Damascus. Some, however, hold that Aram-Naharaim was on this side the Euphrates. The Roman Province of Syria extended from the Euphrates to Egypt. Its eastern boundary was a line from the head of the Gulf of Suez past the south-eastern end of the Dead Sea, the east of Gilead and the Hauran and Palmyra, to the Euphrates. East of this line was Arabia (see chap. xxv.). ' The full history of tlie word is this :— Philistines, D'TIK'i'Q or D^'HtJ'i'Q is rendered by the LXX. in the Hexateuch ipyXiffTuifx ; cf. i Mace. iii. 24, Sirach xlvi. 18. From this Josephus has the adjective (pvXiffTtvos, i. Ani(. vi. 2. But his usual form is iraXaiffTiyot, He also knows the noun H UaXaiffTlvt], and uses it himself of Philistia, xiii. AttU. v. 10 : ' Simeon traversed Judah Kai ttjc UaXaiffTbrjy up to Askalon.' Cf. i. AnU. vi. 2 : ' The country from Gaza to Egypt ... the Greeks call part of that country Palestine.' But in ConOa Apion, i. 22, he quotes Herodotus as using the name in the wider sense inclusive of Judaea. Herodotus, who describes Syria as extending from Cilicia to Mount Carius, distinguishes the Phcenicians from the Ivpioi oi iv ry IlaXaiaTbri, or ol UaXaiffTlvoi KaXtdfieyoi (ii. 104 ; iii. 5, 91 ; vii. 89), and defines it as rrj^ ^vplr]^ tovto t6 x^plov koI t6 M^pi A/7i/TTo»' irav UaXaurii'Tj KaXelrai. Arrian (Anabasis, ii. 25) speaks of t; l.vpii) UaXaicrivT]. Syria was divided into S. Palestina, 8. Punic.i, and S. Ccela ; Herod, i. loj. Palestine was made a separate province, 67 A.n. Syria's Place in History more probably geographical and meaning 'sunken' or ' low ' land. It seems to have at first belongecTto the Phoenician coast as distinguished from the hills above. But thence it extended to other lowlands— Sharon, the Jordan valley, and so over the whole country, mountain as well as plain. ^ The historical geography of Syria, so far as her rela- tions with the rest of the world are concerned, may be summed up in a paragraph. Syria is the summary of northern and most fertile end of the g-reat "^* Historical o •^- 1 , Geography of bemitic home — the penmsula of Arabia. But Syria. the^emitic home is distinguished by its central position in geography— between Asia and Africa, and between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, which is Europe ; and the rdle in history of the Semitic race has been also intermediary. The Semites have been the great middlemen of the world. Not second-rate in war, they have risen to the first rank in commerce and reli- gion. They have been the carriers between East and West, they have stood between the great ancient civilisa- tions and those which go to make up the modern world ; while by a higher gift, for which their conditions neither in place nor in time fully account, they have been mediary between God and man, and proved the religious teachers of the world, through whom have come its three highest faiths, its only universal religions. Syria's history is her 1 Land of Canaan is applied in the Tell-el-Amarna Correspondence of the 14th cent. B.C. (Tab., Berlin, 92) to the Phoenician coast, and later by Egyp. tians to all W. Syria. Ace. to Jos. xi. 3, there were Canaanites east and west of the land ; ace. to Jud. i. 9, all over, in the Mount, Negeb, and Shephelah and (ver. 10) in Hebron. It was the spread of the Canaanites that spread the name. In Isa. xix. 18, the lip of Canaan is the one language spoken in Palestine, of which Phoenician, Hebrew, Moabite, etc., were only dialects. InZech. xiv. 21, probably Canaanite = Phoenician = merchant. 6 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land share in this great function of intermedium, which has endured from the earliest times to the present day. To put it more particularly, Syria lies between two con- tinents— Asia and Africa ; between two primeval homes of men — the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile ; between two great centres of empire — Western Asia and Egypt : between all these, representing the Eastern and ancient world, and the Mediterranean, which is the gateway to the Western and modern world. Syria has been likened to a bridge between Asia and Africa — a bridge with the desert on one side and the sea upon the other ; and, in truth, all the great invasions of Syria, with two ex- ceptions, have been delivered across her northern and southern ends. But these two exceptions — the invasions of Israel and Islam — prove the insufficiency of the bridge simile, not only because they were but the highest waves of an almost constant tide of immigration which has flowed upon Syria from Arabia, but because they repre- sent that gift of religion to her, which in its influence on her history far exceeds the influence of her central posi- tion. Syria is not only the bridge between Asia and Africa : she is the refuge of the drifting populations of Arabia. She has been not only the highroad of civilisa- tions and the battle-field of empires, but the pasture and the school of innumerable little tribes. She has been not merely an open channel of war and commerce for nearly the whole world, but the vantage-ground and opportunity of the world's highest religions. In this strange mingling of bridge and harbour, of highroad and field, of battle- ground and sanctuary, of seclusion and opportunity — ren- dered possible through the striking division of her surface into mountain and plain — lies all the secret of Syria'g Syrians Place in History history, under the religion which has lifted her fame to glory. As to her western boundary, no invasion, save of hope, ever came over that. Even when the nations of Europe sought Palestine, their armies did not enter by her harbours till the coast was already in their posses- sion. But across this coast she felt from the first her future to lie ; her expectation went over the sea to isles and mainlands far beyond her horizon ; and it was into the West that her spiritual empire — almost the only empire Syria ever knew — advanced upon its most glorious course. In all this there are four chief factors of which it will be well for us to have some simple outline before we go into details. These are — Syria's Relations to Arabia, from which she drew her population ; her position as Debate- able Ground between Asia and Africa, as well as between both of these and Europe ; her Influence Westwards ; her Religion. These outlines will be brief. They are meant merely to introduce the reader to the extent and the interest of the historical geography which he is beginning, as well as to indicate our chief authorities. I. The Relation of Syria to Arabia. We have seen that Syria is the north end of the Arabian world, that great parallelogram which is bounded by the Levant with Mount Taurus, the Euphrates with the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea with the Isthmus of Suez. Within these limits there is a wonderful uniformity of nature : the mass of the territory is high, barren table-land, but dotted by oases of great fertility, and surrounded by a lower level, most of which is also 8 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land fertile.^ The population is all Semitic. It is very nume- rous for so bare a land, and hardy and reproductive. But it is broken up into small tribes, with no very definite territories. These tribes have gone forth united as a nation only at one period in their history, and that was the day of Islam, when their dominion extended from India to the Atlantic. At all other times they have advanced separately, either by single tribes or a few tribes together. Their outgoings were four — across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb into Ethiopia, across the Isthmus of Suez into Egypt, across the Euphrates into Mesopo- tamia, across the Jordan into Western Syria. Of these, Syria became the most common receptacle of the Arabian drift. She lay, so to speak, broadside-on to the desert ; part of her was spread east of the Jordan, rolling off unde- fended into the desert steppes ; she was seldom protected by a strong government, like Egypt and Mesopotamia ; and so in early times she received not only the direct tides of the desert, but the backwash from these harbours as well. Of this the Hebrews were an instance, who came over to her, first from Mesopotamia and then from Egypt. The loose humanity of the Semitic world has, therefore, been constantly beating upon Syria, and The Arabian almost as Constantly breaking into her. Of Immigrations. ^^ tribcs who crossed her border, some flowed in from the neighbourhood only for summer, and ebbed again with autumn, like the Midianites in Gideon's day, or the various clans of the 'Aneezeh in our own. But ' The coast of the Indian Ocean open to the monsoons, with part of the coasts of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, Syria, the slopes of T.-iuriis, and the Euphrates valley, are fertile. The rest of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea coasts, the Isthmus of Suez, and forty miles of the coast of the Levant, are desert. Syria s Place in History 9 others came up out of the centre or from the south of Arabia — like the Beni Jafn, for instance, who migrated all the way from Yemen in the first Christian century, and, being made by the Romans wardens of the eastern marches of the Empire, founded in time a great dynasty — the Ghassanides. And others came because they had been crowded or driven out of the Nile or the Euphrates valley, like the Syrians, the Philistines, and the Children of Israel. Thus Syria was peopled. Whenever history lights up her borders we see the same process at work : when Israel crosses the Jordan ; when the Midianites follow and oppress her ; when, the Jews being in exile, the Idumeans come up on their seats ; when the Decapolis is formed as a Greek league to keep the Arabs out ; when the Romans, with their wonderful policy, enrol some of the immigrants to hold the others in check ; especially at the Moslem invasion ; but also during the Latin king- dom of Jerusalem, when various nomadic tribes roaming certain regions with their tents are assigned to the Crown or to different Orders of Chivalry;^ and even to-day, when parts of the Survey Map of Their Cease- Palestine are crossed by the names of the i^ssness. Beni Sab, the Beni Hum&r, the 'Arab-el-'Amarin, and so forth, just as the map of ancient Palestine is distributed among the B'ne Naphtali, the B'ne Joseph, the B'ne Jehudah, and other clans of Israel. All these, ancient and modern, have been members of the same Semitic race. Some of them have carried Syria by sudden war ; others have ranged for a long time up and down the ' Prutz, Z.D.P, v., X. 192, mentions so many ' tents' or 'tribes ' as assigned to the Order of St. John, and argues that the rest belonged to the king. lo The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Syrian border, or settled peacefully on the more neglected parts of the land, till gradually they were weaned from their pastoral habits, and drawn in among the agricultural population. To-day you do not see new tribes coming up from the centre or other end of Arabia to invade Syria ; but you do see a powerful tribe like the Ruwalla, for instance, ranging every year between the Euphrates and the Jordan ; or smaller clans like the Ta'amirah of the Judaean wilderness, or the 'Adwan of Moab, after living for centuries t)y extorting blackmail from the fellahin, gradually themselves take to agriculture, and submit to the settled government of the country.^ From all this have ensued two consequences : — First The fact that by far the strongest immigration into Syria has been of a race composed of small inde- Syria's Popu- pendent tribes, both suits and exaggerates the laiion tribal tendencies of the land itself. Syria, as we shall see in the next chapter, is broken up into a number of petty provinces, as separated by desert and mountain as some of the Swiss cantons are by the Alps. These little clans, which swarmed out of Arabia, fitted the little shelves and corners of Syria, so that Syria was tribal both by her form and by the character of her population. It is partly this, and partly her position between great and hostile races, which have disabled her from political empire. Second. The population of Syria has always been essen- tially Semitic. There are few lands into which so many divers races have come: as in ancient times and Semitic. „,.,.. , ^t- • .1 • 1 Philistmes and Plittites ; then m very large numbers, Greeks ; then with the Crusades a few hundred thousands of Franks ; then till the present day more ' For the present successful policy of the Turks in this, see ch. xxiv. Syria s Place in History 1 1 Franks, more Greeks, Turks, Kurds, and some colonies of Circassians. But all these have scarcely even been grafted on the stock ; ^ and the stock is Semitic. The Greek has been the one possible rival of the Semite ; but Greeks have inhabited only cities, where the death-rate exceeds the birth-rate, and, were they not renewed from abroad, they would disappear in the general mass of the Arab or Syrian population.^ II. Syria's Relation to the three Continents. When the Arabian tribes came up from their desert into Syria, they found themselves on the edge of a great highroad and looking across a sea. The highroad is that between Asia and Africa ; the sea is that which leads from the East to Europe. From one of the most remote positions on the earth they were plunged into the midst of the world's commerce and war. While this prevented them from consolidating into an empire of their own, it proved the opportunity and development of the marvel- lous gifts which they brought with them from their age- long seclusion in the desert. Syria's position between two of the oldest homes of the ^ In face of the fair hair and blue eyes you often meet in Bethlehem and in the Lebanon, it is too much to say with Socin (Art. ' Syria,' ^«fjr. Brit.) ' that tvery trace of the presence of Greeks, Romans, and Franks has completely disappeared.' ^ ' In Eastern cities the death-rate habitually exceeds the birth-rate, and the^ urban population is maintained only by constant recruital from the country, i so that it is the blood of the peasantry which ultimately determines the type of the population. Thus it is to be explained that after the Arab conquest of Syria the Greek element in the population rapidly disappeared. Indeed, one of the most palpable proofs that the populations of all the old Semitic lands possessed a remarkable homogeneity of character is the fact that in them, and in them alone, the Arabs and Arab influence took permanent rooL' — Robertson Smith, Religion oj the Semites, '2, 13. —J 12 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land human race made her the passage for the earliest inter- course and exchanges of civih'sation. There is probably no older road in all the world than that which is still used by caravans from the Euphrates to the Nile, through Damascus, Galilee, Esdraelon, the Maritime Asia and Plain, and Gaza. It is doubtful whether his- tory has to record any great campaigns — as distinguished from tribal wars — earlier than those which Egypt and Assyria waged against each other across the whole extent of Syria, and continued to wage down to the sixth century before Christ. But more distant powers than these broke across this land from both Asia and Africa. The Hittites came south from Asia Minor over Mount Taurus, and the Ethiopians came north from their conquest of the Nile.^ Towards the end of the great duel between Assyria and Egypt, the Scythians from north of the Caucasus devastated Syria.- When the Babylonian Empire fell, the Persians made her a province of their empire, and marched across her to Egypt. At the beginning of our era, she was overrun by the Parthians.^ The Persians invaded her a second time,'' just before the Moslem invasion of the seventh century ; she fell, of course, under the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh \^ and in the thirteenth and fourteenth the Mongols thrice swept through her.^ Into this almost constant stream of empires and races, which swept through Syria from the earliest ages, Europe ' 2 Chron. xiv. 9. •' Alludetl to Zeph, ii. ; Jer. i. 14 ff. Cf. Herodotus i. 104 (T. ' 40 B.C. * 612-616 A.D., under Chosroes II. * 1070-1085. • In 1240 Syrians and Crusaders stood together to beat back the Khares- mians ; a second Mongol invasion took place in 1260, and a third in 1400 under Timur, which repeated the exportations of early Assyrian days, and carried off the eft'ectivc classes of Damascus and other towns to Samarcand. Syria s Place in History 13 was drawn under Alexander the Great ; and now that the West began to invade the East, Syria was found to be as central between them as between Asia and Between Europe Africa. She was Alexander's pathway to ^"d the East. Egypt, 332 B.C. She was scoured during the following centuries by the wars of the Seleucids and Ptolemies, and her plains were planted all over by their essentially Greek civilisation. Pompey brought her under the Roman Empire, B.C. 65, and in this she remained till the Arabs took her, 634 A.D. The Crusaders held her for a century, 1098- 1 187, and parts of her for a century more : coming to her, not, like most other invaders, because she was the road to somewhere else, but because she was herself, in their eyes, the goal of all roads, the central and most blessed province of the world, and yet but repeating upon her the old contest between East and West. Napoleon the Great made her the pathway of his ambition towards that empire on the Euphrates and Indus whose fate was> decided on her plains, 1799. Since then, Syria's history has mainly consisted in a number of sporadic attempts on the part of the Western world to plant upon her both their civilisation and her former religion. Thus Syria has been a land in which history has very largely repeated itself; and if we believe that history never repeats, without explaining, itself, we shall see the value of all these invasions from Asia, Africa, and Europe for illustrating that part of Syrian history which is more especially our interest. What, then, are our authorities for them all ? Many of these invasions have left on the land no trace which is readable by us, but others have stamped their impression both in monuments, which we can decipher, 14 The Historical Geography oj the Holy Land and in literature. Of monuments, Hittites,^ Assyrians, and Egyptians have each left a very few — upon stones north of the Lebanon, on the rocks by the old coast and Assyrian road at the mouth of the Dog River,'^ on a solitary stone near the highroad across the Hauran,^ on a clay tablet found the other day at Lachish,* and in some other fragments. But in the Egyptian and Assyrian annals we have itineraries through Syria, and records of conquest, most profuse and inlorming.^ The only records left by the Antiochi and Ptolemies, besides the names of certain towns- with a few inscriptions, are coins, still occasionally picked up by the traveller.^ On the other hand, Greece and Rome have left their monuments Greek and ovcr the wholc land, but especially on the Roman. plains and plateaus : in Lebanon solitary Greek temples, with inscriptions to the gods of Greece and the native gods ; but across Jordan whole cities, with all the usual civil architecture of theatres, amphitheatres, forums, temples, baths, and colonnaded streets. Yet you will see none earlier than the time Rome threw her shield between ' Wright, Empire of the Hittites ; Conder, Heth and Moab ; Sayce's Races of the Old Testament ; Leon de Lantsheeres, De la race et de la langue des Hittites, Bruxelles, 1891 ; V. Luschan, etc., Ausgrabiingen in Sendschirli^ I. Einl. V. Inschriften, Berlin, 1893 (not seen). * Robinson, Later B. K., 618 ff. ; Layard, Discov. in Nineveh, etc., 21 1 n. ; Conder, Syrian Stone Lore, 56, 124. ^ Z.D.P. V. xii. * Conder, Tell-el-Amarna Tablets. P.E.F.Q., 1S93, Jan. ' Lepsius' Denkmdler aus Aegyften; Records of the Past, esp. Second Series, with Sayce on Tell-el-Amarna Tablets ; Tomkins on Campaigns of Thothmes iii. ; recent papers on these subjects in the P.E.F.Q. and Trans, of the Society of Biblical Archccology ', Conder, Tell-el-Amarna Tablets, 1893. Above all, W. Max Miiller, Asien u. Europa n. altiigyp. Denkmdler, 1S93. * The authorities on these are : — Cough's Coins of the Seleucidir, with Historical Afemoirs, London, 1S03 ; Gardner, Catalogue of Coins in the British Museum; l^he Seletuid Kings of Syria, London, 1878 ; De Saulcy in Me.'angcs de Numismatiqtte (pp. 45-64) ; and, of course, the relevaot lec-ionb in Eckhel, Doctritta numorum vtterum, and in MionneU Syria s Place in History 15 the Greek civilisation and the Arab drift from the desert. There are Roman pavements, bridges, and milestones ; tombstones of legionaries and officials; imperial and provin- cial edicts; ascriptions of glory and deity to the emperors.^ The ruins of the buildings of Herod the Great which sur- vive at Samaria, Caesarea, and elsewhere are all of Greek character, and must be added to the signs of Western influence, which found so strenuous an ally in that extra- ordinary Idumean. Coins also abound from this period — imperial coins and those of the free Greek cities.^ Through all these ages the contemporary Hebrew, Greek, and Latin literatures supplement the monuments. The historical books of the Old Testament, in the form in which we have them, were composed some centuries after the earliest events of which they treat ; but, so far as their geography is concerned, they reflect with wonderful accu- racy the early invasions and immigrations into The Evidence Syria, which we have other means of following. °^'^^ ^'^'^" In the Hebrew prophets we have contemporary evidence ^ The fullest collection of inscriptions is found in vol. iii. of Le Bas and Waddington, Inscriptions Grecques et Latines, recueillies en Grhe et en Asie Mineure ; text in pt. i., transcriptions and expositions in pt. ii. Cf. Wetzstein, Attsgewdhlte Griech. u. Lat, Inschriften gesainmelt auf Reisen in den Trachonen u. uin das Haurangtbirge, from the Transactions of the Royal Acad, of Sciences, Berlin, 1863, with a map; Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil d'Archeologie Orientate, Paris, 1S88, and various papers in the P.E.F.Q.', Mordtmann in the Z.D.P.V. vii. 1 19-124; Allen, 'On Various Inscriptions discovered by Merrill on the East of the Jordan,' in the American Journal of Philology, vi. ; Rendell Harris, Some recently Dis- covered Inscriptions ; my own paper in the Critical Review, Jan. 1892, on 'Some Unpublished Inscriptions from the Hauran,' twelve in all, which I have republished in the end of this book. For any relevant Semitic in- scriptions, see the Corpus Inscriptioimm Semiticarum, Paris, 1881 ff. Cf. Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire. * These are still being found in considerable numbers. The authorities are: — F. de Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, Paris, 1874; Madden, Coins ofthejeivs (in part) ; Eckhel, and Mionnet. 1 6 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land of the Assyrian, Egyptian, Scythian, Babylonian, and Persian invasions : to all these the pages of prophecy are as sensitive as the reed-beds of Syria are to the passage of the wind and the flood. Later books, like Daniel and Ecclesiastes, and fragments of books, like some Psalms, betray by their style of thought, and by their language, that Israel has felt the first Greek influences. The books of the Maccabees and Josephus trace for us the course of Greek and Roman advance, the long struggle over plain and mountain — the Hellenisation of the former, the final conquest of the latter by Rome. The Gospels are full of signs of the Roman supremacy — publicans, taxes, Caesar's superscrip- tion on coins, the centurions, the incubus of the Legion, the authority of Caesar. The Acts tell us how upon the west of Jordan Rome defended Christianity from Judaism, as upon the east she shielded Hellenism from the desert barbarians. In Pagan literature we have by this time many histories and geographies with large information about the Graeco-Roman influence in Syria up to the Fall of Jerusalem.^ For the first six centuries of our era Syria was a province of the Empire, in which, for a time, Hellenism was more at Early Chris- home than in Hellas itself, and Christianity tian Records. ^^,^g ^^g^. persecuted and then established by Western edicts and arms. The story of this is told by the Syrian and Greek historians of the Church, the 1 Polybius passim ; Diodorus Sicuius ; Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander, ii.; Quintus Curtius, iv. ; Strabo's Geo};>aphy, especially xvi. 2, and Ptolemy's; Geographi Graci Minores (edd., Hudson, Oxford, 1698-1712, and Miiller, Paris, 1855-61); Pliny's Hist. Nat.,y. 13-19; Tacitus. In English, of. Gibbon; Mommsen's Provinces of the Roman Empire ; SchUrer's Hist, of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ, Eng., 1890 ff. ; Morrison's The Jews under Roman Rule, 1890; Mahaffy, The Gru't World under Roman ::>iViiy, iSpo. Syria's Place in History 1 7 lives of some saints, and some writings of the Fathers.^ It is supplemented by the Christian remains (especially east of the Jordan), churches, tombs, and houses, with many inscriptions in Greek and Aramaeic.^ The latest Greek inscription in Eastern Palestine appears to be from a year or two after the Moslem invasion. The next European settlement in Syria was very much more brief The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem de facto lasted from 1099 to 1 187— not ninety years ; Authorities on and the coast was Western a century longer. ^^^ Crusades. All the more are we astonished at the impression left on the land. In their brief day, these few hundred thousand.*? of colonists and warriors, though the sword was never out of their hand, organised the land into a feudal kingdom as fully assigned, cultivated, and administered as any part of contemporary France or England. Their chroniclers ^ do justice to their courage and exploits on the field, as well as to their treachery, greed, and lust : but to see how truly they made Syria a bit of the West, we need to go to that wonderful work, the Assizes of Jerusalem, to the documents ' Eusebius, History of the Church and Life of Constantine, The History was continued by Socrates for the years 306-439, by Sozomen largely in imita- tion of Socrates, and by Theodoret and Evagrius to 594. Stephanus Byzan- tinus (probably in Justinian's reign) wrote the 'Ee^iKa, of which we have only an epitome. The history of Zosimus is that of the Roman Empire from Augustus to 410. Jerome's Letters and his Commentaries, passim. The lives especially of Hilarion, by Jerome, and of Porphyry in the Acta Sanctorum. See ch. xi. s See ch. xxviii. ' The best are William, Archbishop of Tyre (i 174-1 iSS ?), Historia rerum tn partibus transmarinis gestarum a tempore successorum Mahumeth usque ad A.D. 1184 ; Geoffrey Vinsauf, Ltinerarium Fep's Afiglorum RicharJi ; Bongars' Gesta Dei per Francos ; Jacques de Vitry ; De Joinville's Memoirs of Louis IX. From the Saracen side, Boha-ed-Din's Life of Saladin, with excerpts from the History oi Kh^MtATu, etc., ed. Schultens, 1732 ; and Imad- ed-Din, El-Katib el Isfahani ; Conquete de la Syrie et de la PaUstine, poMi(5 par le Comte Carlo de Landberg : i., Texte Arabe. Leyden, 1888. B 1 8 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land of the great Orders of Chivalry,^ and to the buildings they have scattered all over the land.' The pilgrim literature, which, apart from trade, repre- sents the sole connection between the West and Syria in Pilgrims and ^^e centuries between the Moslem invasion Traders. ^^^ ^.j^^ Crusades and between the Crusades and last century, is exceedingly numerous. Most of it, too, is accessible in modern translations.^ After the Crusades the Venetians and Genoese continued for a century or two their factories on the Phoenician coast, by which the products of the Far East came to Europe.* ^ The authorities here are : — E. Rey, Les Colonies Franques de Syrie, aux xii"" et xiii'n' Sikhs, Paris, 1S83 ; Prutz, Entwickehmg v. Untergang des Tempel-Herren Ordens, Berlin, 1888 (not seen) ; Prutz's and Rohriclu's papers on the Charters, Papal Bulls, and other documents referring to the Orden der Deutsch Herren and other Orders in Z.D.P. V., vols. viii. and x. See also Conder's papers in the P.E.F.Q., vols. 1889 ff. The best edition of the Assizes 0/ Jerusalem, by John d'Ibelin, is Beugnot's in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades (Paris, 1841-1881). On the Crusades generally, of. Gibbon; Cox's little manual in the Epochs of History ; Sybel, Geschichte der A'reuzziige ; Karien u. Plane zur Paldstina-kunde aus dem 7 bis 10 Jahrhundert, by Bernhold Rohricht, i., ii,, and iii., in Z.D.P.V., vols. xiv. and xv. ; Rohricht's Pegesta Regni Hierosolymitatti, 1893 (not seen). '^ On Crusading masonry, see Conder in the P.E.F. Mem., Samaria under Caesarea, and Judiea under Ascalon. On the fortresses, see Rey, op. cit. ch. vii., with plans and views. On the churches, De Vogii^, £glises de la Terre Sainte ; cf. his Architecture civile et religieuse de la Syrie. • In Bohn's Early Travels in Palestine ; the translations of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society ; Tobler's Itineraria Hierosolymitana ; the French Archives de la Sociiti d' Orient Latin ; Carmoly's liindraires de la Terre Sainte des xiii'^-xvii"" sihles, Bruxelles, 1847, I have also found it useful to consult Reysslmch des heiligen Landes, das ist eine grundtliche Be- schreibiing alter u. jeder Meer u. Bilgerfahrten zum heyl. Lande, etc. etc., Franckfurt am Mayn, mdlxxxiii. ; the indispensable Quaresmius, Historica, Theologica et Monilis Terra: Sanctx Elucidatio, Antwerp, 1639 ; and Pietri Delia ValJe's Keisebeschreibung, translated from the Italian, GenfT, 1674, 1^"^ only a few of Iiis ' Sendschreiben ' refer to Syria. * Besides Rey, who treats of the commerce of the Crusades [op. cit. ch. ix.), the only authorities I know of are Heyd, Geschichte des Levantchandels im Mit- telalter, Stuttgart, 1879, 2 vols. ; in French, mucli enlarged, Leipzig, 1SS5-S6, 2 vols; and Discorso soprail Comiiterciodegli Italiani nel sec. xiv., Roma, 1S18. Syria's Place in History 19 Of Napoleon's invasion we have very full information, which not only illustrates the position of Syria as debatable ground between the East and the West, but is Napoleon's especially valuable for the light it throws upon invasion, the military geography of the Holy Land. One cannot desire a more comprehensive, a more lucid, outline of the relations of Syria to Egypt, to Asia, to Europe, than is given in the memoirs of his campaigns, dictated by Napoleon himself;^ while the accounts of his routes and the reasons given for them, his sieges, his losses from the plague, and his swift retreat, enable us to understand the movements of even the most ancient invaders of the land. Napoleon's memoirs may be supplemented by the accounts of the English officers who were with the Turkish forces.'' The European invasion of Syria, which belongs to our own day, is already making its impression on the land. Nothing surprised the writer more, on his Present Influ- return to the Holy Land m 1891, after an enceof Europe interval of eleven years, than the great in- ^ crease of red and sloping roofs m the landscape. These always mean the presence of Europeans : and where they appear, and the flat roofs beloved of Orientals are not visible, then the truly Western aspect of nature in the Holy Land asserts itself, and one begins to understand how Greeks, Italians, and Franks all colonised, and for cen- turies were at home in, this province of Asia. The Temple Christians from Wiirttemberg have perhaps done more to improve the surface of the country than any other Western * Guerre de r Orient : Cantpagnes ef^gyfte et de Syrie, Memoiresdictees par Napoleon lui-meme et publiees par General Bertrand, Paris, 1847. ' Walsh, Diary of the late Campaign^ ijggiSoi ; Wittman, M.D., Travel* in Syria, etc., ijgg-iSoi^ , . . in company with the Turkish Army. 20 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land agency.^ A Roman Catholic colony has been planted on the shores of the Lake of Galilee. There is an agricultural settlement for Jews near Jaffa, another colony at Artuf, and the Rothschild settlements above Lake Huleh. The Plain of Esdraelon is in the hands of a Greek capitalist. Other Western settlers are scattered over Palestine and Lebanon, and almost everywhere the cultivation of the vine and the silk-worm is spreading rapidly under Euro- p>ean care. Large Circassian colonies, planted by the Turkish Government itself near Caesarea and east of Jordan, must in time considerably affect both the soil and the population about them.^ But the most important material innovation from the West is the railway. The line just com- pleted between Jaffa and Jerusalem will be useful, it seems, only for pilgrims. Much more effect on the future of Syria may be expected from the line which follows the natural routes of commerce and war through the land from Haifa to Damascus.^ Not only will it open up the most fertile parts of the country, and bring back European civilisation to where it once was supreme, on the east of Jordan ; but if ever European arms return to the country- — as, in a contest for Eg>'pt or for the Holy Places, when may they * On these interesting colonies see their journal, Die Warte des Tempcls ; papers in recent volumes of the Z. D. P. V. ; and the account of them in Ross, CradU of Christianity, London, 1891. ' Their three chief colonies are Caesarea, Jerash, and Rabbath Ammon, the last two of which I visited in 189 1. The Government plays them and the Beduin off against each other. They are increasing the area of cultivated land, and improving the methods of agriculture. Perhaps the greatest change is their introduction of wheeled vehicles, which have not been seen in Palestine since the Crusade?, except within the last twenty years, when they have been confined to the Jaffa-Jerusalem and Beyrout-Damascus roads and the Temple colonies. See Appendix on ' Roads and \Mieeled Vehicles.' * Across Esdraelon, over the Jordan by Bethshan, round the south-east corner of the Lake of Galilee to opposite Tiberias, then up the gorge of Fik to the plateau of the Hauran. and 10 to Damascus. Syria s Place in History 2 1 not return ? — this railway running from the coast across the central battle-field of Palestine will be of immense strategic value.^ III. Syria's Opportunity Westward. In the two previous sections of this chapter we have seen Syria only in the passive state, overrun by those Arabian tribes who have always formed the stock of her population, and traversed, conquered and civilised by the great races of Asia, Africa, and Europe. But in the two remaining sections we are to see Syria in the active state — we are to see these Arab tribes, who have made her their home, pushing through the single opportunity gi%-en to them, and exercising that influence in which their glor>- and hers has consisted. It will be best to describe first the Opportunity, and then the Influence itself — which, of course, was mainly that of religion. In early times Syria had only one direction along which she could exercise an influence on the rest of the world. We have seen that she had nothing to give e_-,., c- ^ o o cvTta s Single to the great empires of the Nile and Euphra- <^^p«°^- tes on either side of her ; from them she could be only a borrower. Then Mount Taurus, though no barrier to peoples descending upon Syria from Asia Minor, seems always to have barred the passage in the opposite direc- tion. The Semitic race has never crossed Mount Taurus. ^ The European missionary and educational establishments 6dl rather undei the section of Religion. 2 2 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Practically, therefore, early Syria's only opening lay sea- wards. If she had anything to pour forth of her own, or of what she had borrowed from the civilisations on either side of her, this must be the direction of outflow. So some of her tribes, whose race had hitherto been known only as land traders, voyagers of the desert, pushed out from her coasts upon the sea. They found it as studded with islands as the desert is studded with oases, and by means of these they gradually reached the very west of Europe. The first of these islands is within sight of Syria. Cyprus is clearly visible from the hills of northern Syria immediately opposite to it, and at certain sea- The Mediter- ^ / rr > ranean sons of the year may even be descried from Islands. Lebanon above Beirut.^ From Cyprus the coast of Asia Minor is within reach, and the island of Rhodes at the beginning of the Greek Archipelago , whence the voyage was easy, even for primitive naviga- tion, to the Greek mainland, Sicily, Malta, the African coast, Spain and the Atlantic, or north by Italy to Sar- dinia, Corsica and the coast of Gaul. Along those islands and coasts the line of Phoenician voyages can be traced by the deposit of Semitic names, inscriptions and legends.^ ^ See ch. vii., on tlie Coast. ' For the- Phoenician inscriptions in Cyprus, Rhodes, Sicily, Malta, Carthage, Sardinia, Spain, and Marseilles, see the Corpus Inscriptioiium Semiticarum, vol. i. part i. For names, take the following as instances : — Kition, in Cyprus, is the Hebrew Chittim (see ch. vii.). Mount Atahyrus, in Rhodes, is Mount Tabor, a Semitic term for height. Here Diodorus tells us Zeus was worshipped as a bull, evidently a trace of the Baal -Moloch worship. On many ./Egean islands the worship of Chronos points to ttie same source. The Cypiian Aplirodite herself is just Ashtorolh ; and her great feast was at the usual Semitic festival season in the beginning of April, her sacrifice a sheep (Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 387). One proof of Phoenician influence is the presence of BeruXaj ( = Beth -el), or sacred stones, conical or ovoid oillars. One was in the temple of AiAlnoditc at Syria s Place in History 23 It is not surprising that the early Greek civilisation, which they did so much to form, should have given the Phoeni- cians the fame of inventors. But they were Phoenician not much more than carriers. At this early influence, stage of her history Syria had little to give to the West except what she had wholly or partly borrowed. Her art was Egyptian ; the letters she introduced to Europe were from Egyptian sources ; even the commercial terms which she brought into the Greek language from Asia may not have been her own. But quite original were other droppings of her trade on Greece — names of the letters, of vegetables, metals, and some wares,^ and most, though not all, of the religion she conveyed. The exact debt of Greek religion to Phoenicia will never be known, but the more we learn of both races the more we see how big it was. Myths, rites, morals, all spread westwards, and formed some of the earliest constituents of Greek civilisation. The most of the process was probably over before history begins, for Tarshish was in existence by 1 100 B.C. ; and Paphos (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 3). In Sicily a Carthaginian coin has been dis- covered with the legend 'BARAT'='the wells,' the Phcenician name for Syracusa. Farther west, Carthage is Qarta Hadasha, ' the New City ' ; Cadiz, or Gades, is Gadira, from ' gadir,' a fenced place (see Bloch's Phoenician Glossary). Tarshish is also of Semitic formation, but of doubtful meaning. Port Mahon, in Minorca, is from the Carthaginian general, Mago. Among the legends are, of course, those of Perseus and Andromeda, Cadmus (from 'Kedem,' the East), Europa, etc. ^ The following are some of the Phoenician loanwords in Greek : — The names of the letters Alpha, Beta, etc. ; commercial terms, appa^wv, interest = p3^y; fJtya, weight or coin = njtD; KiiaWrji, pirate, from ??l!^, booty. The name of at least one animal, ?D3 = the camel ; names of vegetables, like va(rwTros = 2)]ii; /SaXcra/iOf = Dti'3; Kvirpot, Lawsonia alba = 1DJ ; Xt/3avo5, frankincense tree^nj^? ; /caam = nj/^Xp, etc. etc. ; of other objects, xtTwys riinS (?) ; kXw/Soj, bird-cage = 3 v3, etc. The religious term BeTi/\ai = sacred stones, is the Semitic Beit-el, or BetheU 24 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land perhaps the Phoenician migration and establishment of colonies in the West was connected with the disturbances in Syria in the fourteenth century. Another important emigration took place five centuries later. About 800, some fugitives from Tyre founded near an old art age. Phoenician settlement on the coast of Africa, opposite Sicily, another colony called Qarta Hadasha. That is almost good Hebrew for * the New City,' and has been corrupted by the Greeks into Carchedon, and by the Romans into Carthago. In the sixth century Carthage obtained the sovereignty over her sister colonies in the West ; ^ and in the fifth century, while the Northern East under Persia assailed Greece across Asia Minor, the Semitic portion of the East twice assailed Greece across Sicily under the leadership of Carthage.^ The second assault was led by one whose name was Hannibal, and whose title, like that of all Phoenician magistrates, was Shophet. But Shophet is pure Hebrew, the title of Israel's rulers from Joshua to Samuel. And Hannibaal is just ' the grace of Baal.' Put Jah for Baal, and you have the Hebrew Hananiah ; or reverse the word, and you have Johanan, the Greek loannes and our John.^ The Greek colonies in Sicily held their own — held their own, but did not drive the invaders forth. It was reserved for another power to do this and keep the Semite out of Europe. The first Punic — that is, Poinic, ^oiVt/co See D. n6. » Cf. Robertson Smith, O.TJ.C, 315 flf. Syria's Place in History 35 discipline for something higher. By keeping the command- ments, and cherishing the hopes, in however mechanical a way, Israel held herself distinct and pure. And, therefore, though she felt the land slipping from under her, and con- soled herself, as her hold on this world became less sure, with an extraordinary development of apocalypse — visions of another world that are too evidently the refuges of her despair in this — she still kept alive the divinest elements in her religion, the gifts of a tender conscience, and of the hope of a new redemption under the promised Messiah. He came in Jesus of Nazareth. He came when the political estate of Israel was very low. He was born into the Empire : He grew up within twenty miles Jesus Christ. of the great port by which Rome poured her soldiers and officials upon His land. His youth saw Herod's embellishment of Palestine with Greek archi- tecture. The Hellenic spirit breathed across all the land. Jesus felt the might and the advantage of these forces, which now conspired to build upon Syria so rich a monu- ment of Pagan civilisation. When He had been endowed by the Spirit with the full consciousness of what He could be, He was tempted, we are told, to employ the marvellous resources of Greece and Rome. The Devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high uwuntain and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. In that day such a vision was nowhere in the world so possible as in Syria. But He felt it come to Him wedded to apostasy. All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. And He replied from the Hebrew Scriptures with a confession of allegiance to the God of Israel : Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship Jehovah thy God, and Hint only shalt thou serve. Also 36 The Historical Geo^aphy of the Holy Land on other occasions He made an absolute distinction between Israel and the Gentiles : Not as the Gentiles, He His view of the said, foT after all these things do the Gentiles Gentile world. ^^^^^ ^^^ y^^^^ heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. Ye worship ye know not what, we know what we worship, for the salvation is from the fews, I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But within Israel and her Scriptures Jesus made great distinctions. He said that much of Scripture was tem- His judgment porary, given at the time because of the hard- of Israel. j^^gg ^f ^j^^ people's hearts, laws and customs that had passed away with the rise to a new stage in God's education of the world. The rest He confirmed, He used for feeding His own soul, and for teaching and leading others to God. Within the nation, also, He distinguished between the true and the false Israel. He insisted that, especially of late, Judaism had gone astray, laying too much emphasis on the letter of the law, nay, adding intolerably to this, and wrongly, foolishly, desiring the external king- dom. He insisted on the spiritual as against the external, on the moral as against the ceremonial, on grace as above law. So the religious authorities were moved against Him. But their chief cause of offence — and it has ever since been the stumbling-block of many who count His ethical His claims teaching supreme — was the claim He made for Himself, ^qj. j-Hmself. He represented Himself not only as the Messiah, but as indispensable to the race ; He not only read the whole history of Israel as a preparation for Himself, but, looking forward, He claimed to inspire, to rule, and to judge all history of men for all time to come. A little bit of Syria was enough for His own ministry, but He sent His disciples into the whole Syria s Place in History 37 world. Morality He identified with obedience to Himself. Men's acceptance by God He made dependent on their acceptance of His claims and gifts. He announced the forgiveness of sins absolutely, yet connected it with His own death. He has given the world its highest idea of God, yet He made Himself one with God. He predicted His death, and that He should rise again : and to His disciples not expecting this He did appear, and, in the power of their conviction that God had proved His words and given Him the victory over death. He sent them into the whole world — the whole world to which every port in Syria, on sea or desert, was at that time an open gateway. To the story of His life and death, to the testimony of His resurrection, to His message from God, the Greek world yielded, which had refused to listen to Judaism. All the little frontiers and distinctions of Syria melted before Him. For the first time, without the force of arms, the religion of Israel left the highlands, in which it had been so long confined, and flowed out upon the plains. With the Book of Acts we are on the spread of sea-coast and among Greek cities ; Peter is ^ °^'^ cured of his Judaism in Caesarea, and the Holy Ghost descends on the Gentiles ; the chief persecutor of the Church is converted on pagan soil, at Damascus ; the faith spreads to Antioch, and then bursts westward along the old Phcenician lines, by Cyprus, the coasts of Asia Minor, the Greek isles and mainland, to Italy, Africa, and Spain. But Christianity had not yet left Syria. As we shall see when we come to visit the Maritime Plain and the Hauran, there are no other fields in the world ^u . • Cbnstianity where the contest of Christianity and Paganism *°** Paganism, was more critical, or has left more traces. The histories 38 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land of Eusebius and his followers, the lives of such saints as Porphyry and Hilarion, relate in full the missionary labours, the persecutions, the martyrdoms, and the am- biguous political triumphs of the Church in Philistia and the Shephelah.^ In the indestructible basalt of Hauran there are monuments of the passage from Paganism to Christianity even more numerous and remarkable than the catacombs and ruins of ancient Rome. There are Christianity ^^^° what Italy caunot give us — the melan- and Islam, choly wrecks of the passage from Christianity to Mohammedanism. This passage was accomplished within a few years. The Mohammedan era began in 622, Damascus fell in 634, Jerusalem in Gn, Antioch in 638. The last Greek inscription in Hauran is about 640, and has no emperor's name, but simply, 'Christ being King.' 2 The reasons of this rapid displacement of the one religion by the other are very clear. When they met and fought for Syria, Christianity was corrupt, and identified with a political system that was sapped by luxury and rent asunder by national strifes ; Mohammedanism was simple, austere, full of faith, united, and not yet so intolerant as it afterwards became. Many Christians accepted with joy the change of ruler ; {t.\s believed that, in the end, he would enforce a change of faith as well. But afterwards the persecution settled steadily down. The Christians were driven to the heights of Lebanon, or were suffered to remain only about Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Damascus, and a few other localities. Then came what we have already glanced at in our catalogue of Western influences on Syria, the impression * For the Hauran mocuments, see p. 13; for Eusebius and other hir torians, p. IJ. * See ch. xjcviii. SyricCs Place in History 39 made by the Crusades. Seen across the shadow of their great failure, the Crusades shine but a gleam of chivalry and romance. Only when you visit Syria do you learn with what strenuous faith, with what an infinite purpose, those ventures of a mistaken Christianity were waged. Syria was settled, organised, and built over The Crusades. almost as fully as any part of contemporary England. The reason that the remains of Greek civilisa- tion are so meagre on the west of the Jordan is the activity of the Crusaders. Large cities which were famous in ancient times, like Askalon and Caesarea, bear now in their ruins few but Crusading marks. How firmly they were built ! To-day the mortar in them is harder than the stone it binds. But it is not by these coast fortresses, nor by the huge castles crowning the heights far inland, that the Crusades impress you, so much as by the ruins of lonely churches and cloisters, which are scattered all over the land, far from the coast and the shelter of the great Prankish citadels.^ After this interval of Christian rule comes the long period of silence and crumbling, and then we see the living churches of to-day, the flourishing missions and schools of nearly every sect in Christendom, and the long lines of pilgrims coming up to Jerusalem from the four corners of the world,^ * For authorities on the Crusades, see pp. 17, 18. * The chief native churches of Syria are (i) the orthodox Greek, with two patriarchates in Syria — Antioch and Jerusalem ; the patriarchs are nominally subject to the Patriarch at Constantinople, and to the Synod there. (2) The Maronites (from John Marc, their first bishop) were originally Monothelites, but in 1 182, as a result of dealings with Rome, they were received into com- munion with the latter, giving up their Monothelite doctrines, but retaining the Syriac language for the mass, and the marriage of their priests. They have one 'Patriarch of Antioch and all the East,' elected by bishops and archbishops, and confirmed by the Pope. There is a college for them, con- ducted by Jesuits, near the Nahr el Kelb. The best account of them is 40 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land In all this the Palestine of to-day is much more a museum of church history than of the Bible — a museum full of living as well as ancient specimens of its subject. The present state of Christianity in Syria is very interesting, showing almost all the faults, as well as vir- . , tues, which have been conspicuous in church Christianity . '■ in Syria history from the beginning. Greeks and Latins to-day. are wagmg with each other a war for the pos- session of holy places, real and feigned. They have dis- figured the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and threaten to cover the most of the land with rival sanctuaries, planted side by side as they are even at Gethsemane.^ Behind all the Churches move, as of old, political interests, com- that by Mr. Bliss in the P.E.F.Q. vols, for 1892-3. (3) In the seven- teenth century Roman missions succeeded in detaching a large number of the Greek Church, allowing the mass in the vernacular, Arabic or Greek com- munion in both kinds, and marriage of the clergy ; but insisting on recognition of the Pope, adoption of the Filioque, and observance of Latin Easter. These are now the Melchites, or Greek Catholics, who own one 'Patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria,' elected by bishops, confirmed by the Pope. (4) Fragments of the old Syriac Church still exist in the land. Protestant missionaries came to the land in the beginning of the century, via Cyprus, where their earliest tombstones are. The American Presbyterians have worked longest and most powerfully— their two greatest works Uie College and its Press at Beyrout, and their translation of the Bible into Arabic. The Irish Presbyterian Church labours in Damascus and round about ; Church of Scotland Missions to the Jews in Beyrout ; Free Church of Scotland's Medical Missions at Shweir in Lebanon, at Tiberias and Safed ; Anglican Missions all over Palestine, with bishop in Jerusalem ; Jewish Missionary Societies of Church of England in Jerusalem, Damascus, and elsewhere; Quaker and other missions here and there. Independent societies are also at work, schools at Nazareth, Jaffa, etc., and especially Edinburgh Medical Mission at Damascus, and British Syrian Schools organisation, which pretty well covers Lebanon. East of Jordan are the Church Missionary's church and schools at Es-Salt and other places, and an independent mission at Kerak. * The bitter feeling between the two Churches which this rival building of ecclesiastical show-places has stirred may be seen in the title of a paper in the Roman Catholic Das Heilige Land for 1890, pp. 137-148. It runs, Di* jungsten Gewaltthaten der schismatischen Griechen in Jerusalem. Syria s Place in History 41 plicating and further debasing the quarrel. The native Christians, partly excusable by the long oppression they have suffered, feel that they hold no mission to Moham- medanism, and, it would appear, hardly believe that a Mohammedan can be converted. The Protestant missions have also, in present political conditions, found it impos- sible to influence any but individual Moslems ; but they have introduced the Bible in the vernacular, and this has had important effects on the native Churches. It is all very well to say, as certain have said in the recent con- troversy within the Anglican Church, that the Western Churches are in Palestine for other purposes than building rival conventicles to the Eastern ; but once the Bible was introduced in the vernacular, and studied by the common people, secession was morally certain from the native Churches, and for this the Western missionaries were bound, whether willing or no, to provide congregations and pastors. It is by a native church whose mother tongue is Arabic that the Moslems will be reached, though we do not yet see whether this is to take place through the older bodies, that give evidence of new life, or through the new congregations of the Western missions. Meantime two things are coming home to the Moslem : opportunities of education of a very high kind are within reach of all portions of the population, and even the Moslems of Damascus are waking up to the real meaning of Christianity, through that side of her which represents perhaps more vividly than any other, the Lord's own love and power to men — medical missions. CHAPTER II THE FORM OF THE LAND AND ITS HISTORICAL CONSEOUENCES For this Chapter consult Maps I., II. and III. THE FORM OF THE LAND AND ITS HISTORICAL CONSEQUENCES WE have seen that Syria's closest relations are with the Arabian peninsula, of which, indeed, it forms the north end. That Syria is not also Arabian in char- acter— that the great Arabian Desert does not sweep on to the Mediterranean except at the extreme south-east corner — is due not only to the neighbourhood of that sea, but much more to the peculiar configuration of the land itself. The Arabian plateau ceases nearly ninety miles from the Mediterranean, because an immense triple barrier is formed against it. Parallel to the coast of the Levant, and all the way from Mount Taurus to the neighbourhood of the Red Sea, there run two great mountain ranges with an extraordinary valley beTween them. These ranges shut out the desert, and by help of the sea charge the whole climate with moisture — providing rains and Syria's barrier mists, innumerable fountains and several large '° ^^^ desert. rivers and lakes. They and their valley and their coast- land are Syria ; Arabia is all to the east of them. The Syrian ranges reach their summits about midway in the Alpine heights of the Lebanons. The Lebanons are the focus of Syria. Besides the many streams which spring full-born from their roots, and lavish water on their 46 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land immediate neighbourhood, four great rivers pass from the Lebanons across the length and breadth of the province. The Orontes flows north, and waters most of northern r- Syria, creating Antioch ; the Abana, or Barada, flows east, and reclaims for Syria a large portion of what would otherwise be desert, creating Damascus ; the Litany rushes west in a bed too deep and narrow for any work save that of intersecting the 'and ; and the Jordan flows south, forming three lakes, and otherwise intensifying the division between the two ranges. Of these rivers, only the Orontes and Litdny reach the open sea ; the Jordan comes to an end in the Dead Sea, and the Abana dies out in combat with the desert. The fate of the latter is a signal proof of how desperately Syria has been rescued from Arabia, and a symbol of the profound influence which the surrounding, invading desert has had upon all her culture and civilisation. The part of Syria with which we have to do is all to the south of the summits of the Lebanons. On their A triple western slope the gorge of the Litany may be barrier. taken as the most natural limit, though we shall sometimes pass a little beyond it. On the eastern slope we shall not go north of the Abana and Damascus. We have first to survey the great triple barrier against the desert, and we commence with its most distinctive feature — the valley between the two great ranges. South of the Lebanons, this valley, with the young Jordan in its embrace, begins to sink below the level of the sea. At the Lake of Huleh it is just seven feet above I. The Jordan ^'^'^t levcl ; at the Lake of Galilee, ten miles valley. farther south, it is 680 feet below, and so for sixty-five miles more it continues to descend, till at the The Form of the Land 47 Dead Sea it is 1290 feet below. From here it rapidly rises to a height of nearly 300 feet above the sea, and thence slowly sinks again to the Gulf of Akabah, which 'brnms its southern continuation. For this unique and continuous trench from the Lebanons to the Red Sea there is no single designation. By using two of its names which overlap each other, we may call it the Jordan- 'Arabah Valley. From the Lake of Galilee to the south of the Dead Sea it is called by the Arabs the Ghor, or Depression.^ On either side of this run the two great Syrian ranges. Fundamentally of the same formation, they are very diffe- rent in disposition. The western is a long, deep ^ The west- wall of limestone, extending all the way from ^'^" ''^"^^" Lebanon in the north to a line of cliffs opposite the Gulf and Canal of Suez — the southern edge of the Great Desert of the Wandering. In Lebanon this limestone is disposed mainly in lofty ranges running north and south ; in Upper Galilee it descends to a plateau walled by hills ; in Lower Galilee it is a series of still less elevated ranges, running east and west. Then it sinks to the plain of Esdraelon, with signs of having once bridged this level by a series of low ridges.^ South of Esdraelon it rises again, and sends forth a branch in Carmel to the sea, but the main range continues parallel to the Jordan Valley. Scattering at first through Samaria into separate groups, it consolidates towards Bethel upon the narrow table-land of Judaea, with an average height of 2400 feet, continues so to the south of Hebron, where by broken and sloping strata it lets itself down, widening the while, on to the plateau of the Desert of the Wandering. This ^ See more fully ch. xxii. ' At Shekh Abrek and Lejjua 48 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Western Range we shall call the Central Range, for it, and not the Jordan Valley, is historically the centre of the land. The watershed lies, not down the middle of the range, but nearer the east. The western flank is long and gentle, falling on to a maritime plain of very varying breadth, a few hundred feet above the sea ; but the eastern is short and precipitous, dragged down, as it were, by the fissure of the Jordan Valley to far below the sea-level. The effect of this appears in the sections given on the large map accompanying this volume. Down the eastern side of the Jordan Valley the range is even more continuous than that down the west. Sink- Theeast- ing Swiftly from Mount Hermon to 2000 feet em range. above the sca, it preserves that average level southward across the plateau of Hauran to the great cleft of the river Yarmuk ; is still high, but more broken by cross valleys through Gilead ; and forms again an almost level table-land over Moab. Down the west of Hauran, on the margin of the Jordan Valley, the average level is raised by a number of extinct volcanoes, which have their counterparts also to the south and east of Damascus, and these have covered the limestone of the range with a deep volcanic deposit as far as the Yarmuk. South of the eastern line of volcanoes runs the Jebel Hauran, or Druze Mountain, as it is called from its latest colonists, and forms the boundary in that direction — the eastern boundary of Syria. Farther south the range has no such definite limit, but rolls off imper- ceptibly into the high Arabian Desert. Here we may take for a border the great Hajj Road, past the Upper Zerka to Ma'en. We see, then, that Palestine is disposed, between the The Form of the Land 49 Sea and the Desert, in a series of four parallel lines or bands running north and south : ^ — The The The The Sea. Maritime Central Jordan Eastern Desert. Plain. Range. Valley. Range. Now, were there no modifications of these four long bandg between the Sea and the Desert, the geography of Palestine would indeed be simple, and in con- iii-. /-T-.! . ,.r^ Modifications sequence the history of Palestme very different of the four from what has actually been. But the Central ^°"^*' Range undergoes three modifications which considerably complicate the geography, and have had as powerful an influence on the history as the four long lines themselves. In the first place, the Central Range is broken in two, as we have seen, by_the Plain of Esdraelon, which unites the Jordan" Valley with the Maritime ^'^'^^'°"- Plain. Again, from Judaea the Central Range does not fall immediately on the Maritime Plain, as it does farther north from Samaria. Another smaller, more open range comes between— the hills of the so-called yhe Shephelah. These are believed to be of a shepheiah. different kind of limestone from that of the Central Range, and they are certainly separated from Judaea by a well- defined series of valleys along their whole extent.* They do not continue opposite Samaria, for there the Central Range itself descends on the plain, but, as we shall see, they have a certain counterpart in the soft, low hills which separate the Central Range from Carmel. And thirdly, south of Judsa the Central Range "^^"^ ^"^^*'- droops and spreads upon a region quite distinct in char- acter from the tableland to the north of Hebron— the * This is the division adopted by Robinson in his Phys. Geog., p. 17, and by Henderson, Palestine, pp. 15-21. » See p. 20$. D 50 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Negeb, or South Country as it is translated in our English version. As all of these three regions — Esdraelon, the Shephelah and the Negeb — have also proved their distinct- ness from the Central Range, as from the Maritime Plain, by their greatly differing histories, we add them to our catalogue of the ruling features of the land, which we now reckon as seven. From the West these lie as follows : — 1. The Maritime Plain. 2. The Low Hills or Shephelah. 3. The Central Range — cut in two by 4. Esdraelon, and running out into 5. The Negeb. 6. The Jordan Valley. 7. The Eastern Range. In addition there are the Lebanons and Carmel. For some reasons the Lebanons ought to be at the head of the The Lebanons above Hst, bccausc the four long strips flow and Carmel. fj-^j^ ^^^ ^^^ dominated by them. But the Lebanons are too separate, and stand by themselves. Carmel, on the other hand, is not separate enough. Geo- graphically a branch of the Central Range, though cut off from it by a district of lower and softer hills like the Shephelah, Carmel has never had a history of its own, but its history has been merged either in that of the coast or in that of Samaria.^ Carmel, however, was always held distinct in the imagination of Hebrew writers, as, with its bold forward leap to the sea, it could not but be ; nor will any one, who desires to form a vivid picture of the country, leave this imposing headland out of his vision. The whole land may then be represented as on the opposite page. ' Se« ch. XI. PHYSICAL SKETCH MAP BarJiolaiTu'H tda£ 52 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land In the summary descriptions of the Promised Land in the Old Testament we find all these features men- tioned,— with the exception of Esdraelon, which falls under the general designation of valley-land, and with the addition sometimes of the slopes or flanks ^ of both ranges, which are distinct in character, and often in popu- lation, from the broad plateaus above them. An account of these passages, and of all the general geographical terms of the Bible, will be found in an appendix. Here it is enough to give a few of the proper names. We have mentioned that for the Jordan Valley, the 'Arabah ; that for the Low Hills, the Shephelah ; and that for the South, the Negeb. The Maritime Plain between Carmel and Joppa was called in Hebrew Sharon, probably mean- ing the Level, but in Greek the Forest, from a great oak forest which once covered it.^ To the south the name for it was Pelesheth, Philistia, or, poetically, the Shotdder of the Philistines^ from its shape as it rises from the sea.^ The Hebrew word daroni or darovia^ meaning south, was applied by the Jews shortly before our era to the whole of the Maritime Plain southwards from Lydda : ^ in Chris- tian times Daroma extended inland to the Dead Sea, and absorbed both the Shephelah and Negeb.* The Arabs confined the name to a fortress south of Gaza — the Darom of the Crusaders.^ What we know as Esdraelon was, in its 1 Ashdoth = nnK'K- ' See pp. 147, 148. » Isa. xi. 14. * Dm, or with the Aramaic definite article NDIIT. » Neubauer, Gfog. du Talmud, p. 62. • In the Onomasticon, not only is Eshtemoa in Dan said to be in thf Daroma, and Ziklag and other towns of Simeon, far south of Beit-Jibrin ; but Maon and Carmel on the Judaean table-land, and Gadda imminens mart mortuo. There was a Daroma Interior (see Art. ' Jether '). '' Now Deir cl Belah. Will. Tyre, xx. 19, derives Darom from Deir-Rum, Convent of the Greeks, but the other is the probable derivation. The Form of the Land 53 western part, the Open Plain of Megiddo, but, on its eastern slope to the Jordan, the Vale of Jezreel.^ Neither of the two great ranges was covered in its whole extent by one proper name. The Central was divided, according to the tribes upon it, into Mount Judah, Mount Ephraim or Israel,^ and Mount Naphtali. Jn the English version mount is often rendered by hill-country^ but this is mis- leading. With their usual exactness, the Hebrews saw that these regions formed part of one range, the whole of which they called not by a collective name, but singularly — The Mountain — ^just as to-day the inhabitants of the Lebanons speak of their double and broken range also in the singular, as El-Jebel. Before the Israelites came into the land they knew tjie Central Range as the Mount of the Amorite.* The Eastern Range was known under the three great divisions of Bashan to the north of the Varmuk; Mount Gilead to the south of that ;^ and to the south of that across Moab, Ha-Mish6r, The Level, or The Plateau par excellence. Another name applied to the northern end of the Moab mountain-wall, as seen from the west, the Mount or Mountains of the 'Abarim ^ — that is, Those-on-the-Other-Side — was applicable, as indeed it was probably applied, to the Eastern Range in its entire extents Viewing, then, all these modifications of the great parallel lines of the land, we see that this fourfold division, fundamental as it is, is crossed, and to some Mountain extent superseded, by a simpler distinction ^^ ^^^°* between mountain and plain, or, to speak more exactly, ' See ch. xix. ' See pp. 325, 338, ' Hill-country of Judaea, Luke i. 39, 65; Josh. xxi. Ii; but always Mouni Eghrainx, * Deut. i. 7. ' But see ch. xxv. • Numb, xxvii. 12. '' Traces of this in Ezek. xxxix. 11, where read 0^*^31/. 54 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land between hilly country and level country. This is obvious geographically : it has been of the utmost importance historically, for the mountain was fit for infantry warfare only, but the plain was feasible for cavalry and chariots ; and, as Palestine from her position was bound to be crossed by the commerce and the war of the two great continents on either side of her, her plains would bear the brunt of these, while her mountains would be comparatively remote from them. All the Central Range, and the centre of the Eastern Range, was mountain, fit for infantry only. The Maritime Plain, Esdraelon, and the Jordan Valley, along with the great plateaus of the Eastern Range, Hauran and Moab, were plains, bearing the great trunk roads, and feasible for cavalry and chariots. Now, it is of the greatest importance to observe that all the mountain-land, viz., the Central Range and Gilead, represents Israel's proper and longest possessions, first won and last lost — while all the valley-land and table-land was, lor the most part, hardly won and scarcely kept by Israel ; but at first remained for long in Canaanite keeping, and towards the end was the earliest to come under the great invading empires. Not only the course of Assyrian and Egyptian war but the advance of Greek culture and of Roman conquest is explained (as we shall see in detail) by this general distinction between hilly and level land, which, especially on the east of Jordan, does not correspond to the distinction of mountain range from Jordan Valley and Maritime Plain. Enisled by that circuit of lowland — the Gh6r, Esdraelon, and the Maritime Plain — the Central Range in Judah and Ephraim formed Israel's most con- stant sanctuary, and Gilead was generally attached to it But, from the table-land of Hauran, Israel were driven The Form of the Land 5 5 by the chariots of Syria ; they held Moab only at inter- vals ; the Canaanites kept them for long and repeated periods out of the Upper Jordan Valley and Esdraelon ; and, except for two brief triumphs in the morning and in the evening of their history, the Philistines kept them out of the Maritime Plain. So, when the Greeks came, the regions they covered were the coast, the Jordan Valley, the Hauran, the eastern levels of Gilead, and Moab ; but it is noticeable that in Gilead itself the Greek cities were few and late, and in the Central Range not at all. And so, when the Romans came, the tactics of their great generals, as may be most clearly illustrated from Ves- pasian's campaign, were to secure all the plains, then Samaria, and, last of all, the high, close Judaea. But this distinction between mountain and plain, which accounts for so much of the history of the land, does not exhaust its extraordinary variety. Palestine is almost as much divided into petty provinces as Greece, and far more than those of Greece are her divisions intensified by differences of soil and climate. The two ends of the Jordan are not thirty miles away from those Brokenness of parts of the Maritime Plain which are respec- the land, tively opposite them, yet they are more separate from these than, in Switzerland, Canton Bern is from Canton Valais. The slopes of Lebanon are absolutely dis- tinct from Galilee ; Galilee is cut off from Hauran, and almost equally so from Samaria. From Hauran the Jebel Druz stands off by itself, and Gilead holds aloof to the south, and again Moab is distinct from Gilead. On each of the four lines, too, desert marches with fertile soil, implying the neighbourhood of very different races and systems of civilisation. Upon the Central Range 56 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land itself Judah is bare, austere, secluded — a land of shepherds and unchanging life : Samaria is fertile and open — a land of husbandmen, as much in love with, as they were liable to, foreign influences. These differences of soil are m- tensified by differences of climate. In Palestine there is every climate between the sub-tropical of one end of the Jordan Valley and the sub-Alpine above the other end. There are palms in Jericho and pine forests in Lebanon. In the Ghdr, in summer, you are under a temperature of more than 100° Fahrenheit, and yet you see glistening the snow-fields of Hermon. All the intermediate steps between these extremes the eye can see at one sweep from Carmel — the sands and palms of the coast ; the wheat-fields of Esdraelon ; the oaks and sycamores of Galilee ; the pines, the peaks, the snows of Anti-Lebanon. How closely these differences lie to each other ! Take a section of the country across Judaea. With its palms and shadoofs the Philistine Plain might be a part of the Egyptian Delta ; but on the hills of the Shephelah which overlook it, you are in the scenery of Southern Europe ; the Judaean moors which overlook them are like the barer uplands of Central Germany, the shepherds wear sheepskin cloaks and live under stone roofs — sometimes the snow lies deep ; a few miles farther east and you are down on the desert among the Bedouin, with their tents of hair and their cotton clothing ; a few miles farther still, and you drop to torrid heat in the Jordan Valley ; a few miles beyond that and you rise to the plateau of the Belka, where the Arabs say ' the cold is always at home.' Yet from Philistia to the Belk& is scarcely seventy miles. All this means separate room and station for a far greater variety of race and government than could The Form of the Land 57 have been effected in so small a land by the simple distinction of Mountain and Plain. What is said of the people of Laish, in the north nook of the Jordan Valley, is very characteristic of the country. And the five men of Dan came to Laish, and saw the people who were in its midst, peaceful and careless, possessing riches, and far from the Phcenicians, and without any relation with the Arameans} Laish is only twenty-five miles Its con- from the Sidonian coast, and about forty from sequences . . in history. Damascus, but great mountams mtervene on either side. Her unprovoked conquest by the Danites happened without the interference of either of those powerful states. From this single case we may under- stand how often a revolution, or the invasion or devasta- tion of a locality, might take place without affecting other counties of this province — if one may so call them, which were but counties in size though kingdoms in difference of race and government. The frequent differences of race in the Palestine of to-day must strike the most careless traveller. The Chris- tian peoples, more than half Greek and partly Frank, who were driven into the Lebanon at various times by the Arab and Turk, still preserve on their high sanctuary their racial distinctions. How much taller and whiter and nobler are the Druses of Carmel than the fellahin of the plain at their feet ! ^ How distinct the Druses of Jebel Hauran are from the Bedouin around them ! The ^ Judges xviii. 7 : according to Budde's separation of the two narratives intertwined in this chapter {Biicher Richttr etc., p. 140). ' To a less extent the same contrast prevails between the peasants of the Ghuta round Damascus and the finer peasants of Hauran, but the population of Hauran is, in many cases, so very recent an immigration (see ch. xxiv.), that it is difficult to appreciate the causes of this diflference. 58 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Greeks of Beyrout are half the world away from the Arabs of Damascus. On the Central Range, within Judaea itself, the desert has preserved the Bedouin unchanged, within a few miles of that medley of nations, Jerusalem. And, finally, within the Arab family there are differences that approach racial degree. The tropical Gh6r has engendered a variety of Arab, the Ghawarineh, whose frizzled hair and blackened skin contrast vividly with the pure Semitic features of the Bedouin of the plateaus above him — the 'Adwan or the Beni Sakhr. Therefore, while the simple distinction between mountain and plain enabled us to understand the course of the in- vasions of the great empires which burst on Syria, these Palestine a morc intricate distinctions of soil, altitude, and Land of Tribes, climate explain how it was that the minor races which poured into Palestine from parts of the world so different as Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and the Greek islands, sustained their own characters in this little crowded province through so many centuries. Palestine has never belonged to one nation, and probably never will. Just as her fauna and flora represent many geological ages, and are related to the plants and animals of many other lands,^ so varieties of the human race, culture and religion, the most extreme, preserve themselves side by side on those different shelves and coigns of her surface, in those different conditions of her climate. Thus when history first lights up within Palestine, what we see is a con- fused medley of clans — all that crowd of Canaanites, Amo- rites, Perizzites, Kenizzites, Hivites, Girgashites, Hittites sons of Anak and Zamzummim — which is so perplexing • For the extreme diversity, see Tristram's various works : Merril's Fast 0/ the Jordan ; and the sunnnnary in Henderson's Paltstitte. The Form of the Land 59 to the student, but yet in such thorough harmony with the natural conditions of the country and with the rest of the history,^ Again, if we remember the fitful nature of all Semitic warfare — the great rush, and if that be not wholly successful at first, the resting content with what has been gained — then we can appreciate why, in so broken a land, the invasion of the Hebrew nomads was so partial, and left, even in those parts it covered, so many Canaanite enclaves. And within Israel herself, we understand why ! her tribes remained so distinct, why she so easily split into two kingdoms on the same narrow Highlands, and why | even in Judah, there were clans like the Rechabites who preserved their life in tents and their austere desert habits, side by side with the Jewish vineyards and the Jewish cities. Palestine, formed as it is, and surrounded as it is, is emphatically a land of tribes. The idea that it can ever belong to one nation, even though this were the Jews, is contrary both to Nature and to Scripture. ^ Some of these undoubtedly represent various races like Amorites, Hittiles, antl probaMy Zamzummim. Others get their name from their localities or the kind of life they lead. CHAPTER III THE CLIMATE AND FERTILITY OF THE LAND, WITH THEIR EFFECTS ON ITS RELIGION For this Chapter consult Map I. THE CLIMATE AND FERTILITY OF THE LAND, WITH THEIR EFFECTS ON ITS RELIGION WE have already seen some of the pecuh'arities of the climate and soil of Palestine. We are able to appreciate in some degree the immense differences both of temperature and fertility, which are due^first, to the unusual range of level — from 1300 feet below the sea with a tropical atmosphere to 9000 feet above it with an Alpine, and, second, to the double exposure of the land — seawards, so that the bulk of it is subject to the ordinary influences of the Mediterranean basin, and desert-wards, so that part of it exhibits most of the characteristics of desert life. Within these ruling conditions we have now to look more closely at the details of the climate and fertility, and then to estimate their social and religious influence. I. Climate. The ruling feature of the climate of Syria is the division of the year into a rainy and a dry season.^ Towards the ' On the climate of Palestine, besides works of travel or residence which furnish meteorological statistics, see Lynch 's Narrative and Official Reports, and Barclay's City of the Great King; consult especially Robinson, Phys. Geog. of the Holy Land, ch. iii. ; P.E.F.Q., especially for 1872; 1883, Chaplin, Obi. on Climate of Jerus. ; 1888-1893, Glaisher on Meteoro. Obs. at Sarona; 1893-4, I^- at Jerus. ; Anderlind, Z.D.P.V., viii. loi ff. : Der Einfluss der Gebirgswaldungen in Nordl. Palastina auf die Vermehrung der wasserigcn Niederschlage daselbst ; Id. xiv. ; Ankel, GrundzQge der Landes natur des H'est/ordnn^anJes, IV, Das Klima ; Wiumann, Travels, 561-570. 64 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land end of October ^ heavy rains begin to fall, at intervals, for a day or several days at a time. These are what the English Bible calls the early or former rain, The rains. literally the Pourer? It opens the agricultural year ; the soil hardened and cracked by the long summer is loosened, and the farmer begins ploughing.' Till the end of November the average rainfall is not large, but it increases through December, January, and February, begins to abate in March, and is practically over by the middle of April. The latter rains of Scripture are the heavy showers of March and April.* Coming as they do before the harvest and the long summer drought, they are of far more importance to the country than all the rains of the winter months, and that is why these are passed over In Scripture, and emphasis is laid alone on the early and the latter rains. This has given most people the idea that there are only two intervals of rain in the Syrian year, at the vernal and the autumnal equinox ; but the whole of the winter is the rainy season, as indeed we are told in the well-known lines of the Song of Songs : Lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone. During most winters both hail and snow fall on the hills. Hail is common, and is often mingled with rain and with thunderstorms, which happen at intervals through the winter, and are frequent in spring. ' In Lebanon often a month earlier. ' mV, Deut, xi. 14, Jer. v. 24, Hos. ri. 3. miO, Joel ii. 23, Ps. Ixxxiv. 7 [E. V. 6). Cf. James v. 7. On rains and seasons generally see Book of Enoch. » The ecclesiastical year of the later Jews began in spring with the month Nisan. * B'IpPD. Besides the references in the last note but one, cf. Prov. xvi. 15, Jer. iii. 3, Zech. x. I. Rain generically = 1DD. A burst of rain = DK^'3. The Climate and Fertility of the Latid 65 The Old Testament mentions hail and thunder together.^ On the Central Range snow has been known to reach a depth of nearly two feet, and to lie for five days or even more, and the pools at Jerusalem have sometimes been covered with ice. But this is rare : on the Central Range the ground seldom freezes, and the snow usually disappears in a day.2 On the plateaus east of Jordan snow lies regu- larly for some days every winter, and on the top of Hermon there are fields of it through the summer. None has ever been seen to fall in the tropical Ghor. This explains the feat of Benaiah, who we?it down and slew a lion in the midst of a cistcrri in the day of the s7iow? The beast had strayed up the Judaean hills from Jordan, and had been caught in a sudden snowstorm. Where else than in Pales- tine could lions and snow thus come together ? In May showers are very rare, and from then till October, not only is there no rain, but a cloud seldom passes over the sky, and a thunderstorm is a miracle." Morning mists, however, are not uncommon — in mid^ summer, 1891, we twice woke into one as chill and dense as a Scotch 'haar'^ — but they are soon dispersed. In Bible lands vapour is a true symbol of what is frail and fleeting — as it cannot be to us northerners, to whose coasts the mists cling with a pertinacity suggestive of very oppo- site ideas. On the other hand, the dews of Syrian nights are excessive ; on many mornings it looks as if there had been heavy rain, and this is the sole slackening of the drought which the land feels from May till October. ' Ps. xviii. etc. ' On snow in Jerusalem, P.E.F.Q., 1883, 10 f. Ro'nnson, Pkys. Geog., p. 265. ^ 2 Sam. xxiii. 20. * i Sam. xii. 17, 18. * At Ghabaghib in Hauran on iglh, and Irbid in G'lead on 25th, June, temp. 48°. On mists and dews, of. Book of Enoch Ix E 66 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Throughout the summer prairie and forest fires are not uncommon. The grass and thistle of the desert will blaze for miles, driving the scorpions and vipers from their holes as John the Baptist describes in one of his vivid figures ; ^ and sometimes, as the prophets tell us, the air is filled with the smoke of a whole wood.^ The winds of Syria are very regular, and their place obvious in the economy of her life. He maketh His _ ministers of winds} They prevail from the west, and, with the help of the sea, they fulfil two great functions throughout the year. In the winter the west and south-west winds, damp from the sea, as they touch the cold mountains, drop their moisture and cause the winter rains. So our Lord said : When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower, and so it is} In summer the winds blow chiefly out of the drier north-west, and meeting only warmth do not cause showers, but greatly mitigate the daily hcat.^ This latter function is even more regular than the former, for it is fulfilled morning by morning with almost perfect punctuality. Those who have not travelled through a Syrian summer can scarcely realise how welcome, how The Summer Unfailing, a friend is the forenoon wind from west wmd. ^|^g ^^^^ j^^^^ j^g jg strongest just after noon, and does not leave you till the need for his freshness passes away with the sunset. He strikes the coast soon after sunrise ; in Hauran, in June and July, he used to reach ^ Luke iii. 7. ' Isa. v. 24 ; ix. 18 ; Joel i. 19 f. ; ii. 3. * Ps. civ. 4 ; Book of Enoch Ixxvi. * Luke xii. 54. ' Ankel, op. cit., pp. 84 ff, gives a number of figures for Jerusalem. From May to October dry winds blow from N\V. 78 "8 days ; from W. 27*5 ; from N. 265- In the rainv month* W. and SW. winds blow for an average of 607 days, from NE., E., and SE., 674. For wind at Sarona see P.E.F.Q., 1892. The Climate and Fertility of the Land 67 us between 10 and 12 o'clock, and blew so well that the hours previous to that were generally the hottest of our day. The peasants do all their winnowing against this steady wind, and there is no happier scene in the land than afternoon on the threshing-floors, when he rustles the thickly-strewn sheaves, and scatters the chaff before him.^ The other winds are much more infrequent and irregular. From the north wind blows chiefly in October, and brings a dry cold.^ The name Sherkiyeh, our Sirocco, literally ' the east,' is used of all winds blowing in from ' - ** The Sirocco. the desert — east, south-east, south, and even south-south-west. They are hot winds : when ye see the south-wind blow, ye say, There will be heat, and it conieth to pass? They come with a mist of fine sand, veiling the sun, scorching vegetation, and bringing languor and fever to men. They are most painful airs, and if the divine eco- nomy were only for our physical benefit, inexplicable, for they neither carry rain nor help at harvest. A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of My people, neither to fan nor to cleanse.^ They blow chiefly in the spring, and for a day at a time. The following extracts, from our diary in 1891, will give some impression of what these hot sandy winds make of the atmosphere. It will ^ The explanation of this daily wind is, of course, that the limestone of Syria heats up under the sun far more quickly than the sea, but after sunset cools again more rapidly, so that the night breezes, after an interval of great stillness just following sunset, blow in the opposite direction from the day ones. Ankel (^op . The corresponding Arabic zva'ar is rocky ground. * Yet Richard's army found the undergrowth very difficult in the forest of Sharon. Vinsauf, Itin. Ricardi, iv. 12. ' It is often impossible to tell whether oak or terebinth is meant in the Old Testament. There are four words, n?N and n?X > p?X and l^^^- * Amos vii. 14 ; Isaiah ix. 9 {E. V. lo) ; I Kings x. 27 ; I Chron. xxviL (xxviii.) 28 ; 2 Chron. i. 15 ; Luke xix. 4. F 82 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land abandoned cultivation. In the bush the forest and the garden meet half way. Sometimes old oil and wine- presses are found beneath it, sometimes great trees, sur- vivors of old woods, tower above it. A few wadies in Western Palestine, and many in Eastern, are filled with oleanders, ribbons of pink across the landscape. Willows are common, so are cane-brakes where there is water. The rank jungle of the Jordan and the stunted flora of the desert fall to be separately described. If Palestine be not a land of forests, it is a land of orcharjis. Except chestnuts, which singularly enough are not found here, all the fruit-trees of the Fruit-trees. temperate zone flourish in Syrja. The most common are the apricot, ' to Syria what the fig is to Smyrna and Ephesus,' figs themselves, the orange, citron, pomegranate, mulberry, pistachio, almond, and walnut.^ The sycomore, which is very easily grown, is cultivated for its timber and its rough tasteless figs, which, as well as the carob fruit, are eaten by the very poor.^ The date-palm used to be cultivated in large groves both on the Maritime Plain and in the Jordan Valley, where it might still be cultivated.^ Near Jericho, large balsam groves were farmed ^,. _, ,,. down to Roman times.^ But the two chief Ohve and Vine. fruit-trees of Palestine are, of course, the olive and the vine, the olive certainly native to Syria, and the vine probably so. The cultivation of the former has been ' Tristram, Natural History of the Bible. Cf. Anderlind, Die Frucht- bdume in Syrien insbesondere Paldstina, Z.D.P. V. xi. 69. Plums, pears, and apples are seldom found in Palestine proper. Cherries are only lately introduced. ' Amos was a gatherer of sycomore figs, vii. 14 ; the carob fruit was the food of the Prodigal, Luke xv. 16. • See below, pp. 267, 271, 354 note. * Balsamodendron GiUadense, still growing in Southern Syria. Cf. Jei. nii. 22. See below, p. 266, note 4 The Climate and Fertility of the Lajid 83 sustained to the present day, and was probably never much greater than it is now. That of the vine is being greatly revived. The disappearance of vineyards and not of forests is the difference with which we have to reckon in the landscape of Palestine. Innumerable hillsides, not capable of other cultivation, which were terraced with green vineyards to their summit, now in their ruin only exag- gerate the stoniness of the land.^ But the Germans on Mount Carmel and in Juda:a, some French firms, and the Jesuits in the Bek'a between the Lebanons are fast chang- ing all this. At Salt there has always been, as there is now, a great cultivation of grapes for manufacture into raisins.- The cultivation of grain was confined to the lower plateaus, the broader valleys, and the plains. At this day the best wheat-fields are Philistia, Esdraelon, Grain. the Mukhneh to the east of Nablus, and Hauran. The wheat of the latter, springing from volcanic soil, is famed throughout the East.^ Barley, given to horses and other beasts of burden, was the despised food of the poorer peasants, or of the whole nation when the Arabs drove them from the plains to the hills. It was in the shape of a poor barley cake that the Midianite dreamt he saw Israel rolling down from the hills and overturning his camp on Esdraelon.* Oats were not grown, but millet was common in ancient times, and maize is now. Beans, pulse, and lentils were largely grown. Garden vegetables thrive richly wherever there is summer irrigation — tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons chiefly in the plains, but we received all these fruits from the peasants ' See the chapter on Judoea. ' See Additional Notes to Fourth Editico. * See the chapter on llauran. ' * Judges vii. 13. 84 The Histoi'ical Geography of the Holy Land of Gilead and the Bedouin of Moab.^ It is doubtful whether the sugar-cane was known.'^ There is, of course, no turf in Palestine, and very little grass that lasts through the summer. After the rains, the field springs thick with grasses and wild grains of many kinds,' some clover, lupins, many succulent plants, aromatic herbs, lilies, anemones, and hx)sts of other wild-flowers, but early summer sees much of this withered away. Lupins, clover and other plants are sometimes cultivated for fodder ; but cattle and sheep alike must trust to the wild pasture, over whose meagre and interrupted vegetation their range has to be very large. Only by the great fountains and pools can they find rich unfading grass throughout the year. Such, then, is the fertility of the Holy Land in forest, orchard, and field. To a western eye it must, at certain seasons of the year, seem singularly meagre and unin- fluential — incapable of stirring the imagination,or enriching the life of a people.'^' Yet come in, with the year at the flood, with the springing of the grain, with the rush of colour across the field, the flush of green on the desert, and in imagination clothe again the stony terraces with the vines which in ancient times trailed from foot to summit of many of the hills — then, even though your eye be western, you will feel the charm and intoxication of the land. It is not, however, the western eye we have to consider. It is the ^ The potato, I think, has just been introduced to Syria. ' Isaiah xliii. 24 ; Jeremiah vi. 20. Eng. Sweet Cane ; hut, according to most authorities, identical with the Calamus (Exod. xxx. 23 ; Ezek. xxvii. 19), a kind of spice, probably imported. • Three Hebrew words are translated grass : p^*, Jerek, which means any green herb : KEH, D^sh^, which is our grass proper ; "l^ifn, Hassir, which is cut tyass or hay. Hay is infrequent, cf. Buhl, Geogr. p. 56, note 33. The Climate and Fertility of the Land 85 effect of this fertility on the desert nomads from whom, as we have seen, the population of Syria was chiefly drawn. If even at the season of its annual ,,„ Effect of the ebb the fertility of the whole land affords Syrian fertility i. on the Nomad. a certain contrast to the desert — how much more must its eastern forests, its immense wheat-fields, its streams, the oases round its perennial fountains, the pride of Jordan, impress the immigrant nomad. If he settles down among them, how wholly must they alter his mode of life ! The fertility of the Holy Land affected immigrants from the desert, among whom Israel were the chief, in two ways. It meant to them at once an ascent in civilisation and a fall in religion. I. It meant a rise in civilisation. To pass from the desert into Syria is to leave the habits of the nomadic life for those of the agricultural. The process may a rise in be gradual, and generally has been so, but the civilisation. end is inevitable. Immigrant tribes, with their herds and tents, may roam even the Syrian fields for generations, but at last they settle down in villages and townships. The process can be illustrated all down the history of Syria : it can be seen at work to-day. Israel also passed through it, and the passage made them a nation. From a series of loosely-connected pastoral clans, they became a united people, with a definite territory, and , * ' Israel s passage its culture as the means of their life. The fro™ the nomadic stage story is told in two passages of such great to the agricul- tural, beauty that I translate the whole of them. The first is from the Song of Moses, and the other from the Blessing of the Tribes — in chapters xxxii. and xxxiii. of the Book of Deuteronomy. It is to be noticed that 86 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land neither of them carries the origin of Israel further back than the desert. Neither of them even hints at the sojourn of the people in Egypt. Israel is a purely desert tribe, who by the inspiration of Jehovah are stirred up to leave their desert home, and settle as agriculturists in Palestine : Remember the days of old, Consider the years of generation on generation. Ask thy father and he will show thee. Thine elders and they will tell thee. When the Highest gave nations their heritage, When He sundered the children of tnen. He set the border of the tribes^ By the number of the children of Israel. For the portion of Jehovah is His people^ Jacob the measure of His heritage. He found him in a land of the desert, In a waste, in a howling wilderness. He encompassed hitn, He distinguished him, He watched him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth his nest, Fluttereth over his young, Spreadeth abroad his wings, taketh thetn^ Beareth them up on his pinions, Jehovah alone led hitn And no strange god was with him. He tnade him to ride on the Land's high places. And to eat of the growth of the f eld. He gave him to suck honey from the cliff, And oil from the flinty rock. Cream of kine and milk cf sheep. With lambs' fat and rams'. Breed of Bashan and he-goats, With fat of the kidneys of wheat j And the blood of the grape thou drankest in foam ! How could the passage from the nomadic life to the agricultural be more vividly expressed than by this figure of a brood of desert birds stirred to leave their nest by the father bird ! The next poem is full of the same ideas — ' Lit., peoples The Climate and Fertility of the Land 87 that it was in the wilderness Jehovah met the people, that their separate tribes first became a nation by their settle- ment in Canaan, and the new habits which its fertility imposed on them : Jehovah from Sinai hath come, And risen from Seir upon them; He shone from Mount Paran, And broke from Meribah of Qadesh} From the South "^ fire . . . to thejn. Also He loved His people, All His saints were in thy hand (?), They pressed to thy feet (?), They took of His words? Law did Moses command us, A Domain had the congregation of Jacob, — So he became king in Jeshurun, When the heads of the people were gathered, When the tribes of Israel were one. There is none like the God of Jeshiouny Riding the heavens to thy help. And the clouds in His highness ! A refuge is the everlasting God, And beneath are the arms of eternity. And he drove from before thee the foe. And he said^Destroy .' So Israel dwelt in safety, Secluded was Jacob's fount. In a land of corn and wine. Also His heavens dropped dew. Happy thou, Israeli Who is like unto thee I People saved by Jehovah, The shield of thy help. Yea, the sword of thy highness; And thy foes shall fawn on thee,*' And thou — on their heights shall thou march f * Text slightly altered (partly after the LXX.) gives this true jjarallel to the other lines. ' Reading very corrupt. I suggest the south as a parallel to the other lines. ' LXX., these lines are very uncertain. * To adopt the happy translation of Mr. Addit. 88 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land 2. But this rise from the nomadic level to the agricul- tural, which the passage from the desert into Syria implied, this ascent in social life, meant at the same time almost inevitably a descent in religion. It is very intelligible. The creed of the desert nomad is simple and austere — for nature about him is monotonous, silent, and illiberal. But Syria is a land of Religious con- sequences of the lavish gifts and oracles — where woods are fertility. full of mysterious speech, and rivers burst suddenly from the ground, where the freedom of nature excites, and seems to sanction, the passions of the human body, where food is rich, and men drink wine. The spirit and the senses are equally taken by surprise. No one can tell how many voices a tree has who has not come up to it from the silence of the great desert. No one may imagine how ' possessed' a landscape can feel — as if singled out and endowed by some divinity for his own domain and residence — who has not, across the forsaken plateaus of Moab or Anti-Lebanon, fallen upon one of the sudden Syrian rivers, with its wealth of water and of verdure. But with the awe comes the sense of indulgence, and the starved instincts of the body break riotously forth. It is said that Mohammed, upon one of his journeys out of Central Arabia, was taken to look upon Damascus. He gazed, but turned away, and would not enter the city. ' Man,' he said, ' can have but one Paradise, and mine is above.' It may be a legend, but it is a true symbol of the effect which Syria exercises on the imagination of every nomad who crosses her border. All this is said to have happened to Israel from almost their first encampment in Canaan. Israel settled in S/iittitn, and the people began to commit whoredom with tfu daughters The Climate and Fertility of the Land 89 of Moab . . . Israel joined himself to Baal-peor. And still more, when they settled on the west of the Jordan among the Canaanites, and had fully adopted the life of the land, did they lapse into polytheism, and the Israel's fail into sensuous Canaanite ritual. In every favoured P°iy'he'sm. spot of the land their predecessors had felt a Ba'al, a Lord or Possessor, to whom the place was Be'ulah, subject or married, and to these innumerable Ba'alim they turned aside. They went astray on every high hill, and under every green tree} . . . they did according to all the abomina- tions of tJu nations which the Lord cast out before the chil- dren of Israel} The poem which we have already quoted directly connects this lapse into idolatry with the change from the nomadic to the agricultural life. These next lines follow on immediately to the lines on p. 86 : And Jeshurun waxed fat, and struck out — Thou art fat, thou art thick, thou art sleek ! — And cast off the God that had made him. And despised the Rock of his salvation. They moved him to jealousy with strange godSt With abominations provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to monsters undivine, Gods they had known not. New things, lately come in. Their fathers never had them in awe. Of the Rock that bare thee thou wast unmindful, Andforgattest the God who gave thee birth. All this makes two things clear to us. The conception of Israel's early history which prevails in Deuteronomy, viz., that the nation suffered a declension from a pure and simple estate of life and religion, to one which was gross and ^ The worship of the host of heaven did not become general in Israel till the ninth and eighth centuries. ' I Kings xiv. 23, 24. Cf. 2 Kings xvii. 9-12 ; Hos. ix. 10. 90 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land sensuous, from the worship of their own deity to the wor- ship of many local gods, is justified in the main — I do not say in details, but in the main — by the geographical data, and by what we know to have been the influence of these at all periods in history. And, secondly, this survey of the fertility of Syria, and of its social and religious influences, must surely have made very clear to us how The marvel of monotheism in unlikely a soil this was for monotheism to spring from. We must feel that it has brought out into relief the presence and the power of those spiritual forces, which, in spite of the opposition of nature, did create upon Syria the monotneistic creed of Israel. CHAPTER IV THE SCENERY OF THE LAND AND ITS REFLECTION IN THE BIBLE THE SCENERY OF THE LAND AND ITS REFLECTION IN THE BIBLE IT has grown the fashion to despise the scenery of Palestine. The tourist, easily saddle-sore and miss- ing the comforts of European travel, finds the picturesque landscape deteriorate almost from the moment Palestine, he leaves the orange-groves of Jaffa behind him, and arrives in the north with a disappointment which Lebanon itself cannot appease. The Plain is commonplace, the glens of Samaria only ' pretty,' but the Judaean table-land revolting in its stony dryness, and the surroundings of the Lake of Galilee feverish and glaring. Now it is true that the greater part of Palestine, like some other countries not unknown for beauty, requires all the ornament which cultivation can give it, and it has been deprived of this. The land has been stripped and starved, its bones pro- trude, in parts it is very bald — a carcase of a land, if you like, from some points of view, and especially when the clouds lower, or the sirocco throws dust across the sun. Yet, even as it lies to-day, there are, in the Holy Land, some prospects as bold and rich as any you will see in countries famed for their picturesqueness. There is the coast-line from the headland of Carmel — northwards the Gulf of Haifa, with its yellow sands and palms, across them brown, crumbling Acre, and in the haze the white 94 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Ladder of Tyre : southwards Sharon with her scattered forest, her coast of sand and grass, and the haggard ruins of Athlit — last foothold of the Crusaders : westwards the green sea and the wonderful shadows of the clouds upon it — grey when you look at them with your face to the sun, but, with the sun behind you, purple, and more Hke Homer's ' wine-coloured ' water than anything I have seen on the Mediterranean. There is the excellency of Carmel itseU : wheat-fields climbing from Esdraelon to the first bare rocks, then thick bush and scrub, young ilex, wild olives and pines, with undergrowth of large purple thistles, mallows with blossoms like pelargoniums, stocks of hollyhock, golden broom, honeysuckle and convolvulus — then, between the shoulders of the mountain, olive- erroves, their dull green mass banked by tl>e lighter forest trees, and on the flanks the broad lawns, where in the shadow of great oaks you look far out to sea. There is the Lake of Galilee as you see it from Gadara, with the hills of Naphtali above it, and Ilermon filling all the north. There is the perspective of the Jordan Valley as you look up from over Jericho, between the bare ranges of Gilead and Ephraim, with the winding ribbon of the river's jungle, and the top of Hermon like a white cloud in the infinite distance. There is the forest of Gilead, where you ride, two thousand feet high, under the boughs of great trees creaking and rustling in the wind, with all Western Palestine before you. There is the moonlight view out of the bush on the northern flank of Tabor, the leap of the sun over the edge of Bashan, summer morn- ing in the Shephelah, and sunset over the Mediterranean, when you see it from the gateway of the ruins on Samaria down the glistening Vale of Barley. Even in the barest The Scenery of the Land 95 provinces you get many a little picture that lives with you for life — a chocolate- coloured bank with red poppies against the green of the prickly pear hedge above it, and a yellow lizard darting across; a river-bed of pink oleanders flush with the plain ; a gorge in Judasa, where you look up between limestone walls picked out with tufts of grass and black-and-tan goats cropping at them, the deep blue sky over all, and, on the edge of the only shadow, a well, a trough, and a solitary herdsman. And then there are those prospects in which no other country can match Palestine, for no other has a valley like the Ghor, or a desert like that which falls from Judaea to the Dead Sea.^ There is the view from the Mount of Olives, down twenty miles of desert hill-tops to the deep blue waters, with the wall of Moab glowing on the further side like burnished copper, and staining the blue sea red with its light. There is the view of the Dead Sea through the hazy afternoon, when across the yellow foreground of Jeshimon the white Lisan rises like a pack of Greenland ice from the blue waters, and beyond it the Moab range, misty, silent, and weird. There are the precipices of Masada and Engedi sheer from the salt coast. And, above all, there is the view from Engedi under the full moon, when the sea is bridged with gold, and the eastern mountains are black with a border of opal. But, whether there be beauty or not, there is always on all the heights that sense of space and distance which comes from Palestine's high position between the great desert and the great sea. ^ Dp- Saulcy calls the Dead Sea, ' le lac le plus imposant et le plus beau qui existe sur la terre.' — Voyage autour dt la Mer Aforte, i. 154. 96 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Of all this, such use was made by Israel as served the expression of her high ideals, or was necessary in the description of her warfare. Israel was a nation of prophets and warriors. But prophets, like lovers, offer you no more reflection of nature than as she sympathises with their passion ; nor warriors, except as they wait Its reflection ^ f r j in Israel's impatiently for her omens, or are excited by Wcir-songs. her freshness and motion, or lay down their tactics by her contours. Let it be when thou Jiearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou bestir thyself, for then shall Jehovah have gone out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines} The torrent of Kishon swept them away, That torrent of spates, torrent Kishon} My God, make them like a whirl of dust. Like the stubble before the wind; As afire burneth a wood And as flame setteth the mountains afire} And I said. Oh that I had zuings like a dove, I would fly away and be at rest / I would hasten my escape From the windy storm and tempest} The Godoftny rock; in Him will I trust: My shield, and the horn of my salvation, My high tower and my refuge. He matcheth my feet to hinds' feet ; He setteth me upon my high places. Thou hast enlarged my steps under mej So that my ankles swerved not} Of the brook shall he drink by the way: Therefore shall he lift up the head} • I Chron. xiv. 15. ' Judges v 21 ' Ps. Ixxxiii. 13, 14, ' Ps. Iv. 6-8. * 2 Sam- xxii. 3, 34, 37. • Ps. ex. 7. The Scenery of the Land 97 The gazelle, Israel, is slain on thy heights, How fallen are the heroes !^ When the Almighty scattered kings on her, It was as when it snoweth on Salmon."^ How vividly do these cries from Israel's mountain-war bring before us all that thirsty, broken land of crags and shelves, moors and gullies, with its mire and its rock, its few summer brooks, its winter spates and heavy snows ; the rustling of its woods, its gusts of wind, and its bush fires ; its startled birds, when the sudden storms from the sea sweep up the gorges, and its glimpses of deer, poised for a moment on the high sky-line of the hills. The battle- fields, too, are always accurately described — the features of the Vale of Elah, of Michmash, ^"'"■'^"^'^^ of Jezreel, and of Jeshimon can be recognised to-day from the stories of David and Goliath, of Jonathan and the Philistine host, of Saul's defeat and Gideon's victory, and Saul's pursuit of David.^ The little details, which thus catch a soldier's ear and eye, are of course not so frequent with the prophets as the long lines of the land, and its greater natural phenomena. He that sitteth on the circle of the earth, And the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; That stretcheth the heavens as a curtain, And spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.^ Men who looked at life under that lofty imagination did 1 2 Sam. i. 19. 2 Ps. ixviii. 14. ' The most careful study of these battle-fields is that given by Principal Miller in The Least of all Lands, and accurate plans accompany the vivid descrip- tions. See also Major Conder's identification of the scene of the story of David and Goliath, and his description of Mount Hachilah in Jeshimon.— Ttnt Work, pp. 277 and 244. 4 Isaiah xl. 22. pS The Historical Geography of the Holy Lattd not notice closely the details of their country's scenery. What infected them was the sense of space and dis- tance, the stupendous contrasts of desert and The Scenery in the fertility, the hard, straight coast with the sea Prophets. .... . , .^ . , breaking into foam, the swift sunrise, the thunderstorms sweeping the length of the land, and the earthquakes. For these were symbols of the great pro- phetic themes : the abiding justice and mercy of God, the steadfastness of His providence, the nearness of His judgments to life, which lies between His judgments as the land between the Desert and the Great Deep ; His power to bring up life upon His people as spring rushes up on the wilderness ; His awful last judgment, like morn- ing scattered on the mountains, when the dawn is crushed upon the land between the hills and the heavy clouds, and the lurid light is spilt like the wine-press of the wrath of God. And if those great outlines are touched here and there with flowers, or a mist, or a bird's nest, or a passing thistledown, or a bit of meadow, or a quiet pool, or an olive-tree in the sunshine, it is to illustrate human beauty, which comes upon the earth as fair as her wild-flowers, and as quickly passeth away, which is like a vapour that appeareth for a moment on the hillside and then vanisheth ; or it is to symbolise God's provision of peace to His people in corners and nooks of this fiercely-swept life of ours : He fnaketh rne to lie down in green pastures : He leadeth me beside the still waters. ^ They looked unto him, and were lightened;'^ where the effect is of liquid light, when the sun breaks ' Psalm xxiii. 3. • Psalm xxxiv. 5, Massoretic text. The Scenery of the Land 99 through the clouds, rippling across a wood or a troubled piece of water. But I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God. ^ I will be as the dew unto Israel'. He shall blossom as the lily, and strike forth his roots like Lebanon: His branches shall spread^ His beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon."^ Bring up man and the animals on the scene, and you see those landscapes described by Old Testament writers exactly as you will see them to-day — the valleys covered with corn, the pastures above clothed with flocks, shepherds and husbandmen calling to each other through the morning air, the narrow high-banked hill- roads brimming with sheep, the long and stately camel trains, the herds of wild cattle, — bulls of Bashan have com- passed me about. You see the villages by day, with the children coming forth to meet the traveller ; ^ the villages by night, without a light, when you stumble on them in the darkness, and all the dogs begin barking, — at evening they return and make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city. You see night. Wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The sun ariseth, they shrink together. And lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work, And to his labour till the evening. You see those details which are so characteristic of every Eastern landscape, the chaff and rolling thorns blown be- fore the wind, the dirt cast out on the streets ; the broken vessel by the well ; the forsaken house ; the dusty grave. Let us pay attention to all these, and we shall surely * Psalm liL 8. * Hosea xiv, 5, 6. * 2 Kings vi. ; Mark x. 13. lOO The Historical Geography of the Holy Land feel ourselves in the atmosphere and scenery in which David fought, and Elisha went to and fro, and Malachi saw the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings. There are three poems in the Old Testament which give a more or less comprehensive picture of the scenery of Palestine : the Twenty-Ninth Psalm, the Song of Solomon, and the Hundred and Fourth Psalm. The Twenty-Ninth Psalm describes a thunderstorm travelling the whole length of the land, rattling and strip- ping it : so that you see its chief features Psalm zxix. . , - , t- u sweepmg before you on the storm. Jinougn to give the translation of verses 3-9, which contain the description. It begins among the thunder-clouds : The voice of Jehovah is upon the waters^ The God of Glory thundereth ; Jehovah is upon great waters. The vfi^ of Jehovah with power, The voice of Jehovah with majesty, The voice of Jehovah breaketh the cedars; Yea, Jehovah breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a wild ox in his youth. The voice of Jehovah heweth out flames of fire. The voice of Jehovah maketh the wilderness whirl j Jehovah maketh the wilderness of Kadesh to whirl. The voice of Jehovah maketh the hinds to travail. And strippeth the forests j In His palace every one sayeth. Glory. ^ Here all the scenery appears to us, as in flashes of light- ning, from the storm-clouds that break on the peaks of Lebanon, down Lebanon's flanks to the lower forests where the deer lie, and so out upon the desert. In the ' Psalm xxix. 3-9. The Scenery of the Land loi last verse there is a wonderful contrast between the agita- tion of the earth at one end of the storm, and the glory of the heavenly temple at the other.^ In the Song of Songs we have a very different aspect of the country : springtime among the vineyards § ^^ and villages of North Israel, where the poem Songs, was certainly composed. The date does not matter for our purpose : ' For, see, the ivinier has passed, The rain is over and gone j The flowers appear in the land; The time of singing is come, And the turtle dove's murmur is heard in our land. The fig-tree is reddening her figs. And blossoming vines give forth their scent. ^ ' ' Come, my beloved, let us forth to the field. Let us lodge in the villages. Let us early to the vineyards. Let us see if the vine flourish, If the vine blossom have opened. The pomegranates bud. There will I give thee my loves, The mandrakes are fragrant. And about our gates are all rare fruits, — / have stored them for thee, my beloved* Lebanon is in sight and Hermon : ' Com.e with me from Lebanon, My bride, with me from Lebanon, Look from the top of Amana, From the top of Shenir and of Hermon* And the bracing air from snow-fields and pine-forests wafts down The scent of Lebanon. There are the shepherds' black tents, the flocks of goats ^ I feel no reason to depart in this verse from the Massoretic text. But see Cheyne in Uxo, who reads oaki for kindt. * Song ii. II-IJ ; vii. 12. I02 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land that swarm from Mount Gilead, the sheep that come up from the shearing and washing, and the strange pomp which now and then passes by the high road across North Israel from Egypt to Damascus — royal litters, chariots, and regiments with banners, heralded by clouds of dust. ' / have likened thee, 0 my love, To a horse among the chariots of Pharaoh.'^ ' What is this coming up from the wildernesx Like pillars of smoke ? Behold ! it is Solomon's palanquin; Threescore mighty men are around it, Of the mighty of Israel; All of them grasping the sword, Experts in war. Every man with sword on his thigh. Against the alarms of the night.' ^ * Who is she that looketh forth like the dawn, Fair as the moon, pure as the sun. Glorious as bannered hosts f ' ' ' / went down into the garden of nuts. To see the fruits of the valley ; To see whether the vine flourished. The pomegranates budded. Or ever I kne^v. My soul had brought me on the chariots of my willing people.'^ The text of the last verse is evidently corrupt, but the sense is clear. The country girl has gone down into the valley, where she thinks herself alone with the nut- trees and pomegranates, when suddenly a military troop, marching by the valley road, surprise her. We shall see, when we come to Galilee, that the character of that pro- vince is to be a garden, crossed by many of the world's ' Song i. 9. ' iii. 6-8. ' Imposing. * vi. 10- 1 2. The Scenery of the Land 103 high-roads. Nothing could better illustrate this character than the procession and pomp, the chariots and banners, which break through the rural scenery of the Song of Songs. We have no space here for the Hundred and Fourth Psalm, and must refer the reader to the Revised Version of it. He will find a more comprehensive Psalm civ. View of the Holy Land than in any other Scripture, for it embraces both atmosphere and scenery, — wind, water and light, summer and winter, mountain, valley and sea, man and the wild beasts. Before we pass from the scenery, it may be well to draw the reader's attention to one feature of its descrip- tion in the Old Testament. By numerous little tokens, we feel that this is scenery described by Highlanders : by men who, for the most part, looked down upon their prospects and painted their scenes from above. Their usual word for valley is depth'^ — something below them; for terror and destruction some of their com- monest names mean originally abyss} God's a Highland unfathomable judgments are depths, for the narrow platform of their life fell eastward to an invisible depth ; their figure for salvation and freedom is a wide or a large place} Their stage slopes away from them, every apparition on it is described as coming up. And there is that singular sense, which I do not think appears in any other literature, but which pervades the Old Testament, of seeing mountain-tops from above. Israel treadeth upon his high places, as if mountain-tops were a common road ; and Jehovah ntarcheth upon His high places, as if it were a usual thing to see clouds below, and yet I04 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land on the tops of hills. Joel looks from his high station eastward over the tops of the mountains that sink to the Dead Sea, and speaks of morn above the mountains broken and scattered upon them by the heavy thunder-clouds. And, finally, we owe to the high station of Israel, those long approaches and very distant prospects both of war and peace : the trails of armies across the plains in fire and smoke, the land spreading very far forth, and, though Israel was no maritime people, the wonderful visions of the coast and the sea. CHAPTER V THE LAND AND QUESTIONS OF FAITH THE LAND AND QUESTIONS OF FAITH THESE questions have, no doubt, already suggested themselves to the reader, and will do so again and again as he passes through the land — How far does the geography of Palestine bear witness to the truth and authenticity of the different books of the Bible ? How far does a knowledge of the land assist our faith as Chris- tians in the Word of God and Jesus Christ His Son ? It may be well for us, before we go through the land, to have at least the possibilities of its contribution to these arguments accurately defined, were it for no other reason than that it is natural to expect too much, and that a large portion of the religious public, and of writers for them, habitually exaggerate the evidential value of the geography and archaeology of Palestine, and by emphasis* ing what is irrelevant, especially in details, miss altogether the grand, essential contents of the Land's testimony to the divine origin of our religion. We have seen how freshly the poetry and narrative of the Bible reflect the natural features of Palestine both in outline and in detail. Every visitor to the land has felt this. Napoleon himself may be quoted : ' When camping on the ruins of those ancient towns, they read aloud Scripture every evening in the tent of the General-in-Chief The analogy and the truth of the descriptions were striking : 107 io8 The Historical Geog7'aphy of the Holy Land they still fit this country after so many centuries and changes.' ^ This is not more than the truth, yet it does not carry us very far. That a story accu- Geographical accuracy of ratcly reflects geography does not necessarily Scripture , . , , . ,. , . mean that it is a real transcript of history — else were the Book of Judith the truest man ever wrote, instead of being what it is, a pretty piece of fiction. Many legends are wonderful photographs of scenery. And, therefore, let us at once admit that, while we may have other reasons for the historical truth of the patriarchal narratives, we cannot prove this on the ground that their itineraries and place-names are correct. Or, again, that the Book of Joshua, in marking tribal boundaries, gives us a detailed list of towns, the most of which we are able to identify, does not prove anything about the not proof of historical date or authorship of these lists, nor the fact of accuracy. , , ,., . . /• . i , • t i • the deliberate partition of the land in Joshuas time. Again, that Israel's conquests under Moses on the east of the Jordan went so far north as described, is not proved by the discovery in these days of the various towns mentioned. In each of these cases, all that is proved is that the narrative was written in the land by some one who knew the land, and this has never been called in question. The date, the accuracy of the narrative, will have to be discussed on other grounds. All that geography can do is to show whether or not the situations were pos- sible at the time to which they are assigned, and even this is a task often beyond her resources. * ' En campant sur les mines de ces anciennes villes, on lisait tous les soirs I'Ecriture Sainte i haute voix sous la tente du general en chef. L'analogic et la v^rit^ des descriptions ^taient frappantes ; elles conviennent encore i ce pays apres tant de si^cles ct ile vicissitudes.' — Campagnes d'£gyptt et dt Syrit, duths par NapoUon lui-m3me, vol. ii. (see p. 19 of this vol.). The Land and Questions of Faith 109 At the same time, there are in the Old Testament pictures of landscape, and especially descriptions of the geographical relations of Israel, which we cannot help feeling as testimonies of the truth of the narratives in which they occur. If, for instance, you can to-day follow the description of a battle by the contours, features, and place-names of the landscape to which it is assigned, that surely is a strong, though not, of course, a ^ , , , , , . . . \ Battle-fields. final, proof that such a description is true. In this connection one thinks especially of the battles of the Vale of Elah, Michmash, and Jezreel. And certainly it is striking that in none of the narratives of these is there any geographical impossibility. Again, nothing that the Pentateuch tells us about the early movements of the Philistines and the Hittites disagrees with the g^, other evidence we possess from geography and '"'srations. archaeology ; ^ while Israel's relations to the Philistines, in the record of the Judges and early Kings, contrasted with her relations to the same people in the prophetic period, is in exact accordance with the data of the his- torical geography of Syria.^ As to questions of authorship, the evidence of geography mainly comes in support of a decision already settled by other proofs. In this matter one thinks especially of the accurate pictures of the surroundings of Jerusalem given in the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, both of them her citizens, contrasted with the very different geographical reflection on the earlier pro- aifdlmhen- phecies of Ezekiel, or the second half of the *"^'*^" Book of Isaiah. Geography, too, assists us in the analysis of the composite books of the Old Testament into their ^ See chapter on the Philistines, p. 172. ' Ibid. p. 178. no The Historical Geography of the Holy Land various documents, for in the Pentateuch, for instance, each document has often its own name for the same locah'ty, and as has just been said, the geographical reflec- tion on the first half of the Book of Isaiah is very different from that on the second half.^ But in the Old Testament geography has little contribution to make to any question of authenticity, for, with the exceptions stated above, the whole of the Old Testament is admitted to have been written by natives of Palestine, who were familiar with their land. It is different, however, with the New Testament, where authorship outside Palestine is sometimes a serious possi- bility. Here questions of authenticity are closely bound up with those of geographical accuracy. Take the case of the Gospel of St. John. It has been held that the writer could not have been a native of Palestine, because of certain errors which are alleged to occur in his descrip- tion of places. I have shown, in a chapter on the Ques- tion of Sychar, that this opinion finds no support in the passage most loudly quoted in its defence.^ And, again, the silence of the synoptic Gospels concerning cities on the Lake of Galilee, like Tiberias and Taricheae, which became known all over the Roman world in the next generation, and their mention of places not so known, has a certain weight in the argument for the early date of the Gospels, and for the authorship of these by contem- poraries of Christ's ministry." But if on all such questions of date, authorship, and accuracy of historical detail, we must be content to admit ' Duhm thinks he can make out that part of Isaiah, xl.-lxvi., was composed in Lebanon. * Ch. xviiL • See chapter on the Lake of Galilee, ch. xri. The Land a^id Questions of Faith 1 1 1 that geography has not much more to contribute than a proof of the possibility of certain solutions, it is very dif- ferent when we rise to the higher matters of Higher the religion of Israel, to the story of its origin questions, and development, to the appearance of monotheism, and to the question of the supernatural. On these the testi- mony of the historical geography of the Holy Land is high and clear. For instance, to whatever date we assign the Book of Deuteronomy, no one who knows the physical consti- tution of Palestine, and her relation to the Deuteronomy great desert, can fail to feel the essential and the truthfulness of the conception, which rules in that book, of Israel's entrance into the land as at once a | rise in civilisation from the nomadic to the agricultural stage of life, and a fall in religion from a faith which the 1 desert kept simple to the rank and sensuous polytheism ' that was provoked by the natural variety of the Paradise west of Jordan.^ Or take another most critical stage of Israel's education : no one can appreciate the prophets' magnificent mastery of the historical forces of their time, or the wisdom of their advice to their people, who has not studied the relations of Syria to Egypt and Mesopo- tamia or the lines across her of the campaigns of these powers. But these are only details in larger phenomena. In the economy of human progress every race has had its office to fulfil, and the Bible has claimed for Israel -^hc training the specialism of religion. It represents Israel of Israel. as brought by God to the Holy Land — as He also carried other peoples to their lands — for the threefold purpose of ^ See chanter iii. . especially pp. %<), oa 1 1 2 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land being preserved through all the changes of ancient his- tory, of being educated in true religion, and sent forth to the world as apostles and examples. But how could such a people be better framed than by selec- tion out of that race of mankind which have been most distinguished for their religious temperament, and by settlement on a land both near to, and aloof from, the main streams of human life, where they could be at once spectators of history and yet not its victims, where they could at once enjoy personal communion with God and yet have some idea also of His providence of the whole world ; where they could at once gather up the experi- ence of the ancient world, and break with it into the modern ? There is no land which is at once so much a sanctuary and an observatory as Palestine : no land which, till its office was fulfilled, was so swept by the great forces of history, and was yet so capable of pre- serving one tribe in national continuity and growth : one tribe learning and suffering and rising superior to the successive problems these forces presented to her, till upon the opportunity afforded by the last of them she launched with her results upon the world. It is the privilege of the student of the historical geography of Palestine to follow all this process of development in detail. If a man can believe that there is no directing hand behind our universe and the history of our race, he will, of course, say that all this is the result of chance. But, for most of us, only another conclusion ir possible. It may best be expressed in the words of one vho was no theo- logian but a geographer — perhaps the most scientific observer Palestine has ever had. Karl Ritter says of Palestine : ' Nature and the course of history shows that The Land and Questions of Faitn 1 1 3 here, from the beginning onwards, there cannot be talk of any chance.' ^ But while the geography of the Holy Land has this positive evidence to offer, it has also negative evidence to the same end. The physical and political con- Geography ditions of Israel's history do not explain all the and moral forces, results. Over and over again we shall see the geography of the land forming barriers to Israel's growth, by surmounting which the moral force that is in her becomes conspicuous. We shall often be tempted to imagine that Israel's geography, physical and political, is the cause of her religion ; but as often we shall discover that it is only the stage on which a spirit — that, to use the words of the prophets, is neither in her mountains nor in her men — rises superior alike to the aids and to the obstacles which these contribute. This is especially conspicuous in the case of Israel's monotheism. Monotheism was born not, as M. Renan says, in Arabia, but in Syria. V^ , , , - _ . , r t Monotheism. And the more we know of Syria and of the other tribes that inhabited her, the more we shall be convinced that neither she nor they had anything to do with the origin of Israel's faith. For myself, I can only say that all I have seen of the land, and read of its ancient history, drives me back to the belief that the monotheism which appeared upon it was ultimately due to the revelation of a character and a power which carried with them the evidence of their uniqueness and divine sovereignty. But the truth and love of God have come to us in their * ' Die Natur und der Hcrgang der Geschichte zeigt uns dass hier von Anfang an von keiner Zufalligkeit die Rede sein kann.' — K. Rilter, Ein Blick auf Paldstina u. seiru christliche Bcvolkerung. H 1 1 4 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land highest power not as a book, even though that be the Bible, nor as a doctrine, even though that be the mono- The incar- theism of the Bible, with all its intellectual and nation. moral consequences, but as a Man, a native and a citizen of this land : whose education was its history, whose temptation was some of its strongest political forces, who overcame by loyalty to its distinctive gospel,^ who gathered up the significance of its history into Himself, and whose ministry never left its narrow limits. He drew His parables from the fields its sunshine lights, and from all the bustle of its daily life ; He prayed and agonised for us through its quiet night scenes ; He vindicated His mission to mankind in conflict with its authorities, and He died for the world on one of its common places of execution. For our faith in the Incarnation, therefore, a study of the his- torical geography of Palestine is a necessary discipline. Besides helping us to realise the long preparation of his- tory, Jewish and Gentile, for the coming of the Son of God, a vision of the soil and climate in which He grew up and laboured is the only means of enforcing the reality of His manhood. It delivers us, on the one hand, from those abstract views of His humanity which have so often been the error and curse of Christianity ; and, on the other hand, from what is to-day a more present danger — the interpretation of Christ (prevalent with many of our preachers to the times) as if He were a son of our own generation. The course of Divine Providence in Syria has not been one of mere development and cultivation, of building and planting. It has been full also of rebuke and frustra- tion, of rooting up and tearing down. Judgment has ' See pp, 35-37. The Land and Questions of Faith 1 1 5 all along mingled with mercy. Christ Himself did not look forward to the course of the history of the kingdom which he founded as an unchecked advance to universal dominion. He took anything but an optimistic view of the future of His Church. He pictured Himself not only as her King and Leader to successive victories, but as her Judge: revisiting her suddenly, and finding her asleep ; separating within her the wise from the foolish, the true from the false, the pure from the cor- rupt, and punishing her with sore and awful calamities. Ought we to look for these visitations only at the end of the world ? Have we not seen them already fulfilled in the centuries ? Has not the new Israel been punished for her sin, as Israel of old was, by the historical powers of war, defeat, and captivity ? It is in the light of these principles of Christ's teach- ing that we are to estimate the mysterious victory of Mohammedanism over Christianity on the Christianity very theatre of our Lord's revelation. The ^"'^ '^^^™- Christianity of Syria fell before Islam, because it was corrupt, and deserved to fall. And again, in attempting by purely human means to regain her birthplace, the Church was beaten back by Islam, because she was divided, selfish, and worldly. In neither of these cases was it a true Christianity that was overthrown, though the true Christianity bears to this day the reproach and the burden of the results. The irony of the Divine Judg- ( ment is clearly seen in this, that it was on the very land where a spiritual monotheism first appeared that the Church was first punished for her idolatry and mate- ' rialism ; that it was in sight of scenes where Christ taught and healed and went about doing good with 1 1 6 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land His band of poor, devoted disciples, that the envious, treacherous, truculent hosts of the Cross were put to sword and fire. They who in His name sought a kingdom of this world by worldly means, could not hope to succeed on the very fields where He had put such a temptation from Him. The victory of Islam over Christendom is no more an obstacle to faith than the victory of Babylonia over Israel upon the same stage. My threshing-floor, said God of these mountains, and so they proved a second time. The same ethical principles by which the prophets explain the overthrow of Israel account for the defeat of Christianity. If the latter teach us, as the former taught them, the folly of making a political kingdom the ambition of our faith, the fatality of seeking to build the Church of God by intrigue and the :>v;ord, if it drive us inward to the spiritual essence of religion and outward to the Master's own work of teaching and healing, the Mohammedan victory will not have been in vain any more than the Babylonian. Let us believe that what Christ promised to judge by the visitations of history is not the World, but His Church, and let us put our own house in order. Then the reproach that rests on Palestine will be rolled away. CHAPTER VI THE VIEW FROM MOUNT EBAL For this Chapter consult Maps I. and III. THE VIEW FROM MOUNT EBAL IT may assist the reader to grasp the various features of the Holy Land, which we have been surveying in the last four chapters, if he be helped to see it with his own eyes as it lies to-day. The smallness of Palestine enables us to make this view nearly complete from two points. First let us stand off the land altogether, and take its appearance from the sea. As you sail north from Jaffa, what you see is a straight line of coast in alter- Palestine from nate stretches of cliff and sand, beyond this a ^^^ ^^^• plain varying from eight to thirty miles in width, and then the Central Range itself, a persistent mountain-wall of nearly uniform level, rising clear and blue from the slopes which buttress it to the west. How the heart throbs as the eye sweeps that long and steadfast sky-line ! For just behind, upon a line nearly coincident with the water- parting between Jordan and the sea, lie Shechem, Shiloh, Bethel, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron. Of only one of these does any sign appear. Towards the north end of the range two bold round hills break the sky-line, with evidence of a deep valley between them. The hills are Ebal and Gerizim, and in the valley — the only real pass across the range — lies Nablus, anciently Shechem. That the eye is thus drawn from the first upon the lie 1 20 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land position of Shechem — and we shall see that what is thus true of the approach from the west is also true of that from the east — while all the other chief sites of Israel's life lie hidden away, and are scarcely to be seen till you come upon them, is a remarkable fact, which we may emphasise in passing. It is a witness to the natural, and an explana- tion of the historical, precedence which was enjoyed by this northern capital over her more famous sister, Jeru- salem. But now let us come on to the land itself, and take our second point of view at this, its obvious centre. Of the ^ two hills beside Shechem, Gerizim is the more The \new from Mount famous historically, but Ebal is higher, and has the further prospect. The view from Ebal virtually covers the whole land, with the exception of the Negeb. All the four long zones, two of the four frontiers, specimens of all the physical features, and most of the famous scenes of the history, are in sight. No geography of Palestine can afford to dispense with the view from the top of Ebal. In detail it is this : Looking south, you have at your feet the pass through the range, with Nablus ; then over it the mass of Gerizim, with a ruin or two ; and then twenty-four miles of hill-tops, at the back of which you dimly discern a tower. That is Neby Samwil, the ancient Mizpeh. Jerusalem is only five miles beyond, and to the west the tower overlooks the Shephelah. Turning westwards, you see — nay, you almost feel — the range letting itself down, by irregular terraces, on to the plain ; the plain itself flattened by the height from which you look, but really undulating to mounds of one and two hundred feet ; beyond the plain the gleaming sandhills of the coast and the infinite blue The View from Mount Ebal 121 sea. Joppa lies south-west thirty-three miles ; Caesarea north-west twenty-nine. Turning northwards, we have the long ridge of Carmel running down from its summit, perhaps thirty-five miles distant, to the low hills that separate it from our range ; over the rest of this the hollow that represents Esdraelon ; over that the hills of Galilee in a haze, and above the haze the glistening shoulders of Hermon, at seventy-five miles of distance. Sweeping south from Hermon, the eastern horizon is the edge of Hauran above the Lake of Galilee, continued by the edge of Mount Gilead exactly east of us, and by the edge of Moab, away to the south-east. This line of the Eastern Range is maintained at a pretty equal level, nearly that on which we stand,^ and seems unbroken, save by the incoming valleys of the Yarmuk and the Jabbok. It is only twenty- five miles away, and on the near side of it lies the Jordan Valley — a great wide gulf, of which the bottom is out of sight On this side Jordan the foreground is the hilly bulwark of Mount Ephraim, penetrated by a valley coming up from Jordan into the plain of the Mukhneh to meet the pass that splits the range at our feet. The view is barer than a European eye desires, but soft- ened by the haze the great heat sheds over all. White clouds hang stagnant in the sky, and their shadows crouch below them among the hills, as dogs that wait for their masters to move. But I have also seen the mists, as low as the land, sweep up from the Mediterranean, and so deluge the range that, in a few hours, the valleys which lie quiet through the summer are loud with the rush of water and the rattle of stones ; and though the long trails of cloud wrap the summits, and cling about the hillsides, * Ebal is 3077 feeL 122 Tht Historical Geography of the Holy Land the land looks barer and more raw than in the sunshine. The hills are brown, with here and there lighter shades, here and there darker. Look through the glass, and you see that the lighter are wheat-fields ripening, the darker are olive groves, sometimes two miles in extent, not thickly planted like woods in our land, but with the trees wide of each other, and the ground broken up beneath. Had we looked west even so recently as the Crusades, we should have seen Sharon one oak forest from coast to mountain. Carmel is green with its carobs and oak saplings. But near us the only great trees are the walnuts and sycomores of Nablus, immediately below. In valley-beds, or on the brow of a steep slope, but mostly occupying the tops of island-knolls,' are the villages. There are no farmsteads, villas, or lonely castles, for the land is still what it has been from Gideon's and Deborah's time — a disordered land, where homes cannot safely lie apart. In all the prospect the one town, the most verdant valley. He at our feet, and the valley flows out, on the east, to a sea of yellow corn that fills the plain below Gerizim. Anciently more villages would have been visible, and more corn, with vineyards where now ruined terrace walls add to the stoni- ness ol the hills. In Herod's day the battlements of Caesarea and its great white temple above the harbour would have flashed to us in the forenoon sun ; behind Ebal the city of Samaria would have been still splendid and populous ; a castle would have crowned Gerizim -, there would have been more coming and going on the roads, and the sound of trumpets would have risen oftener than it does to-day from the little garrison below. In Christian times we should have seen the flat architecture of the villages, which you can scarcely distinguish from the Tke View from Mount Ebal 1 2 3 shelves of the mountains, break into churches, with high gables, cupolas, and spires. For the century of the feudal kingdom at Jerusalem, castles were built here and there, and under their shelter cloisters and farmsteads dared to be wheP3 they never could be before or since. That must have been one of the greatest changes the look of the land has undergone. But during all these ages the great long lines of the land would be spread out exactly in the same way as now — the straight coast, and its broad plain ; the range that rolls from our feet north and south, with its eastern buttresses falling to the unseen bottom of the Jordan Valley, and across this the long level edge of the table-land of the East It is on Ebal, too, that we feel the size of the Holy Land — Hermon and the heights of Judah both within sight, while Jordan is not twenty, nor the coast thirty miles away — and that the old wonder comes strongly upon us of the influence of so small a province on the history of the whole world. But the explanation is also within sight Down below us, at the mouth of the glen, lies a little heap of brown stones.^ The road comes up to it by which the patriarchs first entered the land, and the shadow of a telegraph post falls upon it It is Jacob's well : Neither in this mountaiti nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father ; but the time cometh, and now is, when true worshippers shall worship t/u Father in spirit and in truth * Or did when the writer was there in 1891 ; but the Greek Church ha»« begun to build over it. BOOK II WESTERN PALESTINE CHAPTER VII THE COAST For this Chapter consult Maps I., II., /{/., V. and VI. THE COAST * Ante importuosas Asceloni ripa* ' EVERY one remembers, from the map, the shape of the cast end of the Levant. An almost straight h"ne runs from north to south, with a sh'ght inch'na- . Phoenicia. tion westward. There is no large island off it, and upon it no deep estuary or fully sheltered gulf North of the headland of Carmel nature has so far assisted man by prompting here a cape, and dropping there an islet, that not a few harbours have been formed which have been, and may again become, historical. When we remember that the ships of antiquity were small, propelled by oars and easily beached, we understand how these few advantages were sufficient to bring forth the greatest maritime nation of the ancient world — especially with the help of the mountains behind, which, pressing closely on the coast, compelled the population to push seaward for the means of livelihood. South of Carmel the Syrian coast has been much more strictly drawn. The mountains no longer come so near to it as to cut up the water with their roots. But ^^^^^ ^f sandhills and cliffs, from thirty to a hundred ^armeL feet high, run straight on to the flat Egyptian delta, with- out either promontory or recess. A forward rock at 'Athlit, two curves of the beach at Tanturah, twice low 128 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land reefs — at Abu Zaburah and Jaffa — the faint promise of a dock in the inland basin of Askalon, with the barred mouths of five or six small streams ^ — such are all the possibilities of harbourage on this coast. The rest is merely a shelf for the casting of wreckage and the roosting of sea-birds. The currents are parallel to the coast, and come north laden with sand and Nile-mud, that helps to choke the few faint estuaries and creeks.'^ It is almost always a lee-shore ; the prevailing winds are from the south-west. ^ Of this natural inhospitality two consequences followed in the history of the land. In the first place, no invader ever disembarked an army south of Carmel, till the country behind the coast was already in his power. Even invaders from Europe — the Philistines themselves (if indeed they No natural ^ame from Crete),3 Alexander, Pompey, the harbours. ^^^^ Crusaders, and Napoleon — found their way into Palestine by land, either from Egypt or from Asia Minor. Other Crusaders disembarked farther north, at Acre or Tyre, and in the Third Crusade, Richard, though assisted by a fleet, won all the coast fortresses south of Carmel from the land.* But again, this part of the coast has never produced a maritime people. It is true that the name Phoenicia once extended as far south as Egypt ; ^ ' The mouth of the Rubin is seventy yards across, and six feet deep, yet by the bar, amoncellement du sable, it can be forded : Guerin.ywa'/fr, ii. 53. " Admiralty Charts, 2633, 2634. Cf. Otto Ankel, Gfvndzuge der Landes- natur des Westjordattland(s, 32, 33. Thus the Nile has not only created Egypt, but helped to form the Syrian coast. * See pp. 170 f. * Richard had come to Acre by Cyprus. Philip Augustus and Konrad landed'at Acca. Frederick 11., in 1228, came by Cyprus to Batrun, south of Tripoli. In the Middle Ages the galleys leaving Venice or Genoa touched at Corfu, Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, from vt^hich they made for Jaffa as the nearest port to Jerusalem. See Felix Fabri (in P.P. T. Series), vol. i. » So Strabo. Josephus xv. Antt. ix.. 6 ; Pliny, I/ist. Nat. v. 14, speaki of Joppa of the Phoenicians. The Coast 129 Phoenician masonry has been uncovered at Tanturah, the name of 'ArsCf is probably derived from the Phcenician god Reseph/ and we have records of Sidonian supremacy at various times over Dora and Joppa, as of Tyrian over Joppa and Askalon.^ But the Phcenicians cannot be said to have been at home south of Carmel. Phcenicia proper lay to the north of that headland ; from Carmel to Egypt the tribes were agricultural, or interested in the land trade alone. It was not till a seafaring people like the Greeks had planted their colonies in Sharon and Philistia that great harbours were seriously attempted. Of this a striking illustration is given by the generic name of the landing- places from Gaza to Caesarea. This is not Semitic but Greek : El-mineh, by a very usual transposition of the vowel and consonant of the first syllable, is the Greek Limen ; ^ Leminah is still in the Talmud the name for the port of Caesarea^ The other name for harbour on this coast, Maiumas, has not yet been explained.^ ^ See Sut^ey Memoirs, ii. p. 137 flf. Clermont-Ganneau, Recutil . cit. ii. 109. Wittmann, Travels, pp. 128, 136, The Maritime Plain 157 It was not only war which swept the Maritime Plain. The Plague also came up this way from Egypt. Through- out antiquity the north-east corner of the ^, ^ The Plague. Delta was regarded with reason as the home of the Plague. The natural conditions of disease were certainly prevalent. The eastern mouth of the Nile then entered the sea at Pelusium, and supplied a great stretch of mingled salt and fresh water under a high temperature.^ To the west there is the swampy Delta ; and on the Asiatic .side sand-hills, with only brackish wells. Along the coast there appear to have been always a number of lagoons, separated from the sea by low bars of sand, and used as salt-pans.^ In Greek and Roman times the largest of these was known as the Serbonian Bog or Marsh.^ It had a very evil repute. The dry sand blowing across it gave it the appearance of solid ground, which was sufficient to bear those who ventured on it, only till they were beyond flight or rescue, and it swallowed part of more than one unfortunate army.* In Justinian's time, the 'Bog' was surrounded by communities of salt-makers and fish- curers ; filthy villages of under-fed and imbecile people, who always had disease among them.^ The extremes of temperature are excessive. It was a very similar state of affairs to that which has been observed in connection with the recent outbreak of plague in Astrakhan.^ Now all 1 Always accompanied by fevers, as round the Gulf of Mexico. ' Cf. Martin Baumgarten's Traveh^i^o"]) in Churchhill's Collection, i.410. ^ \iy.vr] "Lifi^wvU, vStrabo, vii. 59, and Died. Sic. ; Serbonis Lacus, Pliny, AW. Hist. V. 13. Cf. Ptol. iv. 5, § 12, 20. It lay parallel to the sea, and was about 200 stadia by 50. * Dio. Sic. i. 5 gives a graphic account of this. Artaxerxes Mnemon lost part of his army here in 350. ^ Gibbon. * On the Outbreak of Plague in Astrakhan, 1878-79, by Dr. Giovanni Cabriadus, Transactions of the Epidemiological Society, vol. iv., pt. iv. 449. Cf. on the same subject the Reports cf the German and English Commtsswns, ib. vol. iv. 362, 276. 158 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land armies coming from the north reached these unhealthy conditions, exhausted by an arduous march across the desert. Coming from the south, armies picked up the infection, with the possibility of its breaking out after the heat of the desert was passed, in the damper climate of Syria. Their camps, their waste and offal, with an occasional collapse of their animals in a sandstorm, were frequent aggravations.^ Relevant instances are not few in history. Here Senna- cherib's victorious army was infected by pestilence, and melted northwards like a cloud ; here in Justinian's time the Plague started more than once a course right across the world ; here a Crusading expedition showed symptoms of the Plague ; here, in 1799, Napoleon's army was infected and carried the disease into Syria : while the Turkish force that marched south, in 1801, found the Plague about Jaffa and in the Delta.^ These facts probably provide us with an explanation of two records of disease in the Old Testament. The Philis- tines, who occupied the open door by which the infection entered Syria,^ were struck at a time they were in camp ' Baumgarten in 1507 saw such a collapse : ' 10,000 sheep and asses and other creatures lying on the ground rotten and half consumed, the noisome smell of which was so insufferable that we were obliged to make all haste ; ' it was a collection of herds which the Sultan of Egypt had caused to be seized in Syria in default of the Syrian tribute. Cf. the similar tribute which Isaiah desciibes as going down to Egypt through the same dangers, xxx. 6 : Oracle of the beasts of the Ncgeb. See Wittmann, as below, pp. 122 f. 2 On Sennacherib, see the author's /faiaA i. On the Plague in Justinian's time, Evagrius, xxix. ; Gibbon, xliii. ; on Napoleon, the Memoirs of Cam- paigns sXx&SiAy cited ; \Wahh, Journal of the /ate Canipaipt in Egypt, 1803, p. 136; especially Wittmann, Travels, chs. viii. , x. , xi. on Plague and Ophthalmia in Maritime Plain. Volney, who says (Travels, i. 253) that the Plague always appears on the coast, and is brought from Greece and Syria, is giving a mistaken account of the fact that its home is in NE. corner of the Delta. • All the Commissioners of Inquiry on the Plague of Astrakhan were not The Maritime Plain 159 against Israel by two strong symptoms of the Plague — tumours in the groin and sudden and numerous deaths.^ Among the Israelites, again, the only country which gave its name to a disease was Egypt. All the sore sicknesses of Egypt of which thou art afraid xs a curse in the Book of Deuteronomy, which is eloquent of the sense of frequent infection from that notorious quarter. One of these sick- nesses is specified as the Boil or Tumour of Egypt? That it occurs in the singular number may, of course, be due to its being a continuous eruption on the body, but it seems rather to mean a solitary tumour, and it is interesting that in recent instances of the pestilence, the tumours have generally been one on each person, while in India a local name for the Plague is The Boil.^ However this may be, it seems certain that Israel was equally convinced as to whether the infection can be carried by clothes, but the Germans had no doubt that this outbreak was caused by the carriage to the district of spoil of war. — Trans, of Epidem. Soc. iv. 376 ff., Report oj German Commission ; cf. The Account of the Endemic Plague in India, ib. p. 391, where it is said that it is traders who are mostly attacked. * The name of the thing with which they were smitten, D vSy 'dphoKm, means swellings or boils, i Sam. v. 6, 9, 12 ; and the offerings made to avert the calamity were not only golden boils but golden mice, the symbol of the Plague, ib. vi. 5. Cf. Herodotus' account of the disaster to Sennacherib, in which mice play a part, ii. i. The disease with which Napoleon's army was attacked in Philistia was ])recisely the same — a very idiizX fi^vre ^ bubons. " All the sore sicknesses of Egypt, Deut. vii. 15, xxviii. 60; pestilence in the way, or after the manner, of Egypt, Amos iv. 10. The Boil (= l^nty Shehtn) is applied both to a single tumour like a carbuncle, as in 2 Kings XX. 7, and to an extensive eruption and swelling of the skin, as in Job ii. 7, where it is supposed to be elephantiasis. In Deut. xxviii. 35 it means some extensive disease of the skin. * Trans, of the Epidem. Soc, iv., pt. i. 129 ff. On Plague and Typhus Fever in India, Surgeon-General Murray. On solitary tumours, see ib. Report of German Commission on the Astrakhan Plague, p. 376, and the cases specified by Dr. Cabriadus in the same Transactions, iv. , pt. iv. p. 449, and Surgeon-Major Colville's Notes on Plague in Province of Baghdad, ib. iv., pt, i. p. 9, where in many the sign of Plague was an enlargement of glans in groin or armpit. See Additional Note, p. 670. 1 60 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land sometimes attacked by epidemics, which, starting from the north-east corner of Egypt, travelled by the short desert route to Syria, and passed up the avenues of trade from the Maritime Plain. The Philistines, as traders, would stand in special danger of infection. These, then, were the contributions of the Maritime Plain to the history of Israel. It was a channel always busy with Commerce, and often scoured by War and the Plague. The positions of the cities of the Maritime Plain are of extreme interest. We have surveyed those on the coast. Those inland arrange themselves into two Cities of the ^ . . , , _ , Maritime groups. Commg trom the north, we nnd no inland town of any consequence till the 'Aujeh is passed, and then all at once the first group appear at the mouth of the Vale of Ajalon. The second group are separated from these by the low hills on the Nahr Rubin, and consist of the towns of Philistia. It is, of course, the incoming Vale of Ajalon that explains the first group — Ramleh, and Lydda and her sisters, with, V He of the Perhaps, Antipatris. Lydda, or Lod, with Ono, Smiths. a little farther out on the plain, and Hadid, on the edge of the hills behind, formed the most westerly of the Jewish settlements after the Exile. The returned Jews naturally pushed down the only broad valley from Jerusalem till they touched the edge of the great thorough- fare which sweeps past it The site of their settlements here is described as the Ge-haharashim — the Valley of t/ie Smit/is or Craftsmen. It is surely a recollection of the days when there was no harash in Israel, but the Hebrews came down to the Philistine border to get their plough- shares and their mattocks sharpened.^ The frontier posi- * I Sam. liii. 19. Lod, Ono. and Iladid are not given in Joshua (only in The Maritime Plain 16 1 tion of Lydda — according to Josephus, 'a village not less than a city' — made it the frequent subject of battle and treaty between the Jews and their succes- Lydda. sive enemies.^ Like all the other inland towns of Sharon, it appears never to have been fortified. It was, as we have seen, one of the centres of Jewish feeling throughout Roman times, and after the destruction of Jerusalem it formed a refuge of the religious leaders of Judaism. After one or other of those revolts of despair, into which the Jews burst during the second and third centuries, Lydda was emptied of everything Jewish, and made pagan, under the name of Diospolis.^ Judaism disappeared, but Christianity survived, and finally got the upper hand. There was a Bishop of Diospolis in the fourth century, and a Synod of Diospolis, at which Pela- gius was tried, early in the fifth.^ The chief Christian I Chron. viii. 12) ; but Ezra ii. 33 implies that they were Jewish towns before the exile, cf. Neh. vii. 37. Neh. xi. 35 relates their rebuilding, and gives us the name of the district, D"'ti'^n^ ^3— LXX., yTj'Apaaein. Conder suggests that llarashim 'survives in the present Hirshah,' P.E.F.Q., 1878, 18. ^ Especially between the Syrians and the Jews, and the Romans and the Jews. It was confirmed by Ptolemy to Jonathan Maccabeus, i Mace. xi. 34, and by Caesar, with the right to make it thoroughly Jewish, xiv. Antt. x. 6. It was the capital of a toparchy, iii. Wars, ill. 5. For its adherence to the national side, witness its occupation by Cestius Gallus (see p. 13S), as also by Vespasian, iv. Wars, vi. That the latter met with no opposition was due to the town's want of foilification. ^ This is usually supposed to have happened as early as Hadrian's time, when Jerusalem was desecrated. But Schlatter, Zur Topopaphie u. Geschichte PaldstinaSy No. 2, sets the change of name under Septimius Severus about the year 202 a.d.. when Beit-Jibrin also was put under a Greek name. The earliest coins that have been found of Diospolis bear the legend ' L. Septimia Severa Diospolis.' Eusebius and Jerome still know it under that name, though, strange to say, neither Diospolis nor Lydda is the subject of a special article in the Onomasticon, but the name Diospolis occurs only in fixing the position of towns like Arimalhea, Addara, Adithaim, etc * 415. He got off, to the wrath of Jerome : Dialog adsj. Pel. L 1 62 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land interest of Lydda, however, centres round her St. George. There is no hero whom we shall more frequently meet in Palestine, and especially east of Jordan. St. George. Indeed, among all the saints, there has been none with a history like this one, who, from obscure origins became not only the virtual patron of Syrian Christendom, and an object of Mohammedan reverence, but patron as well of the most western of all Christian peoples, St. George of Lydda is St. George of England ; he is also a venerated personage in Moslem legend. For this triple fame he has to thank his martyrdom on the eve of the triumph of Christianity (to the early Church George is Megalo- martyr and Tropaiophoros) ; the neighbourhood of his shrine to the scene of a great Greek legend ; the removal of his relics to Zorava, in Hauran, where his name spread with great rapidity ; and the effect of all this, his Syrian reputation, first upon the Moslems before they became impervious to Christian influences, and then on the Crusaders at a crisis in their first invasion. The original George was a soldier of good birth, and served as a military tribune under Diocletian. In 303 he was martyred. According to some, Lydda was the scene of his martyrdom ; others place there the property of his family, but say that he suffered in Nicomedia.^ In either case Lydda received his relics ; through the following centuries pilgrims visited his tomb in the town,^ and there 1 Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. viii. 5, tells of ' a certain man of no mean origin, but highly esteemed for his temporal dignities,' who, in Nicomedia, tore down Diocletian's edicts against Christianity, and then heroically met death. ' Antonini Placentini Itiuerarium {cir. 570), c. 25 : ' Diospolis ... in qua requiescit Georgius martyr. ' The same sentence confounds Diospolis with Ashdod and Cxsarea. Arculf, before 683, Willibald, 728, and Bernard, 865, also mention the tomb. The church does not appear to have been dedicated to St. George ; travellers quote only the monastery and the tomb. The Maritime Plain 163 was a monastery dedicated to him. A church had stood in Lydda from the earliest times, but it was destroyed on the approach of the First Crusade. A new cathedral was built by the Crusaders over the tomb, and partly because of this, but also in gratitude for the supernatural intervention of the saint in their favour at Antioch, they dedicated it to him. It was a great pile of building, capable of being used as a fortress. So, on the approach of Richard, Saladin destroyed it. Richard, who did more than any man to identify St. George with England,^ is said to have rebuilt the church ; but there is no record of the fact, and it is much more likely that the great bays which the traveller of to-day admires are the ruins that Saladin made.2 By Crusading times the name of the saint had displaced both Diospolis and Lydda, and the town might have been called St. George till now but for the break in Christian pilgrimage from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries." The Arabs have perpetuated the Hebrew name Lod in their Ludd. The connection of St. George with a dragon can be traced to the end of the sixth century. It was probably due to two sources— to the coincidence of the rise of the martyr's fame with the triumph of Sd^he'^^ Christianity over paganism, and, as M. Clermont ^'"^^°"' Ganneau has forcibly argued, to the conveyance to St. George of the legend of Perseus and Andromeda. It was ^ It was under Edward in. that St. George became patron of England. ' Vinsauf is silent. Robinson's reasons against Richard's building seem conclusive, Bib. Kes. iii. 54 f.; De Vogiie, Us Agliscs de la Terr, SainU, 363 ff. with plans. Cf. Phocas, 39; Bohaeddin, ch. 121. _ =• So in Crusading documents {Z.D.P. V. x. 215), but even as late as in 1506, in Die Jerusalemfahrt des Caspar von Mulinen : ' Und reit der Herre fon Ramen und der Herre fon Sant Joergen uncz gon Jaffen' iZ D P V "• 195). ■ " 164 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land in the neighbourhood of Lydda — at Arsftf or Joppa — that Perseus slew the sea-monster which threatened the virgin ; and wc know how often Christian saints have been served heir to the fame of heathen worthies who have preceded them in the reverence of their respective provinces. But the legend has an even more interesting connection. The Mohammedans, who usually identify St. George with the prophet Elijah — El Khudr, the forerunner of Messiah — at Lydda confound his legend with another about Christ Himself. Their name for Antichrist is Dajjal, and they have a tradition that Jesus will slay Antichrist by the gate of Lydda. This notion sprang from an ancient bas-relief of St. George and the Dragon on the Lydda church. But Dajj&l may be derived, by a very common confusion between n and /, from Dagon, whose name two neighbouring villages — Dajun and Bet Dajon — bear to this day, while one of the gates of Lydda used to be called the Gate of Dagon.^ If the derivation be correct, then, it is indeed a curious process by which the monster, symbolic of heathen. ism conquered by Christianity, has been evolved out of the first great rival of the God of Israel. And could there be a fitter scene for such a legend than the town where Hebrew touched Philistine, Jew struggled with Greek, and Christendom contested with Islam? To-day the popula- tion is mostly Mohammedan, and the greater part of the cathedral a mosque ; but there is still a Christian con- gregation in Lydda, who worship in the nave and an aisle ; and once a year, on the anniversary of their great saint, whom even the Moslems reverence, they are permitted to celebrate Mass at the high altar over his tomb.^ ' Clermont Ganneau, P.E.F. Mem. ii. * For such details of the above as are mc^i. in M. Clermont Ganncau's papcn ( am indebted to Q\\inn%Jud(e, i. The Maritime Plain 165 About 700 Lydda suffered one of her many overthrows. The Arab general ^ who was the cause saw the necessity of building another town in the neighbourhood to command the junction of the roads from the coast to the interior with the great caravan route from Egypt to Damascus. He chose a site nearly three miles from Lydda, and called the town Ramleh, ' the sandy,' and, indeed, there is no other feature to characterise it. Like the cathedrals of the plains of Europe, the mosque of Ramleh has a lofty tower, from which all the convergent roads may be surveyed for miles. Ramleh was once fortified. It suffered the varying fortunes of the wars of the Crusades, and since it became Mohammedan, in 1266, its Christian convent has continued to provide shelter to pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem.^ From Ramleh it is a long way back in time to Anti- patris. Antipatris was one of the creations of Herod, and appears to have been built not as a fortress, but as a pleasant residence. Its site was " ^*"'' probably not where Robinson placed it, at the present Kefr Saba, but southward, near the present El-Mir. Here is all the wealth of water which Josephus describes, as well as sufficient ruins to demonstrate that the site was once a place of importance.' * Suleiman, son of the Khalif 'Abd-el-MeIek, according to Abulfeda. ' Pilgrims used to wait here till the frequently delayed permission was granted them to go on to Jerusalem. Felix Fabri, i., etc., etc. » See Robinson, Bib. Res. ii. 45-47. The credit of the discovery of the other site is due to the P.E.F. Survey under Conder (see P.E.F. Mem. ii. 258 fif.). Though in one passage Josephus says Antipatris was on the site of Kefr Saba (xvi. Antt. v. 2), in another he descril>es it more generally as in the Plain of Kefr Saba (ii. IVarSy xxi. 9). JUPEA. THE SHEPBELAH AHP PEBLISTIA CHAPTER IX THE PHILISTINES AND THEIR CITIES For this Chapter consult Maps I. and IV. THE PHILISTINES AND THEIR CITIES 'T'^^IIE singularity and importance of the Palestine towns ■*- demand their separation from the rest of the Mari- time Plain, and their treatment in a chapter by them- selves. The chief cities of the Philistine League were five — Gaza, 'Askalon, 'Ashdod, 'E^cron, and Gath ; but Jamneh, or Jamniel, is generally associated with them. Only one — 'Askalon — is directly on the sea ; the others dominate the trunk-road which, as we have seen, through Philistia keeps inland. None of them lie north of the low hills by the Nahr Rubin. These two facts, with the well-known dis- tinction of the Philistines from the Canaanites or Phoeni- cians, point to an immigration from the south and an interest in the land trade. This is confirmed by all that we know of the history of this strange people. In the LXX. the name Philistines is generally translated by Allophuloi (Vulg. The name aliegencB) ' aliens ' ; and it has suggested a P^^'i'stines. derivation from falash, a Semitic root, 'to migrate.'^ In the CMd Testament there is a very distinct memory of ' The name was not given by the Semites, Hebrews, or Canaanites. That it was the Philistines' name for themselves appears from its use by all olhei peoples who came into connection with them. In the Egyptian inscriptions it is I'urasati ; in the Assyrian inscriptions it is Pulistav and Pilista ; Schrader, K.A.T., I02, 103, where there is an interesting argument to show that by •.'',9 lyo The Historical Geography of the Holy Land such a migration : O childreri of Israel, saith Jehovah, have I not brought up Israel out of tJu land of Egypt, and t/u Philistines from Kaphtor, and the Syrians from Kir ? The Kaphtorim, which came forth from Kaphtor, destroyed tlu A vim, which dwelt in open villages as far as Gaza, and dwelt in their stead} Where the Phih'stines came from, and what they originally were, is not clear. Their origin. . _ . That they moved up the coast from Egypt is certain;' that they came from Kaphtor is also certain. But it by no means follows, as some argue, that Kaphtor and Egypt are the same region.^ On the contrary, Kaphtor seems to be outside Egypt ; * and as the Philistines are Pilista the Assyrians meant Judah as well as the Philistine cities — a remarkable precedent for what happened in Greek times, when the name of Philistia was extended across the whole country behind. Pelesheth has a Semitic appear- ance which Peiishtim, showing the root to be quadriliteral, has not. The name is supposed to survive in the names of several localities in the Shephelah hills— at Keratiyeh el Fenish by Beit-Jibiin, Arak el Fentsh, Bestan el Fentsh — also at Latrfln, Soba, Amwas, and Khurbet Ikbala. All these place* are on the borderland of ancient Philistia, and the name does not occur else- where. See Conder in P.E.F. Mem. vol. iii. 294. ' Amos ix. 7 ; Deut. ii. 23. ' From the unlikelihood of their landing on the coast, from the traces in the Old Testament of their settlement to the south of Gaza before they occu- pied it (the stories of the patriarchs and Book of Joshua), ami from Gen. x. 14. whether you read the clause in brackets where it stands, or at the end of thf verse. The Pathrusim and Casluhim are practically Egypt ; out of whom should be whence. But some take this clause as a gloss. ' Egyptologists like Ebers (^gyptett u. die Biicher Mosis) and Sayce [Races 0/ the O.T., 53-54, 127, a popular statement) assert that Kaphtor is Kaft-ur, 'the greater Phoenicia,' applied to the Delta by the Egyptians. But see p. 197. Before this Reland (p. 74) had placed Kaphtor 'in ora Maritima /Egypti contra Pelusium,' and ' suspected ' a connection between the names Pelusium and Pelesheth. Cf. Plutarch's De Isiet Osiri, xvii., which speaks of a youth, Pelusius or Palaestinus, after whom Iris names Pelusium. * I cannot think that if Kaphtor had been part of the Delta, it would have been given as distinct from Egypt, in Amos ix. 8. On the other hand, the reason given by Dillmann (on Gen. x. 14), that <{< is applied to Kaphtor in Jer. xlviL 4, is not conclusive, for ^j* is also applicable to the Delta coast. The Philistines and their Cities 1 7 1 also called Kerethim,^ and the connection between Egypt and Crete was always a close one, and certain traditions trace the inhabitants of Palestine to Crete, it appears more safe to identify Kaphtor with that *^ '°'^' island.2 But to have traced the Philistines to Crete is not to have cleared up their origin, for early Crete was full of tribes from both east and west.' The attempt has been made to derive the name Philistine from the Pelasgians, or from a Pelasgic clan called Peneste, and to prove in detail that Philistine names and institutions are Aryan/ But Crete shows signs of having been once partly colonised by Semites, and it is possible that some of these, after a long contact with Greek tribes, returned eastward.^ In that case their natural goal, as with the eastward-faring Greeks, would be, not the harbourless coast of South Syria, but the mouths of the Nile. Now, the little that we know of the Philistines, while not, indeed, proving such a theory, does ' Zeph. ii. 5 ; Ezek. xxiv. Cf. l Sam. xx. 14. ' That Kaphtor is not mentioned in Gen. x. 4, with other Mediterranean islands, as a son of Javan, is due to the fact that Crete was regarded as con- nected, not with the north, but with the south coast of the Mediterranean. It is scarcely necessary now to say that the arrangement in Gen. x. is not ethnological, but mainly geographical. The traditions referred to in the text are the connection which the inhabitants of Gaza alleged between their god Mama and the Cretan Jove, and the statement in Tacitus, Hist. v. 2 : 'Judasos Creta insula profugos, novissima Libyse insedisse, memorant, qua tempestate Saturnus vi Jovis expulsus cesserit regnis.' He seeks to explain this tradition by the analogy between Idsei, from Mount Ida, and Judsei. It must be kept in mind that these late traditions may have arisen from a con- nection between Crete and the Philistine coast in Hellenic times— 1.«. after Alexander the Great. Gaza especially had then great trade with the west. » Cf. Odyssey, xix. i7off. Achaeans, Kydonians, Dorians, Pelasgians, and aboriginal Cretans — hedKpTjToi. * Hitzig, Urgeschuhte u. Mythologie der Philistaer, where the most extra- ordinary Sanscrit analogies are suggested. The argument has been still more overdone by the article in Schenkel's Bibd-Ltxicon. " Knobel's opinion (Volkerta/el Gtn. x.) was that the Philistines *ere Egyptians who had sojourned in Crete. 172 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land not contradict it. Take them as a whole, and the Philis- tines appear a Sennitic people, with some non-Semitic habits, institutions, and words. Putting aside Racial char- . , , ... acterof the names of their towns, which were pro- Pbilistines. , , . , \ • /-^ • 1 i bably due to their Canaanite predecessors,^ we find a number of their personal names also to be Semitic.^ Their religion seems to have consisted of the thorough Semitic fashion of reverencing a pair of deities, masculine and feminine. Dagon had a fish-goddess by his side, and the names Dagon and Beelzebub are purely Semitic. Nor is this evidence counterbalanced by the fact that the Philistines did not practise circumcision, for they may have abandoned the custom during their western sojourn, as the later Phoenicians did in contact with the Greeks. But even when we have admitted the Semitic features, it is still possible to argue that the Philistines received these from the civilisation which they succeeded and absorbed. This is certain in the case of their towns, and of the names of the giants among them, who belonged to the remains of the Canaanite population.* Indeed, with the exception, perhaps, of Abimelech, there is no Philistine name of a Semitic cast of which this may not be true. It is quite possible that neither Delilah nor Obed-edom the Gittite was a pure Philistine.* As for language, there is little argument either way ; but if, as there is some reason ' This disposes of part of Stade's argument, Gesch. des V. Israel, i. 142. ' Abimelech, Delilah, Obed-edom. But see below. Perhaps also Ishbi, Saph, Goliath, Raphah. Achish, E^^3K, son of Maoch, "jiyo, king of Gath, i Sam. xxvii. 2. Achish, son of Maachah, king of Gaih, nayo i Kings ii. 39. \V. Ma» Miiller {Asien u. Eur., 389) gives a name Bid-ira, * Josh. xi. 21, 22. Cf. XV. 13, 14. * Gath was so near the Israel border, and so often under Israel, that Obed edom may have been a Hebrew, though this is not likely from bis name. The Philistines and their Cities 173 to suppose, incoming Israel acquired theirs from the Canaanites, it is not impossible for the Philistines to have done the same.^ As for religion, if in antiquity the religion of a province was usually adopted by its invaders, and if even Israel fell so frequently under the power of Canaanite worship, as only with difficulty to escape from permanently succumbing to it, how much more likely were the Philis- tines, who had not the spirit of Israel, to yield to the manner of the gods of the land} The case, therefore, is very complex. As to the non-Semitic elements in Philistinism, some maintain that they are Greek, or at least Aryan.^ Now, it would indeed be interesting if we were sure that in the early Philistines Israel already encountered that Hellenism with which she waged war on the same fields in the days of the Maccabees, But we cannot affirm more than that this was possible ; and the above ambiguous results are all that are afforded by the present state of our knowledge of this perplexing people. The Philistines appear to have come into the Maritime Plain of Syria either shortly before or shortly after Israel left Egypt. In the Tell-el-Amarna Letters from South Palestine, in the beginning of the four- pcarance in , , . , Canaan. teenth century B.C., they are not mentioned ; and in the latter half of that century the monuments of Rameses II. represent the citizens of Askalon with faces that are not Philistine faces.* Now, this agrees with the ' Nothing can be argued about the speech of the early Philistines, from the fact that in Aramaic times the Philistines, as witnessed by two coins of Ashdod, spoke a dialect of Hebrew. * 2 Kings xvii. 26. ' The article in Riehm's Handworterbuch says of the Philistines : ' Sie Bind mit Griechischen, bestimmter Karischen, Elcmenten, stark versetzten Semiten, aus Kreta. In Isa. ix. 11, for Philistij»es the LXX. have 'EXXjj'tJ. * They are probably Hittite. — Brugsch. 1 74 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land traditions in Genesis, one of which places the Philistine centre still to the south of Gaza,^ while another states that the Canaanites once held all the coast from Gaza north- wards j^ as well as that of Deuteronomy,^ that the Caph- torim had to expel the Avini, who dive It in open villages, as far as Gaza. This northern advance of the Philistines may have been going on at the very time that the Israel- ites were invading the Canaanites from the east. But if so, it cannot have been either powerful or ambitious, for of the various accounts in the books of Joshua and Judges of the first Hebrew conquests, none bring the Hebrews even into conflict with the Philistines.* Still later, by Deborah's time, the tribe of Dan had touched the sea, and when afterwards they were driven back to the hills, the pressure came not from Philistines, but from Amorites.^ Very soon ' In Gcrar — Gen. xx. and xxvi. Gerar can hardly be the Umm-el-Jerar for which it is generally taken ; for this is too far north for the verse in which it occurs to agree with the clause immediately before it, Gen. xx. i ; and the Onomasticon puts it twenty-five Roman miles south of Beit-Jibrin. 2 Gen. X. 19. * ii. 3- * Josh. xi. and xiii. ; Judges i., especially verse 18, where, with the LXX. and most authorities, we should insert the word 'not.' Josh. xiii. 2 says expressly, This is the lavd that yet remaiueth — all the Geltloth, or circuits, oj the Philistines. * Judges V. 17 : Dan abideth in ships. Judges i. 34 : The Amontes forced the children 0/ Dan into the mountains, for they would not suffer them to come down into the valley, i.e. of Ajalon, where according to the next verse, the Aniorites settled till they were subdued by Ephraim. [I cannot agree with Budde [Biicher Kichter u. Samuel, p. 17) that Mount Heres = Beth-shemesh, the present 'Ain Shems, in the Vale of Sorek (read siidlich for nordluh in Budde). Mount Hcres must be in the Vale of Ajalon, where Ephraim would naturally come, as he would not into Sorek.] The two statements can hardly be reconciled, for if the Amorites succeeded, according to Judges i. 34, in preventing Dan from even coming down into the valley, how could it be said that (Judges v. 17) Dan ever got to the sea, and remainea in shipsl This is just one of the difficulties that meet us almost everywhere in the accounts of Israel's occupation of the land. I have ventured (in opposition to Stade, Budde, and Kittel) to adopt the statement that Dan did reach the sea, for Judges V. 17 belongs to one of the best-assured parts of the Song of Deborah, The Philistines and their Cities 175 afterwards, however, the Philistines, adding to their effective force the tall Canaanites ^ whom they had subdued, and strengthened, perhaps, by the addition of other clans from their earlier seats — for, like Israel, they had several tribes among them^ — moved north and east with irresistible power. Overflowing from what was especially known as their districts, the Geliloth Pelesheth,^ they seized all the coast to beyond Carmel, and spread inland over ^j^gj^. contact Esdraelon. It was during this time of expan- '^"'^ ^^'^^'^'• sion that they also invaded the highlands to the east of them, and began that conflict with Israel which alone has given them fame and a history. We cannot have followed this history without being struck by the strange parallel which it affords to the history of Israel — the strange parallel and parallel the stranger difference. Both Philistines and pSnes^ Hebrews were immigrants into the land for ^"^ Israelites. whose possession they fought through centuries. Both came up to it from Egypt. Both absorbed the populations they found upon it. Both succeeded to the Canaanite civilisation, and came under the fascination of the Canaan- ite religion. Each people had a distinctive character of its own, and both were at different periods so victorious that either, humanly speaking, might have swallowed up the other. Indeed, so fully was the Philistine identified with the land that his name has for ever become its name — a and is not to be put aside simply because it conflicts with another state- ment. ^ Sons of Anak. ' Kaphtorim, Philistines, Kerethim, etc. ' One of the few instances of the use of Gelll, or Gelilah, apart from Galilee (ch. XX.). It was, of course, a name applied by the foreign Hebrews, and one might be tempted to see a trace of it in the Galilea of the Crusaders, cast of Cxsarea, and the modern Jelil, north-cast of Jaffa. See p. 413. 1 76 Tne Historical Geography of the Holy Land distinction which Israel never reached. Yet Israel survived and the Philistine disappeared. Israel attained to a destiny, equalled in the history of mankind only by Greece and Rome, whereas all the fame of the Philistine lies in having served as a foil to the genius of the Hebrews, and to-day his name against theirs is the symbol of impenetrablcness and obscurantism. What caused this difference between peoples whose earlier fortunes were so similar ? First, we may answer, their geographical position, and Second, the spirit which was in one of them. The same I land ^ which brought in Israel from the east brought up the Philistine from the south. It planted Israel on a rocky range of mountain, aloof from the paths of the great empires, and outside their envy. It planted the Philistines on an open doorway and a great thoroughfare, amidst the traffic and the war of two continents. They were bent now towards Egypt, now towards Assyria, at a time when youthful Israel was growing straight and free as one of her own forest trees They were harassed by intrigue and battle, when her choicest spirits had freedom for the observation of the workings of an omnipotent and righteous Providence ; and when, at last, they were overwhelmed by the streams of Greek culture which flowed along their coast in the wake of Alexander the Great, she upon her bare heights still stubbornly kept the law of her Lord. Yet, to ascribe this difference of destiny to difference of geographical position were to dignify the mere opportunity with the virtue of the original cause ; for it was not Israel's geo- graphical position which prevented her from yielding to the Canaanite religion, or moved her, being still young * See Amos viii. Q. The Philistines and their Cities 177 and rude, to banish from her midst the soothsayers and necromancers, to whom the Philistines were wholly given over.i But from the first Israel had within her a spirit, and before her an ideal, of which the Philistines knew nothing, and always her prophets identified the purpose— which they plainly recognised— of her establishment on so iso- lated and secure a position with the highest ends of righteousness, wisdom, and service to all mankind. It is outside the purpose of this work to follow in detail the history of the relations of the two peoples, but it may be useful to define the main periods into which that history falls, with their relevant portions of geography. There was first a period of military encounters, and alternate subjugation of the one people by the other. This passed through its heroic stage in the times „ , ^f C 01 1 T^ Relations of 01 bamson, baul, and David, entered a more Israel and peaceful epoch under Solomon, and for the ito'b.c. 800 next three centuries of the Hebrew monarchy was distin- guished by occasional raids from both sides into the heart of the enemy's country. The chief theatre of the events of this period are the Shephelah hills and the valleys leading up through them upon Judah and Benjamin.^ At one time the Philistines arc at Michmash, on the very citadel of Israel's hill-country, and at another near Jezreel, by its northern entrances.^ In both of these cases their purpose may have been to extend their supremacy over the trade routes which came up from Eg>-pt and crossed the Jordan ; but it seems as probable that, by occupying Michmash and the Plain of Esdraelon, they sought to separate the ' Cf. I Sam. xxviii. 3 with Isa. ii. 6. ' See next chapter. I Sam. xiii., xxix., and xxxi. M I yS The Historical Geography of the Holy Land tribes of Israel from one another.^ Occasionally Philis- tines penetrated to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem,'^ or the Israelite raids swept up to the gates of Gaza ; ' but neither people ever mastered the other's chief towns. The second period is that of the centuries from the eighth to the fourth before Christ, when the contests of the two jj g J, nations are stilled before the advance upon 800-400. Syria of the great world-powers — Egypt, As- syria, Babylon and Persia. Now, instead of a picture of forays and routs up and down the intervening passes, Philistine and Hebrew face to face in fight, we have the gaze of the Hebrew prophets looking down on Philistia from afar, and marking her cities for destruction by the foreign invader. It is, indeed, one of the many signs of the sobriety of the prophets, and of their fidelity to histori- cal fact, that they do not seek to revive within Israel at this time any of her earlier ambitions for the victory of her own arms over her ancient foe. The threats of prophecy against Philistia are, with one exception, threats of destruc- tion from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, speak of the Philistine cities, not hotly, as of enemies shortly to be met in battle, but piti- fully, as victims of the Divine judgment, which lowers over Philistia and Israel alike.* 1 This seems the more likely idea in the case of Michmash, for although there was a trade route from the east of the Jordan by Jericho and Michmash to the coast, which was much used by the Crusaders (see p. 250), a garrison at Michmash could not have kept it open while Saul had his camp at Gilgal, and commanded the Jordan. * 2 Sam. V. 22 it. * 2 Kings xviii. 8. * Isa. xiv. 29-32; Jer. xlvii. ; Zeph. ii. ; Zech. ix. The one exception ii Isa. xi. 14, where it is said Judah and Ephraim shall swoop upon the shoulder of the Philistine towards the sea. This is a passage which some ni.iintain is not Isaiah's. But, as far as our present subject is concerned, there was suffi- The Philistines and their Cities 1 79 A change of attitude and temper came with the third period, from the third century before Christ to the close of the Jewish revolts against Rome, in the third ,,t „^ ° ' 111. B.C. 3CX>— century after Christ. With Alexander's inva- •*-^- 3°°- sion the Philistine coast and cities were opened to Greek influence. There was traffic with Greece through the harbours, such as they were ; there were settlements of Greek men in all the cities, Greek institutions arose, the old deities were identified with Greek gods, and, though the ancient Philistine stubbornness persisted it was exercised in the defence of civic independence, according to Greek ideas, and of Greek manners and morals. But it was just against this Hellenism, whether of Syria or of the half-free Philistine cities, that the sacred wars of the Maccabees broke out. The aloofness of the prophetic period was over, and Israel returned to close quarters with her ancient foes. Their battles raged on the same fields ; their routs and pursuits up and down the same passes. Did Samson arise in the Vale of Sorek, and David slay Goliath in the Vale of Elah, both of them leading down into Philistia ? — then the birthplace of the Maccabees was in the parallel Valley of Ajalon, at Modin, and their exploits within sight of the haunts of their predecessors a thousand years before. So, through the literature of this time, and of the times leading up to it, we miss the wide prophetic view, and in psalms that exult in the subjugation of the Philistines to Israel, and trimnph over Philistia} we seem to breathe cient historical occasion for it in Isaiah"s days, in the expeditions of Uzziah and Hezekiah up to the gates of Gaza. Psalm Ix. (cviii.), Ixxxiii., etc. Of course, it is always possible histoncally that such Psalms are of earlier date, for Hezekiah carried fire and sword into Philistia while Isaiah was alive— a strong reminder to us of how impossible it is to be dogmatic on the date of any Psalm, simply because it reflects the main Jeeling of the literature of the time to which we assign it. i8o The Historical Geography of the Holy Land again the ruder and more military spirit of the times of Samson and of Saul. This hostility and active warfare persisted till the last Jewish revolts under the Roman emperors. Then the Jews gave way, withdrawing into Galilee, and Christianity succeeded to the heritage of the war against Hellenism. The slow conquest of heathenism by the Church forms the fourth period of the history of Philistia, from the first IV. In Chris- ^° ^^^ beginning of the fifth century after nan Times. Christ. It is typical of the whole early progress of Christianity, and as full of pathos and romance as this was in any other part of the world. In Philistia Chris- tianity rose against a Hellenism proud of its recent vic- tories over the Jews. There were flourishing schools and notable philosophers in every city. The gods, identified with the deities of Greece and Rome, were favoured equally by the common people and by the governing classes. The Marneion, or Temple of Mama, at Gaza was regarded as a stronghold of heathendom only second to the Serapeum at Alexandria.^ Beside so elaborate a paganism the early Christians of Philistia, though they were organised under many bishops, were a small and feeble folk. Like the Church of Pergamos, they divelt by Satan's scat, and like her, in consequence, they had their martyrs.^ Next neigh- bours to the Church of Egypt, they imitated the asceticism of Antony, and avowed the orthodoxy of Athanasius. The deserts of Egypt sent them monks, who, scattered over the plain and the low hills of Shephelah, gradually converted the country people, with a power which the Hellenism of the cities had no means to counteract.' It is their caves ' Jerome ad Lactam, ep. vii., and Commentary to Ifaiah, c. xvii. ' Rev. ii. 13. For martyrs sec Kuscbius, J/.E. viii. 13, Soiomzn, passim. • Jerome, Life of Hilarion. Soiomen's History, vi. 31. The Philistines and their Cities i8i and the ruins of their cloisters which we come across to-day in the quiet glens of the Shephelah, especially in the neighbourhood of Beit-Jibrin.^ For a little, Constan- tine's favour gave them a freer course in the cities, but this was closed by the following hostility of Julian ; and it was not till 402, under the influence of Theodosius, and at the hands of the vigorous Bishop Porphyry of Gaza,^ that the Cross triumphed, and idolatry was abolished. Then the Marneion was destroyed, almost on the same site on which Samson drew down the Temple of Dagon fifteen hundred years before. But this was only the climax of a process of which the country monks must get the credit. In the same glens where the early peasants of Israel had beaten back the Philistine armies with ox-goads,^ and David, with his shepherd's sling, had slain the giant, simple monks, with means as primitive, gained the first victories for Christ over as strenuous a paganism. After this, life in Philistia is almost silent till the Crusades, and after the Crusades till now. This rapid sketch of the four periods of Philistine history will prepare us both for our review of the great Philistine cities in this chapter, and of the Shephelah in the next. The five Philistine cities we take now from the south northwards. Gaza may best be described as in most respects the southern counterpart of Damascus. It is a site of abun- ^ See ch. xi. The labours of these monks were especially numerous in the j-A/ioi of Eleulheropolis : Eusebius. ^ Lift of Porphyry, by Marcus the Deacon, in the Acta Sanctorum. ' The story of Shamgar and his slaughter of 600 Philistines with an ox-goad (Judges iii. 31) is no doubt, as many have suggested, a typical instance of the fact above stated. 1 82 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land dant fertility on the edge of a great desert ^ — a harbour for the wilderness and a market for the nomads ; once, as Damascus is still, the rendezvous of a great Gaza. pilgrimage; and as Damascus was the first great Syrian station across the desert from Assyria, so Gaza is the natural outpost across the desert from Kgypt. This, indeed, is to summarise her position and history. Gaza lies to-day where she lay in the most ancient times, on and around a hill, which rises lOO feet above the plain, Gaza and '^^ three miles' distance from the sea. Fifteen the Desert, wells of fresh water burst from the sandy soil, and render possible the broad gardens and large popula- tion.^ The Bedouin from a hundred miles away come into the bazaars for their cloth, weapons, and pottery. In the days when the pilgrimage to Sinai was made rather from Syria than from Egypt, the caravans were organised in Gaza for the desert march.^ The inhabitants were characterised as Movers of pilgrims,' whom, no doubt, like the Damascenes, they found profitable. As from Damascus, so from Gaza great trade-routes travelled in all directions — to Egypt, to South Arabia, and in the times of the Naba- ' ^ir2 T]j i-pxy^ TTJs ip/jfiov. Arrian, Anabasis ii. 26, For Damascus see ch. xxi. * Arrian, Anab. Alex. ii. 26, reckons Gaza at twenty stadia from the sea. The hill is not extensive. The gardens spread about it four miles north and south by two and a half east and west. The population is saiil to be 18,000 at present, and, except when ruined, the town was described by writers of all ages as large, splendid, and opulent. For detailed descriptions see P.E.F. Mem. iii. ; Z.D.P. V. viii., but especially xi., with plan by Clatt, p. 149. in \4S^ twice as big as Jerusalem : Felix l-abri (/'./*. 7'.), ii. 450. * Rather than at Hebron, even when the pilgrimage was to or from Jeru- salem, for the Bedouin still avoid Hebron, but come readily to Gaza : Robin- son, B.K. i. Cf. Anton. I'lacen. Hitter. (570 a.d.), which describes (ch. xxxiii. ) the Gazans as ' homines honestissimi, omni liberalitate decori, amatoi ei pcregrinorum.' Antoninus took eighteen or nineteen days on the way to SinaL Afitonius de Cremona says: ' De monte Synay usque ad Gazam fuimus x». diebus in deserto.' Cf. also Bcrnhard, de la Brocqucric (14J2). The Philistines and their Cities 1 83 lean kingdom to Petra and Palmyra.^ Amos curses Gaza for trafficking in slaves with Edom.^ When the descriptions of Strabo and Pliny reach Gaza, almost the only fact they find relevant is her distance from Elath, on the Gulf of Akaba.' From all those eastern depots, on sea and desert, Gaza, by her harbour, in Greek times forwarded the riches of Arabia and India across the Mediterranean, as Acca did by the Palmyra-Damascus route. The Crusaders alone do not appear to have used Gaza for commerce, because this part of Palestine was never so securely in their hands as to permit them to dominate the roads south and east for any distance, and they tapped the eastern trade by the route Moab, Jericho, Jerusalem, Joppa.* But through Moslem times the stream has partly followed its old channel. To this day caravans setting out from Gaza meet the Damascus Hajj at Ma'en with pilgrims and supplies.^ Their common interest in those routes has gene- rally kept the people of Gaza and the Bedouin on good terms. Bates, the Persian who defended Gaza against Alexander the Great, employed Arab mercenaries ; ^ in the military history of Judah, Arabians are twice joined with Philistines ; ^ the excursions of the Maccabees against the Philistine towns were usually directed against the ' nomads ' as well ; ^ and, on the eve of her desolation by Alexander Janneus, Gaza was looking wistfully across the ' Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 12. Cf. ch. xxix. " Amos i. 6. » Strabo, vi. 20 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 12, cf. 14. * Rey's Lis Colonies Frauques dans U xii. tt xiii. siicles, ch. ix. * Burckhardt's Travels in Syria, pp. 436, 658 ; Doughty's Arabia Deserta, I. p. 133, where it is said that caravans also come from Hebron to Ma'en. * Arrian, Anab. ii. 26, 27 ; Quintus Curtius, iv. 6. ' In bringing tribute to Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron. xvii. 11, and in invading Jehoram, 2 Chron. xxi. 16. * I Maccabees. 184 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land desert for King Aretas, the Arabian, to come to her help.^ In the Moslem invasion Gaza was one of the first points in Syria which Abu Bekr's soldiers struck,^ and the Byzan- tine army was defeated in the suburbs. After that the Mohammedans called Gaza Dehliz el Moulk, ' the Thresh- old of the Kingdom.' But Gaza has even closer relations with Egypt. The eight days' march across the sands from the Delta requires Gaza and ^^^^ ^^ ^" army come up that way into Syria, Egypt- Gaza, being their first relief from the desert, should be in friendly hands. Hence the continual efforts of Egypt to hold the town. Alike under the Pharaohs of the sixteenth to the fourteenth centuries, and the Ptolemies of the third and second, we find Gaza occupied, or bitterly fought for, by Egyptian troops.^ Alexander, invading Egypt, and Napoleon, invading Syria, had both to capture her. Napoleon has emphasised the indispensableness of Gaza, whether in the invasion or the defence of the Nile Valley.* Gaza is the outpost of Africa, the door of Asia. Gaza never lay within the territories of early Israel,^ * Josephus xiii. Antt. xiii. 3. ' By the most southerly of the three brigades — that of Amr Ibn el Assi — Gaza seems to have been taken in 634. * The Annals of Thothnia III.; The Tellel-Amama Letters of the fifteenth century ; the records of Ramses' conquests in the fourteenth. Sayce supposes the rhilistines were planted by the Egyptians in Gaza and her sister cities as outposts of Egypt {Races of the 0. T., p. 54), yet Egypt is always represented as hostile to them, Miiller, Asien u. Etiropa, 388 fT. Cf. Jer. xlvii. From 323, when Ptolemy Lagos took it (Diod. Sic. xix. 59), Gaza frequently passed from the Ptolemies to the Antiochi, and back again, till 198 B.C. (Polybius, v.), when it fell to Antiochus the Great, and remained pait of the Syriar kingdom for a century. Put see Additional Notes on p. 198. * Op. cit. II. ch. viL * A later addition to Josh, xv., viz. vv. 4547, sets Gaza within the ideal borders of Judah ; but this has no confirmation, and, indeed, is contradicted by the true reading of Judges i. iS, where a not should be inserted from the LXX. The Gaza of i Chron. vii. 28 is another Gaza, near Shechem. The Philistines and their Cities \ 85 though Israel's authority, as in Solomon's time,^ and tem- porary conquests, as in Hezekiah's,^ might extend to hei gates ; and this is to be explained by the pres- q^^,^ ^^^^j tige which Egypt, standing immediately behind, ^^'"^^'' cast upon her. Under the Maccabees, as we have seen, Jewish armies carried fire and sword across Philistia. Ekron and Ashdod were taken, Askalon came to terms, and, after Jonathan had burnt her suburbs, Gaza was forced to buy him ofif.^ It was not till 96 B.C. that Jews actually crossed her walls, but in that year the pent- up hatred of centuries burst in devastation upon her. Alexander Janneus, taking advantage of the withdrawal from Syria of the Egyptian troops, invested Gaza. After a year's siege, in which the whole oasis was laid waste, the town itself was captured by treachery, its buildings burned, and its people put to the sword.* Gaza, to use the word that is echoed of her by one writer after another for the next century, lay desert.^ In 62, Pompey took Gaza — now called a maritime city, like Joppa — from the Jews, and made it a free city.^ In 57, Gabinius rebuilt it,^ certainly on a new site, and possibly close to its harbour, which all through the Greek period had been growing in importance. In 30, Gaza, still called ' a maritime city,' was granted by Caesar to Herod,^ but at the latter's death, being Greek, as ^ I Kings iv. 24. Azza, or rather 'Azza, is the more correct spelling of Gaza. * 2 Kings xviii. 8. ' Josephus xiii. Antt. xv. 5 ; l Mace. xi. 60. In xiii, 4, read Gazara for Gaza. * Josephus xiii. Antt. xiii. 3. * iroKiiv xpbvov ipr]fj.ovi, Josephus xiv. Antt. v. 3 ; fUvovaa fpr]fj.os, Strabo xvi. 2. 30 ; and i] Iprj/xoi rdfa, the anonymous Greek geographer in Hudson's Geographic veter. script. Graci Minores, iv. p. 39. * Josephus xiv. Antt. v. 3. ' Josephus xiv. Antt. iv. 4 ; i. Wars, vii, 7, In both of these passagei Gaza Is separated from the inland towns, and called Maritime. ' Josephus XV. Antt. vii. 3. 1 86 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Josephus says, it was again taken from the Jews, and added to the Imperial Province of Syria.* ' New' Gaza flourished Gaza which exceedingly at this time, but the Old or Desert IS Desert, Gaza was not forgotten, probably not even wholly abandoned, for the trunk-road to Egypt still travelled past it. In the Book of Acts, in the directions given to Philip to meet the Ethiopian eunuch, this is accurately noted: Arise, and go toward the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza ; this is desert} Most authorities connect the adjective, not with Gaza, but with the way ; yet no possible route from Jerusalem to Gaza could be called desert, and this being so, and several writers ot the period immediately preceding having used the phrase of the town itself, it seems that we are not only encouraged, but shut up, to the same reference here. If New Gaza, as is probable, lay at this time upon the coast, then we know that the road the Ethiopian travelled did not take that direction, and in describing the road it was natural to mention the old site — Desert, not necessarily in reality, but still in name — which was always a station upon it. That Philip was found immediately after at Ashdod suggests that the meeting and the baptism took place on the Philistine Plain, and not among the hills of Judzea, where tradition has placed them. But that would mean the neighbourhood of Gaza, and an additional reason for mentioning the town.' * Josephus xvii. Antt. xi. 4 ; ii. Wars, vi. 3. Also the earliest imperial coins of Gaza date from a year or two after this (De Saulcy, Numismatiqut de la Terre Sainte, p. 213). ' Acts viii. 26. » My only difficulty in coming to this conclusion is that so many autho- rities are against it ; but it seems to me so impossible to describe any route from Jerusalem to Ga^a as desert — whether it be that by Beitjibrin, which Robinson (B.R. ii. ; Fhys. G/tcg. 108, 109) selects, or the longer one bj Hebron, which Raumer and Guerin prefer {Jud/e, ii. p. 204), Guerin s«p> The PkilisHjtes and their Cities 187 The subsequent history of Gaza is identified, as we have seen, with the struggle of Christianity against heathendom. In the second and third centuries Gaza Gaza and became a prosperous centre of Greek com- Christianity, merce and culture. Her schools were good, but her temples were famous, circling round the Marneion, or House porting his choice by the unfounded remark that fewer people took this route, and therefore it might be distinguished as ^/jtj^os from the other— that I feel we are shut up to taking tp-r^fxat as referring to Gaza. Now, had Acts viii. been a document of the first century B.C., there could have been no doubt about the reference, for Gaza was then left 'desert,' as explicitly stated by Josephus xiv. Ayitt. iv. 4, and remained desert, as witnessed by Strabo xvi. 2. 30, and by the Anonymous Geographical Fragment in Geogr. Grac. Minores, ed. Hudson, iv. p. 39. This Fragment gives a list of towns from south to north, and says that after Rinocoloura, tj vd. Tafa Kihai, ir6\ts oZaa Kal avT-f], (Iff T) ^pr]nos Tdfo, etra 7) AffKdXov TrdXis. Diodorus Siculus (xix. 80) had also spoken of an Old Gaza (^ iraXata Tdfa) as the town where Ptolemy Lagos, in 312, defeated Demetrius Poliorcetes, as if to distinguish it from the New Gaza (which he does not name) of his (Diodorus') own time. Schurer, Hisi. Div. II. vol. ii. 71, holds that the New Gaza was not the port, but another town lying inland, and, according to the Anonymous Fragment, to the south of Old Gaza ; but there is no evidence of this. The New Gaza of the Fragment might as well be a coast town as Askalon ; and Josephus' statement that the Gaza Pompey enfranchised in 62 was not an inland city, like Ashdod and Jamnia, but a maritime, like Joppa and Dora (Josephus xiv. j4n/(. iv. 4 ; cf. Josephus xv. j4nU. vii, 3, where again it is ' maritime,' like Joppa) seems to make it probable that the Gaza which Gabinius rebuilt (i6. V. 3) was on the coast. If this be so, then it lay off the road to Eg)-pt, which still passed by the desert Gaza. It is not necessary to suppose that this latter was absolutely deserted even in Philip's time. The fertile site and neighbour- hood of the great road would attract people back ; but, even though it were largely like its old self again, the name 'Epri/xoi might stick to it. Gaza is said to have been demolished by the Jewish revolt of 66 A.D. (ii. IVars, xvii. 1), and if this had been true, we might have had a new reason why the author of Acts viii. added the gloss ' this is desert ' to his description of Gaza ; but, as Schurer remarks, we have coins of the years immediately following, which testify to the city's continued prosperity (cf. De Saulcy, Num. de la T.S., p. 214). However this may be, the process of the return of the city to its old site, which may have begun, as I say, before Philip's lime, was completed in the following centuries, and the reason of it is clear. The land trade was always likely to prevail over the sea trade on such a coast, and the old site had, besides the road, its fertility and fifteen wells. In 363 A.D. the Gazans 1 88 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land of the city's god, Marna. Marna, Lord or our Lord/ was the Baal of Gaza, Lord of Heaven and sun and rain, whom it was easy to identify with Zeus. A statue, discovered a short time since at Tell-el-'Ajjul, is supposed to be the image of Marna, and it bears resemblance to the Greek face of the Father of gods and men.^ Around him were Zeus Nikephorus, Apollo, Aphrodite, Tyche, Proserpina, Hecate — nearly the whole Syrian pantheon. Truly the Church of Gaza dwelt, like the Church of Pergamos, where Satan's seat is : and like her she had her many martyrs,^ Constantine, finding the inland Gaza's authorities obdur- ately pagan, gave a separate constitution to the sea-town, or Maiumas, which he entitled Constantia, and there was a bishop of this besides the Bishop of Gaza. But Julian took these privileges away. For generations the rival cries ' Marna,' ' Jesus,' rent the streets and circuses. How the Church in 402 finally won the political victory under Theodosius and her famous Bishop Porphyry we have already seen.* After this the schools of Gaza in philosophy and rhetoric grew more and more distinguished. Students, it is said, left Athens to learn the Attic style in Philistia, and even Persia borrowed her teachers.^ We get a glimpse of the citizens in the close of the sixth century, ' very honest, beautiful with all liberality, lovers of pilgrims.' ' But in 635 Gaza became Moslem, and, for obvious reasons, gradually declined to the rank of a respectable believed themselves to be on the same site as Old Gaza, and the temples destroyed in 402, and the churches built in their stead, occupied the site of the city to-day which agrees with the description of the site of Gaza taken by Alexander the Great (Arrian, Anab. ii. 26). Jerome's statement in the Onomasticon is too vague to be taken into account. > Cf. MapAv d^d of I Cor. xvi. 22. « P.E.F.Q.y 1883. * Euseb. II.R. and Sozomen /aj«w, * P. 180 f. • For details see Stark, pp. 631-645. • S«e p. 182 n. 3. l^he Philistines atid thetr Cities 1 89 station of traffic. Even with the Crusaders her military importance did not revive. They found her almost deserted, and they took no trouble to fortify her. Their chief for- tress in Philistia was Askalon, and their southern outpost was Daroma, now Deir-el-Belat, on the Wady, three hours south of Gaza. Near Gaza there was a town, Anthedon.^ which occurs in Josephus, and is mentioned by Pliny, Ptolemy, and Sozomen. Alexander Janneus took it when he took Gaza: it was rebuilt and enfranchised under the Romans, and in Christian times had a bishop.^ Near this town, then called Tadun, the Moslems defeated the Byzantines in 635. The site was lost till the other day, when Herr Gatt heard the name Teda given by a native to some ruins twenty-five minutes north of Gaza harbour, and near the sea.» Anthedon must have been virtually a suburb of Gaza. We take next Askalon, or as the Hebrews called it, 'Ashkelon. The site, which to-day bears the name,* has been already described : it is a rocky amphi- theatre in the low bank of the coast, and filled ^''"''°"' by Crusading ruins.^ Since the fortifications, as at Caesarca, are bound together by pillars of Herod's time, it is certain that the Askalon, which Herod embellished," stood here 1 Josephus xiii. Ann. xiii. 3 ; xv. 4 ; i. Wars, iv. 2 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. \\\ Ptol., Gcogr. V. 16. a ^^^^ Conciliorum. * This proves that Pliny was wrong in putting Anthedon inland from Gaza, and Ptolemy riglit in calling it a coast town. For an account of Gall's dis- covery, see Z.D.P.V. vii. 5 ff. ; cf. 140. 141. It contains the following beautiful summary of tradition. After asking the name of the place and hear- ing It was Teda, Gait said to his informant : ' ^^^lence knowest thou that ? ' 'From those who have lived before me have I heard it. Is it not with you as with us— some are born and others die, and the old tell the younc what they know ? ' *" * In Arabic 'Askalan, with initial 'Ayin instead of Aleph. * See description by Guthe, with plan by Schick, Z.D.P. V. ii. 164 ft * L War: xx\. 11. 190 The Historical Geography of the Holy La7id also, though extending farther inland : and there is no hint in Josephus that Herod's Askalon occupied any other site than that of the old Philistine city. If this be so, then of all the Philistine Pentapolis, Askalon was the only one which lay immediately on the sea.^ This fact, combined with distance from the trunk-road on which Gaza, Ashdod, and Ekron stand, is perhaps the explanation of a certain singularity in Askalon's history, when compared with that of her sisters. The town has no natural strength, but is very well watered. Take her in her period of greatest fame. During the Crusades Askalon combined within herself the significance Askalon in ^^ '^^ ^^'^^ fortresses of Philistia, and proved the the Crusades, j^^y ^^ southwest Palestine. To the Arabs she was the ' Bride of Syria,' ' Syria's Summit.' ^ The * Doubt upon this point has arisen solely from these facts, that in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, 536, there are mentioned both a Hishop of Askalon and a Bishop of the Port or Maiumas of Askalon, and that Antoninus Placentinus (c. 33), A. D. 570, and Benjamin of Tudela mention two Ascakms from which Pusey drew the conclusion that the Philistine city lay inland {P.E.F.Q., 1874). These data are important, but cannot counti.rlialance the positive assertions of Josephus that Herod's Askalon, which was the Crusader's Ascalon on the coast, was an ancient city (iii. IVars, ii. i), and 520 stadia from Jerusalem, too great a distance for any but a coast town. Josephus nowhere describes Askalon as maritime (in the passage just quoted he says it was walled about), unless in i. IVars, xxi. 11, the clause which de- scribes the Laodiceans as dwelling on the sea-shore covers also the inliabitants of Askalon in the next clause. It is possible that ancient Askalon spread far inland : the hollow by the sea is very small, the Crusading town there was little more than a fortress, and ancient ruins, of what must have been large edifices, lie far inland (cf. Gu^rin, Judce ii. 134.) The harbour town may have been definitely separated from the town behind. Conder's suggestion that a Khurbet Askalon in the Slicplielah may be the Askalon of the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, has nothing to support it but the name (P.E.F. Mem.). Gu^rin's idea that the inhabitants tried to create a better port than that at their feet, either north or south, may be the solution of the difficulty. He found no traces of such ; but it is noteworthy that the next stream to lb« south bears the name among others of the Nahr 'Askulan. * Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslenu. The Philistines and their Cities 191 Egyptians held her long after the Crusaders were settled In Jerusalem. She faced the Christian outposts at Ramleh, resisted many assaults, and discharged two expeditions up to the walls of Jerusalem, before she was captured by Baldwin ill. in 11 54. The scene of two more battles Askalon was retaken by Saladin in 11 87, and dismantled five years later when he retired upon Jerusalem. The Christians tried to rebuild the fortress, but the truce came, one of the articles of which was that the town should be fortified by neither party, and it was finally demolished by Bibars in 1270. This fierce contest and jealousy between powers occupying respectively Syria and Egypt, the plains and the hills, amply certify the strategical importance of the old Philistine site. That through all the Crusades, Askalon should have enjoyed chief importance, while Gaza had hardly any is certainly due to the situation on the coast. Both Moslems and Christians had fleets which from time, to time supplied and supported Askalon from the sea. It may have been this same touch with the sea which proved Askalon's value to its ancient masters, especially if it be here that the Philistines were reinforced by . . . c /- 1 T -1 Askalon in direct immigration from Crete.^ Jeremiah con- the History nects it with the sea-shore.^ In David's lamen- tation over Saul, it is not Gath and Gaza, but Gath and Ashkelon which are taken as two typical Philistine cities. Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon : it may be that these were bazaars ; * and there is a sound of trade, a clinking of ^ Hence the Cherethim, but see p. 169 ff. As we have seen, Askalon was a fortress in Ramses 11. 's time, before the Philistines came : taken by Ramses 11. from the Hittites, cf. Brugsch, Geogr. Ittschr. altaegyptischer Denkmdltr ii. * xlvii. 7. '2 Sam. i. 20, cf. 2 Kings xx. 34. 192 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land shekels, about the city's very name.^ Askalon was always opulent and spacious.^ The Assyrian flood covered all things, and Askalon suffered from it as much as her neigh- bours.' But in the times of the Maccabees she recovered her distinction. She was not so bitter to Judaism as the other Hellenic towns, and so escaped their misfortunes at the hands of Jonathan.* When Alexander Janneus devas- tated Gaza, Askalon kept her peace with that excitable savage. She was the first in Philistia to secure the pro- tection of Rome, and enjoyed her freedom earlier and more continuously than the rest. Through Roman and Byzan- tine times she was a centre of Hellenic culture, producing even more grammarians and philosophers than her neigh- bours.' If Askalon takes her name from trade, Ashdod, like Gaza, takes hers from her military strength.^ Her citadel was probably the low hill, beside the present Ashdod. village. It was well watered, and commanded the mouth of the most broad and fertile wady in Philistia, It served, also, as the half-way station on the great road between Gaza and Joppa, and, as we have seen, the inland branch broke off" here for Ekron and Ramleh. The ruins of a great khan have outlived those of the fortresses from which the city took her name. Ashdod also, like her sisters, had suffered her varying fortunes in the war with Israel, and like them suffered for her position in ' Ashkelon, from shaka!, to weigh, or to pay. Hence shekel or shekel. * For Herod's lime, cf. Josephus iii. IVars ii. i,elc. ; Under the Moslems, Lc Strange, op. cit. ' Cf. Conquests of Satgon and Sennacherib: Records of the Past. * I Mace. X. 86 ; xi. 60. * P.E.F.Q.y l888, 2223, describes two statues found at Askalon. Reinacb {Revut des Etudes /uives, 1888) ascribes them to the first century n.c. Thc7 ate VictoricK. * i Sam. iv. ; 2 Cbron. xxvi. & The Philistines and their Cities 193 the way between Assyria and Egypt. Sargon besieged and took her, as related in Isaiah ; ^ Sennacherib besieged and took her,^ but her most wonderful siege, which Herodotus calls the longest in history, was that for twenty- two years by Psammetichus.' Judas Maccabeus cleared Ashdod of idols in 163, and in 148 Jonathan and Simon burnt her temple of Dagon.* But, like Askalon, Ashdod was now thoroughly Greek, and was enfranchised by Pompey. Ekron, the modern 'Akir, as Robinson discovered, won its place in the league by possesion of an oracle of Baal-zebub, or Baal of the Flies,^ and by a site on the northern frontier of Philistia, in the Vale of Sorek, where a pass breaks through the low hills to Ramleh. That is to say, like so many more ancient cities, Ekron had the double fortune of a sanctuary and a market on a good trade route. Ekron was nearer the territory of Israel than the other Philistine towns, and from this certain consequences flowed. It was from Ekron that the ark was returned to Israel, by the level road up the Sorek valley to Beth-shemesh, not twelve miles away. Amos uses a phrase of Ekron as if she were more within reach than her sister towns : ^ she was ceded to the Maccabees by the Syrians ; ^ and, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews readily came to her, for, like Lydda, she was in a valley that led down from Jerusalem. To-day the Joppa- Jerusalem railway travels past her. With Ekron we may take a town that stood very near in rank to the first Philistine five — Jabneh, or Jabneel,^ with a harbour at the mouth of the ^ Isa. XX. ' I Rec. of Past. v. » Herod, ii. 157. ^ \ Mace. v. 68 ; x. 83, 84. ' 2 Kings i. 2. • Amos i. 8. ' i Mace. x. 89. ' That is, God buildeth, Josh. xv. II. N 194 ^-^^ Historical Geography of the Holy Land Rubin, famous in the history of the Jews for their fre- quent capture of it,^ and for the settlement there of the Jewish Sanhedrim and a school of Rabbinic theology after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Yebna, as the town is now called, lies in a fertility of field and grove that helps us to understand the repute of the district for populousness.^ The ruins are those of churches built by the Crusaders, who called the place by a corruption of its full name, reversing / and n as usual, Ibelin for Jabniel. Now, where is Gath ? Gath, the city of giants, died out with the giants. That we have to-day no certain knowledge of her site is due to the city's early and absolute disappearance. Amos, about 750 B.C., pomts to her recent destruction by Assyria as a warning that Samaria must now follow. Before this time, Gath has invariably been mentioned in the list of Philistine cities, and very frequently in the account of the wars between them and Israel. But, after this time, the names of the other four cities are given without Gath — by Amos himself, by Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and in the Book of Zechariah^ — and Gath does not again appear in either the Old Testament,* or the Books of the Maccabees, or those parts of Josephus which treat of centuries subsequent to the eighth. This can only mean that Gath, both place and name, was totally destroyed about 750 B.C. ; and renders valueless all statements as to the city's site which are based on evidence subsequent to that date - as, ' I Mace. V. 58. * Strabo, vii. 1 8. 2. Philo in his account of his embassy to Caligula. ' Amos i. 6-8 ; Jer. xlvii. ; Zepli. ii. 2-7 ; Zcch. ix. 5-7. * Micah i. 10 : Tell it not in Gath is hardly an exception, for tlie cxpres «ion is proverbial. The Philistines and their Cities 195 for instance, that of the Onoinasticon, on which so much stress has been laid by recent writers on this question,' or that of the Crusaders, who identified Gath with the site of Jabneh.^ When we turn to the various appearances of Gath in history, before the time of Amos, what they tell us about the site is this : Gath lay inland, on the borders of Hebrew territory, and probably in the north of Philistia. When the ark was taken from Ashdod, it was brought about, that is inland, again to Gath.^ Gath was the Philistine city most frequently taken by the Israelites, and, indeed, was considered along with Ekron as having originally belonged to Israel :* after taking Gath, Hazael set his face to go up to Jerusalem!' All this implies an inland position, and hence nearly all writers have sought Gath among the hills of the Shephelah or at their junction with the plain — at the south-east angle of the plain,^ at Kefr Dikkerin,' at Deir Dubban,^ and at Beit-Jibrin, or 'home of big men.' The only argument for so southerly a position is Gath's ' OnotJia^ticon, art. TiO, 'and it is even now a village as you go from Eleuthcropolis (Beil-Jibrin) to Diospolis (I ydda), about the fifth milestone from Eleutheropolis.' Robinson, Condor, Gu^rin, all make much of this valueless tradition- ^ Will, of Tyre, xv. 24 ; Fel. Kab. ii. 425. ' 1 Sam. v. 8. * Gath was taken under Samuel (i Sam. vii. 14), and is then described as originally Israelite. Taken also by David, according to I Chron. xviii. i ; but this is perhaps due to reading (righily or wrongly) the parallel text, 1 Sam. vii. 14 : Metheg Ha Ammah, bridlt of the molkir-cily, as if it were Gath Ha .'\mmah, Gath the metropolis. Taken also by Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 6), this must have been early in his long reign. But the statement, in 2 Chron. xi. 5-8, that Gath was among the cities rebuilt by Rehoboam may, if Gath be the true reading (Josephus viii. Antt. x. I substitutes Ipa 01 Ipan), mean, from the other towns mentioned, another Gath, near Beit-Jibria " 2 Kings xii. 7. • Trelawney Saunders, Introduction to Purvey, etc ' Quiun, Jud^c. • Robinson. 196 Tiu Hi^tr-r::-: S-:::^ —- >:/ ^^ Hc'.y Land rrmtn^v^' -.- of David and Achish.^ and this '- e other hand, Gath is mentiocr . .V several times with £kron,E .ally in the pursoit of the Philistines from the Vale oi' Euoh.' In a raid c^ Uzziah, Gath is coupled with '""'" '"i Ashdod.* None of this prevents us from fixir_ -Qcfa favoured by modem writers, Tell-es- Safiyeh, whidi cocnmaads the entrance to the Vale oi Elah and looks across Philistia to the sea. Steep limestone scarps rise bokQy from the {dain to a brx»d plateau, still known by the natives as the Castle: During the Crusades, Kii^ Folke fiictified it, it was destro>-ed by Saladin, and is said to have been restored by Richard. They called it Blancfaegarde, from its white frontleL It is altogedier too important a site to have been neglected by either laad or the Philistines, and this '.tr.zs : nent in its £Kvoiir some weighL But :: i-^^ *or jmxrf. Tdl-es-S&fi>'di may have beer. __ _ - V.---*e * or the Mizpefa of the Shepbelah.* Gath has aced at Beit-Jibrin, the 'home of big men,' both because this na^tA well have served as a by-name for the dty of tbe giants,^ and is in die ne^hboorfaood of Mareshah," and because Beit-Jibrin has not been identified with any other great town of antiquity. But Beit-Jibrin is too £ar south, and does not lie on the line of the root of the Philistines after tbe battle of Sbocoh.* We must look £utfaer north and towards EkroD. The first Book of Chronicles mentions a Gath convenient to Ajalon and the hills of Ephraim,^ but * ■ Saa. zzri. 2-6. * l Sana t. S. * Jtid. zvB. 5a. * 2 Cfarac xxvi 6. * J4i^x.a9,3i £.; 2Kia£*vii.22,e:c * Jo^ xv. jL '2S«.nL22. • OL MoRskdh-cath, Mic L I4> * I Saa- ZTiL 5a. " I Ckna. va. 21 : via. I^ Th^ PkiHs fines and tkeir Cities 19* this may be Gath-rimmon, which lay towards Jc^jpa. The case is made mote, difficult by the fact that Gath is a generic name, meaning ' winepress,' and was applied, as we might have expected, to several villages, usually with another name attached* Remarkably eiioi^;fa, like their great namesake, they have all disaj^ieared, and in that land of the vine almost no site called after tf»e wine- I>ress has held its name. This, then, — ^that Gath lay inland, on the borders of Israel, probably near to Ekron, and perhaps in the mooth of a pass leading up to Jerusalem, — is all we know of the town which was once so fanuMis, and which wfac^ vanished 2500 years ago.' Gath perished with its giant race FURTHER XOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE PHILISTTSES. Since dns chafiter was ia the paper's kaads, I ksve Ae PhiKsriars in W. Max If tiler's Aaem m. rmirjm k. l>eMimmIerm {Leipag, iSg^y. He stateaeBts oa pfk 3 : tbis. Aaoag tke pintes from Asia iBmat whoB J attacked vac Pa-ca-sa-ti, 'froai the aidst of the sa, etc, with Evopem featares and saae of the oastaBe : Bay have beea Anrirat-L^om tnbes fro^ the «'»eT o: the theatj is not impossible that they vete pce-HeOe^ Greek Isks, pethaps die 'Brai^n'cy of Od. ni. 176, i^ by the Gte^ adraaoe vestvaid (Dircz^ i^i Tz k * Ct GaA-ha-hqiher, die 1ibt]i7 1 f : :- --.r cear Joppa : Gath-OMMM ia Eas : * For Gadi, m the E^ypliaa r t . : ^ . u. 64, 65. The Assyriaa lists =1 vhich soaae have ideatified as Gz: giTcn in Tbaduaes* list (ICBller. .-. kc, 161^ Utlia (A. p. 159 and PL 593) saggests Ke :. sii5>asoa*c/the muy Gaths of Palestiae. 198 The flistorical Geography of the Holy Land and Tf i5/cpot ? ?). The Pu-ra-sa-ti are the chief tribe ; they are the Philistines. In 1200 Ranjses iii. represents them as unsettled. The Papyrus Golenischeff describes the other tribe Ta-k-ka-ra as settled in Dor by 1050. The Philistine invasion of the Maritime Plain from Gaza to Carmel, mentioned in Deut. ii. 23, Miiller dates from a little before this. He supposes the sudden decline of their power in David's reign to be due to an invasion of the Maritime Plain by Egypt. Shishank's list of conquests (