Palestine, the Glory of all Lands. Travel-studies of some Bible places

Preface

These chapters are called " Travel-Studies," to indicate that they combine the impressions of travel with the results of study before and after travel. My endeavour has been to weave scenery and story together in such a way as to furnish interesting and instructive family reading for Sabbath evenings. Instead of going in detail over the Holy Land, I have selected the chief places in it, and a few which are closely con nected with it, and then tried to seize upon and bring into clear view the main interest of these places. Other parts of the country are spoken of in connection with them. It would be impossible to mention all the books which I have read on the subject, and to which I have been more or less indebted. But preface there are three which have been more to me than any others. Every one of them has its own distinctive value ; and, taken together, they form in my opinion a very complete Palestine library.

I refer to Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, Conder's Tent Life in Palestine, and Professor George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land. The purpose of this book made notes undesir able, and precluded any discussion of questions which are raised here ancl there. I have, therefore, simply stated what seems to me to be the present position of these questions. It is necessary to make this remark, especially with reference to what is said about Egypt and the Pharaohs of the Oppression and the Exodus. The important discoveries which Dr. Flinders Petrie is making in Egypt may probably make it necessary to reconsider our present views of both Egyptian and Biblical Chronology. A. S. Perth, October 1896. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE i. palestine : the glory op all lands . . 9 ii. jerusalem, the city of the great king . 57 iii. bethlehem and bethany : the advent and the ascension ..... 105 iv. nazareth, where he was brought up . . 140 v. three memorable places — shiloh, bethel, Jacob's well ..... 177 vi. a day on the sea op galilee . . . 208 vii. the river jordan and mount pisgah . . 241 viii. egypt and its greatest pharaoh . . 276 ix. damascus, the paradise op the east . . 318 x. ephesus and the temple of diana in paul's day and now ..... Palestine : THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS

Chapter I Palestine

: THE GLORY OF ALL LANDS "A land that I had espied for them, which is the glory of all lands." — Ezek. xx. 6. VERY reader of the Bible must have observed that, from the countries which are mentioned there, one is singled out, and spoken of in terms different from all the rest. It is spoken of in terms of extraordinary, even extravagant eulogy, as if it held some singular pre-eminence over all other countries. The names of many lands appear in the Bible. All the countries of the then known Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all lottos 10 world are probably mentioned, those forming the west of Asia, the north of Africa, and the south of Europe, besides some other countries lying beyond those limits. All the countries from India to Russia (Ezek. xxxviii. 2, 3, R.V.), and from China (Isa. xlix. 12) to Spain, are referred to.

From all these one insignificant strip of rugged country, Palestine, is singled out ; it is lauded to the skies ; it is glorified indeed as if it were not a bit of our earth at all, but an outlying province of heaven itself. And in point of fact it is sometimes treated as if it were so, for the names of the land itself, and of places in it, are transferred to heaven, and are made to furnish names for heavenly places. Palestine is styled in Scripture " the glory of all lands." And it has to be remembered that this august title was not conferred on the land by an enthusiastic Canaanite, partial to his native country, and desirous to exalt it above all other countries. The words actually Palestine : tbe Olovs of all Xante 11 profess to have been spoken by the Lord of heaven and earth. There was a time when no one in heaven or on earth could possibly have called this land " the glory of all lands."

A few years ago an Egyptian woman found in her native land a remarkable bundle of old letters, two hundred in number, more than three thousand years old. They were stone tablets with letters written on them in Canaan before the Hebrews conquered the land. From these letters we get an interest ing glimpse of the land which was destined to become so famous. At that early period Canaan was a part of the empire of Egypt, or was under its protectorate, and the Tel el Amarna Tablets show that it was a very commonplace land, distinguished for nothing but war and wickedness. The early accounts which we find in the Bible tell the same tale, showing that the land might then have been well called the shame of all lands. Palestine: tbe ©lore of all Xan&s Yet this was the. land which in a very short time sprang into fame of a unique kind.

It received the title of " the glory of all lands " ; and it laid hold in a singular manner upon the human heart — a hold which it has never since lost, and which it is not likely ever to lose. The title conferred by God has been to the full admitted by man. Indeed, when one thinks of it, there is something altogether singular in the place which this land has held in the minds and hearts of men. There are titles of men and of places which are given, received, and worn, but which are no more than empty words. This title is not one of these. It has been in a remarkable way accepted universally. Think of the attraction, one might even say the fas cination, which this land has had for many men from Abraham's day to the present hour. Abraham, to whom the land was promised, was no sooner settled there, though as yet he had no possession in the land, than his heart was Palestine: tbe <Blorg of all Xan&s 13 manifestly fixed there for ever.

Forced by famine to go down to Egypt, he made his way back to Canaan as soon as he could. And his attachment to the land was inherited in all its warmth by his descendants. His grandson Jacob was driven out of Canaan by fear of his brother Esau ; but, although he found refuge in the ancestral country, and although he had settled down in business and family life there, he returned to Canaan as soon as the way seemed open, even at the risk of his brother's vengeance. He died in Egypt, but he took an oath of his sons that they would bury him in Canaan. His son Joseph rose to be the second man in Egypt, but he never forgot Canaan, and he too made his friends swear to carry his body back to Canaan for burial. To the Israelites, as they wandered through the wilderness, Canaan was heaven. Moses, their great leader, had never seen the land, but his affection was set on it ; Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanos 14 and it almost broke his heart to be condemned never to enter it.

In Canaan the Jews were patriots of the noblest type ; and in their captivity in Babylon their pathetic home sickness expressed itself thus : " How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ? " " If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." How the Jews fought time after time for their loved land is one of the most touching chapters of the history of patriotism. Philo says that the Jews in their dispersion had but one metropolis — not Alex andria, Antioch, or Rome — but " the Holy City, with its Temple, dedicated to the Most High God." But it is not over the Jewish mind alone that this singular land has thrown its spell. Men from other lands have shed their blood for it. In the Middle Ages armies from Europe poured into it to wrest it from the hands of the infidel, whose possession of it was thought to sully its glory.

Kings left their thrones, princes palesttne : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 15 their estates, scholars their books, and peasants the plough, in a series of vain attempts to rescue the land from its shame. Then there has been a constant stream of pilgrims from distant lands pouring year after year for centuries into Palestine to visit the holy places. One of the most striking sights which one sees in the land is the crowd of shaggy haired Russian pilgrims at Easter, clad in rough attire and long boots. They are a devout and superstitious people. I remember seeing them at their devotions between-decks on a Russian steamer, and I also saw a Greek church in Jerusalem crowded with them to the door at an Easter service. Travellers, too, flock to that land every year from all parts of the continent of Europe, from America and Australia, and other lands.

And all this has been going on for centuries, although it is by no means easy to get into the country or to pass through it. A tour in Palestine is Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 16 even yet no mere holiday pastime. The country may be entered by land or from the sea ; but the one way is toilsome, the other is dangerous. He who goes to it by land finds that there is no road into it ; he who goes by sea finds that it has no harbour. The former reaches it by a weary journey through the desert on a camel's back ; the latter has to land in a small boat which can only reach the shore through a narrow opening in a reef of rocks. Many a life has been lost in the landing at Jaffa, storms frequently springing up in the treacherous Mediterranean in an in credibly short time. Then to go through the land is a task, there being neither railways nor roads from Jerusalem northwards — only rough tracks, up hill and down hill, and often in the dry beds of winter torrents.

And the strangest thing of all is that these great armies of soldiers, pilgrims, and travellers have been in all times pouring into and through this land in spite of such diffi culties, although there has never been much in the Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 17 land worth fighting for. and so very little worth the trouble of going to see. The country has no size. It is nothing but a little strip of very rugged hilly land, which forms, one might say, the back wall of the Mediterranean Sea, two thou sand miles in from its entrance-gate at Gibraltar. It is about as large as Wales, or half the size of Scotland. And it has really nothing in it, and can never have had much, of that which usually attracts travellers to foreign lands. The land which is styled " the glory of all lands " is found to be a very commonplace land.

Its scenery is not beautiful, much less glorious. Palestine has no grand mountains, — Lebanon and Hermon are beyond it, — no noble rivers, no waterfalls, no fine bays, or rock scenery on its coast. There is no beautiful seaboard. It is true that the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee are fine sheets of water when seen in good weather ; that the plain of Esdraelon, the battlefield of the nations, is a magnificent stretch of level country — though Palestine : tbe ©Ion. of all Xante 18 somewhat monotonous — and when clad in spring colours is beautiful ; and that the plain of Sharon is the same in an inferior degree. The hill country of Judea is rugged and wild. But there is really little in Palestine which may not be seen in many other lands, excepting perhaps the deep trench of the Jordan, which has no parallel anywhere on the face of the earth.

But, speaking generally, the country must be pronounced to be naturally commonplace and unattractive. Its scenery would never have made it a land of travel. Moreover, what nature has refused to the land art has certainly not supplied. The land which nature has not made attractive, man has in the present day by neglect and bad government made positively unattractive. Once it was called " a land flowing with milk and honey," but that was in contrast to the " waste, howling wilder ness." It was a people weary of forty years' wandering in the desert who were taught to look Palestine: tbe ©lorg of all Xanos 19 forward to Canaan as " a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills ; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees ; a land of oil olive, and honey."

It once was all this ; there are evidences, as in the broken aqueducts and the ruined vine terraces on the hill-slopes, that it was once far more fertile than it has been for hundreds of years. At the present day neglect is written over the face of almost the whole country. Man is doing nothing to make up for nature's defects. Agriculture is in its most primitive state there ; there are few well cultivated fields to be seen anywhere, while there are no well - appointed farmsteads, no handsome country seats, pretty wayside cot tages, or clean and tidy villages, such as make one of the charms of other countries. The towns are ill-kept ; the streets, even in so important towns as Nazareth, Tiberias, Shechem, and Bethlehem, are mere narrow and often dirty Palestine : tbe ©lors of all Xante lanes.

There are no sanitary laws or inspectors. Nature has not made the land attractive ; man has made it in many places even repulsive. Nor does the land retain, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome, visible monuments of its great past. The Jews were never great in architecture or sculpture. According to Josephus, " the erection of splendid monuments was contrary to the law of Moses." There are no temples or ancient buildings, either in good preservation or in ruins, to be seen. We can stand to-day in many places in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, within walls where false gods were worshipped thousands of years ago. There is nothing of this kind remaining of the worship of the true God from Dan to Beersheba. Nowhere are any monuments or statues to be seen. On the site of Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel, and of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, there are great hewn and carved stones lying scattered about, ancl in the former place a number of Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 21 columns still standing ; but for the most part the stones of ancient structures have been built, whole or broken up, into wretched modern houses.

The present natives of the land have no respect for antiquity. Yet in spite of all this the streams of pilgrims ancl travellers flow on from year to year with no signs of abatement. The land is still, in spite of its unattractiveness, treated as " the glory of all lands." It has something independent of scenery. Like some most attractive plain people, it pos sesses a spell which the finest scenery has never imparted to other lands. Speaking for myself, I may say that I can never forget my first sight of the Holy Land. Our ship had sailed from Port Said at night, and we knew that we would land at Jaffa in the morning. This was a prospect too exciting for much sleep. I awoke at three o'clock, and made my way up on deck. All was dark, and only the men on duty were there. I went back to my cabin, but not to Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 22 sleep.

In two hours I returned to the deck, resolved to wait for dawn and the sight of that illustrious shore. At last a lighthouse appeared ; then, as the day began to break, the outline of the sea-coast of the ancient land of the Philis tines came into view, and, though I well knew that there was nothing fine to be seen, I can say that, while I have looked with far greater admira tion on many a land, I have never looked with so much interest on any. One thing more has to be added as to the unattractiveness of the land. What nature has not done and art has not done, history has not supplied. Taking the word in its usual sense, as applied to Babylon, Greece, or Rome, Palestine cannot be said to be historically attractive, can not indeed be said to have had any history. It holds no place of any importance in the secular history of the world.

Palestine has produced no great men, no leader in literature, science, art, politics, or war. Leave out the Palestine : tbe ©lore of all Xante 23 one thing to be mentioned in its proper place, and the history of the land must be pronounced as commonplace as its scenery. Yet what a fame it has, and how much atten tion has it ever attracted ! More books have been written about it than about any other land. And as the land itself never wants travellers, so books about it never want readers. And all the books about that land are not made up of the hasty impressions of travellers passing through the land for pleasure. There are com plete scientific descriptions of the country. Of late years especially, the result of an increasing interest in the land has been that societies have been formed in Great Britain and the United States which have sent out the most competent explorers and surveyors.

By them the land has been as correctly mapped out and surveyed as any land on earth, every important hilltop being laid down, we are told, within a few yards, and the heights determined within five feet ; Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 24 while the levels of the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea have been fixed within a few inches. Underground exploration has also been carried out in all important places in so far as Turkish ignorance ancl fanaticism would permit. Even the masons' marks on ancient stones have been noted and copied with the liveliest interest, and relics of no intrinsic value, found there beneath the dust of ages, have received places of honour in the world's greatest museums. Another kind of fame this strange land enjoys above all others. Its names — Canaan, Palestine, the Holy Land — are familiar to people to whom the names of Assyria, Egypt, and Greece are yet strange.

Nay more, connection with this poor little country has given fame to great countries. Babylon and Egypt are better known to most people from their connection with Pales tine than from anything in themselves or their history. The names of the unhistorical men and the poor places of Palestine are known to far more Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 25 people than the most famous of other lands. Men of learning and reading are familiar with the names of Achilles and Pericles, of Cæsar and Horace, of Troy and Thermopylæ. But the names of Abraham and David and Paul, and above all, of Jesus Christ, of Jerusalem and Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, are household words to peasants and chfldren in this land, and to thousands in lands where the names, even, of Alexander and Cæsar, of Athens and Rome, are yet unknown.

Nor is it only in the minds and memories of men that the names of this land and its people have a place ; these names are enshrined in their hearts and affections. They are names which have music in them. The point we have reached is this : Palestine appears to have no natural worthiness of the title bestowed by God and admitted by men, " the glory of all lands." Indeed, **on any natural principles the title is unaccountable. If we judge by the usual standards, it is wildly Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 26 extravagant. Yet there it is, and it must be accounted for. As Christ must be accounted for — Who was He, and whence came He ? — as the Bible must be accounted for — What is it, and whence came it ? — so must the undoubted glory of the land of Christ and the Bible be accounted for. How has this little strip of rugged Syrian land come to be called and reckoned " the glory of all lands " % It was not human genius that created a halo about it, as Sir Walter Scott's genius did with Scotland.

His genius glorified Scotland, but he had materials, both natural and historical, to work upon. In Palestine, as we have seen, the materials are wanting. The glory of this land is simply and solely religious. Palestine was the native land of the Cliristian religion. All is said when that is said. That, and that alone, has made its glory. The sub lime patriotism of the Jews was not mere love of Palestine, as the patriotism of the old Swiss people was love of their grand country, or as Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 27 Scottish patriotism was love of " the land of the mountain and the flood." Jewish patriotism was piety. It was love of the Lord's land, the land which He had given them. The Crusaders fought not for the conquest of a rich or strategi cally important country. Napoleon's idea of Syria being " the indispensable basis of operations against the English possessions in India," had no place in their schemes.

They fought to wrest a holy country from profane hands. And all pilgrims and travellers go to Palestine to see not fine scenery but Bible scenes. It is in illus tration of the Bible that explorations are carried out in Palestine, and that books are written on it. It is in this, and in this alone, that the land's attraction lies. It is the Bible that has fixed Palestine so deep in the heart of humanity. It is the Christian religion which has done it all. Be that religion true or false ; be it a human superstition or a divine revelation ; be it merely a national faith or the universal religion, tern- Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xante 28 porary or everlasting, — this at least is certain, that it has lifted the poorest of lands out of obscurity into fame. Nature has not done it ; art has had no hand in it ; history has given no aid.

The Christian religion has made Palestine " the glory of all lands." I think that this must be admitted to be a point of no small importance in the argument for the truth of the Bible and the divine origin of the Christian faith. For it is beyond doubt that here we have a singular phenomenon ; there has never been the like of this in any land or in any age. There has never been another holy land ; there have only been holy places. The world is not large, and its whole human history is not long in such a question as this. Account for it as we may, this little country has given birth to a race of men which will not die, and which persecution has failed to exterminate. Where are the Trojans, the Philis tines, the Hittites, the Chaldees ? Their con- Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 29 temporaries of four thousand years ago, the seed of Abraham the Hebrew, still exist and flourish.

Account for it as we may, this insignificant country and this despised race have produced a book with a perfectly unique popularity ; a book whose circulation is going to the ends of the earth, ancl bids fair to go to the end of time ; a book which has influenced more minds, high and low, strong and weak, and touched more hearts, than all other books put together. Other great books are read mostly by the learned, and then their ideas filter down into common thought and talk, but the Bible is the universal book. In that land was born a faith which in its in fancy overthrew, Hercules-like, the hoary idola tries ancl powerful social systems, such as slavery, of the ancient world, and which in its maturity has shown marvellous power both of defence and aggression, having survived all kinds of attack, and originated a system of aggression which looks as if it would conquer the world.

Palestine • tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 30 This is its aim, and it appears to have power to accomplish it. It may well be asked if all this could have been done by a superstition or an imposture. Might is not always right ; success is not always an evidence of the true and the good. But here is a case in which might and success are so allied with all that commends itself to a sober mind, an enlightened conscience, and a pure heart, that the evidence has manifest cogency. Only admit that Christianity is what the Bible says it is, a revelation from God ; that the Hebrew prophets actually held a divine commission ; and above all, that the Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee, whom men knew as Jesus Christ, was the veritable Son of God ; and the unique position which this small and poor land from which they all sprang has ever held, and still holds, in human estimation, is fully accounted for.

Here is the Bible explanation of the whole matter — that God having in view the revelation in a history of the true religion, fixed upon a Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 31 people to whom and through whom the revela tion should be made, that for them He " espied " — the original word means to select by searching — and chose this land to be the home of His chosen people, the land of revelation, and above all, the place of the earthly manifestation of His own Son, who was born in it, lived in it all His days, died in it, was buried in it, rose from the grave in it, and from it ascended into heaven. This is the explanation offered. If we admit all this — that Jerusalem was " the city of the Great King " ; that the Temple which stood on its rocky height was for a time God's dwelling place on earth ; that He appeared to Abraham at Hebron, in the south of this land ; that He spoke to Samuel at Shiloh, in the centre of this land ; above all, if we admit that the Man who sat at Jacob's Well at the foot of Mount Gerizim, who taught, wrought miracles, and called disciples on the beach of the Sea of Galilee, in the north of this land, and who was crucified out- Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 32 side the gate of Jerusalem, was God's own Son, — if we admit all this, everything is plain, and the great title of the land is fully accounted for.

This was quite enough to make a poor land " the glory of all lands " ; to make that commonplace lake, the Sea of Galilee, the most sacred sheet of water on earth ; to make the insignificant Jordan the most famous of rivers ; to make Jerusalem, which has none of the elements of a great city — situation, environment, trade, com merce — the first of cities ; to make a wretched Arab hamlet like Bethany a place of renown. All is accounted for if we admit the claim of the Christian religion. But if we do not, what then ? Has superstition done all this ? This seems to be incredible. In that case, does there not remain an unsolved, and, we may add, an insoluble problem . If the Bible is a book of fables, like the stories of the Delphian Apollo or the Ephesian Diana, how has the poor land in which those fables had their origin Palestine : tbe ©lorg of all Xanbs 33 come to be " the glory of all lands" ?

Or if the book contains nothing but excellent moral teaching mixed up with legends, how have the places where this moral teaching happened to be pro pounded become so firmly fixed in the minds and affections of men ? Is there anything else like this in human history ? I cannot understand why men should flock to see the places where a man who was no more than a man gave himself out to be God, or was mistaken for God ; but I can well understand why all men should feel an inex tinguishable interest in visiting the one land on earth which was glorified by the residence in it for a time of the Son of God made flesh and dwelling among men. I cannot understand how so much should be made of a little lake on which a man preached from a boat a sermon, no matter how wonderful, to a congregation gathered on the shore ; but I can well understand how so much should be made of the Sea of Galilee if the Preacher was the incarnate Word of God.