Geographic influences in Old Testament masterpieces

Front matter

Pass /?6 // Y9 Book ,G 4 W/ J Copyright^?

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

Preface

It is not the purpose of this book to teach the geography, history, or nature study of Palestine in detail, but rather to give illustrations of how Old Testament literature is interpreted through the geography, history, botany, and zoology of the land in which it was written. Every one should know something of these subjects. There is no better way to impress these great facts upon our minds than to connect them with the poetic outbursts they have inspired in great authors, and nowhere did nature seem to have a more impressive effect upon the mind of man than in Palestine, becoming a necessary part of the expression of his soul. We lost all that during the Middle Ages. Not until the time of Wordsworth and his contemporaries did the great nature poets begin to appear in the West. To-day in our public schools we are trying to teach our youth to come close to the very heart of life by drawing close to nature. It is fitting, then, that we should go back to the great nature poets of Hebrew literature to help us on our way, for " true poetry has always come back to the realities of Nature and life," and some of the world's greatest masterpieces are to be found in the Old Testament. We are beginning to show appreciation of this fact by introducing the Bible as literature into many of our schools, 1 but

1 See recommendation of the Committee on College Requirements ; also the North Dakota Plan, Biblical World, June, 191 3, and " Academic a real interpretation of these masterpieces is utterly impossible without some knowledge of the land itself — without, figuratively speaking, breathing the same atmosphere which inspired the author. The two things, then, work together : a knowledge of the nature of the land interprets the literature, and the literature interprets our knowledge of all nature and life.

The selections included in this little book are illustrative of some of the main geographical features of Palestine which affected the life of the people so strongly. Most of them are great poems or stories depicting historical events. They introduce some of the forms of literature peculiar to the Hebrews and of which their great writers were such unconscious masters. They also touch upon botany and zoology, the nature study with which these . Hebrew poets were saturated and which reveals the everyday life of the people.

The text quoted unless otherwise indicated is the American Revised Version. The special translations inserted are taken from many scholars. They are not meant as a substitute for our familiar versions, but rather to illumine the passages by looking at the original Hebrew in the light of the gifted scholarship of our day. Any version — the King James, the Revised, the Douay, or the Jewish translation of the Hebrew Scriptures — will serve for the use of the students.

Credit for Bible Study," The Independent, March 9, 1914; also a statement of the Colorado Plan, the Gary Plan, the New York City Plan, the Pennsylvania Plan, the Pittsburg Plan, the Australian Plan, and the Saskatchewan Plan in the Twentieth Century Quarterly, September, 1914. This Quarterly is edited by Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, Washington, D.C. See also " The Biblical Knowledge of High School Students," Religious Education, August, 191 4.

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PREFACE

I am indebted to Professor Irving F. Wood of Smith College, Miss Harriet L. Keeler, formerly of the Cleveland public schools, and Dr. Washington Gladden for their kindness in reading the manuscript and encouraging its publication ; also to Dr. Margaret L. Bailey of Smith College for assistance in proofreading.

Lake Erie College LAURA H. WILD

Painesville, Ohio

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Contents

PAGE

PART I. THE GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES .... i PART II. OLD TESTAMENT MASTERPIECES ... 21 SELECTION

I. The Coast 21

Isa. xvii, 12-14

II. The Roads 25

The Story of Joseph and his Brethren 25

Gen. xxxvii

III. The Hills 32

Ps. xxiv, 7-10 (xxiii, 7-10, Douay); Ps. cxxi (cxx, Douay); Ps. cxxv, 1, 2 (cxxiv, 1, 2, Douay); Gen. xxii, 1-18; Isa. xxx, 15-17 ; Isa. xxxi, 1, 3-5

Abraham on Mount Moriah 38

Gen. xxii, 1-18 Isaiah's Warning 41

IV. The Attractions of the Plain 46

Samson and the Wheat Fields 46

Judges xv, 4-17 The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley . 52 Song of Songs ii, 1 (Canticle of Canticles ii, 1, Douay)

V. The River Kishon and Deborah's Song 55

Judges v

VI. Mount Carmel and Elijah the Tishbite 66

1 Kings xviii, 16-40 (3 Kings xviii, 16-40, Douay)

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SELECTION PAGE

VII. Mount Carmel and the Rains 75

1 Kings xvii, 1-7 (3 Kings xvii, 1-7, Douay); 1 Kings xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41-46 (3 Kings xviii, 1, 2, 5, 6, 41- 46, Douay)

VIII. The Thunderstorm Psalm 80

Ps. xxix (xxviii, Douay)

IX. Mount Hermon, the Land of Snow 84

Prov. xxv, 13 ; Hos. xiii, 3 ; Hos. vi, 4 ; Hos. xiv, 6

X. The Smell of Lebanon . 87

Hos. xiv, 4-7

XL Naaman's Scorn of the Jordan 92

2 Kings v, i-i9a (4 Kings v, i-i9a, Douay)

XII. The Bulls of Bashan and the Balm of Gilead . . 97 Ps. xxii, 12 (xxi, 13, Douay); Deut. xxxii, 9-15; Jer. 1, 17-19; Gen. xxxvii, 25; Gen. xliii, 1 1 ; Jer. viii, 18-22

XIII. The Caves 104

Gen. xix, 30; Obad. 3, 4, 10-15 (Abdias 3, 4, 10-15, Douay); 1 Sam. xxiv (1 Kings xxiv, Douay); 1 Sam. xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23 (1 Kings xiii, 5-7, 19 to xiv, 23, Douay); 1 Sam. xxii, 1,2(1 Kings xxii, 1, 2, Douay); 1 Sam. xxviii, 3-25 (1 Kings xxviii, 3-25, Douay); Amos ix, 1 b-3 a

XIV. The Desert 119

Ps. ciii, 15, 16 (cii, 15, 16, Douay); Ps. lxiii, 1 (lxii, 2, 3, Douay); Ps. xiii, 1, 2 (xli, 2, 3, Douay); Ps. cvii, 4 ff. (cvi, 4 ff., Douay); Ps. cxliii, 6-8 (cxlii, 6-8, Douay); Isa. xxxii, 1, 2; Isa.lv; Isa. xl

XV. The Land and the People 129

Ps. civ (ciii, Douay); Deut. viii, 7-10 ; Exod. xxxiv, 22, 26; Judges vi, 11, 12; and selections from the Prophets and from Job

XVI. The Poem of the Farmer 141

Isa. xxviii, 23-29

CONTENTS

SELECTION PAGE

XVII. The Fields of Bethlehem and the Story of Ruth 145 The Book of Ruth

XVIII. The Song of the Vineyard 155

XIX. The Shepherd Psalm 161

Ps. xxiii (xxii, Douay)

INDEX OF BIBLE REFERENCES 171

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

JOSEPH'S WELL 2.6 ^""^

THE GREAT HIGH PLACE AT PETRA 36 \f

PLOWING IN THE FIELDS OF SHARON 46*^

THE RIVER KISHON AND THE OLD BATTLEGROUND ... 54 [.

MOUNT CARMEL AND THE PLAIN OF ACRE 74

THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT HERMON 84 :

THE WILDERNESS SOUTH OF THE DEAD SEA 1 1 8

PALESTINIAN AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS I40

GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

IN OLD TESTAMENT

MASTERPIECES

PART I

One of the greatest educators of our country, the man who has done more than any other to call our attention to the scientific study of the needs of our youth, calls the Bible our " pedagogical masterpiece." 1 All teachers who are familiar with the book know this to be true, that from a teacher's standpoint, that of the art of presenting material, it is most illuminating. They know also that modern scholarship has thrown such a flood of light upon Hebrew literature that the Old Testament especially is rightfully regarded as containing some of the finest examples of story, poetry, and oratory that the world possesses. No less a writer than Mr. Edmund Gosse says that when young men come to him for advice in the formation of style he has no counsel for them except to read aloud as often as possible portions of the Bible. No less a teacher than one of our professors of English in

Yale University in trying to show his students how to write an essay or prepare a speech or tell a story sends them to the Scriptures to find out how, and points to the many noted men of letters who have "learned their trade in great part from the English Bible." He says their case differs only in degree from that of the plain people, and "since the easiest of books to have at hand has been found in the experience of so many and so different men the best of models for learning how to write, it cannot be set aside without folly." And one of the professors of English in Harvard University, in speaking of the Old Testament, says " it has preserved for us the history, the poetry, the wisdom, the religious ideals and national hopes of a people whose individuality and tenacity of thought are perhaps the strongest known in history " ; and he adds that its poetry is " marked by a singular concreteness and objectivity both of idea and of idiom, and by a freedom of form otherwise unknown in English."

Since these statements concerning the value of the Bible as a textbook are undoubtedly not in the least exaggerated, it seems unpardonable to debar our children from its acquaintance as great literature. Furthermore, these recent years have revolutionized the teaching of geography, so that this subject is now considered quite worthy of place in our universities as well as in our secondary schools, so much has it to do with the development of life, both in the past and in the present. Our great geographers have been busy turning the light of their particular science upon every country of the earth, and they have not omitted the little territory of Palestine. The most recent geographical investigations show this tiny strip of land to be one of the most remarkable portions of the earth's surface, a representation in miniature of what has been spread over whole continents elsewhere. But the land and the literature of the land are inextricably bound together. It is my purpose to show that we are depriving our children of one of the greatest source books of education when we cut them off from an acquaintance with the land of Palestine and the literature of the Old Testament, and that a most legitimate aid to the study of literature and geography in general is the study of some of the great Old Testament masterpieces against the geographical background which forms their setting.

From the broader standpoint we are only beginning to appreciate fully the value and interest of this branch of knowledge. The ancients understood the necessity of a crude geography in order to conduct their trade and make the discoveries which the more adventurous among them dared to undertake ; and though much of it was guesswork, which has had to be revised with the more accurate knowledge of the world, their geographical guesses led to great things — the discovery of continents, the migration of races, the establishment of great empires, the onward progress of civilization. The geography of to-day is not guesswork because there is now very little of the earth's surface that is unexplored, and because with the advance of science we have so much more accurate means of drawing maps and picturing the relative importance of various localities. But it is nevertheless of great interest to us to read of the geographical guess of Columbus, who stumbled on America when he thought he was going to find India, or to discover in the country just east of the Dead Sea a mosaic map of the Eastern world laid out in the ground hundreds of years ago. 1 This is the oldest known map in the world. It is made of squares of stone of various colors — red, yellow, blue, black, and white — and represents Palestine, the Nile Valley, and the surrounding countries. Bridges, fish, beasts, and men, as well as mountains, rivers, and cities, are depicted. There is not much left of the animals now but legs and tails. However, an antelope may be seen intact, as well as palm trees in the hot valleys. This proves that the ancient geographers felt, as we do, that we should have pictures in our minds not only of the topography of a land (where the water ends and the plains and mountains begin), and of the distance between cities, but also of the things that live there, the kind of animals and plants as well as men.

Modern geography, however, goes much further than this. It asks " why " of everything it places upon the map. Why, for example, did the great steel company choose to place its city at the precise spot which is called Gary, Indiana ? Why do the great trunk lines of our continent all focus at Chicago ? Why is the city of Buenos Aires growing so rapidly and magnificently ? Why are many ruins of ancient buildings found on the Upper Nile and comparatively few in the Delta ? Why has the little country of Palestine played so important a part in the development of the religious life of the world ? Many of these " whys " have to do with the development of commerce, and as this is a commercial age, we are having commercial geography introduced very generally into our schools. But modern geography is by no means wholly utilitarian, it is more of a

1 Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation, pp. 205 ff.

science than that would signify. We want to know the answers to these questions because they are vitally connected with our understanding of history, the story of the life of the world in the past as well as in the present day. Palestine is a wonderful country to study from the modern geographical standpoint. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, it is a very small country, only about one hundred and fifty miles north and south by one hundred east and west if we include the plateau east of the Jordan, which properly belongs to its history. This is about the size of our little states of Vermont or New Jersey, and yet within that small territory we have the most varied scenery and the most varied climate in the world. Think of starting on a journey across the state of Vermont some day and on the Lake Champlain side looking out upon a plain covered with palm trees, apricots and figs, oranges and peaches, and fields of flowers, with the temperature of southern France ; then climbing low rounded hills, dipping down into a valley and ascending a high mountain, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, where the natives dress in sheepskin and live in warm stone huts ; then making a quick, sharp dip down into a torridly hot valley, with the thermometer in May standing from 104 to 1 14 Fahrenheit, where the thinnest of clothes only are endurable ; then rising again to the plateau beyond, where cool breezes and heavy dews make blankets at night desirable. This would be like crossing from the Mediterranean Sea near Joppa over the foothills and up Mount Zion, down into the Jordan Valley and up again to the Plateau of Moab. Or if one stood upon Mount Carmel, the one conspicuous promontory which juts out a little north of the middle of the coast line, and looked northeast, there would be the snow-capped Mount Hermon, the Pike's Peak of Palestine, standing nine thousand feet above the sea, with the hills of Galilee beneath, the grainfields of the Valley of Jezreel to the east, and, swinging around to the south, the beautiful fertile Plain of Sharon lying at one's feet dotted with fruit trees and with red anemones which sprinkle the landscape with color. California, as one travels from Los Angeles to Sacramento and from the Pacific Coast to the Sierras, is said to be more like Palestine than any other country in the world, so far as the differences in climate and landscape are concerned; 1 but California covers a very much larger territory, — more than ten times as large, 2 — and so Palestine has the distinction of giving us the most compressed and kaleidoscopic view of the landscapes and climates which the world contains.

The second reason why Palestine is a remarkable country to study is from the geological standpoint. Geology is more or less involved in geography, just as botany and zoology are. The land we live upon — the soil, the rocks, the mountains and valleys — has a history. Some portions of land are much older than others and show the effects of age and can tell tales that younger places know nothing about. Now Palestine can tell a very old story of the earth's appearance above the sea some thirty thousand years ago 8 and of the gradual changes that took place until

1 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation.

2 California has an area of 158,000 square miles, and Greater Palestine of only 1 2,000. Thus California is fully thirteen times as large as Palestine.

8 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation, p. 307. This is the average of the various estimates of geologists concerning the lapse of time since the close of the last glacial period in Palestine.

it was fit for men to live upon some five or six thousand years ago — of great glaciers that rubbed and scratched and melted, of mighty volcanic eruptions that tore the rocks up by the roots, and of the folding of the earth's crust into hills and valleys, forming watersheds and river basins and lakes and seas, leaving mountains and plateaus high and dry, and causing rich, fertile soil to be washed down upon the plains. Palestine is a wonderful country geologically for three reasons ; first, because it contains within such a small area almost all the different kinds of formations which the earth assumes — plain, plateau, sand hill, desert and snow-clad peaks, river valley and mountain gorge, marshes, bodies of fresh water and salt water, hot springs and sulphur springs, steep escarpments and howling wilderness, caves for robbers, pillars of salt, volcanic craters, chalk, limestone, sandstone, a forbidding coast line, and one semblance of a harbor. What greater variety could one ask for ? Moreover, while the top layers of sandstone, limestone, and chalk are geologically young, there are very ancient granite rocks near at hand, and it was one of the very first portions of the earth's surface to get settled into shape fit for man and beast. 1 It has, therefore, a longer story to tell than most lands.

In the third place, it contains the most wonderful valley known anywhere on the earth's surface, a valley which starts up in the Lebanon Mountains with the sources of the Jordan River, widening out into marshes with a tiny lake called Lake Huleh, and then a little farther down forming

1 Townsend MacCoun, The Holy Land in Geography and History ; Canon Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; C. F. Kent, Biblical Geography and History ; Elihu Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine.

the harp-shaped Sea of Galilee with its clear, blue, fresh water. The outlet of the Sea of Galilee is the River Jordan, which winds down to the Dead Sea, " a sparkling serpent writhing in a barren desert, with only here and there an oasis of deepest green." The distance the Jordan traverses from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea is only about sixty miles in an air line, but the river is so winding that its course measures two hundred miles. The Sea of Galilee at its lower end sinks down very rapidly. Where the Jordan River finds its exit its channel is six hundred and fifty feet below the level of the ocean, and by the time it reaches the Dead Sea the gorge is twelve hundred and seventy-eight feet below sea level. When one finds land below sea level anywhere, it is a phenomenon to be specially noted, but almost thirteen hundred feet below is heard of only in the little country of Palestine. " No other part of the earth's land surface sinks much over three hundred feet below the level of the sea ; there may be something on the surface of another planet to match the Jordan Valley — there is nothing on this." 1 The gorge is especially peculiar ; geologists think it is not due to the rift cut deep in the rock by the flowing stream, as most valleys are made, but to the original folding of the earth's crust, which left this deep trench to be filled in by the water washing down from above. 2 Moreover the Dead Sea, which is the terminus of this valley, has no outlet ; it receives all the waters from the Jordan and the smaller streams on the east which flow into it, but there is no stream which flows out. It never gets filled up, however,

1 George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land.

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation.

and never overflows, because the heat is so intense down in that torrid valley that the water evaporates very rapidly. This causes the atmosphere to be exceedingly moist and all the more unbearable in the hot season. 1 It also causes all the mineral elements to be deposited in the sea ; not any are carried off, so that it has become the saltiest body of water known, the water containing twenty-five per cent of salts. No living thing can exist in it — all fish die within a few feet of shore, all palm trees and plants on the borders, which sometimes become inundated, wither up and perish. If a man tries to swim, as soon as he has reached a depth up to his armpits he is lifted off his feet " and vainly wiggles his toes in an attempt to touch bottom." If the wind blows, the heavy water very slowly rises into waves, but finally breaks with tremendous force dangerous to boats and men. 2 But because of its peculiarities this body of water produces some of the most beautiful color effects known. 3 And so, geologically, Palestine is a most interesting country with which to become acquainted. But there is still another reason why every student should mark Palestine in red as one of the spots on the globe that he knows about ; and that is because it contains a greater variety of plants and animals than any other country of its size in the world. 3 How many know that the cyclamen which you buy at the greenhouse in winter, with its beautiful

1 "Owing to the proximity of the desert and the intense heat — the temperature rising in summer as high as n8° — it is the scene of a stupendous process of evaporation. It is computed that between six and eight million tons of water rise in vapor from this great natural caldron each day." — Kent, Biblical Geography and History.

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation.

3 Kent, Biblical Geography and History.

rose-colored blossoms, is a native of Palestine ? How many have supposed that the common old-fashioned hollyhock which grows in your grandmother's garden in the country received its name from the holy-hocys of the Holy Land brought back to England by the Crusaders ? * Did you know also that our delicate maidenhair fern could be seen in some of the caves over there, as well as the lilies and the mustard spoken of in the Gospels, and crocuses and narcissi, bachelor's-buttons and wild mignonette, besides gorgeous fields of red anemone, the wild rose, and " an endless variety of orchids "? 2 Around the marshes of Lake Huleh are found acres of the papyrus reed, some of it growing sixteen feet high. This is the plant that used to grow in such profusion in Egypt and from which the first paper was made by cutting it into strips and pasting them together. It took the place of the expensive sheepskin for writing purposes, and many of our old manuscripts were written on this kind of paper. But now this reed is wholly extinct in Egypt and, except in Palestine, is not found again until one reaches Assyria or India. 3

If you should visit the Semitic Museum at Harvard University, you would find a collection of Palestinian birds, some of them looking much like our own. You would recognize the raven, of which there are no less than seven kinds in Palestine. The Palestinian crow has a gray body and black wings. There are quail in the grass, as well as

1 A. Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine.

2 Goodrich-Freer, Things Seen in Palestine ; Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine ; Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; W. M. Thomson, The Land and the Book.

8 Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine.

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partridges in the hills and owls in the ruins. There is the white stork with black wings, red bill, and red legs, and there are many long-legged water birds. Swallows, goldfinches, doves, white sparrows, and even robin redbreasts, are among the smaller birds. But there are some birds in the regions near the Dead Sea not found elsewhere in any part of the world. 1 In Palestine almost every kind of creature seems to flourish, from sheep and dogs and camels to bears, hyenas, wolves, and jackals, and from lizards and snakes to bats and most enormous grasshoppers. The remarkable thing about the flora and fauna of Palestine is not the number of species but the fact that ordinarily these plants and animals are found in such widely separated places. Serpents and lizards are found in hot countries, bears and deer in cold ; maidenhair ferns are found in Vermont and Canada, and cyclamen nowhere in America but in hothouses. Yet here in Palestine they are all together. It is the native habitat of palm trees and fir trees, olives and apricots, figs and grapes. The reason for it of course is that there is such a variety of climate in this little land, from the torrid Jordan Valley to the cold, snow-clad mountains of Lebanon. There is a puzzle in the Book of Samuel. 2 I wonder if you can tell the answer. How could a boy named Benaiah find a lion (whose habitat is a torrid jungle) in a cave where there was snow ? The answer would be hard to find in America but very simple in Palestine years ago, before lions were extinct. The lion lived in the Jordan Valley and by mistake

1 Tristram, Natural History of the Bible ; Grant, The Peasantry of Palestine.

2 2 Sam. xxiii, 20.

one hot day wandered up the west bank only five or six miles into a cave in the mountains of Judea about three thousand feet above his home. 1

But there' is yet another reason why these plants and animals are interesting. They represent the flora and fauna of different continents — of Asia and Africa and Europe. Ordinarily in studying geography you classify these living things separately according to continents, but here they are together. It is because Palestine is a bridge between these continents, a meeting place, a point of adventure from north to south and from east to west, and also because it is such a narrow bridge, with the hot desert on one side and the cool Mediterranean Sea on the other. 2 We shall find later that it has been a bridge and meeting place for human beings of various continents and races, 1 as well as for plants and animals, but just now we will confine ourselves to this third reason for including Palestine in our study of geography : namely, that it has the most remarkable variety of flora and fauna of any known country. 2

The fourth reason is the historical. Of course when we speak of history we mean the story of the human race. We have been speaking of the story of the earth, its rocks, its plants, its animals. That is all history in one sense, the history of the earth, and goes back thousands of years before the history of man ever began at all. Man, indeed, is the highest animal and caps the story of the development of the earth. But in the sense in which it

1 Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land.

2 Huntington, Palestine and its Transformation ; Standard Bible Dictionary, art. "Animals."

is ordinarily used, history means the story of the life of men on earth. And Palestine is a remarkable country because of its bearings upon the history of men. In the first place it is situated very near what is supposed to be " the cradle of the human race ' n — the place where the land first became fit for men to live, where they first appeared on the earth and gradually developed into tribes and races. Palestine is not the birthplace of the first man, but it is near enough to the earliest developments of mankind to take us away back to primitive society and conditions and show us how those early nomads lived — how they began to settle down and become agriculturists and cease to wander about for their living, how commerce first began to develop and merchant vessels to be launched upon the sea by the Phoenicians and great overland roads to be built between cities. Moreover, it lies upon the direct path between the oldest civilizations of the world, Babylonia and Egypt, with their important cities, and it was across this bridge, or pathway, that men passed to and fro and exchanged ideas in the earliest days of history. The oldest road in the world runs through Palestine — the ancient caravan route from Egypt up the coast and across the Plain of Esdraelon at Dothan, then over the Jordan Valley just north of the Sea of Galilee and on to Damascus and the East. Along that road came the traders to whom Joseph was sold by his brethren to be taken down into Egypt as a slave, and along that road the caravans passing to and fro brought the news of the world to this little isolated country of Hebrews.