mm- urn... txhraxy of Che Cheolojicd ^cmin5 1030 Solomon, King, ..... » 1000 Disruption of the Kingdom and invasion by Shishak, » 970 Elijah, ....... >i 870 Israel comes into touch with Assyria : Battle of Karkar, 854 Elisha, ....... 850-800 First Writing Prophets : Amos, Hosea, circa 750 rUzziah dies, ..... 740 Isaiah - Northern Israel falls, .... 721 .Deliverance of Jerusalem, 701 /•Discovery of Book of Law, 621 Death of Josiah at Megiddo, 608 Jeremiah -| Fall of Assyria : Rise of Babylonia, 606 f First Great Captivity of Jerusalem, Ezekiel ■! r. j i. V.becond „ ,, „ 597 5S7 TFall of Babylonia : Rise of Persia, . ^j^^°^j^] Return ofjews from exile, . 538 536 iTemple Rebuilt, .... 515 Ezra and Nehemiah, . . . 457-440 Erection of Temple on Gerizim, 360 Alexander the Great in Syria, .... 332 Beginning of Seleucid Era, .... 312 Kingdom of Parthia founded, .... 250 Rome defeats Antiochus the Great at Magnesia, v^ 192 V XXVI Chronological Table The Maccabees, ...... John Hyrcanus, . . • Alexander Janneus, , , . . . t 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, ,...,. Archelaus banished : Judeea under Roman Procurator, 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, ..... circa Decian Persecution, .... Diocletian's Persecution, Eusebius, Archbishop of Ca^sarea, 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, .... B.C. 166-135 135-105 104-78 64 40 31 37-4 A.D. 6 on front circa 34 39 37-44 50-100 66 70 106 135 218 250 303 315-318 323-336 400 622 632 . 634-63S 661 1070- 1085 1098- 1 1 87 1187 1191 circa 1270 1240, 1260, 1400 1799 ABBREVIATIONS Baudissin, Stud. =Studien zur Seniitischen ReligionsgeschicJite. Boha-ed-Din, Vit Sal., ed. Schult=Vita Saladinis, with excerpts from the geography of Abulfeda, ed. Schultens. See p. 17, n. 2. Budde, Ri. u. Sa. or Richt. Sam. = Die Bilcher Richter u. Samnelis. C.I.S. — Corpus Insci-iptionum Semiticarum, cf. p. 15, n. i. Conder, T.W.=-Tent Work in Palestine. De Saulcy, Num. de la T.S. = Numismatique de la Terre Sainte. Geog. Gr. Min. = Geographi 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. Josephus, Antt.=- Antiquities. ,, Wars— Wars of the Jews. A'..,^. Zl =Schrader's Keilinschriften u. das Alte Testament. Neubauer, Geog. Tal.=La Giographie du Talmud, Paris, 1868. P.E.F. Mem. —Memoirs of the Palestine 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. P.P. 7". = Palestine Pilgrims Text Society's Series of Publications. Robertson Smith, 0. T.J. C. = Old Testament in the fewish Church, ed. 2, 1892. Robinson, B.R. ox Bib. Res. = Biblical Researches, London, 1841. ,, 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 recuillies en G7-he et en Asie Mineure, See p. 15, n. i. Wetz. = Wetzstein. Z.A. T. W.=Zeitschrift fur Alt-testamentliche Wissenschaft. Z.D.M. G. — Zeitschrift der Deutschen Mogenldndischen Gesellschaft. Z. D. P. V. = Zeitschrift des Deutschen Paldstina- Vereins. M.u.N.D.P.V.=Mittheilungen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Paldstina- Vereins. In the transliteration of Hebrew and Arabic words 'Aleph is usually ren- dered by a light, 'Ayitt by a rough, breathing; but in well-known names they are sometimes omitted ; Qoph by K; Sade usually by S. In ancient names Gimelis rendered by G (hard), in modern names by/. BOOK I THE LAND AS A WHOLE CHAPTER I THE PLACE OF SYRIA IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY For this chapter consult Map II, THE PLACE OF SYRIA IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY BETWEEN the Arabian Desert and the eastern coast of the Levant there stretches — along almost the full extent of the latter, or for nearly 400 miles — a tract of fertile land varying from 70 to 100 miles in breadth. This is so broken up by mountain range and valley, that it has never all been brought under one native govern- ment ; yet its well-defined boundaries — the sea on the west. Mount Taurus on the north, and the desert to east and south — give it a certain unity, and separate it from the rest of the world. It has rightly, therefore, been covered by one name, Syria. Like that of The Names Palestine, the name is due to the Greeks, but °* ^^^ ^^"'^" by a reverse process. As ' Palestina/ which is really Philistina, was first the name of only a part of the coast, and thence spread inland to the desert,^ so Syria, which is a shorter form of Assyria, was originally applied by the Greeks to the whole of the Assyrian Empire from the Caucasus to the Levant, then shrank to this side of the Euphrates, and finally within the limits drawn above. The Arabs call the country Esh- Sham, or * The Left,' for it is really the northern or north-western end of the great Arabian Peninsula, of ' See p. 4. 4 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land which they call the southern side El Yemen, or ' The Right.' 1 The name Palaistine, which Josephus himself uses only of Philistia, was employed by the Greeks to distinguish all Southern Syria, inclusive of Judaea, from Phoenicia and Coele-Syria. They called it Syria Palaistin^, using the word as an adjective, and then Palaistine, 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 gimd 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 Aratn, 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.). 2 The full history of the word is this : — Philistines, QTlK'^S or D^TlB'^S is rendered by the LXX. in the Hexateuch (pvXiffTieifi ; cf. i Mace. iii. 24, Sirach xlvi. 18. From this Josephus has the adjective ion, i. 22, he quotes Herodotus as using the name in the wider sense inclusive of Judasa. Herodotus, who describes Syria as extending from Cilicia to Mount Carius, distinguishes the Phoenicians from the IlvpLoi ol iv rfj HaXaiffTlvri, or oi HaXaiffrlpoi KaXedfievoi. (ii. 104 ; iii. 5» 91 > '*''•• ^9)> ^""^ defines it as t^s 'Evpirjs tovto t6 x^P^°^ '^'*' '''^ ju^pt klfviTTov irdf llaXaiaTii'ti KaXeirai. Arrian {Anabasis, ii. 25) speaks of i) livpiTj JlaXauTTlvTi. Syria was divided into S. Palestina, S. Punica, and S. Coela ; Herod, i. 105. Palestine was made a separate province, 67 A.D. Syria s Place in History more probably geographical and meaning ' sunken ' or * low ' land. It seems to have at first belonged to 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 great ^^ Historical ° deography of Semitic home — the peninsula of Arabia. But ^>^'^- the Semitic 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 role 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 ^ 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. In Zech. 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's Syria's 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 I 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, ^j^^ tribes 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 Taurus, 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 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 ^^ssness. Beni Sab, the Beni Humar, 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 Histo7'ical 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 by 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 lation 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. -,^, ... . i tt- • ,i • i Philistines and Hittites ; 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 ;i 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,' Encyc. Brit ) ' that every trace of the presence of Greeks, Romans, and Franks has completely disapjieared.' 2 ' In Eastern cities the death-rate habitually exceeds the birth-rate, and the urban population is maintained only by constant recruital from the country, 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 root.'— Robertson Smith, Religion oj the Semites, 12, 13. 1 2 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land human race made her the passage for the earliest inter- course and exchanges of civilisation. 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. - Alluded to Zeph. ii. ; Jer. i. 14 ff. Cf. Herodotus i. 104 ff. ^ 40 B.C. * 612-616 A.D., under Chosroes il. ' 1070-10S5. " 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 140x3 under Timur, which repeated the exportations of early Assyrian days, and carried ofif the effective classes of Damascus and other towns to Samarcand. Syria s Place in History 1 3 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 ^nd 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-I187, 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 of 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 Egyptian i /• i tn •!-» • o 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 informing.^ 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 o^cr 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 Haces of the Old Testament ; Leon de Lantsheeres, De la race et de la langue des Hittites, Bruxelles, 1891 ; V. Luschan, etc., Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, I. Einl. V. Inschriften, Berlin, 1893 (not seen). 2 Robinson, Later B. A"., 618 ff. ; Layard, Discov. inNineveh, etc., 211 n. ; Conder, Syrian Stone Lore, 56, 124. 3 Z.D.P. V. xii. * Conder, Tell-el-Amarna Tablets. P.E.F.Q., 1893, Jan. ' Lepsius' Dcnkmaler aus Aegypten; 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 A rchcEology, Conder, Tell-el-Amarna Tablets, 1S93. Above all, W. Max Miiller, Asien u. Eiirofa n. altdgyp. Denkmdler, 1893. « The authorities on these are :— Cough's Coins of the Seleucidce, -ivith Historical Memoirs, London, 1S03 ; Gardner, Catalogue of Coins in the British Museum; The Seleucid Kings of Syria, London, 1878 ; De Saulcy in Milanges de Numismati,/ue (pp. 45-64); and, of course, the relevant seclions in Eckhel, Doctrina numorum veterum, and in Mionnet. 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 xhe 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 Grice et en Asie Mineure ; text in pt. i. , transcriptions and expositions in pt. ii. Cf. Wetzstein, Ausgewdhlte Griech. u. Lat. Inschriften gesammelt auf Reisen in den Trachoneti m. um das Haurangebirge, from the Transactions of the Royal Acad, of Sciences, Berlin, 1S63, with a map; Clermont-Ganneau, Rccueil d^ Archeologie Orientale, Paris, 1888, 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 Inscriptiotitwi Semiticarum, Paris, 1881 ff. Cf. Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire. 2 These are still being found in considerable numbers. The authorities are: — F. de Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, Paris, 1874; Madden, Coi7is of the Jews (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, Caesal-'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. ^^^^ ^j.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 * Polybius passim; Diodorus Siculus ; Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander, ii. ; Quintus Curtius, iv. ; Strabo's Geography, especially xvi. 2, and Ptolemy's ; Geographi Grceci Minores (edd., Hudson, Oxford, 1698-1712, and Mtiller, Paris, 1855-61); VXwi^'sHist. Nat.,\. 13-19; Tacitus. In English, cf. Gibbon; Mommsen's Provinces of the Roman Empire ; Schiirer's Hist, of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ, Eng., 1890 ff. ; Morrison's The Jews under Rotnan Rtile, 1890; Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, 1890. Syria s Place m History 17 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 1187 — 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 thousands 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 Jerusale^n, to the documents ^ Eusebius, History of the Chtirch and Life of Constantine. Tlie 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. Stephanas Byzan- tinus (probably in Justinian's reign) wrote the 'E^rtKa, 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 Coiiime7itaries, passitn. The lives especially of Hilarion, by Jerome, and of Porphyry in the Acta Saiictorutn. See ch. xi. ^ See ch. xxviii. ' The best are William, Archbishop of Tyre (i 174-1188?), Historiarentm in partibus Iratisniarinis gestai-iwi a tempore successorum Alahumeih usque ad A.D. 1 184; Geoffrey Vinsauf, Itinerarium Regis Angloru7)i RicharJi; Bongars' Gesta Dei per Francos ; Jacques de Vitry ; De Joinville's Alenioirs of Louis IX. From the Saracen side, Boha-ed-Din's Life of Saladin, with excerpts from the ^«/w^ of Abulfeda, etc., ed. Schultens, 1732 ; and Imad- ed-Din, El-Katib el Isfahan! ; Conquete de la Syrie et de la Palestine, public par le Comte Carlo de Landberg : i., Texte Arabe. Leyden, 1SS8. 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 ^^ centuries between the Moslem invasion Traders, ^^^ ^^ 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"" Siecles, Paris, 1883 ; Prutz, Eutwickehing v. Untergang des Tetnpel-Hn-ren Ordetts, Berlin, 1888 (not seen) ; Prutz's and Rohricht'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 o/Jerttsalem, by John d'Ibelin, is Beugnot's in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades (Paris, 1841-1881). On the Crusades generally, cf. Gibbon ; Cox's little manual in the Epochs of History ; Sybel, Geschichte der Kreuzziige ; Karten u. Pliine zur Paldstina-hinde aus dem 7 bis 10 Jahrlnindert, by Rernhold Rohricht, i., ii., and iii., in Z.D.P.V., vols. xiv. and xv. ; Rohricht's Regesta Regni Hierosolymitani, 1893 (not seen). " On Crusading masonry, see Conder in the P.E.F. Mem., Samaria under Ccesarea, and Judaea under Ascalon. On the fortresses, see Rey, op. cit. ch. vii., with plans and views. On the churches, De Vogiie, £glises de la Terre Sainte ; cf. his Architecture civile et religieiise de la Syrie. ^ In Bohn's Early Travels in Palestine ; the translations of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society ; Tobler's Itineraria Hierosolyriiitana ; the French Archives de la Society d'' Orient Latin ; Carmoly's Itincraires de la Terre Sainte des xiii"''-xvii'"' sikles, Bruxelles, 1847. I have also found it useful to consult Reyssbuch des heiligen Landes, das ist eine grundtliche Be- schreibung alter u. jeder Meer u. Bilgerfahrten zum hey I. Lande, etc. etc., Franckfort am Mayn, MDLXXxni. ; the indispensable Quaresmius, Historica, Theologica et Moralis Terra: Sanctx Elticidalio, Antwerp, 1639 ; and Pietri Delia Valle's Reisebeschreibnng, translated from the Italian, GenfT, 1674, but only a few of his ' 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 Levantehandels iin Mil- telalter, Stuttgart, 1879, 2 vols. ; in French, much enlarged, Leipzig, 1885-86, 2 vols; and Discorso wpra il Cominercio degli Italiani nel sec. xiv., Roma, 1818. Syria s Place in History 1 9 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 ence of Europe interval of eleven years, than the great in- °" ^"^' crease of red and sloping roofs in 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 Wlirttemberg have perhaps done more to improve the surface of the country than any other Western ^ Guerre de r Orient \ Cavipagnes d'Agypte et de Syrie. Memoires dictees par Napoleon lui-meme et publiees par General Bertrand, Paris, 1847. * Walsh, Diary of the late Campaign, iygg-i8oi ; Wittman, M.D., Travels in Syria, etc., lygg-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- pean 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 Egypt or for the Holy Places, when may they ^ On these interesling colonies see their journal, Die Warte des Tempels ; papers in recent volumes of the Z.D.P. V. ; and the account of them in Ross, Cradle of Christianity, London, 1891. - Their three chief colonies are Cassarea, Jerash, and Rabbath Ammon, tlie last two of which I visited in 1891. 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 Crusades, 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 Wheeled 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 so 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 stratecric 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 given to them, and exercising that influence in which their glory 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 syna's single to the great empires of the Nile and Euphra- Opening, 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 fall rather under the section of Relijnon. 2 2 The HistoHcal 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 the Coast. ' For the Phcenician inscriptions in Cyprus, Rhodes, Sicily, Malta, Carthage, Sardinia, Spain, and Marseilles, see the Corpus Inscriptioniim Semiticarutn, vol. i. part i. For names, take the following as instances : — Kition, in Cyprus, is the Hebrew Chittim (see ch. vii.). Mount Atabyrus, 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 the same source. The Cyprian Aphrodite herself is just Ashtoreth ; 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 BeruXot ( = Beth-el), or sacred stones, conical or ovoid pillars. One was in the temple of Aphrodite at Syria s Place in History It is not surprising that the early Greek civih'sation, 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 l/ 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 iioo B.C.; and Paphos (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 3). In Sicily a Carthaginian coin has been dis- covered with the legend 'BARAT'='the wells,' the Phoenician 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^cjv, interest = j13iy; fj.va, weight or coin = n30; /ctfaXXijs, pirate, from ??K', booty. The name of at least one animal, <'03 = the camel; names of vegetables, like ii expelling the Syrian colonists from by Rome. ^j^^ island. In revenge, Hamilcar crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 237 ; and by 218 his son, ' Freeman's Sin'/y {Story of the Nations series), p. 56. -' 480-473, and again 413-404. ^ Cf. Freeman, op. cit.^ p. 21. Syria's Place in History 25 Hannibal the Great, had conquered Spain, and crossed the Alps into Italy. But again it was proved that Europe was not to be for the Semites, and Hannibal was driven back. By 205 the Romans had conquered the Iberian peninsula, passed over into Africa, and made that a Roman province.^ How desperate was the struggle, how firmly the Syrians had planted themselves in the West, may be seen from the fact that seven hundred years after the destruction of Carthage men still talked Punic or Phoenician in North Africa; the Bible itself was trans- lated into the language,^ and this only died out before its kindred dialect of Arabic in the eighth century of our era. During the glory of Carthage the Phoenician navies, crowded out of the eastern Mediterranean by the Greek and Italian races, pushed westward through ' ^ '^ Further the Straits of Gibraltar to the Canary Isles,^ to Phoenician Voyages. a strange sea of weeds which may have been the same Columbus met towards America,* to the west of Gaul, the Scilly Isles,^ and therefore surely to Britain ; while an admiral of Tyre, at the motion of Pharaoh Necho, circumnavigated Africa in 600 B.C.,^ or 2000 years before Vasco da Gama. After the fall of Carthage — the fall of Tyre had hap- pened a hundred years before — the Phoenician genius confined itself to trading, with occasionally a L^^gr little mercenary war. Under the Roman Em- P^°e""='a- pire, Phoenicians were to be found all round the Mediter- ranean, with their own quarters and temples in the large ^ Fifty years later they were interfering in the affairs of the real Phoenicia, and one hundred and fifty later they had reduced Syria to a province also. - Augustine. ^ Diodorus Siculus, v. 19-20. * Scylax, Periphis, 112, in the Geographi GrcECt Minores (ed. Muller, i. 93). * Cassiterides, or tin islands (Strabo, iii. v. 11). * Herodotus, iv. 42. 2 6 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land towns. When Rome's hold on the East became firm at the beginning of our era, Syrians ^ flowed into Italy — as Juvenal puts it, the Orontes into the Tiber. There were a few good rhetoricians, grammarians, poets and wits among them, but the mass were slave-dealers, panders and mongers of base superstitions. During all this time — from the thirteenth century of the old era to the first of the new — there had stood upon the highlands immediately behind Phcenicia a nation speaking almost identically the same dialect ; and this nation had heard the Phoenician tales of those western isles and coasts: Israel and °^ Chittim, that is, Cyprus, and of Rodan, that Phoenicia, jg^ Rhodes; Javan, or the lonians ; Elissa, some farther coast of Sicily or Italy ; and Tarshish, which was the limit in Spain. And though this tribe had no port of their own, nor were in touch with the sea at all, their imagination followed the Phoenician voyages, but with a nobler ambition than that of gain, and claimed those coast-lands, on which the gross Semitic myths had caught, for high ideals of justice, mercy, and the know- ledge of the true God.^ When one has learned the impressionableness of the early Greek to the religion which Syria sent him by the Phoenicians, and remembers how closely Israel stood neighbour to Phoenicia in place, in language, in political alliance, one's fancy starts the question. What if Phoenicia had also been the carrier of Israel's faith, as of Egypt's letters, Babylon's wares and the wild Semitic myths I It was impossible. When Phoenicia was still a religious influence in the West, Israel either had not arrived in Palestine, or was not so expert in the possibilities of her own religion as to commend it 'Also Nabateans, cf. C./.S., P. i. torn. ii. 183 flf. '•' Isaiah xlii. Syria s Place in History 27 to other peoples — though those were her neighbours and kinsmen according to the flesh ; and when Israel knew herself as God's servant to the whole world, and con- ceived Phoenician voyages as means of spreading the truth westward, the Phoenicians were no longer the cor- respondents, but the enemies, of every other race upon the northern and western shores of the Mediterranean. Take, for instance, the time of Elijah, when Israel !„ the time and Phoenicia stood together perhaps more of Elijah. closely than at any other period. The slope of religious influence was then, not from Israel to Phoenicia, but from Phoenicia to Israel. It is the attempt to spread into foreign lands the worship of Baal, not the worship of Jehovah, that we see. It is Jezebel who is the mission- ary, not Elijah ; and the paradox is perfectly intelligible. The zeal of Jezebel proceeded from these two conceptions of religion : that among the same people several gods might be worshipped side by side — Phoenician Baal in the next temple to Jehovah of Israel ; and that religion was largely a matter of politics. Because she was queen in Israel, and Baal was her god, therefore he ought to be one of Israel's gods as well. But it is better not to be a mission- ary-religion at all than to be one on such principles ; and Israel's task just then was to prove that Jehovah was the one and only God for her own life. If she first proved this on the only true ground — that He was the God of justice and purity — then the time would certainly come when He would appear, for the same reason, the God of the whole earth, with irresistible claims upon the allegiance of Phoenicia and the West. So, with one exception, Elijah confined his prophetic work to Israel, and looked seaward only for rain. But by Naboth's vineyard and other matters 2 8 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land he taught his people so well the utter difiference of Jehovah from other gods — being as He was identical with righteous- ness, and therefore supreme — that it naturally followed that Israel should see This was the Deity whose interests, whose activity, whose dominion were universal. But that carries us into the heart of our next subject, the Religion In the later °^ Syria — the inquiry, why Israel alone of Prophets. Syrian tribes came to so pure a faith, and so sure a confidence of its victory over the world. Let us finish this section by pointing out that when the prophets of Israel did rise to the consciousness of the universal dominion of their religion, it was to Phoenician means — those far Phoenician voyages we have been following — that they looked for carrying it into effect. To the prophets Phoenicia and her influence are a great and a sacred thing. They exult in her opportunities, in her achievements. Isaiah and Ezekiel bewail the destruction of Tyre and her navies as desecration. Isaiah cannot believe it to be final. He sees Phoenicia rising purified by her captivity to be the carrier of true religion to the ends of the earth.^ IV. The Religion of Syria. We have seen that Syria, Esh-Sham, is but ' the north ' end of the Semitic world, and that from the earliest times her population has been essentially Semitic. By this it was determined that her role in history should be predomi- nantly the religious. The Semites are the religious leaders of humanity. The three great monotheisms have risen ^ Isaiah xxiii. ; Ezekiel xxvi. ff. Syj'ia s Place in History 29 among them ; the grandest prophets of the world have been their sons. For this high destiny the race were prepared by their age-long seclusion in Arabia. 1 r • 1 r 11 The Religious In the deserts of Arabia, life is wonderfully temper of the tempered. Nature is monotonous, the dis- tractions are i&v^, the influence of things seen is as weak as it may be ip this universe ; the long fasts, necessary every year, purge the body of its grosser elements, the soul easily detaches itself, and hunger lends the mind a curious passion, mixed of resignation and hot anger. The only talents are those of war and of speech — the latter culti- vated to a singular augustness of style by the silence of nature and the long leisure of life.^ It is the atmosphere in which seers, martyrs, and fanatics are bred. Conceive a race subjected to its influences for thousands of years ! To such a race give a creed, and it will be an apostolic and a devoted race. Now, it has been maintained that the desert did furnish the Arab with a creed, as well as with a religious tempera- ment. M. Renan has declared that the Semite, living where nature is so uniform, must be a monotheist ; ^ but this thesis has been disproved by every fact j^^^ naturally discovered among the Semites since it was Monotheists. first promulgated. The Semitic religions, with two excep- tions (one of which, Islam, is largely accounted for by the ^ Our chief authorities for life in Arabia in ancient and modern times are such travellers as Ludovico Varthema, who went down with the Plaj to Mecca in 1503 (Hakluyt Society's publications) ; Burckhardt, Burton, and especially Doughty {Arabia Deserta, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1887), who knows the Bedawee, ' the unsophisticated Semite,' as never Western did before. Cf. Wellhausen, Skizzen, etc., iii., Rtste des Arabischen Ueidentii»is ; Robertson Smith, Marriage and Kinship iyi Arabia and The Religion of the Semites. - Histoire des langues semitiqties, ed. 3, 1863; ' De la part des peuples semitiques,' Asiatic Review, Feb. and May 1859 ; and, in a modified form, in his Histoire d'' Israel, vol. i. v] 30 The Histoincal Geography of the Holy Land other, Judaism), have not been monotheistic. Introduced to the Euphrates valley, or to Syria, where the forces of nature are as complex and suggestive of many gods as any part of the Aryan world itself, the Semite has gone the way of the Aryans — nay, has preceded them in this way, not only developing a polytheism and mythology of great luxuriance, but proving its missionary to the Greeks. The monotony of the desert, however, counts for something ; the desert does not tempt to polytheism. Besides, all Semitic religions have been distinguished by a tendency which makes strongly for unity. Within each tribe there was but one tribal god, who was bound up with his people's existence, and who was their only lord and head. This belief was favourable to monotheism. It trained men to reduce all things under one cause, to fix their attention on a sovereign deity ; and the desert, bare and monotonous, conspired with the habit. We may, then, replace Renan's thesis, that the Semite was a born monotheist, by this : that in the Semitic religion, as in the Semitic world, monotheism An Oppor- . tunity for had a great opportunity. There was no neces- sary creed in Arabia, but for the highest form of religion there was room and sympathy as nowhere else in the world to the same degree. Of this opportunity only one Semitic tribe took advan- tage, and the impressive fact is that the advantage was taken, not in Arabia, but in Syria herself — that Uniqueness . 1 .1 , • 1 1 1 of Israel's IS to say, on the soil whose rich and complex forces drew all other Semitic tribes away from the austerity of their desert faith, and turned them into polytheists of the rankest kind. The natural fertility of Syria, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, intoxicated Syria s Place in History 31 her immigrants with nature-worship ; the land was covered, not by one nation with its one god, but by many little tribes, each with its patron and lord ; while, to make confusion worse confounded, the influence of the powerful idolatries of Egypt and Mesopotamia met and were combined upon her. Yet Syria, and not the Desert of Arabia, was the cradle of monotheism. The period in which this became manifest was, no doubt, one when her history for the first time counteracted to some degree the variety of her natural charms, the confusion of her many faiths. Israel's monotheism became indisputable in the centuries from the eighth to the sixth B.C., the period of the great Assyrian invasions described in Sec- tion II. of this chapter. Before the irresistible Assyrian advance the tribal gods of Syria — always identified with the stability of their peoples — went down one after another, and history became reduced to a uniformity analogous to that of nature in the Semitic desert. It was in meeting the problems, which this state of affairs excited, that the genius of Israel rose to a grasp of the world as a whole, and to faith in a sovereign Providence. This Providence was not the military Empire that had levelled the world ; He was not any of the gods of Assyria. He was Israel's own tribal Deity, who was known to the world but as the God of the few hills on which His nation hardly main- tained herself. Fallen she was as low as her neighbours ; taunted she was by them and by her adversaries to prove that Jehovah could save her any more than the gods of Hamath or Damascus or the Philistines had saved them : ^ yet both on the eve of her fall, and in her deepest abasement, Israel affirmed that Jehovah reigned ; that He ^ Isaiah x. 8-11 ; xxxvi. 18-20; xxxvii. 12, 13. 32 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land was Lord of the hosts of heaven and earth ; that Assyria was only a tool in His hand. Why did Israel alone rise to this faith ? Why did no other of the gods of the Syrian clans, Baals and Molochs, take advantage of the opportunity ? Why should the people of Jehovah alone see a universal Providence in the disasters which they shared, and ascribe it to Him ? The answer to these questions is the beginning of Syria's supreme rank in the religious history of mankind. It is writ, beyond all misreading, in the prophets The reason of . , . , , . ^ , i i • i Israel's Mono- of the time and m the history of Israel which preceded the prophets. To use their own phrase, the prophets saw JeJwvali exalted in righteousness. And this was not their invention : it had been implicit in Israel's conception of Jehovah from a very early age. In what are confessedly ancient documents, Jehovah is the cause of Israel's being, of the union of their tribes, of their coming to Palestine, of their instinct to keep separate from other peoples, even when they do not seem to have been conscious of a reason why. But from the first this influ- ence upon them was ethical. It sifted the great body of custom and law which was their common heritage with all other Semitic tribes ; it added to this both mercy and justice, mitigating the cruelty of some laws, where innocent or untried life was in danger, but strenuously enforcing others, where custom, greed or tyranny had introduced carelessness with regard to the most sacred interests of life.^ We may not always be sure of the dates of these laws, but it is past all doubt that the ethical agent at 1 As, for instance, in the matter of homicide. The contrast of Israel's laws on this with the prevailing Semitic customs, is very significant of the ethical superiority of Israel. Syria's Place m History work in them was at work in Israel from the beginning, and was the character, the justice, the hoHness of Jehovah. But at first it was not in law so much as in the events of the people's history that this character impressed them. They knew all along that He had found them, chosen them, brought them to the land, borne with them, forgiven them, redeemed them in His love and in His pity, so that, though it were true that no law had come to them from Him, the memory of all He had been to them, the influence of Himself in their history, would have remained their distinction among the peoples. Even in that rude time His grace had been mightier than His law. On such evidence we believe the assertion of the prophets, that what had made Israel distinct from her kinsfolk, and endowed her alone with the solu- Revelation. tion of the successive problems of history and with her high morality, was the knowledge of a real Being and intercourse with Him. This is what Revelation means. Revelation is not the promulgation of a law, nor the predic- tion of future events, nor 'the imparting to man of truths, which he could not find out for himself.' All these ideas of Revelation are modern, and proved false by the only true method of investigation into the nature of Revela- tion, viz., a comparison of Scripture with those heathen religions from which the religion of Israel sprang, but was so differentiated by the Spirit of God. Such a comparison shows us that the subject of Revelation is the character of God Himself. God had chosen the suitable Semitic temper and circumstance to make Himself known through them in His righteousness and love for men. This alone raised Israel to her mastery of history in the Assyrian period, when her political fortunes were as low, and her C 34 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land extinction, humanly speaking, as probable as that of her kindred. This alone preserved her in loyalty to her God, and in obedience to His law, during the following centuries, when the other Syrian peoples gave way to the inrush of the Hellenic spirit, and Zeus, Athene, Apollo, Aphrodite and the goddesses of Fortune and Victory, displaced, or were amalgamated with, the discredited Semitic deities. Having solved with the prophets the problem set to her faith by the great Oriental empires, Israel entered — Israel and upon the Same floor of Syria — on her struggle HeUenism. ^^j|-|^ ^^^ stranger forces of the West, with the genius of Hellenism, and with the dominion of Rome. It is interesting, but vain, to speculate on what would have happened if the Maccabean age had produced a mind like Isaiah's or Jeremiah's, or had met Greece with another spirit than that of Ecclesiastes, or of the son of Sirach. As it was, the age fell far below that of the prophets in insight and in faith. The age of the Maccabees is a return to that of the Judges and Saul, with the Law as a new inspiration. The spiritual yields to the material, though the material is fought for with a heroism which makes the period as brilliant as any in the history of Israel. For a few years the ideal borders of Israel are regained, the law of Moses is imposed on Greek cities, the sea is reached, and the hope of Israel looks westward from a harbour of her own.^ The conflict with Hellenism intensifies the passion for the Law, the conflict with Rome, the passion for the land and political independence. In either case it is the material form which becomes the main concern of the people. Nevertheless, as Paul has taught us to see in his explanation of history ,2 this devotion to the letter of Law and Prophecy was a > See p. 136. » Cf. Robertson Smith, O.TJ.C, 315 ff. 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 mountain 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 tvorship me. And He replied from the Hebrew Scriptures with a confession of allegiance to the God of Israel : Get thee behind vie, Satan, for it is written. Thou shalt zuorship Jehovah thy God, a7id Him only shalt thou serve. Also \6 The Historical Geography 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, ^g^/^^ ^^/ your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. Ye zvorship ye k?iow not what, we knoiu zvhat we zuorship, 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- er Israel. j^^gg ^f ^^ 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, f^j. Himself 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 ^j 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 Phoenician 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 nv. ■ ■ ■ Cnnstianity where the contest of Christianity and Paganism ^""^ Paganism. was more critical, or has left more traces. Tho 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.i 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 cannot 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 6^7, Antioch in 638. The last Greek inscription in Hauran is about 64c 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 ; few 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 monuments, see p. 13; for Eusebius and other his- torians, p. 15. * See ch. xxviii. Syricis 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 I 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 Maro, 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 , . . , , . . /-. i i t i.- in Syria history from the begmning. u-reeks and Latms °" ^^' are waging 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 Filioqiie, 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, z/z'a Cyprus, where their earliest tombstones are. The American Presbyterians have worked longest and most powerfully — their two greatest works the 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. Die jungsten Gewaltthaten der schismatischen Griechen in Jertisalem. Syria s Place m History 4 1 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 CONSEQUENCES For this chapter consult Maps /., //., Ill, 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 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 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 land ; and the Jordan flows south, forming three lakes, and otherwise intensifying the division between the two ranges. Of these rivers, only the Orontes and Litany 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 wcstcm 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 ^^^^ level ; 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 For7n 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 forms 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 ^"^"^ range. 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.2 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 Lejjun. 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- The east- ^"S Swiftly from Mount Hermon to 2000 feet ern range. abovc the sca, it prcscrvcs 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 bands between the Sea and the Desert, the geography of Palestine would indeed be simple, and in con- ... /• T-i 1 • -IT/- Modifications sequence the history of ralestme 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 -pj^g 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 The Neseb thirdly, south of Judaea 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. Gcog., p. 17, and by Henderson, Palestine, pp. 15-21. ^ See p. 205. 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, because the four long strips flow and Carmel. ffom and are 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. ^ See ch. xx. I PHYSICAL SKETCH MAP BanbolooLr*: Liiai 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 Shotilder of the Philistines, from its shape as it rises from the sea.^ The Hebrew word daroni or darojjia,^ 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^nnB'K- ^ See pp. 147, 148. 3 Isa. xi. 14. ■* D"l"l*t, or with the Aramaic definite article NOTll. 5 Neubauer, Ghg. du Talmud, p. 62. ^ In the Ono77iasticon, not only is Eshtemoa in Dan said to be in the Daroma, and Ziklag and other towns of Simeon, far south of Beit-Jibrin ; but Maon and Carmel on the Judoean table-land, and Gadda iniininens mart mortno. There was a Daroma Interior (see Art. ' Jether '). ■^ Now Deir el 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. In 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 the 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 Yarmuk; Mount Gilead to the south of that; ^ and to the south of that across Moab, Ha-Mishor, 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 extent.'^ 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 Judxa, Luke i. 39, 65; Josh. xxi. 11; but always Mount Ephraim, * Deut. i. "]. * But see ch. xxv. * Numb, xxvii. 12. ' Traces of this in Ezek. xxxix. 11, where read D'l^V. 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 I by the commerce and the war of the two great continents on either side of her, her plains would bear the brunt of j these, while her mountains would be comparatively remote i 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, for 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 v.'^ar 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 Ghor, 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 55 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 r to, foreign influences. These differences of soil are in- 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 Ghor, in summer, you are under a temperature of more than ioo° 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 Judsea. With its palms and shadoofs the Philistine Plain might be a part of the Egyptian Delta ; but on the hills oif the Shephelah which overlook it, you are in the scenery of Southern Europe ; the Judgean moors which overlook them are like the barer uplands of t 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 Belka 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 t lie 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 Richter 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 difference. 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 Judsea 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 Ghor 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 more 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 East of the Jorda7i ; and the summary in Henderson's Palestine. 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, Hittites, and probably 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 peculiarities 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. L 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. ; F.E.F.Q., especially for 1872; 1S83, Chaplin, Obs. on Climate of Jerus. ; 1888-1893, Glaisher on Meteoro. Obs. at Sarona', 1893-4, lb. at Jerus. ; Anderlind, Z,D.P.V., viii. loi ff. : Der Einfluss der Gebirgswaldungen in Nbrdl. Palastina auf die Vermehrung der wasserigen Niederschlage daselbst ; Id. xiv. ; Ankel, Grtindzuge der Landes- natur des Westjordanlandes, IV, Das Klima ; Wittmann, Travels, 561-570. 68 64 The Histo7'ical 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 : Z(?, 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 Hail and snow. . 1 • 1 , , 1-11 ram 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. vi. 3. miD, 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. * CJ'IpPD. Besides the references in the last note but one, cf. Prov. xvi. 15, Ter. iii. 3, Zech. x. I. Rain generically = "ltOD. A burst of rain^DtJ'J. The Climate and Fertility of the Land 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 we7it down and slew a lion in the I midst of a cisterfi in the day of the snow? The beast had strayed up the Judaean hills from Jordan, and had been j caught in a sudden snowstorm. Where else than in Pales- tine could lions and snow thus come together ? 1 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, 1 89 1, 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., 1S83, 10 f. Robinson, Pkys. Geog., p. 265. 2 2 Sam. xxiii. 20. •• i Sam. xii. 17, 18. ^ ' At Ghabaghib in Hauran on 19th, and Irbid in Gilead on 25th, Juiic, temp. 48°. On mists and dews, cf. 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 The Winds. -^ ^ ^ 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, straightivay 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 heat.® 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. ^j^g ^^^^ ^^^ j^^ jg g^j-ongest 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 NW. 78*8 days ; from W. 27*5 ; from N. 26'5. In the rainy months W. and SW. winds blow for an average of 607 days, from NE.,E.,and SE., 67 "4. For wind at Saronasee/'.^S. /^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 soiith-zuind blow, ye say, There will be heat, and it cometh 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 cit., p. 85) rightly emphasises the importance of those daily winds. Robinson, Phys. Geog., p. 278, remarks on their regularity. From June 3 to 16 they had the north-west wind ' from the time we left the Ghor till we arrived at Nazareth. The air was fine and mostly clear, and, although the mercury ranged from 80° to 96°, the heat was not burdensome. ' Yet at Ekron, under the same wind, the thermometer rose to 105°, and in the sun only to 108°. 2 Job xxxvii. 9. Cf. Ankel, op. cit., p. 86. ^ Luke xii. 55. * Jer. iv. II. Cf. Ezek. xvii. 10; xix. 12; Hos. xiii. 15. 68 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land be noticed how readily they pass over into rain, by asHght change in the direction, from SSW. to full SW. : — Edh-Dhaheriyah^ Saturday, April 25 (in the Negeb, four hours south of Hebron), 8 p.m. — Night dark and clear, with moon in first quarter. Temp. 58° Fahr. ; 11 p.m. 62°, moon hazy. Sunday. — 8 A.M. 78°. Hot wind blowing from south, yet called Sherkeh or Sherkiyeh, i.e. east wind, by our men. Temperature rapidly rises to 88° at 10, and 90° at 12. Sky drumly all forenoon, but the sun casts shadows. Atmosphere thickening. At 1.45 wind rises, 93° ; 2.30, gale blowing, air filled with fine sand, horizon shortened to a mile, sun not visible, grey sky, but still a slight shadow cast by the tents. View from tent-door of light grey limestone land under dark grey sky, misty range of hills a mile away, and one' camel visible ; 3.40, wind begins to moderate, temp. 93° ; 4.40, strong wind, half-gale, 83° ; 5 p.m., wind SSW., temp. 78°. Wind veers round a little further W. in the course of the evening ; 6 p.m. temp. 72° ; sunset, 68° ; 10.30 p.m., 63°. A slight shower of rain, stormy-looking night, with clouds gathering in from many quarters. The grey town's eastern face lit up by the moon, and very weird against the clouds, which are heaped together on the western sky, and also reflect the moonlight. Monday, April 27. — -Rain at intervals through the night, with high SW. wind endangering the tents ; 5.45 a.m. temp. 58°. Distant hills under mist, with the sun breaking through. Scud- ding showers, grey clouds, no blue sky. Impression of land- scape as in Scottish uplands with httle agriculture. Left camp 6.30. Most of the day dull and windy. Cleared up towards evening, with sunshine. Here is another Sherkiyeh nearly three weeks later, in Samaria, between Sebastiyeh and Jenin : May II. — At Sebastiyeh at sunrise the temperature was only 48° with a slight west wind. Towards noon, under the same wind, it rose to 80°. But then the wind changed. A Sherkiyeh blew from SSE., and at 2 p.m., at our resting-place, Kubatiyeh, which is high and open, it was 92°. Sun veiled, afternoon dulL The Climate and Fertility of the Land 69 At 5, at Jenin, 'En-gannim, it was 88°, with more sunshine. At 10, it was still 84°. A few hours later we were wakened by cold. The wind had changed to the West, the temperature was 72°. At sunrise it was 68°. These two instances — and between them we experienced two others at Jerusalem, one of which lasted for two days — will give the reader some idea of what is the east wind, or sirocco. It will be seen from them that in Palestine this wind does not inflict on men more than great dis- comfort, with a strong possibility of fever. In the desert, where the sand is loose, it is different : there have been cases in which whole caravans were overwhelmed by the sirocco between Egypt and Palestine ; but once on the fertile hills, there is no danger to life from the sand-clouds, and the farther north they travel, the less disagreeable does their haze become.^ Yet sometimes the east wind breaks with great violence even on the coast. Tents may be carried away by wicked gusts.^ It was to an east wind that Jeremiah likened the scattering of Israel, by an east wind that Ezekiel saw the ships of Tyre broken, and the Psalmist the ships of Tarshish.2 We have seen, then, how broken the surface of Palestine is ; how opposite are its various aspects, seaward and towards the desert ; how suddenly changing and how contrary its winds. All this will have prepared us for the fact that its differences of temperature are also very great — great between one part of the •^ ° ° ^ Temperature. country and another, great between summer and winter, but relatively greater between day and night ^ Cf. Robinson, Phys.Geog. pp. 279, 280. "^ 'Lync\\,Official Report, p. 74. 3 Jer. xviii. 17; Ezek. xxvii. 26; cf. xi.x. 12; Ps. xlviii. 7 ; Jos. xiv. Ant. ii. 2. 70 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land and between one part of the day and another. Here are some instances : On one of his journeys, Robinson ex- perienced in May, in the mountains of Judaea, a pleasant temperature of from 80° to 96° under a fresh west wind ; but at Ekron in the plain, though the wind was the same, the heat had risen to 105°, and the sultry air had all the characteristics of a sirocco. Coming down from the plateau of Moab to the Jordan, on July 7th, we found the temperature at Heshbon at 9 A.M., when the sun was near his full strength, only 76° ; but on the edge of the Ghor at noon it was 103° ; on Jordan, at 2.30 P.M., 101° ; and at Jericho throughout the night not less than 89°. On the heights of Gadara, from the afternoon of the 23rd to the forenoon of the 27th June, the mid-day temperature had ranged under the west wind from 82° to 90°, the evening temperature (between 6 and 10 P.M.) from 70° to yG'^ while the lowest morning temperature just before sunrise was 65°. But at the sulphur Its extremes. baths of Hammath, just below Gadara, the mid-day temperature on the 24th of June was 100°, and at 3 P.M. still 96° ; while at Pella, near the Jordan Valley, on the 28th and 29th June, we had a mid-day tempera- ture from 98° to 101°, a sunrise temperature of 74°, and at 10 P.M. 78°. Yet after we rose, on the evening of the 29th, to the Wady Yabis in Gilead, at 10 P.M., it was only 69°, and next mid-day at Ajlun 86°, and at 10 P.M. 64°, and at sunrise next morning 58°. These are changes between different localities, but even at the same spot the range in temperature is great. We have seen that caused by the sirocco — in one instance from 48° at sun- rise to 92° by 2 P.M. But take an instance when there was no sirocco. On the 23rd of April, at Beit-Jibrin at The Climate and Fertility of the Land 71 sunrise, the thermometer stood at 42° ; from 11 to 3 it ranged over 85°. At Laish it sank, in a storm of wind and rain, from 88° to 72° in very little over a quarter of an hour ; but changes as sudden, and even more extreme, are not uncommon down the whole of the Jordan Valley.^ But these extremes of heat which in summer surround the Central Range of Palestine, and these ample changes of temperature must not be allowed to confuse our minds with regard to the temperate and equable climate which this part of the land, Israel's proper territory, enjoys throughout the year. In all the world there are {q.\\ healthier homes. The mean annual temperature varies from 62° to 68°. Except when the sirocco blows, the warmest days of summer seldom exceed 90°, and the cold of winter still more seldom falls to freezing-point, February is the coldest month, with a mean temperature of about 46°. Through March and April this rises from 54° to 61° ; in May and June from 65° to 74° ; July and August, ^6° ; September and October, 75° to 68°. After the rains there is a fall in November to about 60°, and in December to 52°. The snows, the less sunshine, and the cold north-east winds, are sufficient to account for the further fall in January to 49°.^ We have now carefully surveyed the rains, winds, and temperatures of Palestine. For the mass of the land lifted from 1000 to 2000 feet above the sea, the result is a temperate climate, with the annual seasons perhaps more * Lynch's Narrative-, cf. Daily Range, Sarona, P.E.F.Q., 1891 ; Jerus., id., 1893. On Tiberias, P.E.F.Q., 1896, p. 92 ; cf. below, Additional Note to 441. ^ These figures are arrived at after a comparison of Barclay's for the years 1851 to 1855 {City of the Great King, p. 42S), and those given by Chaplin, P.E.F.Q., 18S3, and Glaisher, id., 1S93-4. Cf. Wittmann, 561-570. "^2 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land regular, but the daily variations of heat certainly much . greater, than is the case throughout the most of the tem- I Racial effect pcratc zone. On her hills and table-lands of the climate, jg^.^^! enjoygj ^11 the advantages of a healthy and bracing climate, with the addition of such stimulus I and strain as come from a considerable range of the daily temperature, as well as from the neighbourhood of extreme heat, in the Jordan Valley and in the Western Plain, to which the business of their life obliged most of the nation very frequently to descend. Some tribes suffered these changes of temperature more regularly than others. Most subject to them were the highlanders of Mount Ephraim, who had fields in the Jordan Valley, and the Galileans, whose province included both the heights of Naphtali and the tropical basin in which the Lake of Galilee lies. In their journeys through this land — from the Jordan to Cana, from Nazareth to Capernaum, from Capernaum to the highlands of Caesarea Philippi — our Lord and His disciples, often with no roof to cover their heads at night, must have felt the full range of the ample Syrian tem- perature. But the;se are the conditions which breed a hardy and an elastic frame of body. The national type, which was formed in them for nearly two millennia, was certain to prove at once tough and adaptable. To the singular variety of the climate in which the Jewish nation grew up we may justly trace much of the physical per- sistence and versatility which has made Jews at home in every quarter of the globe. This is something very different from the purely Semitic frame of body, which has been tempered only by the monotonous conditions of the desert. The Arab has never proved himself so successful a colonist as the Jew. And we have in these times another The Climate and Fertility of the Land. 73 instance of the tempering influences of the cHniate of Palestine. The emigration of Syrians from the Turkish Empire is steadily proceeding, and the Syrians are making good colonists in America and in Australia. There is one other effect of the climate of the Holy Land which is quite as important. It is a climate which lends itself to the service of moral ideas. In the first place, it is not mechanically regular. Unlike that of Egypt, the climate of Syria does not depend upon a few simple and unfailing phenomena — upon ^ . Climate not one great instrument like the Nile to whose mechanically regular. operations man has but to link his own and the fruits of the year are inevitable. In the Palestine year there is no inevitableness. Fertility does not spring from a source which is within control of man's spade, and by which he can defy a brazen and illiberal heaven. It comes down from heaven, and if heaven sometimes withholds it, there is nothing else within man's reach to substitute for it. The climate of Palestine is regular enough to pro- voke men to methodical labour for its fruits, but the regu- larity is often interrupted. The early rains or the latter rains fail, drought comes occasionally for two years in succession, and that means famine and pestilence. There are, too, the visitations of the locust, which are said to be bad every fifth or sixth year ; and there are earthquakes, also periodical in Syria. Thus a purely mechanical con- ception of nature as something certain and inevitable, whose processes are more or less under man's control, is impossible ; and the imagination is roused to feel the pre- sence of a will behind nature, in face of whose interrup- tions of the fruitfulness or stability of the land man is absolutely helpless. To such a climate, then, is partly 74 1^^^ Historical Geography of the Holy Land due Israel's doctrine of Providence. The author of the Book of Deuteronomy, to whom we owe so much insight into the religious influences of the Promised The Climate _ , , . , . , , , • , i i i and Provi- Land, emphasises this by contrasting the land with Egypt. For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not like the land of Egypt, whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and zvateredst it tuith thy foot, as a garden of herbs — that is, where everything is so In Deutero- much under man's control, where man has all nomy. nature at his foot like a little garden, where he has but to link himself to the mechanical processes of nature, and the fruits of the year are inevitable. But the land, whither ye are passing over to 'possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, of the rain of heaven it drinketh water: a land which fehovah thy God Himself looketh after ; contintially are the eyes of fehovah thy God upon it, from the beginning of the year, even to the end of the year. That is, the climate of Egypt is not one which of itself suggests a personal Providence, but the climate of Pales- tine does so. And it shall be, if ye indeed hearken to my commandments, which I am commanding you to-day, to love fehovah your God, to worship Him with all your heart, and with all your soul, that then I will give the rain of the land in its season — early rain and latter rain, — and thou shalt gather thy corn and thine oil. And I will give grass in thy fields for thy cattle, and thou shalt eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be beguiled, and ye turn aside and worship other gods and bow down to them ; and the wrath of fehovah grow hot against you, and He shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and the ground yield not her increase ; and ye perish off the good land which fehovah is giving you (Deut. xi.). The Climate and Fertility of the Land 75 Two remarkable passages in the prophets give us in- stances of this general principle. Through Amos Jehovah reminds His people of recent drought, famine, mildew and blasting, pestilence and earthquake, and reproaches them that after each of these they did not return to j^ ^^^^^ Him : 1 yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith ^^^ isaiah. Jehovah, And Isaiah, perhaps alluding to the same series of climatic disturbances, speaks in a different order, of earthquake, drought with forest fires and a famine, and complains that, in spite of them, the people are still im- penitent : for all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still? It was a moral Providence, then, which the prophets read in the climate of their land. Now, there were features in this which of themselves might suggest such a reading. The hardness of man's life even in the best of seasons, for Palestine needs persistent toil to be fruitful, the uniqueness of presence of the desert, the drought, the earth- Inneof Provi- quake,the locusts — these spontaneously suggest ^^"'^^• a purpose at work for other than material ends. But Israel could not have read in them the high moral Providence which she did read, with a God of another character than Jehovah. Look at her neighbours. They experienced the same droughts, thunderstorms and earthquakes ; but these do not appear to have suggested to them any other ideas than the wrath of the Deity, who had therefore to be propitiated by the horrible sacrifices of manhood, feminine purity and child life, which have made their ^ Amos iv. 6-1 1. ^ Isaiah v. 25, ix. 8-21, v. 26-30. These passages are connected by the same refrain, they belong to the same series, and must originally have stood together. We need not suppose that either prophet was bound to follow the real sequence. Amos puts famine before drought. 76 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land religions so revolting. Israel also felt God was angry, but because He was such a God, and had revealed Himself as He had done in the past, they knew that He punished them through their climate, not to destroy, but ' to warn and turn, his rebel folk. The Syrian year and I its interruptions play an equal part in the Phoenician religions and in the Hebrew prophets' doctrine of Provi- dence. But while in the former they lead to mutilation and horrible sacrifices, in the latter they are the reminder that man does not live by the bread of the year alone : they are calls to conscience, to repentance, to purity. 1 And what makes the difference on that same soil, and under those same heavens, is the character of Israel's \ God. All the Syrian religions reflect the Syrian climate ; Israel alone interprets it for moral ends, because Israel alone has a God who is absolute righteousness. Here, then, is another of those many points at which the Geography of Syria exhausts the influence of the material and the seen, and indicates the presence on the land of the unseen and the spiritual. II. The Fertility of the Land. The long rainy season in Palestine means a consider- able rainfall,^ and while it lasts the land gets a thorough soaking. Every highland gorge, every low- and Summer land valley-bed — nearly every one of those "^""^ ' wadies which are dry in summer, and to the traveller at that season seem the channels of some ancient and forgotten flood — is filled annually with a roaring ^ Annual rainfall at Nazareth is about 6i centimetres ; at Jerusalem, 57 ; while at Athens it is 40; Constantinople, 70; Vienna, 44; London, 58; Paris, so; Rome, 80.— So Anderlind, Z.D.P.V., viii. loi ff. Cf. F.E.F.Q. 1894. The Climate and Fertility of the Land 77 torrent, while many of the high meadows are lakes, and plains like Esdraelon become in part quagmires. But the land is limestone and very porous. The heavy rains are quickly drained away, the wadies are left dry, the lakes become marshes, or dwindle to dirty ponds,^ and on the west of Jordan there remain only a very few short perennial streams, of which but one or two, and these mere rills, are found in the hill-country. At the foot of the hills, however, there burst forth all through the summer not only such springs as we have in our own land, but large and copious fountains, from three to twenty feet in breadth, and one to three feet in depth — some with broad pools full of fish, and some sending forth streams strong enough to work mills a few yards away. These fountain- heads, as they are called,^ are very characteristic features of the Syrian summer ; in the midst of the dust and rust of the rest of the land they surprise you with their wealth of water and rank vegetation. They are chiefly found at the foot of Hermon, where three of them give ^^g summer birth to the Jordan, along both bases of the ^^'^'^^• Central Range, in the Jordan Valley and the Western Plain, and in Esdraelon at the foot of Gilboa and of the Samaritan hills. There are s;naller editions of them among the hills of Galilee and Samaria, but in the table- land of Judaea the springs are few and meagre, and the inhabitants store the winter rain in pits, partly natural, partly built. On the plains water may be got in most places by boring and pumping.^ ^ Very occasionally these winter lakes will be large through the whole summer. The Merj el Ghuruk, when we passed it in May 1891, was a very extensive lake. So with Buttauf in Galilee. 2 Ras el 'Ain. * The presence of 'Ain, -veil or spring, in place-names is very comroon. yS The Historical Geography of the Holy Land I On the east of the Jordan water is much more plentiful. There are several long perennial rivers draining the eastern Water East desert, and watering all the plateaus between of Jordan. j|. ^^^j ^.j^g Jordan Valley, the eastern half of which might easily be irrigated by them in its entire extent. Springs are more frequent, and, although streams are fewer to the north of the Yarmuk than to the south, the soil on the north is deep volcanic mould on a basalt basis, and holds its winter moisture far longer than the limestone. The distribution of water, then, unequal as it is, is I another factor in heightening the complexity of this land of contrasts. Take it along with the immense d?sm"bution differences of level and temperature, with the differences of aspect, seaward and to the desert, and you begin to understand what a mixture of but we must not infer from this that living water is present. It is not so at 'Ain Shems ; at 'Ain Sinia there is only a bir, or cistern of rain-water (Robin- son, Phys. Geog., 219, 220). At the foot of the hills the chief large fountains that are characteristic of Syria are the following : — On the Western Plain, between Tyre and Akkah at Ras el 'Ain, at 'Ain el Musheirifeh, at El- Kabireh, at Birweh, and at Tell Kurdany, the source of the Belus. Along north base of Carmel the Kishon is fed by copious springs. South of Carmel we have the sources of the Zerka, Subbarin and Umm-esh Shukaf, whence aqueducts went to Ccesarea, and some other spots at the roots of the Samarian hills, like Ras el 'Ain, whence the 'Aujeh flows. In the Shephelah there are several wells ; water can always be got by boring on the Philistine plain ; Askalon and Gaza are noted for their wells, and the wadies near the sea have fresh water for most of the year. The streams in the Negeb are only winter streams (Psalm cxxvi.) ; the wells are few. Along the western base of the Judaean range are some copious fountains, chiefly at faults in the strata in the gorges leading up to the plateau, e.g. 'Ain el Kuf, in the W. el Kuf. In a cave in a gorge off" W. en Najil I found abundance of water in May. The Judaean plateau has many cisterns and pools, but few springs, and almost no large ones. There are two springs between Edh-Dhaheriyah and Hebron — perhaps the upper and nether springs of Caleb (Josh. xv. 19) ; twelve small springs about Hebron, and over thirty have been counted within a radius of ten miles from Jerusalem, but only those at King Solomon's Pools yield a considerable quantity of water. Samaria is more The Climate and Fertility of the Land 79 soils Palestine is, and how her fauna and flora range along every degree between the Alpine and tropical, be- tween the forms of the Mediterranean basin and those of desert life, while she still cherishes, in that peculiar deep trench down the middle of her, animals and plants related to those of distant lands, with which in previous geological periods she had closer relations. As to soils, every reader of the Bible is made to feel how near in Palestine the barren lies to the fruitful. Apart from the desert proper, which comes up 1 1 /-IT, The Soil. almost to the gates of the Judaean cities, how much land is described as only pasture, and this so dry that there is constant strife for the wells upon it? How often do we hear of the field, the rough, uncultivated, but not wholly barren, bulk of the hill-country, where the favoured, especially at Khan Lubban, the W. Kanah, Salim, Nablus (where the deep vale between Gerizim and Ebal has running water all the year round), Fendakumieh, Jeba, Tell Dothan, Lejjun, and Jenin. On the northern base of Gilboa there are 'Ain Jalild and three other fountains, making a considerable stream. In Galilee there are springs at Shunem, Khan el Tajjar (two, one large), Ilattin (large), Nazareth, SefTurieh (large), Gischala, Tibntn, Kedesh (two, both large), and other places. Along the eastern base of the Central Range, in the Ghor, are many large and very copious fountains — most of them more or less brackish and warm — opposite Merom, 'Amudiyeh, Belateh, Mellahah, all copious, with streams; the last two very large, then the smaller Mughar and Kuba'a. On the eastern shore of the Lake el Tabighah, a fount with stream, 'Ain et Tineh and Mudawarah, with large pools ; 'Ain el Baridah, with small pools ; the hot springs at the Baths of Tiberias ; about Beisan many springs and thence down the Jordan at frequent intervals, especially at Sakflt, \V. Malih (salt and warm), Kerawa, Fusail, 'Aujeh, 'Ain Duk, 'Ain es Sultan (near Jericho), 'Ain Hajla, out on the plain. And along the coast of the Dead Sea Jehair, Feshkhah (both brackish and warm), Ghuweir (small), Terabeh, 'Ain Jidy, and 'Areijeh, whose streams are copious, produce thickets and fields, but are lost even before the sea is reached. Of longer streams from the west the Jordan receives the Jalud at Bethshean, the Fari'ah, and the Kelt — the first two perennial, the last almost so. The waters on the Eastern Range will be treated further on. So The Historical Geography of the Holy Land beasts of the fields that is, wild beasts, found sufificient room to breed and become a serious hindrance, from first to last, to Israel's conquest of the land.^ ^\\\s field vs, a great element in the Old Testament landscape, and we recognise it to-day in the tracts of moor- land, hillside and summit, jungle and bare rock, which make up so much of the hill-country, and can never have been cultivated even for vines. How much of this field was forest must remain a debateable question. On the one hand, where there are now only some fragments of wood, writers, even down to the Crusades, describe large forests like that of Northern Sharon ; the word Woodland. for wood occurs in place-names, where there are now few trees, as in Judaea and Jaulan ; you see enormous roots here and there even on the bare plateau of Judsea ; palm groves have disappeared from the Jordan Valley, and elsewhere you may take for granted that the Turk has not left the land so well wooded as he found it. On the other hand, copse and wood cover many old clearings as on Carmel ; on the Central Range, the Old Testament speaks only of isolated large trees, of copses and small woods, but looks for its ideal forests to Gilead, Bashan, and Lebanon ; and there is very little mention of the manufacture of large native vvood.2 The truth is, that the conditions for the growth of such large forests as we have in Europe and America, are not present in Palestine : the Hebrew word we \.x^x\s\-dX^ forest ^ Field, rnb'j is used not only for this wild moorland and hillside, but also for cultivated soil, and for the territory belonging to a town. * Isaiah ix. lo. For the temple cedar was imported from Lebanon. The Israelites do not appear to have used cofifins, 2 Kings xiii. 2i ; of, Ankel, op. cit.f p. 104. The Climate and Fertility of the Land 8 1 ought to be woodland, and perhaps only copse ox jungle}- and we may safely conclude that the land was never very much more wooded than it is to-day. The distribution of woodland may have been different, but the woods were what we find the characteristic Palestine wood still to be — open and scattered, the trees distinguished rather for thickness than height, and little undergrowth when com- pared with either a northern or a tropical forest.^ Here and there groves of larger trees, or solitary giants of their kind, may have stood conspicuous on the bare landscape. The chief forest trees are several varieties of oak, including the ilex, of terebinth,^ and carob, and box that Trees, grows to a height of twenty feet, with a few pines and cypresses, and by water plane trees. All these were trees of God, that is, planted by Him and not by man. The only others of equal size were the walnut, mentioned by Josephus as numerous above the Lake of Galilee, and the sycomore, used for both its fruit and its timber.* But these were cultivated. The acacia or shittim- wood is common towards the desert. Next to the woods of Palestine, a high thick bush forms one of her sylvan features. It consists of dwarf oak, terebinth and pine, dwarf wild olive, wild vine, ^ ' ' Bush. arbutus and myrtle, juniper and thorn. This mixture of degraded forms of forest and fruit-trees repre- sents both the remains of former woods and the sites of ^ lyv The corresponding Arabic wa'^ar is rocky ground. - Yet Richard's army found the undergrowth very difficult in the forest of Sharon. Vihsauf, Itin. Kicardi, iv. 12. ^ It is often impossible to tell whether oak or terebinth is meant in the Old Testament. There are four words, n?X and n?S ; p?X and jiPX. ■* Amos vii. 14 ; Isaiah ix. 9 [E. I'. lo) ; i Kings x. 27 ; i Chron. .\xvii. (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 orchards. Except chestnuts, which singularly enough are not found here, all the fruit-trees of the Fruit-trees. temperate zone flourish in Syria. 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 Olive 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 Frtuht- bdume in Syrien insbesondere Paldstiita, 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. * Balsamodeiidron Gileadense, still growing in Southern Syria. Cf. Jer. viii. 22. See below, p. 266, note 4. The Climate and Fertility of the La fid 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 Judaea, 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 summerirrigation — tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons chiefly in the plains, but we received all these fruits from the peasants ^ See the chapter on Judaea. " See Additional Notes to Fourth Edition. ^ See the chapter on Ilaiiran. * Judges vii. 13. 84 The Historical 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 hosts 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. 2 Isaiah xliii. 24 ; Jeremiah vi. 20. Eng. Sweet Cane ; but, 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 : pi"!, Jerek, which means any green herb : X{J'^, Deshe, which is our grass proper ; "I^VH, Hassir, which is cut grass or hay. Hay is infrequent, of. Buhl, Geogr. p. 56, note 33. The Cli7nate 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 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 p^ ^ise in be gradual, and generally has been so, but the cvii'sation. 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 from ^"^^ nomadic stage story is told in two passages of such great to tiie agncui- 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 attd they will tell thee. When the Highest gave nations their heritage, When He stmdered the children of vieii. 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 hitn ijt a land of the desert, In a waste, in a howling wilderness. He encompassed him. 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 them, Beareth them up on his pinions, Jehovah alone led hitn And no strange god was with him. He jnade him to ride on the Land^s high places^ And to eat of the growth of the field. He gave hitn to suck honey from the cliff. And oil from the flinty rock. Cream of kine and milk of sheep. With lambs' fat and ratns'. Breed of Bashan and he-goats, With fat of the kidneys of wheat; 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 frotn Sinai hath come. And risen from Seir upon them; He shone fro?n Mount Paran, And broke from Meribah of Qadesk} From the South ^fre . . . to them. 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 comtnand 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 Jeshurun, 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, Israel / Who is like unto thee ! People saved by Jehovah, The shield of thy help. Yea, the sword of thy highness j And thy foes shall fawn on thee,^ And thou — on their heights shalt thou march / ' Text slightly altered (partly after the LXX.) gives this true parallel to the other lines. 2 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. Addis. 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. . i i • l 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 Shittim, and the people began to commit whoredom with the 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 po'y^heism. 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 tuent astray on every high hill, and under every gree^i tree} . . . they did according to all the ahomina- tions of the 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 feshurun waxed fat, and struck out — Thou art fat, thou art thick, thou art sleek / — And cast off the God that had 7nade him. And despised the Rock of his salvation. They moved him to jealousy with strange gods. 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. And forgattest 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 ot 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 P^^^tine. 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 like Homer's ' wine-coloured ' water than anything I have seen on the Mediterranean. There is the excellency of Carmel itself: 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- groves, their dull green mass banked by the 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 Hermon 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 Judaea, 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. 1 Pe Saulcy calls the Dead Sea, ' le lac le plus imposant et le plu3 beau qui existe sur la Xtxie..'' —Voyage aiitour de la Mer Morte, i. 154. g6 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 , ' r- • in Israel's impatiently for her omens, or are excited by war-songs. ^ r ^ 1 • 1 . her freshness and motion, or lay down their tactics by her contours. Let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou bestir thyself, for then shall fehovah have gone out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines} The torrent of Kishon swept thejn 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 wings like a dove,, I would fly away and be at rest .' I would hasten my escape From the windy stor7n and teitipestJ^ The God of my rock; iti Him will I trust: My shield, and the hortt ofjny salvation. My high tower and my refuge. He 7natcheth my feet to hitids' feet ; He setteth me upon my high places. Thou hast enlarged my steps under me; So that my ankles swerved not.^ Of the brook shall he dritik by the way : Therefore shall he lift up the head.^ * I Chron. xiv. 15. ^ Judges v. 21. ^ Vs. Ixxxiii. 13, 14. ' Ps. Iv. 6-8. ^ 2 Sam. xxii. 3, 34, 37. * Ps. ex. 7. The Scejtery of the Land 97 The gazelle, Israel, is slain on thy heig/tls, How fal left are the heroes .'"^ When the Almighty scattered kings on her, It was as when it snoweth on Sahnoit.- 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 — Battle-fields. 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. ^ Ps. l.wiii. 14. 3 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.— Tent Work, pp. 277 and 244. '* Isaiah xl. 22. G 98 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land 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 - .,, 1 , , .1 • 1 1 in the fertility, the hard, straight coast with the sea ^ ^ ^ ' 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 inorn- 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 niaketh me 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. 2. ' 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 Cod?- 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 ;3 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 forthy The sun ariseth, they shrink together, A ft d 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 1 Psalm Hi. 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 xxix. . . ^ ^ , sweepmg before you on the storm. Enough 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 thutiderethj Jehovah is up07i great waters. The voice 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 calfj Lebanon and Sirion like a wild ox in his youth. The voice of Jehovah heweth out flames of fire. The voice of Jehovah iiiaketh the wilderness whirl; Jehovah maketh the wilderness of Kadesh to whirl. The voice of Jehovah maketh the kinds to travail. And strippeth the forests ; 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 songof and villages of North Israel, where the poem Songs, was certainly composed. The date does not matter for our purpose : ' For, see, the winter has passed, The rain is over and gone; The fiowers appear in the landj The time of singing is come, And the turtle dove's fmirmur is heard in our land. The fig-tree is reddening her figs, Aiid blossoming vines give forth their scent.' ^ ' Come, my beloved, let us forth to thefield^ Let us lodge in the villages. Let us early to the vineyards, I^et 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 the7n for thee, my beloved.' Lebanon is in sight and Hermon : ' Come 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 loco, who reads oaks for hi}ids. ^ Song ii. II-13 ; 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, O my love, To a horse among the chariots of Pharaoh! ^ ' What is this coming up from the wilderness Like pillars of smoke f 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 tnoon, pure as the sun, Glorious as bannered hosts ? ' ^ ' / went down into the garden of nuts, To see the fruits of the valley ; To see whether the vine fiotcrished. The pomegranates budded. Or ever I knew, 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. 10-12. The Scefiery 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 m 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 coining 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 treadetJi upon his high places, as if mountain-tops were a common road ; and Jehovah niarcheth upon His high places, as if it were a usual thing to see clouds below, and yet ^ pioy- " y^3 nnQ etc. » anno. 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 moiintains 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 Geography 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 in accuracy of rately reflects geography does not necessarily Scripture ... , . /- i • 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 , i . r i historical date or authorship of these lists, nor the fact of the deliberate partition of the land in Joshua's 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 ruines de ces anciennes villes, on lisait tous les soirs I'Ecriture Sainte a haute voix sous la tente du general en chef. L'analogie et la verite des descriptions etaient frappantes ; elles conviennent encore a ce pays apres tant de siecles et de vicissitudes.' — Campagnes d^&gypte et de Syrie, dictees par Napoleon lui-meme, vol. ii. (see p. 19 of this vol.). The La7td and Qtiestions 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 ^^^.j other evidence we possess from geography and ™'grations. 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 1-1 n • . ,. Geography geographical reflection on the earlier pro- andauthen- 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. 1 lo 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 locality, 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. a Ch. xviii. * See chapter on the Lake of Galilee, ch. xxi. The Land and 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 q^iestions. 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 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 -^^^ 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 chapter iii. , especially pp. 89, 9a 112 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 is possible. It may best be expressed in the words of one who 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 Faith 113 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. /-<-«• 1 r 1 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 1 * Die Natur und der Hergang der Geschichte zeigt uns dass hier von Anfang an von keiner Zufalligkeit die Rede sein kann.'— K. Ritter, Ein Blick atif Paldstina u. seine christliche Bevblkerung. H 1 14 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- T-u T theism of the Bible, with all its intellectual and i he Incar- ' 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, arid 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 ^"^ islam. 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 sword, 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 117 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 I20 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, Gerizirn is the more The view from Mount famous historically, but Ebal is higher, and has Ebal. 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 /ro7n Moicnt 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 feet. 122 The 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, lie 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 of 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 The View from Mount Ebal 123 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 where 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 mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father ; but the time cometh, and now is, when true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. ^ Or did when the writer was there in 1891 ; but the Greek Church have begun to build over it. BOOK II WESTERN PALESTINE CHAPTER VII THE COAST 1S5 For this Chafer consult Maps /, //., IV., V.. VI. THE COAST ' Ante importuosas Asceloni ripas.' EVERY one remembers, from the map, the shape of the east end of the Levant. An almost straight line runs from north to south, with a slight inclina- 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 somh of sandhills and cliffs, from thirty to a hundred *^^™^'' 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 127 1 28 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 came 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, amoitcelle??ieni du sable, it can be forded : Gu6rm,^udee, ii. 53. 2 Admiralty Charts, 2633, 2634. Cf. Otto Ankel, Grundzilge der Landes- natur des Westjordajilandes, 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 li., 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 which they made for Jaffa as the nearest port to Jerusalem. See Felix Fabri (in P.P. T. Series), vol. i. ' So Strabo. Josephus xv. A^itt. ix. 6 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 14, speaks of Joppa of the Phoenicians. The Coast 129 Phoenician masonry has been uncovered at Tanturah, the name of 'Arsuf is probably derived from the Phoenician 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 Phoenicians cannot be said to have been at home south of Carmel. Phoenicia 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 Survey Memoirs, ii. p. 137 ff. Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil d Archeologie Oriental. It is M. Ganneau who has proposed the interesting identification of Horus, Reseph, Perseus, and St. George. The myths of Perseus and St. George were both born on this coast, see p. 162. A stone hawk, which he maintains is the symbol of Horus, was found at 'Arsuf. He adds that Reseph was probably equivalent to Apollo, and in Egypt Apollo and Horus were equal. But the classical name of 'Arsfif, ApoUonia, cannot be used to assist this identification. It was probably conferred by ApoUonius, son of Thraseas, who governed Ccele-Syria for Seleucus Antipater, i Mace. x. 69 ff. 1 1 was rebuilt by Gabinius in 57 B. c. , in the Crusades it was besieged by Godfrey, i:iken by Baldwin, again by Richard ; Louis resided the fortifications, and it was finally destroyed by Bibars in 1265. Cf. again Clermont-Ganneau in P.E.F.Q., 1896. 2 Inscription of Eshmunazar, 11. 18, 19, in the C.I.S., i. 19, 20, which records the grant of Dora and Joppa to Sidon. Scylax ^Geographi Greed Minores, ed. Miiller, i. 79) assigns Dora to the Sidonians and Askalon to the Tyrians during the Persian period. For Phoenician trade with Joppa, cf. Jonah i. 3, 2 Chron. iv. 16. But the name of Joppa is not inserted in the parallel passage in I Kings v. » Like 'ArsQf from Reseph. * n3"'10^. Talmud Jerus. Gittin, i. I. Cf. Conder, Vent llork, p. 2S3. " Conder makes it equivalent to watering-place. I 130 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land But the failure even of these attempts to establish permanent ports for deep-sea vessels is a yet stronger Wrecked proof of the inhospitable character of the coast. harbours, -j^^^ ^g take them in series from the north. 'Athltt has twice been held against all the rest of Palestine. In 130 A.D. it was the last stronghold of Jewish independ- ence : in the thirteenth century it was the last fortress of the Cross.^ Yet seaward 'Athlit is unsheltered. The blunt foreland suggests the only kind of harbour possible on the Syrian shore — a double port facing north and south, whose opposite basins might compensate for each other's ex- posure ; yet no such harbour seems to have been attempted. The Crusading ruins at 'Athlit are numerous and solid ; there is a castle, a church, and remains of a mighty sea- wall. Yet the men who built these built out into the sea nothing but a jetty that is now covered by the waves. Farther south at Tanturah, the ancient Dor, Merla, or La Merle of the Crusaders,^ there are also great buildings and the suggestion of a double harbour. If this was ever achieved, it has disappeared, and only a few coasting vessels now put in to the unprotected rock. Caesarea had a great port ; yet nothing but part of its mole remains. Within the reefs at Minet 'Abu Zaburah the inhabitants of Nablus used to keep a few boats, but little masonry is visible.^ At 'Arsuf,* there is a tiny harbour, yawning thirty feet between a jetty and a reef ; it is used by fishermen. Every one knows the open roadstead at Jaffa, with the reefs that are more dangerous in foul weather than they are 1 It was known then as Castelluin Peregriiiorum. 2 On Dor see further, ch. xix. On La Merle, cf. Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Ilinerarium Kicardi, iv. 14. * The famous water-melons of Mukhalid are exported from here. * See p. 129. The Coast 131 useful in fair.^ In olden days Jamnia had a Limen at the mouth of the Nahr Rubin, but the Minet Rubin, as it is now called, is a little way off this, and by a few rocks with some masonry provides only a landing-place for small boats.2 The Limen of Ashdod is now the Minet-el-Kulah, with a landing-place between reefs ' at which ships occa- sionally touch.' ^ At Askalon there are visible at low water two shallows of crescent shape, which are perhaps remains of ancient moles, and at the bottom of the rocky basin, in which the mediaeval city was confined, explorers think they can trace the lines of a little dock ; but the sand, which drifts so fast up the coast, has choked the dock, and in the sea there is only a jetty left.* The Limen of Gaza was once a considerable town, if we may judge from the ruins that still break from the sand, but the beach is now straight and low, and the roadstead as unsheltered as Jaffa. Thus, while the cruelty of many another wild coast is known by the wrecks of ships, the Syrian shore south of Carmel is strewn with the fiercer wreckage of harbours. I have twice sailed along this coast on a summer after- noon with the western sun thoroughly illuminating it, and I remember no break in the long line of foam where land and sea met, no single spot where the land gave way and welcomed the sea to itself. On both occasions the air was quiet, yet all along the line there was disturbance. It seemed as if the land were everywhere saying to the sea: I do not wish you, I do not need you. And this echoes through most of the Old Testament. Here the sea spreads before us for spectacle, for symbol, for music, ^ Pliny's description (H.N., v. 14) suits the Jaffa of to-day: ' Insidet coUem praejacente saxo.' " Guerin, ii. 54. ' P.E.F. Mem. i., all signs of a harbour are covered with drifting sands. ■* Z.D.F. v., ii. 164, with a plan. G\x€nT\,Jtidee, ii. 155. 132 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land for promise, but never for use — save in one case, when a prophet sought it as an escape from his God.^ In the The coast Psalms the straight coast serves to illustrate in Scripture, ^j^^ irremovable limits which the Almighty- has set between sea and land. In the Prophets its roar and foam symbolise the futile rage of the heathen beat- ing on Jehovah's steadfast purpose for His own people : Ah I the booming of the peoples, the multitudes — like the booffiing of the seas they boom ; and the rus/mig of the nations, like the rushing of mighty waters they rush ; nations — like the rushing of many waters they rush. But He checketh it, and it feeth far away, and is chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind, and like swirling dust before a whirlwind? As in the Psalms and the Prophets, so also in the His- tory the sea was a barrier and not a highway. From the first it was said : Ye shall have the Great Sea for a border? Throughout the language the sea is a horizon : the Hebrew name for the West is the Sea. There were three tribes, of whom we have evidence that they reached the maritime frontier appointed for them : Dan, who in Deborah's time was remaining in ships, '^ but he speedily left them and his bit of coast at Joppa for the far inland sources of Jordan ; and Asher and Zebulon, whose territory was not south but north of Carmel. Even in their case no ports are mentioned, the word translated haven, in the blessing of Zebulon and in the blame of Asher,^ being but beach, land washed by the sea, and the word translated creeks meaning ^ Though in another they, that go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters, are Hebrews, worshippers of Jehovah, Ps. cvii. 23. 24- 2 Isa. xvii. 12, 13. 3 Num. xxxiv. 6. * Judges V. 17. See p. 174. » Gen. xlix. 13 ; Judges v. 17. The Coast 133 no more than just cracks or breaks. Again, when the builders of the second temple hire Phoenicians to bring timber from Lebanon to Joppa, it is not written ' to the harbour or creek of Joppa/ but to the sea of Joppa?- So that the only mention of a real harbour in the Old Testa- ment is in the general picture of the storm in Psalm cvii., where the word used means refuge. Of the name or idea of a port, gateway in or out, there is no trace ; and, as we have just seen, in the designation for the port of Caesarea in the Talmud, Leminah, and in the name still given to some landing-places on the Philistine coast, El- Mineh, it is no Semitic root, but the Greek Limen which appears. In this inability of their coast-line to furnish the language of Israel with even the suggestion of a port, we have the crowning proof of the peculiar security and seclusion of their land as far as the sea is concerned. We can now appreciate how much truth there is in the contrast commonly made between Palestine and Greece. In respect of security the two lands do not Palestine and much differ ; the physical geography of Greece ^''^^'^^• is even more admirably adapted than that of Palestine for purposes of defence. But in respect of seclusion from the sea, and the world which could be reached by the sea, they differed entirely. Upon almost every league of his broken and embayed coast-line, the ancient Greek had an invitation to voyage. The sea came far inland to woo him : by island after island she tempted him across to other continents. She was the ready means to him of commerce, of colonising, and of all that change and adventure with other men, which breed openness,originality ^ Ezra iii. 7. 134 ^^^^ Historical Geography of the Holy Land and subtlety of mind. But the coast-line of the Jew was very different, and from his high inland station he saw it only far off — a stiff, stormy line, down the whole length of which as there was nothing to tempt men in, so there was nothing to tempt them out.^ The effect of a nation's physical environment upon their temper and ideals is always interesting, but can never be more than vaguely described. Whereas of even greater interest, and capable too of exact definition, because abrupt, imperious and supreme, is the manner in which a nation's genius, by sheer moral force and Divine inspiration, dares to look beyond its natural limits, feels at last too great for the conditions in which it was developed, and appropriates regions and peoples, towards which nature has provided it with no avenue. Such a process is nowhere more evident than in the history of Israel ; we find the history not only as in other lands, moulded by the geography, but also breaking the moulds, and seeking imperiously new spheres. The first instance of this meets us now. In the development of the religious consciousness of this once desert tribe, there came a time when her eyes were lifted beyond that iron coast, and her face, in the words of her great prophet, became radiant and her heart large with the sparkle of the sea : for there is turned upon thee the seas fiood-tide, and the wealth of the nations is coming utito thee. Who are these like a cloud that fly, and like doves to their windows f Surely towards me the isles are stretching, and ships of Tarshish in the van, to bring thy sons from afar, their silver and their gold with them, to ^ Hull [P.E.F. Memoir on Geology, etc., of Arabia Petrcea, Palestine, etc.) proves that, at no very remote date, the sea washed the foot of the hills. Had this lasted into historical times the whole history of Judaea and Samaria would have been utterly different. The Coast 135 tJie 7ia7ne of JeJiovah of Hosts and to the Holy of Israel, for He hath glorified thee. Isles here are any lands washed by the sea, but what the prophets had chiefly in view were those islands and coasts of the Mediterranean which were within physical sight of the Greek, but to the Hebrew could be the object only of spiritual ambition. Six of them at least are named in the Old Testament. The Isles. The nearest is Cyprus, whose people are called Kittim, from the ancient town of Kti or Kition.^ Cyprus is not, of course, in sight of any part of the territories of Israel, but its hills can be seen at most times from those hills of northern Syria that are immediately opposite to them, and even from southern Lebanon above Beyrout, during a few weeks about midsummer, when the sun sets behind Mount Troodos, the peak of that mountain comes out black against the afterglow.^ It was these glimpses of land in the setting sun, which first drew the Phoenicians westward, and from the Phoenicians the Israelites had their knowledge. Beyond Cyprus is Rhodes, and that was called Rodan among the Hebrews and its people Rodanim.^ Crete was known to them under the name Kaphtor.* These, the only three islands of the Mediterranean men- tioned in the Old Testament, were evidently the line of Phoenician progress westward : they are also the three that occur in nearly every mediaeval voyage from Syria to Europe.^ Beyond them loomed to the Hebrews, farther and ' C.I.S., i. 137 : cf. Gen. x. 4 ; Numbers xxiv. 24 ; Isaiah xxiii. 1,12. ' So Dr. Carslaw of Shweir and I saw it in July 1891 from a hill in front of Shweir, six hours from Beyrout, and 5000 feet above the Mediterranean. ^ In Ezek. xxvii. 20, for pT Dedan read p") Rodan, and in Gen. x. 4, for D^JHT Dodanim read D^JTl Rodanim, where the LXX. have'PiStoi. * This is more probable than that Kaphtor should be Kaft-ur, an Egyptian name for the Delta. See notes on p. 170. * Cf. p. 128, n. 4. 136 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land more uncertain coasts. The name Javan came from the lonians or lafones, on the Asiatic shores of the ^gean,^ but is used of all Greeks down to Alexander the Great.^ Tubal and Meshech, often mentioned with Javan,^ were tribes in the interior of Asia Minor. Beyond Javan were the coasts of Elisha/ that was perhaps Sicily, and Tar- shish, the great Phoenician colony in Spain. To all of these ships traded from Tyre and Sidon and Accho and Joppa. Their outward cargoes were Syrian wheat, oil, and balm, with Oriental wares, and they brought back cloth, purple and scarlet, silver, iron, tin, lead, and brass.^ Sometimes they carried west Hebrew slaves^ and outlaws,'^ forerunners of the great Dispersion. The isles shall wait for His law ; let ihefn give glory to Jehovah, and publish His praise in the isles : unto Me the Joppa and the ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^pe. When, at last, the Jews got Maccabees. ^j^^jj. ^j.g^ ^^^ ^j^j^ harbour,^ it was such a prophecy as this which woke up within them. Of Simon Maccabeus the historian says : ' With all his glory he took Joppa for an haven, and made an entrance to the isles of the sea.' ^ The exultation of this statement — the glad ^ Isa. Ixvi. 19 ; Ezek. xxvii. 13, 19. In the last verse, for Dan also read Vedan, which is unknown. 2 Daniel viii. 21 ; xi. 2. 3 Gen. X. 2 ; Ezek. xxvii. 13. Tubal was the Tebarenians; Meshech the Moschoi of Herodotus. Schrader, K.A.T., 82-84. * Gen. X. 4, Elisha, son of Javan ; i Chron. i. 7 ; Ezek. xxvii. 7. => Ezek. xxvii. 6, 12, 13, 17. « Amos ii. 9. "^ Jonah i. 3. * Eziongeber was probably only held for them, and we are speaking now of the western coast. * I Mace. xiv. 5 : Ka2 /uera Trdo-??? t^s 56^1?? avrov fKa^e tt]v 'Uiririjv els "Ki/x^va Kal iiroi-ncrev daoSov rah vrjaois rrji daXdcrcrris. This was about I44 B.C. Jonathan Maccabeus had captured Joppa in 148 (i Mace. x. 76), and in 145 he had made Simon lord of the coast from the Ladder of Tyre to the Border of Egypt. But this lordship was only nominal, till the next year, when the Greek natives of Joppa being about to revolt, Simon occupied it with a force, and then, a few years later (about 141), fortified it. The Coast 137 'At last!' that is audible in it — was very natural; and we sympathise with it the more when we learn that this was not a mere military operation of Simon's, but, accord- ing to his light, a thoroughly religious measure. In those great daj's, when Jews took a town within the promised boundaries, they purged it of the heathen and their idols, and settled in it * such men as would keep the Law.' ^ The Laiv, then, was at last established on the sea, with an open gate to the isles, and the people of Jehovah had more reason to be rapturous than at any time since the prophecies of their western progress were first uttered. Their hopes, however, were defeated by the rigour of the measures they took to fulfil them. In every town the Hellenised popu- lation 2 rose against this fanatic priest from the rude high- lands, with no right to the sea, and intrigued for the return of Antiochi or Ptolemies, who allowed them to worship their own gods. It was the old opposition between Philistia and Israel, on the old ground. Twice the Syrians retook Joppa, twice Hyrcanus (Simon's successor) won it back. Then, after twenty years of Jewish possession, Pompey came in 63 B.C., and decreed that, with the other coast towns, it should be free.^ But in 47 Caesar excepted Joppa, * which the Jews had originally,' and decreed * it shall belong to them, as it formerly did;'* and later Augustus added it, with other cities, to Herod the Great's ' So Simon did at Gazara, i Mace. xiii. 47, and, we can understand, in Joppa also, though in a sea-town full of foreigners the task would be more difficult, and not so perfectly accomplished. - In all the coast towns at this time, though the bulk of the common people were from the old stocks of the country, and spoke Aramaic, the upper classes were Greek, and Greek was the official language ; and the native deities were amalgamated with their Greek counterparts, ' Josephus xiv. Antt. iv. 4 ; i. Wars, vii. 7 : ' He restored to their own citizens.' * Josephus xiv. Antt, x. 6. 138 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land kingdom.^ Joppa was therefore Jewish as no other town on the coast or Maritime Plain became, and so it con- tinued till the campaign of Vespasian in 68 A.D. And it was violently Jewish. Though Joppa was tributary to Herod he never resided there, or tried to rebuild it, or to plant heathen features upon it. Alone of the chief cities of the region, it had no Greek or Latin name attached to it. In close commerce with Jerusalem, Joppa was infected with the fanatic patriotism of the latter ; as there were rebels and assassins there, so there were rebels 'and pirates here. The spirit of disaffection towards Rome passed through the same crises in the coast town as in the capital. In the terrible outbreak of 66^ when every other town of the Maritime Plain was divided into two camps,^ and Jews and Hellenised Syrians massacred each other, Joppa alone remained Jewish, and it was Joppa that Cestius Gallus first attacked on his march to Jerusalem.^ In the years before the Jews thus took to arms Joppa had doubtless been distinguished by the more peaceful exercises of the same Judaistic spirit. On ground which was free from heathen buildings and rites, the Pharisees must have imitated as far as possible the rigorous measures of the Maccabees, and cherished the ancient and noble hopes which the sea inspired in their race, along with many petty precautions against the foreigners whom it drifted to their feet. This was the state of affairs when Peter came down from Jerusalem to Joppa, and dreamt of things clean and unclean, on the housetop overlooking the harbour.* If now we turn to the neighbouring Caesarea, we see as great a contrast as was possible on the same coast. Was ^ Josephus XV. Antt. vii. 3 ; ii, WarSy vi. 3. ' ii. Wars, xviii. 2. * lb. 10, ■» Acts X. The Coast 139 Joppa Jewish, national, patriotic, Caesarea was Herodian, Roman in obedience, Greek in culture. At first the Herodian strongholds had all lain on the east of Palestine, and for the most part in wild, inaccessible places, like Machaerus and Masada, as best became a family not sure of its station, and sometimes chased from power by its enemies. But when Herod won the favour of Augustus, and time made it clear that the power of Augustus was to be permanent, Herod came over the Central Range of Palestine, and on sites granted by his patron built himself cities that looked westward. He embellished and fortified both Jerusalem and Samaria. Then he looked for a sea-port. On the coast Augustus had given him Gaza, with Anthedon, Joppa and Straton's Tower.^ He chose the last — Josephus says because it was more fit to be a sea-port than Joppa. But this was not so. The reasons of his choice were political. We must suppose, it was more important for Herod to have a harbour suited to Sebast^ than to Jerusalem, for Sebast^ itself was nearer the sea and more in his own hands than the Holy City. Besides, Joppa, as we have seen, was national rather than Herodian in spirit. Straton's Tower was virtually a fresh site. Here Herod laid the lines of 'a magnificent city,' and spent twelve years in building it.^ He erected sumptuous palaces and large edifices for 'containing the people,' a temple on raised ground, a theatre, and an amphitheatre with prospect to the sea. There were also a great number of arches, cellars, and vaults for draining the city, ' which had no less of architecture bestowed on them than had the buildings ^ i. Wars, xx. 3. " Josephus XV. Antt. ix. 6 ; but in xvi. Antt. v. i., ' ten years.' 1 40 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land above ground,' But the greatest work of all was the haven. A breakwater 200 feet wide was formed in twenty fathoms depth by dropping into the waves enormous stones. The half of it was opposed to the course of the waves, so as to keep off those waves which were to break upon it, and so was called Procymatia, or ' first breaker of waves,' while the other half had upon it a wall with several towers. There were also a great number of arches, where the sailors lodged, and before them a quay, which ran round the whole haven, and ' was a most pleasant walk for such as had a mind to that exercise.' The entrance of the port was on ' the north, on which side was the gentlest of all the winds in this place.' On the left of the entrance was a round turret, made very strong in order to meet the greatest waves, while on the right stood two enormous stones upright and joined together, each of them larger than the turret opposite.^ To-day the mole is 160 yards from shore, and the mouth of the harbour measures 180.^ This immense haven had a name to itself — Sebastos Limen — which even dwarfed the name of the city, Caesarea.' In later times the latter is called The Csesarea beside the August Harbour,* and Jews also, as we have seen, spoke of the Leminah by itself; for it was the harbour — the first, the only real port upon that coast. Caesarea speedily became, and long continued to be, the virtual capital of Palestine — the only instance of a coast town which ever ^ Josephusxv. A7ttt. ix. 6, abridged. ^ />.^./r. Mem. ii. ' Kaiaapeia SejSaoTi^ : Kaia-apela IIapa\i6s, Kaccrapeia ij eTrl daXdrrri. Cnesarea Stratonis, Csesarea Palestinae, and, after Vespasian's time, Colonia Prima Flavia Augusta Csesarea. The last name in Pliny, Natural History, V. 69, and in a Latin inscription discovered in the neighbourhood. * On a coin of Nero : KAISAPEIA H HPOS SEBASTfi AIMENI. The coin is given in De Saulcy's Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, p. 1 16. The Coast 1 4 1 did so. ' Caesarea Judaeae caput est,' says Tacitus,^ but he means the Roman province of that name. Judaean, in the true sense of the word, Caesarea never was. The gateway to Rome, the place was already a piece of Latin soil.- The procurator had his seat in it, there was an Italian garrison, and on the great white temple that shone out over the harbour to the far seas, stood two statues — of Augustus and of Rome.^ It was heathendom in all its glory at the very door of the true religion ! Yes, but the contrast might be reversed. It was justice and freedom In the most fanatical and turbulent province of the world. In seeking separation from his people, and an open door to the West, Herod had secured these benefits for a nobler cause than his own, to which we now turn. Peter came to the Joppa which has been described, and it is interesting to note that he came by Lydda — in those days another great centre of Jewish feeling. Peterat It was Joppa, Lydda, and Jerusalem which Joppa. Cestius Gallus singled out as the centres of the national revolt* To Jewish Joppa Jewish Peter came ; and we can understand that as he moved about its narrow lanes, leading to the sea, where his scrupulous countrymen were jostled by foreign sailors and foreign wares, he grew more concerned than ever about the ceremonial law. While food was being prepared — observe the legal moment — he saw, above this jealous bit of earth, heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending as it had been a great sheet — perhaps the sail of one of these large Western ships in the offing — let down by the fo7ir corners to the earth, wherein 1 Hist. ii. 78. - The Jews called Caesarea the daughter of Edom — their symbolic name for Rome. Talmud Babyl. Megillah, 6a. ' Josephus as above, * ii. Wars, xviii. lo. 142 The Histo^dcal Geography of the Holy Land 7vere all the four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. A nd there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter, kill and eat ! But Peter said. Not so. Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. To his strict conscience the contents had been a temptation. A nd the voice said unto him a second time, What God hath cleansed call not tho2i common I This was done thrice, and the vessel was received up into heaven again. And at T\it. vision took place in Joppa, but the fact Caesarea, ^^^ fulfilled in freer Caesarea. Here, on what was virtually Gentile soil, and amid surroundings not very- different from those of Paul's sermon on Areopagus,^ Peter made his similar declaration, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons ; but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. Here, in a Roman soldier's house, in face of the only great port broken westward through Israel's stormy coast, the Gentile 1 Pentecost took place, and on the Gentiles was poured out ' the gift of the Holy Ghost?- Again, in the narrative of Paul's missions, Caesarea is the harbour by which he reaches Syria from Ephesus, Paul at ^"<^ from which he sails on his last voyage for Caesarea. italy.3 More significant still were his removal I to Caesarea from Jerusalem, and the anxiety of the Jewish I authorities to get him brought back to Jerusalem.^ In the i Holy City they would not give him a fair hearing ; his life • was in danger, they lay in wait to kill him. In Caisarea ' he was heard to the end of his plea ; but for his appeal to Caesar, he would have been acquitted, and during two 1 Josephus says that the Limen of Caesarea was like the Piraeus ; and the great temple and court of justice stood hard by. ^ ^^.^g y^^ * Acts xviii. 22 ; xxvii. i. ■* Acts xxv. 3. The Coast 143 whole years in which he lived in the place, receiving his friends, and enjoying a certain amount of liberty — though the place had many Jewish inhabitants ^ — no one ventured to waylay him. There were only some sixty miles between C?esarea and Jerusalem, but in the year 60 Caesarea was virtually Rome. The subsequent history of Herod's harbour repeats what we have already learned of it. As long as the land was held by men with interests in the West, the _ Caesarea in town triumphed over the unsuitableness of subsequent history. its site ; but when Palestine passed into the hands of an Eastern people, with no maritime ambitions, it dwindled, and was finally destroyed by them. Caesarea was Vespasian's head-quarters, equally opportune for Galilee, Samaria and Judaea, and there he was proclaimed Emperor in 69. He also established close by a colony under the title Prima Flavia Augusta Caesarea. Very early there was a Christian bishop of Caesarea, who became Metropolitan of Syria. Origen fled here, and Eusebius was Archbishop from 315-318. When the Moslems came, Caesarea was the head-quarters of Sergius, the Byzantine general : in 638 it was occupied by 'Abu 'Obeida. Under the Arabs its importance, of course, sank. The town continued opulent, but famous only for its agricultural products,^ and Herod's splendid harbour must have fallen into decay. The town was left alone by the first Crusaders, but King Baldwin took it in 1 102, and thus passing once more into the hands of seafarers it was rebuilt, so that the ruins of to-day are mostly of Crusading masonry.^ Saladin ^ ii. Wars, xiv. 4. ^ Mukaddasi in the tenth, and Nasir-i-Khusrau in the eleventli, cent, quoted by Le iitrange, Pal. under Moslems, 474. ^ P.E.F. Mem. ii. 144 '^^^ Historical Geography of the Holy Land won it in 1187, and reduced it.^ Richard took it back in 1 191, and built it again. Louis of France added fortifica- tions. And then Sultan Bibars, consummating the policy of his race by that destructive march of his in 1265, o^ which every coast fortress was battered down, laid Caesarea low, and scattered its inhabitants. It is said that he himself, pick in hand, assisted at its demolition.^ When we come to deal with the strongholds of Samaria, we shall see how Sebaste, which is only some twenty-five miles inland from Caesarea, and has the same western exposure, has suffered similar changes of fortune according as an Eastern or a Western race dominated the countr}'. ^ Boha-ed-din, Life of Saladin, ch. 35 ^ Makrizi. CHAPTER VIII THE MARITIME PLAIN K For this Chapter consult Maps /., IV., V. and VI. THE MARITIME PLAIN BEYOND the forbidding coast there stretches, as you look east, a prospect of plain, the Maritime Plain — on the north cut swiftly down upon by Carmel, whose headland comes within 200 yards of the sea, but at Carmel's other end six miles broad, and thence gradually widening southwards, till at Joppa there are twelve miles, and farther south there are thirty miles between the far blue mountains of Judaea and the sea. The Maritime Plain divides into three portions. The north corner between Carmel and the sea is bounded on the south by the Crocodile River, the modern Nahr-el-Zerka, and is nearly twenty miles long. From the Crocodile River the Plain of Sharon, widening from eight miles ' ^ ^ Sharon. to twelve, rolls southward, forty-four miles to the mouth of the Nahr Rubin and a line of low hills to the south of Ramleh, This country is undulating, with groups of hills from 250 to 300 feet high. To the north it is largely wild moor and marsh, with long tongues of sand running in from the coast. The marshes on the Zerka are intricate, and form the refuge of Arabs who keep them- selves free from the requisitions of the Turkish Govern- ment. There is one large oak-wood in the very north, and groves of the same tree scatter southward. These are the remains of a forest so extensive, that it sometimes gave its 147 148 The Hist07ncal Geography of the Holy Land name to the plain. The Septuagint translates Sharon by Drumos} Josephus describes it as the ' place called the Forest,' ^ or * The Forests,' ^ and Strabo calls it ' a great Forest.'* It is the same which the Crusaders named the Forest of Assur ; ^ Tasso the Enchanted Forest,^ and Napoleon the Forest of Miski.^ Scattered and ragged as it now is, like all the woodland of Palestine, it must origin- ally have swept all the way from the heights of Carmel to Ajalon. Besides the streams mentioned, the northern part of Sharon is crossed by a few other perennial waters — the Mufjir or Dead River of the Crusaders,^ the Iskanderuneh or their Salt River, and the Falik or their Rochetaille.^ In the southern half of Sharon, south of the 'Aujeh and in front of the broad gulf of Ajalon, there is far more culti- vation— corn-fields, fields of melons,gardens, orange-groves, and groves of palms, with strips of coarse grass and sand, frequent villages on mounds, the once considerable towns of Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramleh, and the high road running among them to Jerusalem. To the south of the low hills Phiiistia or that bouud Sharon, the Plain of Philistia rolls Daroma. ^^ ^.^ ^^ ^.j^^j. ^^ Egypt, about forty miles, risiig now and again into gentle ranges 250 feet high, and cut here and there by a deep gully, with running water. But Philistia is mostly level, nearly all capable of cultiva- tion, with few trees, and presenting the view of a vast series of corn-fields. Wells may be dug almost anywhere. ^ Isaiah xxxv., xxxvii. 24, Ixv. 10. ^ j_ Wars, xiii. 2. 3 xiv. Aiitt. xiii. 3. « xvi. : Spu^is iii-yas ris. ^ Vinsauf, litn. Ricardi, iv. 16. One of the feudal manors of the neigh- bourhood was called Casale de la Forest. Rohricht, Studieti zur mittelalt. Geog. u. Topogr. Syrien's Z.D.P. V. x. 200. ^ Gerusalemme Liberata, ii. and xiii. ' From the present village of Miskieh. 8 But see Rohricht as above, p. 251. » Vinsauf, Itin. Ric. iv. 17. The Maritime Plain 149 The only difficulty to agriculture is the drifting sand, which in some places has come two and a half miles inland. The whole Maritime Plain possesses a quiet but rich beauty. If the contours are gentle the colours are strong and varied. Along almost the whole seaboard runs a strip of links and downs, sometimes of pure drifting sand, some- times of grass and sand together. Outside this border of broken gold there is the blue sea, with its fringe of foam. Landward the soil is a chocolate brown, with breaks and gullies, now bare to their dirty white shingle and stagnant puddles, and now full of rich green reeds and rushes that tell of ample water beneath. Over corn and moorland a million flowers are scattered — poppies, pimpernels, anemones, the convolvulus and the mallow, the narcissus and blue iris — roses of Sharon and lilies of the valley. Lizards haunt all the sunny banks. The shimmering air is filled with bees and butterflies, and with the twittering of small birds, hushed now and then as the shadow of a great hawk blots the haze. Nor when dark- ness comes is all a blank. The soft night is sprinkled thick with glittering fireflies. Such a plain, rising through the heat by dim slopes to the long persistent range of blue hills beyond, presents to-day a prospect of nothing but fruitfulness openness of and peace. Yet it has ever been one of the ^^^ p'^'"" most famous war-paths of the world. It is not only level, it is open. If its coast-line is so destitute of harbours, both its ends form wide and easy entrances. The southern rolls ofl" upon the great passage from Syria to Egypt ; upon those illustrious, as well as horrible, ten sandy marches from Gaza— past Rafia, Rhinocoloura, 'the :50 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Serbonian Bog,' and the sands where Pompey was stabbed to death — to Pelusium and the Nile. Of this historical highway between Asia and Africa, along which Thothmes, Ramses, Sennacherib, Cambyses, Alexander, Pompey, Titus, Saladin, Napoleon and many more great generals have led their armies — of this highway the Maritime Plain of Palestine is but the continuation. Nor is the north end of the plain shut in by Carmel, as the view from the sea clearly shows. From the sea the The passage sky-line of Carmel, running south-east, does not by Carmel. sustain its high level up to the Central Range. It is bow-shaped, rising from the sea to its centre, and drooping again inland. At the sea end, under the head- land, a beach of 200 yards is left, and southwards there is always from a mile to two miles between the hill-foot and the shore. But this passage, though often used by armies — by Richard, for instance, and by Napoleon on his retreat — is not the historical passage round Carmel, and could not be. It is broken by rocks, and extremely difficult to force if defended, so that the Crusaders called part of it the House of the Narrow Ways, Les Destroits, and Petra Incisa.^ It is at the other, the inland, end of Carmel that the historical passage lies. Here a number of low hills, with wide passes, and one great valley — the Valley of Dothan — intervene between Carmel and the Central Range, and offer several alternative routes from the Maritime Plain to Esdraelon. Napoleon, who followed one of these routes on his northern march, has stated his reasons for doing so in words which emphasise the very points we are considering : ' Carmel se lie aux ^ Vinsauf, Itiner. Ricardi, iv. 12, 14. Les Destroits survives in Khurbet Dustrey. The Maritime Plain 1 5 1 montagnes de Nablouse, mais elle en est separee par un grand vallon ' — that is, the low hills of softer formation, whose subdued elevation seems as a valley between the harder heights of Carmel and Samaria. ' On a I'avantage de tourner Mont Carmel par la route qui suit la lisiere de la plaine d'Esdrelon ' — that is, after it reaches the water- shed— 'au lieu que celle qui longe la mer arrive au detroit de Haifa ' — that is, the sea-pass which the Crusaders called Les Destroits — 'passage difficile a forcer s'il ^tait defendu.' ^ The route Napoleon chose, to the east of Carmel, was of the three which are usually followed the most westerly, for his goal was Acre. From the north end of Sharon it strikes due north, past Subbarin, and, descending to the east of the Muhrakah, reaches Esdraelon at Tell Keimun. It is the shortest road from Sharon and Egypt to the Phoenician cities, and is to-day followed by the telegraph wire. Another route leaves Sharon at Khurbet es-Sumrah, strikes north-east up the Wady 'Arab to the watershed at 'Ain 'Ibrahim, and thence descends to Lejjun, from which roads branch to Naza- reth, Tiberias, and by Jezreel to Jordan. A third, and more frequented route, leaves Sharon still farther south, and, travelling almost due east by a long wady,^ emerges upon the Plain of Dothan, and thence descends north-east to Jenin, in Esdraelon. This road is about seventeen miles long, but for Beisan and the Jordan Valley, it is much shorter than the route by Lejjun, and is, no doubt, the historical road from Egypt to the east of the Jordan and Damascus. It was on this road near Dothan that Joseph's brethren, having cast him into a "^'xtjif ted up their ' • ^ Campagnes d^&gypte et de Syrie Memoires . . . dicties par lui-meme, ii. 55. ^ W. 'Abu-Nar, afterwards W. el Ghamik and W. Wesa. 1 5 2 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land eyes, and behold, a company of I shmaelites came from Gilead, with their camels, bearing spicery and balm, and myrrhy going to carry it down to Egypt} To this issue of Sharon into Esdraelon, which is hardly ever noticed in manuals of sacred geography, too much Its historical attention cannot be paid. Its presence is felt effect. i^y ^11 jjjg history of the land. No pass had more effect upon the direction of campaigns, the sites of great battles, or the limitation of Israel's a,ctual possessions. We shall more fully see the effects of it when we come to study the Plain of Esdraelon. Here it is enough to mention such facts as illustrate the real continuity of Esdraelon and Sharon. In ancient Egyptian records of travel and invasion,^ names on Esdraelon and the Jordan are almost as frequent as those on the Maritime Plain, and a journey is recounted which took place in a chariot from the Lake of Galilee to Egypt. On this Bethshan and Megiddo, which is Lejjun, and Joppa were all stations. In the Bible the Philistines and Egyptians are frequently represented in Esdraelon. It must surprise the reader of the historical books, that Saul and Jonathan ^ Gen xxxvii. 25. The following are the levels relative to these routes: The headland of Carmel is some 500 feet above the sea ; thence the ridge rises, in rather over eleven miles, to 1810 feet ; thence suddenly sinks to 800 or locx), the height of the pass by Subbarin to Tell Keimun. Then come, almost at right angles to Carmel, the series of lowrer ranges— for eight miles the Belad er-Ruhah, 'a district of bare chalk downs, with an average elevation of Soo feet' {P.E.F. Mem. ii.), fertile, but treeless, except on the western slope; then eight or ten miles of higher hills, some of which reach 1600 feet ; then Dothan, and then the hills of Samaria. The watershed at 'Ain 'Ibrahim, where the Lejjun road crosses, is as high as iioo feet. Dothan is 700. Sharon, at its margin, is 200, and this may be taken as the level also of Esdraelon, though Lejjun is over 400 and Jenin over 500. 2 Travels of an Egyptian, I. R.P., ii. 107 ff. ; Annals of Thothmes III.^ ib. p. 39 ff. Cf. W. Max-Miiller, Asien mid Etavfa, p. 195 ff. The Maritime Plain 153 should have come so far north as Gilboa to fight with Philistines, whose border was to the south of them, and that King Josiah should meet the Egyptians at Megiddo. The explanation is afforded by the easy passage of Sharon into Esdraelon. The Philistines had come by it, either to make the easier entrance into Israel from the north, or to keep open the great trade route to Gilead ; the Egyptians had come by it, because they were making for Damascus and the Euphrates. Between these, its open ends, the Maritime Plain was traversed by highways, which have followed, through all ages, pretty much the same direction. Coming r^j^^ ^^^^^ ^^ up from Egypt, the trunk road crossed the the plain. Wady Ghuzzeh near Tell el 'Ajjul — Calfs Hill — a favour- ite Saracen camp,^ and continued through Gaza and past Mejdel to Ashdod, avoiding the coast, for the sand on the Philistine coast comes far inland, and is loose. After Ashdod it forked. One branch struck through Jamnia to Joppa, and thence up the coast by 'Arsuf and Caesarea to Haifa,^ with Roman bridges over the streams. The other branch, used in the most ancient times, as well as by the Romans and Saracens, and still the main caravan road between Egypt and Damascus, strikes from Ashdod farther inland, by Ekron to Ramleh, and thence travels by Lydda and Antipatris to the passes leading over to Esdraelon. This road was joined by roads from the hills at Gaza, Ashdod, Ramleh — where the Beth-horon road from Jerusalem, and another from Beit-Jibrin, through the Shephelah, came in, — at Antipatris, — where the road from Jerusalem to Csesarea, by which Paul was brought down, ^ It was Saladin's twice. ^ According to Brugsch, the royal Egyptian road. 154 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land crossed it,^ and near Gilgal and Kakon, where passes descended from Shechem and Sebastd The inland high- road was also joined by a cross-road from Joppa near Antipatris. All these roads were fairly well supplied with water. The natural obstacles were few, and easily turned. The inland road avoided the streams and marshes which the coast road had to traverse, and which do not Its defences* seem to have been bridged ,till the Romans came. Some fortresses, as in the south the Philistine cities, and in the north 'Arsuf and Caesarea, might form bases or flanks for long lines of defence, but they stood by themselves, and could be easily turned, as Geoffrey turned Caesarea in the First Crusade. Strong lines were drawn across the plain at only two places that we know of. The deep, muddy bed of the 'Aujeh tempted Alexander Janneus to build a wall from Kapharsaba to the sea at Joppa, with wooden towers and intermediate redoubts ; but ' Antiochus soon burnt them, and made his army pass that way to Arabia.' ^ And, again, Saladin's army, with its left on the strong fortress of 'Arsuf, and its right on the Samarian hills, strove to keep Richard back, but were dispersed after two heavy battles.^ Napoleon's march is the one we know in most detail. He was under the necessity of taking two fortresses — Gaza and Joppa — and was attacked by a body of Samarians from Nablus as he passed Kakon. His experiences may be fairly taken as those likely to have happened to most invaders from north and south, except that when it was the Jews who ^ The part of this road through the hill-country was traced by Ely Smith in 1840, but the level part from Antipatris to Caesarea has still to be recovered. 2 Josephus, xiii. Antt. xv. i. Cf. i. Wars, iv. I. * Vinsauf, Itiner. Ricard. iv. 14-24. The Maritime Plain 155 opposed the invader, they came down Ajalon, and flung themselves across his path from Lydda, Gezer, and Joppa. We now see why the Maritime Plain was so famous a war-path. It is really not the whole of Palestine which deserves that name of The Bridge between Asia • • 1 '^^^ cam- and Africa ; it is this level and open coast- paigns of the land along which the embassies and armies of the two continents passed to and fro, not troubling themselves, unless they were provoked, with the barren and awkward highlands to the east. So Thothmes passed north to the Hittite frontier and the Euphrates. So Rameses came. So, from 740 to 710, Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, and Sargon swept south across Jordan and Esdraelon to the cities of the Philistines, entering Samaria, whose open gateways they found at Jenin and Kakon,^ but leaving Judah alone. So, in 701, Sennacherib marched his army to the borders of Egypt, and detached a brigade for the operations on Jerusalem, which Isaiah has so vividly described. So Necho went up to the border of Assyria, and Nebuchadnezzar came down to the border of Egypt. So Cambyses passed and left Judaea alone. So Alexander the Great passed between his siege of Tyre and that of Gaza, and passed back from Egypt to Tyre, entering Samaria by the way to punish the inhabitants of Shechem.2 So the Antiochi from Syria and the Ptolemies from Egypt surged up and down in alternate tides, carrying fire and rapine to each other's borders. From their hills the Jews could watch all the spectacle of war between them and the sea — the burning villages, the swift, busy lines of chariots and cavalry — years before Jerusalem ^ Jenin on Esdraelon, Kakon on Sharon. ^ The account of his inarch into Jerusalem is fictitious. 156 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land herself was threatened.^ When Judas Maccabeus burnt the harbour and ships at Jamnia, 'the light of the fire was seen at Jerusalem, two hundred and forty stadia off.' ^ In Roman times legions marched and countermarched too often to mention ; and they made great roads, and bridged the streams with bridges, some of which last to this day. In the first Moslem assaults the Maritime Plain bore less of the brunt than the eastern parts of the land, but in the European invasions of the eleventh to the thirteenth cen- turies it was again, as in Greek and Roman times, scoured by war. While Geoffrey and the First Crusade passed unhindered from Haifa to Ramleh,^ Richard and the Third Crusade had to skirmish every league of the way with an enemy that harassed them from the Samarian valleys, and to fight one great battle under Arstif, and another on the east of Joppa.* In the Philistine Plain innumerable conflicts, sieges, and forays took place, for while the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem lasted, it met here the assaults of the Egyptian Moslems, and when Richard came he had here at once to repel the sallies of the Moslem from Jerusalem, and intercept the aid coming to them from Egypt. In 1265 Bibars came north, and one by one de- molished the fortresses so thoroughly, that some of them, like Askalon and Caesarea, famous for centuries before, have been desolate ever since. But perhaps this garden of the Lord was never more violated than when Napoleon, in the spring of 1799, brought up his army from Egypt, or when, in the heat of summer, he retreated, burning the towns and harvests of Philistia and massacring his prisoners.^ ^ Isa. V. 26 ff. ^2 Mace. xii. 9. The real distance is about 300 stadia. ^ William of Tyre, vii. 22, * Vinsauf, Iliii. Ricardi, as above, ' Op. cit. ii. 109. Witlmann, 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 Travels {.ii^o"]) in Churchhill's Collection, i.410. ^ y.lij.vf] Zep^wvls, Strabo, vii. 59, and Diod. Sic. ; Serbonis Lacus, Pliny, Nat. 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. 6 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 of the German and English Commissions, jV". 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 describes 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. ^ On Sennacherib, see the author's Zfrtza/i i. On the Plague in Justinian's time, Evagrius, xxix. ; Gibbon, xliii. ; on Napoleon, the Memoirs of Cafn- /a?>;w already cited ; Vfa.\%\ Journal of the late Campaign 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 \s 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 of German Commission ; of. 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 vSJ? 'dpholim, 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 precisely the same — a very fatal ^t'z'r* *s. { 1 CHAPTER IX THE PHILISTINES AND THEIR CITIES 167 For this Chapter consult Maps I. and IV. THE PHILISTINES AND THEIR CITIES THE 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, 'Ekron, 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 Philistines. derivation from falash, a Semitic root, 'to migrate.'^ In the Old 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 other peoples who came into connection with them. In the Egyptian inscriptions it is Purasati ; 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 1C9 lyo The Historical Geography of the Holy Land such a migration : O children of Israel, saith Jehovah, have I not brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Kaphtor, and the Syrians from Kir ? The Kaphtorim, which came forth from Kaphtor, destroyed the Avim, which dwelt in open villages as far as Gaza, and dwelt in their stead} Where the Philistines 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 Pelishtim, 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-Jibrin, Arak el Fenish, Bestan el Fenish — also at Latrun, Soba, Amwas, and Khurbet Ikbala. All these places 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), and from Gen. x. 14, whether you read the clause in brackets where it stands, or at the end of the verse. The Pathrusim and Casluhim are practically Egypt ; otit of who?n should be whence. But some take this clause as a gloss. ^ Egyptologists like Ebers {^gypten u. die Biicher Mosis) and Sayce {Races of 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 Z^is Zf/i?^ O^/r/, 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 i^ is applied to Kaphtor in Jer. xlvii. 4, is not conclusive, for ^^^ 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 r -1 •/- Tr 1 -11 Kaphtor. appears more safe to identity Kaphtor with that island.^ 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. i 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 : 'Judaeos Creta insula profugos, novissima Libyae insedisse, memorant, qua tempestate Saturnus vi Jovis expulsus cesserit regnis.' He seeks to explain this tradition by the analogy between Idaei, 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 — i.e. after Alexander the Great. Gaza especially had then great trade with the west. ^ Cf. Odyssey, xix. i7off. Achaeans, Kydonians, Dorians, Pelasgians, and aboriginal Cretans — iTedKpijrot. * Hitzig, Urgeschichte u. Mythologie der Philistiier, where the most extra- ordinary Sanscrit analogies are suggested. The argument has been still more overdone by the article in Schenkel's Bibel- Lex icon. ^ Knobel's opinion (Volkertafel Gen. x.) was that the Philistines were 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 Semitic people, with some non-Semitic habits, institutions, and words. Putting aside Racial char- ... , . , acterof the names of their towns, which were pro- 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. 2 Abimelech, Delilah, Obed-edom. But see below. Perhaps also Ishbi, .Saph, Goliath, Raphah. Achish, ti'''3K, son of Maoch, TlVO, king of Gath, i Sam. xxvii. 2. Achish, son of Maachah, king of Gath, nsyiD I Kings ii. 39. W. Max Miiller (Asien u. Eur., 389) gives a name Bi-d-ira. 3 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 his 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 o • r ^ r Their ap- South Palestine, in the beginning of the four- pearance 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. 3 The article in Riehm's Handworterbuch says of the Philistines : ' Sie sind mit Griechischen, bestimmter Karischen, Elementen, stark versetzten Semiten, aus Kreta. In Isa. ix. ii, for Philistines the LXX. have'EXXTjj'ej. * They are probably Hittite. — Brugsch. 174 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land traditions in Genesis, one of which places the Philistine centre still to the south of Gaza,i while another states that the Canaanites once held all the coast from Gaza north- wards ; 2 as well as that of Deuteronomy,^ that the Caph- toriin had to expel the Aviin, who dwelt 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 Gerar — 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 land that yet remaineth — all the Geltloth, or circuits, of the Philistines. ^ Judges V. 17 : Dan abideth in ships. Judges i. 34 : The Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountains , for they ivould not suffer them to come down into the valley, i.e. of Ajalon, where according to the next verse, the Amorites settled till they were subdued by Ephraim. [I cannot agree with Budde {Bikher Richter II. Samuel, p. 17) that Mount Heres = Beth-shemesh, the present 'Ain Shems, in the Vale of Sorek (read siidlich for n'drdlich in Budde). Mount Heres 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 remained 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 ^^^^^ 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 1 y^' the stranger difference. Both Philistines and SSes^^ ' 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- j 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- j ment. ^ Sons of Anak. • ^ Kaphtorim, Philistines, Kerethim, etc. I 3 One of the few instances of the use of Gelll, or Gelllah, 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, east of Ccesarea, and the modern Jelil, north-east of Jaffa. See p. 413. 1 76 The 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 impenetrableness 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 Hand ^ 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 &\\\y. 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. 9. TJie Philistines and their Cities 177 and rude, to banish from her midst the soothsayers and necromancers, to whom the Philistines were wholly given over,^ 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 Reijjtjons ^f of Samson, Saul, and David, entered a more J?'^?^ ^^^ ' ' ' Phihstia, peaceful epoch under Solomon, and for the I-Tob.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 are 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 Egypt 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. ' 1 Sam. xiii., xxix., and xxxi. M 1 78 The Histo7'ical 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^ 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 2 Sam. V. 22 ff. ® 2 Kings xviii. 8. * Isa. xiv. 29-32 ; Jer. xlvii. ; Zeph. ii. ; Zech. ix. The one exception is 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 maintain is not Isaiah's. But, as far as our present subject is concerned, there was suffi- The Philistines and their Cities 179 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 ^ii b c 300— 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 y 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 triujupk 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 historically that such Psalms are of earlier dale, 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 feeling 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 j 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 tian 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 Marna, 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 seat, 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 Isaiah, c. xvii. ^ Rev. ii. 13. For martyrs see Eusebius, H.E. viii. 13, Sozomen, passim. ^ Jerome, Life of Hilar ion. Sozomtn's History, vi. 31. The Philistines and their Cities 1 8 1 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 vbiio% of Eleutheropolis : Eusebius. - Life of Porphyry, by Marcus the Deacon, in the Acta Sanctoritm. ' 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 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 Egypt. 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, ^clls of fresh water burst from the sandy soil, and render possible the broad gardens and large popula- tion.2 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 ' lovers 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- ^ M ry dpxv TTJi ipnixov. Arrian, Anabasis ii. 26. For Damascus see ch. xxx. ' Arrian, A7tab. 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 said 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 Gatt, p. 149. In 1483 twice as big as Jerusalem : Felix Fabri (P.P.T.), 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.R. i. Cf. Anton. Placen. Itiner. (570 A.D.), which describes (ch. xxxiii. ) the Gazans as ' homines honestissimi, omni liberalitate decori, amatores peregrinorum.' Antoninus took eighteen or nineteen days on the way to Sinai. Antonius de Cremona says: *De monte Synay usque ad Gazam fuimus xv. diebus in deserto.' Cf. also Bernhard, de la Brocquerie (1432). The Philistines and thei?' Cities 183 tean 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 Les Colonies Fra>tqiies datis le xii. et xiii. sit'cles, ch. ix. " Burckhaidt'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, Anal), ii. 26, 27 ; Quintus Curtius, iv. 6. ' In bringing tribute to Jehoihaphat, 2 Chron. xvii. il, 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. Aiitt. 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 Thothmes III.; The Tell-el-Amarna Letters of the fifteenth century ; the records of Ramses' conquests in the fourteenth. Sayce supposes the Philistines were planted by the Egyptians in Gaza and her sister cities as outposts of Egypt {Races of the O. T., p. 54), yet Egypt is aiwuys represented as hostile to them, Miiller, Asien ti. Europa, 388 ff. 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 19S B.C. (Polybius, v.), when it fell to Antiochus the Great, and remained part of the Syriar kingdom for a century. Rut see Add tional Notes on p. 198. * Op. cit. II. ch. vii. ^ A later addition to Josh, xv., viz. vv. 45-47, sets Gaza within the ideal borders of Judah ; but this has no confirmation, and, indeed, is contradicted by the true reading of Judges i. 18, 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 185 though Israel's authority, as in Solomon's time/ and tem- porary conquests, as in Hezekiah's,- might extend to her gates ; and this is to be explained by the pres- (^^^^^ ^^^ tige which Egypt, standing immediately behind, Israel, 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 off^ 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 Csesar 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 ; i Mace. xi. 60. In xiii. 4, read Gazara for Gaza. * Josephus xiii. Antt. xiii. 3. ' iroXiiv XP^^'O" ipVf^ovs, Josephus xiv. Anit. v. 3 ; fxivovja ^p-rjfios, Strabo xvi. 2. 30 ; and ij Iprjfjiot Tdl;-a, the anonymous Greek geographer in Hudson's GeographicB veter. script. GrcEci Minores, iv. p. 39. ® Josephus xiv. Antt. v. 3. ■^ Josephus xiv. Antt. iv. 4 ; i. Wars, vii. 7. In both of these passat;es 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 toivard 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 imm.ediately after at Ashdod suggests that the meeting and the baptism took place on the Philistine Plain, and not among the hills of Judaea, where tradition has placed them. But that would mean the neighbourhood of Gaza, and an additional reason for mentioning the town.^ ^ Josephus xvii. Anti. xi. 4 ; ii. Wars, vi. 3. Also the earliest imperial coins of Gaza date from a year or two after this (De Saulcy, Numismatique de la Terre Sainte, p. 213). ^ Acts viii. 26. 3 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 Gaza as desert — whether it be that by Beit-Jibrin, which Robinson {B.R. ii. ; Phys. Geog. 108, 109) selects, or the longer one by Hebron, which Raumer and Guerin prefer {Judee, ii. p. 204), Guerin sup- The Philistines 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 ^ptj/xos from the other — that I feel we are shut up to taking ^ptj/Mos 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. AntL iv. 4, and remained desert, as witnessed by Strabo xvi, 2. 30, and by the Anonymous Geographical Fragment in Geogr. GrcEc. Afinores, ed. Hudson, iv. p. 39. This Fragment gives a list of towns from south to north, and says that after Rinocoloura, tj vid Fdfa KUTat, 7r6Xis ovaa Kal avT-q, eW r) lpT]fj.os Td^a, etra tj AffKaXov 7r6Xis. Diodorus Siculus (xix. 80) had also spoken of an Old Gaza (^ iraXaia, 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. Schiirer, Iltsi. 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. A>iU. iv. 4 ; cf. Josephus xv. AnU. vii. 3, where again it is ' maritime,' like Joppa) seems to make it probable that the Gaza which Gabinius rebuilt (id. v. 3) was on the coast. If this be so, then it lay off the road to Egypt, 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 'Eprj/xo^ might stick to it. Gaza is said to have been demolished by the Jewish revolt of 66 A.D. (ii. IVars, xvii. i), 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 Schiirer remarks, we have coins of the years immediately following, which testify to the city's continued prosperity (cf. De Saulcy, A'ztm. 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 time, 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 tifteen wells. In 363 A.D. the Gazans 1 88 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land j 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 I 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 I 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 Onomasticpn is too vague to be taken into account. 1 Of. Mapav add of I Cor. xvi. 22. 2 p.E.F.Q., 1882. ' I'^useb. H.E. and Sozomtn fassim. * P. 180 f. " For details see Stark, pp. 631-645. • See p. 182 n. 3. The Philistines and their Cities 189 station of traffic. Even with the Crusaders her miUtary 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- •' •' ^ Askalon. theatre in the low bank of the coast, and filled by Crusading ruins.^ Since the fortifications, as at Csesarca, are bound together by pillars of Herod's time, it is certain that the Askalon, which Herod embellished,'^ stood here ^ Josephus xiii. Antt. xiii. 3 ; xv. 4 ; i. Wars, iv. 2 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 14; Ptol., Geogr. v. 16. '^ Acta Conciliorum. ^ This proves that Pliny was wrong in putting Anthedon inland from Gaza, and Ptolemy right in calling it a coast town. For an account of Gatt'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, Gatt said to his informant : ' Whence 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 young 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 ff. * i. Wars xxi. 11. 190 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land 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. \^^y ^o south-west 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 Bishop 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 Ascalons from which Pusey drew the conclusion that the Philistine city lay inland (P.E.F.Q., 1874). These data are important, but cannot counterbalance 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 inhabitants 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. Guerin, /ude'e ii. 134.) The harbour town may have been definitely separated from the town behind. Conder's suggestion that a Khurbet Askalon in the Shephelah may be the Askalon of the Acts of the Council of Constantinople, has nothing to support it but the name {P.E.F. Mem.). Guerin'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 the south bears the name among others of the Nahr 'Askulan. - Le Strange, Palestine tinder the Moslems, 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 III. 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 ...-„-, 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. PublisJi 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 il.'s time, before the Philistines came : taken by Ramses II. from the Hittites, of. Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr. altaegyptischcr Denkmaler ii. 2 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 shakal, to weigh, or to pay. Hence shekel or shekel. - For Herod's time, cf. Josephus iii. Wars ii. i, etc. ; Under the Moslems, Le Strange, op. cit. ^ Cf. Conquests of Sargon and Settnacherib : Records of the Past. * I Mace. X. 86 ; xi. 60. ' P.E.F.Q., 1888, 22-23, describes two statues found at Askalon. Reinach {Revue des Etudes /uives, 1888) ascribes them to the first century B.C. They are Victories. « i Sam. iv. ; 2 Chron. xxvi. 8. 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 possession 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 hiils 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 1 Isa. XX. - I Rec. of Past. v. * Herod, ii. 157. ■* i Mace. v. 6S ; x. 83, 84. * 2 Kings i. 2. ® Amos i. 8. ^ i Mace. x. 89. * That is, God buildeth, Josh. xv. 11. 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.2 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 Gath, ,. A 1 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. i8. 2, Philo in his account of his embassy to Caligula, ^ Amos i, 6-8 ; Jer, xlvii. ; Zepli, ii. 2-7 ; Zech. ix. 5-7. *■ Micah i, 10 : Tell it not in Gath is hardly an exception, for the expres- sion is proverbial. The Philistines and their Cities 195 for instance, that of the Onomasticon, 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.2 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 inlmid, 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 ' 07tomastico7i, art. T^Q, 'and it is even now a village as you go from Eleutheropolis (Beit-Jibrin) to Diospolis (Lydda), about the fifth milestone from Eleutheropolis.' Robinson, Conder, Gu^rin, all make much of this valueless tradition. - Will, of Tyre, xv. 24; Fel. Fab. ii. 425. ' i Snm. v. 8. ■* Gath was taken under Samuel (i Sam. vli. 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 (rightly or wrongly) the parallel text, 1 Sam. vii. 14: Metheg Ha Ammah, bridle of the mother-city, as if it were Gath Ha Ammah, 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 Relioboam may, if Gath be the true reading (Josephus viii. Antt. x. I substitutes Ipa or Ipan), mean, from the other towns mentioned, another Gath, near Beit-Jibrin. ^ 2 Kings xii./7. * Trelawney Saunders, Introduction to Survey, etc. ^ Gn^nn, Judee. ^ Robinson. 196 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land connection with Ziklag in the story of David and Achish,i and this is scarcely conclusive. On the other hand, Gath is mentioned between Askalon and Ekron,^ several times with Ekron, and especially in the pursuit of the Philistines from the Vale of Elah.^ In a raid of Uzziah, Gath is coupled with Jamnia and Ashdod.* None of this prevents us from fixing on a site much favoured by modern writers, Tell-es- Safiyeh, which commands the entrance to the Vale of Elah and looks across Philistia to the sea. Steep limestone scarps rise boldly from the plain to a broad plateau, still known by the natives as the Castle. During the Crusades, King Fulke fortified it, it was destroyed by Saladin, and is said to have been restored by Richard. They called it Blanchegarde, from its white frontlet. It is altogether too important a site to have been neglected by either Israel or the Philistines, and this lends the argument in its favour some weight. But it is not enough for proof Tell-es-Safiyeh may have been Libnah, the White,^ or the Mizpeh of the Shephelah.^ Gath has also been placed at Beit-Jibrin, the 'home of big men,' both because this might well have served as a by-name for the city of the giants,''' and is in the neighbourhood of Mareshah,^ and because Beit-Jibrin has not been identified with any other great town of antiquity. But Beit-Jibrin is too far south, and does not lie on the line of the rout of the Philistines after the battle of Shocoh.^ We must look farther north and towards Ekron. The first Book of Chronicles mentions a Gath convenient to Ajalon and the hills of Ephraim,^*^ but ^ I Sam. xxvii. 2-6. ^ i Sam. v. 8. ' Ibid. xvii. 52. * 2 Chron. xxvi. 6. ^ Josh. X. 29, 31 f.; 2 Kings viii. 22, etc. ^ Josh. xv. 38. ^ 2 Sam. xxi. 22. « Cf. Moresheth-gath, Mic. i. 14. * I Sam. xvii. 52. 10 i Chron. vii. 21 ; viii. 13. The Philistines and their Cities 197 this may be Gath-rimmon, which lay towards Joppa. The case is made more 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 enough, like their great namesake, they have all disappeared, and in that land of the vine almost no site called after the wine- press has held its name. This, then, — that Gath lay inland, on the borders of Israel, probably near to Ekron, and perhaps in the mouth of a pass leading up to Jerusalem, — is all we know of the town which was once so famous, and which wholly vanished 2500 years ago.^ Gath perished with its giant race. FURTHER NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF THE PHILISTINES. Since this chapter was in the printer's hands, I have seen the passages on the Philistines in W. Max Miiller's Asien tc. Europa nach den alt-dgyptischeti Denkm'dlern (Leipzig, 1893). His statements on pp. 361, 387 ff., amount to this. Among the pirates from Asia Minor whom Ramses III. («>. 1200) attacked were Pu-ra-sa-ti, 'from the midst of the sea,' Danona, Ta-k-ka-ra, etc., with European features and some of the costume of Asia Minor. They may have been Ancient-Lycian tribes from the east of the Aegean (p. 388) ; the theory is not impossible that they were pre-Hellenic inhabitants of the Greek Isles, perhaps the 'Erei/cpT/res of Od. xix. 176, thrown into movement by the Greek advance westward (Danona and Ta-k-ka-ra, perhaps La.va.oi 1 Cf. Gath-ha-hepher, the birthplace of Jonah, in Galilee, Gath-rimmon near Joppa: Gath-rimmon in Eastern Manasseh, Joshua xxi. 25. 2 For Gath, in the Egyptian records, see 2 R.P. v. 48, Nos. 63 and 70; ii. 64, 65. The Assyrian lists mention a G