IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER XV.
The Sea of Galilee
Going to the grave to weep —
Procession of mourners [Jer. ix. 17] — Village of Cana — Its
appearance — Women at the fountain — Scene of the miracle — The
earthen jars (John ii. i-ii] — Pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem —
Their encampment — Songs after sunset [Ps. cxxi., cxxii.] — The Horns
of Hattin — Battle-scene — Sermon on the Mount — Natural objects
around supplying the imagery — Traditional scene of miracle of feeding the
five thousand — Glimpses of the Sea of Galilee — Tiberias —
Observations on the sea and its shores — Sudden storms — Transparency
of its waters — Silence — Variety of opinions among travellers
respecting its beauty — Lake of Geneva — Different appearance in our
Lord's times — Holy memories, especially in the life of Christ [Isa. ix.
T, a] — The hot-baths— Their medicinal virtues— Ride along the
shores — Thunder-storm — Difficulties — Jordan rapids —
Cross the Jordan — Bedouin hospitality— The region beyond Jordan
— Visit to Tiberias— Its history-Jewish inhabitants — Schools
— A Sabbath on the Sea of Galilee — Midnight sky over the lake —
The moon rising on the heights of Gadara — Thoughts of Jesus,
WE have already mentioned that our tent was pitched at
Nazareth near to a burying-ground that was shaded by olive-trees. Early in the
morning, when we were making ready with some regret for our journey northward,
ws witnessed a procession of women, about thirty in number, coming forth from a
cemetery where they had been to weep at the grave of some recently departed
friend. They were still lamenting. It was not difficult to single out the chief
mourners by their look of deeper sorrow. Some beat upon their breasts. At times
the whole company lifted up their voices in a loud wail ; more frequently the
mourning took the form of a low and sadly modulated chant. The dress and
unveiled countenances made it evident that they were Christian women, but the
same practice prevails among the Mohammedan females ; and when they appear at
early dawn in their white robes and with their faces veiled, flitting silently
among the tombs, the effect is weird-like, and almost makes you wonder whether
they be not themselves the risen dead. It is very probable that there were some
hired mourners in that large company, and that the custom referred to by the
weeping prophet so many thousand years ago has never gone out - "Consider ye
and call for the mourning women that they may come, and send for cunning women
that they may come; and let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that
our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush with
waters."
Moving in a north-easterly direction, we came, in about two
hours, to Kefr-Kenha - that is, the village of Cana, the traditional scene of
our Lord's first miracle, the turning of water into wine at a marriage
festival; though Dr. Robinson has argued with no little force in favour of
Kana-jelil, a village which stands in a more northerly direction at about an
equal distance from Nazareth. There is something altogether natural in the fact
that the mother of our Lord should have friends and acquaintances in the
nearest village to her home in Nazareth, that she should be invited to a
marriage in one of its families, and that her wonderful Son, now rising into
observation, should be asked to grace by his presence an event so interesting
in their family history. The village stands on a little eminence, and has a
thick cactus hedge as its wall of defence; but every other shrub and plant was
forgotten by us in the abounding pomegranate-tree, which was at that time
beginning to open its gorgeous scarlet blossoms to the sun. The houses were
generally of a very rude description; but we could discover in some of them a
pillar or sculptured lintel, the fragment of earlier greatness, like a piece of
silk cloth sewn into a woollen garment We were conducted to a Greek church of a
very unpretentious description, which was said to cover the site of the house
where the marriage festival was celebrated, and where the hidden power of Jesus
first blazed into miracle; and, as if to render the tradition less credible by
the excess of detail, we were shown within the church six earthen jars of
enormous proportions, which, when filled, would have required two or three
strong men to carry each of them; and these, we were assured, were the pitchers
in which, when brimful, the water was turned into wine! Of course, this must be
taken as mere monkish invention; but on the supposition that this is the real
Cana of John's Gospel, then that one fountain of the village at which the
maidens were gossiping when we passed a little ago, must have been the very
fountain from which the servants drew the water which, when turned into wine,
enriched for many years to come the newly-wedded pair. There was a beautiful
significance and fitness in this "beginning of miracles" by Jesus, not only as
indicating how his presence and blessing transmute even the most common things
into a higher good, turning the water of earth into the wine of heaven, but as
giving a new and divine sanction to wedded love. What a protest, at the very
entrance on his public ministry, against that apostasy one of whose marks was
to be "forbidding to marry"! That which was first instituted by God in Eden
before man had fallen, was now reinstituted in Cana when God appeared
"manifested in the flesh."
Not long after we had left Kefr-Kenna, we
came upon a company of Armenian pilgrims who were on their way up to Jerusalem
to keep their holy week. They were scattered about in a large natural recess to
the right of our path, and their number was great, composed of men, women, and
children - probably not fewer than a hundred. They had already broken up their
encampment, and were busily engaged in preparing for the day's journey.
Prostrate camels were being loaded with tent materials; horses and donkeys with
lighter bundles; and over the whole many-coloured and motley multitude there
was a look of impatience to be gone. It was impossible not to be reminded of
the annual pilgrimages of the ancient Hebrews to Jerusalem to keep their solemn
feasts, many a band of whom, gathered from the surrounding Galilean hills and
valleys, must no doubt have travelled by this very path. And could we have
journeyed with these modern pilgrims for a few hours, we should have discovered
other points of resemblance to the old travellers of David and Solomon's times,
for they too are accustomed to relieve the monotony of their journey and to
encourage themselves in their progress by frequent music and sacred song. No
inconsiderable portion of modern Mohammedan literature, it is said, consists of
hymns prepared for the Moslem pilgrims that travel with their caravans in such
multitudes from Cairo or Damascus to Mecca. And the various sects of Oriental
Christians, such as the Copts, the Armenians, and the Greeks, have also their
religious odes with which they commemorate dangers past, and stimulate their
enthusiasm to meet the difficulties of the morrow. Particularly after sunset,
when the tents have been pitched, the fires kindled, and the evening meal
taken, the silence of the early night is broken by frequent songs, either sung
by a single voice, or in loud and prolonged chorus, which may be heard in the
villages for many miles around.
A few weeks of travelling in the East,
like our own, give a wonderful air of reality to many of the allusions in those
psalms which inspired pens prepared for the Hebrew pilgrims, and which for so
many ages awakened the echoes of old Palestine. They have, in every line, the
hue and complexion of Eastern scenery and adventure. The references to
sun-stroke and to the attacks of wild beasts and robbers, appear very natural
in a country where the head needs to be constantly protected from the rays of
an almost vertical sun, and where the leopard, the wild boar, and the Bedouin
are to this day the terror of the traveller. With our elaborately fenced and
carefully macadamised roads, we have much difficulty, when at home, in
appreciating the frequent allusions to the sliding of the foot in travel. But
when you have journeyed for a month in a land in which the only roads are
pathways made by beasts of burden, often leading over giddy heights, or along
the edge of rocky precipices, and in which a moment of giddiness, a sudden
start, a false step, a loose stone, or a place made slippery by recent rains
would endanger life, you then come to understand the fitness and beauty, at the
close of a day's adventure and peril, of those gratefully pious words of the
121st Psalm: "My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He
will not suffer thy foot to be moved : he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand."
In
another hour our notice was attracted by a double-crested hill on our left, in
which we recognized the " Horns of Hattin." Its height is not very great, and
it terminates in two peaks about sixty feet high, very like each other, and
with a grassy platform between. In our own country, we should have called it
"saddle-backed;" and it is very probable that it originally received its name
from this very resemblance, for the two peaks, with the intervening ridge, are
not unlike the two pointed horns of a camel's saddle. The place is memorable
from the fact that on the plain at its base, in 1187 A.D., the Crusaders
received from the army of the chivalrous Saladin that disastrous defeat which
drove them from the land and made the Saracens permanent masters of the
country. The little band of brave men who sought to rally their scattered
fragments on the plateau at the summit, only found a more honourable death. But
an infinitely more sacred interest gathers around those summits, if the
tradition be true that on or near that grassy platform was the spot on which
Christ called to him his twelve apostles, and on which he delivered his
immortal discourse recorded in Matt, v-vii, on which account it has received
the more hallowed name of the "Mount of the Beatitudes." It is curious to
observe how differently modern travellers of name and authority have dealt with
this tradition. Dr. Robinson argues against it with decision, as if he were
certain that this could not, at all events, be the place. The shrewd author of
"The Land and the Book" holds that there is no evidence whatever in favour of
the spot, and leaves the matter, at the least, an open question ; while the
present Dean of Westminster, who is usually slow enough to believe, decides
with unwonted firmness in favour of this very scene, and finds "the
conformation of the hill so beautifully in accordance with what we read in the
gospel narrative as almost to force the inference that, in this instance, the
eye of those who selected the spot was, for once, rightly guided."
We
diverged a considerable distance from our path, and rode to a point very near
the summit, and certainly our impressions, confirmed by views which we
afterwards obtained from the plain of Gennesareth, were that, in this instance,
local tradition, as well as the judgment of older travellers, had spoken truly.
It is quite certain, from the evangelical narrative, that this great sermon of
the Great Teacher was spoken on a mountain not far to the west of the Sea of
Galilee. It is further obvious that the place was one of easy access to the
multitudes that thronged to it, and that there must have been some verdant spot
on it, convenient for hearing, in the centre of which Jesus may be supposed to
have sat, surrounded by the inner circle of his apostolic band, and then by a
far-extending outer circle of inquirers who had come up in thousands from the
towns and villages on the northern and western shores of the lake. And it
seemed to us to be nearly as certain that, both in respect to the locality of
the mountain itself and to its configuration, it answers to all these
conditions. Is there any other place in the whole of that region which unites
in itself all these requisites? We delighted therefore to abandon ourselves to
the thought that, somewhere on the summit of this mountain which slopes down so
gently on its northern side to the spacious Gennesareth plain, Jesus spake that
exposition of moral duty which, in purity, spirituality, and humanity, had
never been approached by any of the ethical teachings that had preceded it -
which no moral teaching since has been able to supplement or improve - which,
though it did not amend the Decalogue yet "filled it up," ensouled it, and, as
it were, transfigured it, even as the body of Jesus was afterwards made
luminous and glorious on another mount, - "that heavenly summary of the life
and practice of Christianity which age after age has regarded as the most
sacred heritage which God has vouchsafed unto his Church."
We almost
persuaded ourselves that we could discover the influence of the objects around
us on more than one of the allusions in that divine discourse. The wild flowers
were so abundant and luxuriant as several times to entangle themselves in our
stirrups; so that when Jesus said to his hearers, "Consider the lilies how they
grow," he may have had many.of those very flowers springing up at his feet. We
remember that Kitto identifies the lily of Palestine in a beautiful scarlet
flower, its size about half that of the common tiger-lily of our own country,
whose blossoms are turban-like. It grows, he tells us, in the locality where
Christ delivered his discourse, and it blooms at the very season when the
sermon is supposed to have been delivered. This gives additional point to his
words that "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
We came upon thorn bushes whose leaves were literally hidden by the multitude
of sparrows that covered them ; and "one of them," said Jesus, "cannot fall to
the ground without your Father." And yonder, a day's journey towards the north,
was the city of Safed sitting on the crest of a mountain some thousands of feet
above those peaks of Hattin, supplying perhaps the outward picture and symbol
for the moral proverb hidden in his words : "A city that is set upon a hill
cannot be hid." One thing may be remarked in general, that our Lord's teachings
ever derived their outward shape and colouring from the natural objects by
which he was surrounded; so much so that one could almost guess from the
imagery of his lessons, and especially of his parables, in what part of the
land they were spoken. Down in Judea, it is the vineyard, the fig-tree, the
sheep-fold, the desert, that affords the drapery of his instructions. Up in
Galilee, it is the corn-field, or the fishermen's net, or the travelling
merchant, or the gorgeous flower.
But while we descended from this spot
with the strong impression that it was the true "Mount of the Beatitudes," we
had no patience with the ignorant and clumsy tradition which soon after pointed
out to us, on the road-side, a curiously-shaped circle of stones as the scene
of the great miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with the five loaves,
and which even singled out one flat stone as "the dining-table of Christ" The
scene of that magnificent miracle was somewhere on the other side of the
Galilean lake which we were now approaching, and there was nothing around that
fitted in to the picturesque narrative of the evangelist, of the multitudes
arranged in fifties upon the green grass.
We quickened our pace when, a
short time after, we began to obtain bright glimpses of the Sea of Galilee. But
we were tantalized for nearly an hour by zigzag paths, each of which we
imagined was sure to land us on its sunny shores. At length we were on level
ground; and riding past the city of Tiberias, in whose shivered walls we saw
traces of the terrible earthquake of 1837, we pitched our tent about a quarter
of a mile southward of the city, and so near to the lake that a little child
could easily have cast a stone from the door of our tent into its
waters.
This little inland sea, the Lake of Chinnereth of the Old
Testament, the Lake of Gennesareth - of Tiberias - of Galilee of the New
Testament, is sixteen miles in length, while its average breadth is estimated
at between six and seven miles. It is encircled by mountains on every side,
except near the entrance and outflow of the Jordan; and these rise in many
places more than a thousand feet, and in general not more than a hundred yards
from its margin. Various representations have been given of its shape, the
greater number of them as purely conjectural as those which imaginative
astronomers have given us of the constellations. "Cinneroth," says the ever
witty Fuller, "is so named from Kinner, a harp in Hebrew which it is said to
resemble. Sure the high winds sometimes make but very bad music (to the ears of
mariners) when playing thereupon."But his wisdom, as usual, comes limping very
rapidly in the footsteps of his wit, when he adds soon after -"Indeed, an
active fancy in point of resemblance will fashion anything to anything." Those
come much nearer the truth who find in the lake some resemblance to a pear laid
horizontally on a table, for it is broadest at its northern extremity and it
narrows and forms a kind of segment where the Jordan issues out of it. Hemmed
in by lofty hills, and six hundred and fifty-three feet below the level of the
Mediterranean, the climate upon its shores, unlike that of the hill-country of
Nazareth which we had left only six hours before, is nearly tropical and in
summer many of the plants and flowers of India may be gathered on its banks.
Indigo is cultivated in patches and the stately palm tree here waves its head,
as we had seen down m the sultry plains of Jericho. It abounds in fish, many of
them undisturbed by boat, or hook, or net, growing in quiet nooks to a great
size. Some of them are queer-looking creatures, but others, resembling our own
bream and perch are excellent food and indeed these formed our chief diet
during the three days that we dwelt upon its shores. They are caught by
hand-nets, which are managed by men who let them down from the rocks, or stalk
about, more than half naked, in shallower places, like herons; and more
frequently, as we afterwards found, by pieces of bread mixed with poison cast
into the sea which the fish swallowing greedily, soon after come up to the
surface dead - a revolting practice which, had we been aware of sooner, would
certainly have spoiled our meals. It cannot be any longer said that there is
only one crazy boat upon the whole lake, for we noticed four sailing on it at
one time. But these are only used for transport from one side of the lake to
the other; and the practice of launching out into the deep and fishing all the
night with large nets, which was common in the days of our Lord and his
apostles, is now wholly unknown. We observed various characteristics of the
lake, some of which afforded interesting illustrations of passages in the
gospel history. Generally, its waters became quite deep only a few steps from
the shore; so that it was an admirable expedient which our Lord more than once
adopted, of preaching to the people from a little ship which could be brought
quite near to the beach, and yet continued to float in such deep water as
effectually to protect him from pressure and interruption. And though we did
not witness any storms on the lake, yet we could see in the structure of the
entire region - in the numerous wadies that opened on the lake on our own side
- in the ravines which divided the mountain-wall over yonder in the country of
the Gadarenes, as well as in the deep gorge through which the Jordan poured its
waters into it - the very machinery by which sudden gusts are produced in our
own mountain tarns and lakes. These "coming down" upon the lake, according to
Luke's accurately graphic description, would stir it into sudden tempest, and
make it difficult for many a little ship to reach the land.
We were
struck, too, with the singular transparency of the waters. When riding along on
its margin some hundred feet above its surface, and looking sheer down into its
depths of many fathoms, we could distinctly see the shells and pebbles at its
bottom; and there is scarcely extravagance in the statement of one traveller,
that a boat seen by him on its calm bosom really seemed as if it were suspended
in the air. But nothing so impressed us as the silence and desolation of its
shores. There was an almost utter absence of activity and life. With the
exception of Tiberias - which seems waiting for a second earthquake to engulf
it - and of the little insignificant village of Magdala, there is not a single
town or hamlet upon its shores in all that circuit of more than forty miles.
Not only do the open tombs of the dead yawn upon you from the sides of the
mountains behind, but wherever you go you are treading upon the graves of
buried villages and cities.
We have been interested in noticing the
strange diversity of opinion among travellers respecting the appearance of this
memorable lake. Some have refused it a single element of beauty. Others, like
Dr. Clarke, have spoken of its uncommon grandeur; have even described it as
rivalling some of the finest lakes in Europe, and as much resembling in certain
points the Lake of Geneva. Much allowance must no doubt be made for the
different seasons and states of the weather in which it has been looked upon;
but in any circumstances this last is an exaggerated statement. We are at this
moment writing with a large portion of the Lake of Geneva spread out before us.
We are looking forth upon the glorious Savoy Alps that girdle it on one side,
whose many peaks, tipped with snow or clothed with dark pines, rise nine
thousand feet into the bright sky, and retire behind each other as forming a
kind of inner sanctuary,
"And Jura answers through her misty shroud
Back
to the joyous Alps which call to her aloud."
We are gazing down upon
those bright villages which project into the Leman Lake upon every little
promontory, or nestle among their vines in every quiet bay, and we ask, What is
there in all this to remind us of Gennesareth? Could we imagine one of the
lonely lakes of Cumberland, such as Coniston, to be many times enlarged, we
should find a nearer resemblance to the Sea of Galilee. We think of it now, so
lone, and bright, and calm, and deep, circled by those walls of mountain and
mirroring that azure sky, and we claim for it a certain beauty of its own, "an
immaculate charm which cannot be defaced." And when we endeavour to reproduce
its appearance in other days, its waters busy with the little ships of
transport and vocal with the fisherman's song - its shores lined with at least
nine large cities, and the sides of the neighbouring mountains verdant with
corn-fields and gardens, or dotted with villages - the picturesque palm
mingling with the fragrant walnut and with other trees of a more temperate
clime, flowers and blossoming shrubs of every hue fringing its shores and
making an eternal summer, we may imagine how different was the scene on which
our Lord and his apostles gazed. There are statements by Josephus which warrant
every feature in this fancy picture; and nothing more impressed us as
indicating the wealth and prosperity that had once marked this whole region
than the long line of colonnades which we were able to trace for a mile along ,
the shore down from Tiberias, indicating either the large extent and the
earlier magnificence of that city itself, or the existence there of another
city of great dimensions and splendour.
Still, it is the holy memories
which cluster around this little inland sea that give to it its chief
attractions, and render it by far the most interesting sheet of water in the
world. And as we took our seat upon its sandy beach with its myriads of
beautiful tiny shells, we gave ourselves up for a time to those hallowed
associations. As Nazareth had been the home of our Lord's private life, so had
Capernaum, on the northern shore of this lake, been "the magazine of his
miracles," the home of his riper manhood, and the centre of his public
ministry. He had chosen the greater number of his apostles from among its
humble fishermen, as they mended their nets or plied their toilsome work in its
quiet bays. When walking upon its beach or preaching from boats near its
shores, he had taught some of his grandest lessons and spoken many of his
greatest parables. Up in recesses and desert places in its neighbouring
mountains, he had many a time retired to pray. Borne in the boats of friendly
fishermen, its bosom had often been a ready pathway by which he passed on his
errands of divine love from one city or village on its shores to another. When
he slept his sleep of innocence, pillowed in a corner of the storm-beaten ship,
he had risen at the cry of his terrified disciples, and rebuked thy winds and
waves, O Sea! and immediately thou didst own the presence of thy Lord and
become a calm. Yea, he had walked by moonlight on thy foam-crested waves, as on
a solid pavement, and piloted the creaking ship that bore in it his infant
Church, to a tranquil shore. And in the brief interval after his resurrection,
he returned once more to thy sandy beach, and in the early morning light,
blessed his disciples with his last miracle in the great draught of fishes. In
Isaiah's grand prophetic words, " In the land of Zebulon and the land of
Naphtali, by the way of the sea, the people that walked in darkness saw a great
light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them did the
light shine."
We had time before sunset to pay a visit to the hot
baths, about three-quarters of a mile further down from Tiberias on the margin
of the lake. They are of extraordinary antiquity, being frequently noticed by
Josephus, and mentioned by Pliny as among the natural wonders of the world.
There are even allusions in the Old Testament Scriptures which indicate their
existence so far back as the days of Moses and Joshua. At a little distance
from the lake there are four thermal springs, whose waters are gathered into
two vast reservoirs or tanks, under a dome-shaped roof which must originally
have made fair pretences to elegance and ornament, but which, like everything
else in this land, receives no repairs, and is slowly crumbling to ruin. The
water coming from those volcanic fountains is so hot that, after remaining for
some hours in the capacious tanks, it scalds the hand that is put into it, and
it is only by very slow degrees that the bather can venture into its almost
boiling heat. The whole atmosphere of the apartment has a most "villanous"
smell of sulphur. Its medicinal virtues are said to be wonderfully efficacious
in cases of rheumatism and gout; and though we were happily free from those
ailments, we yielded to the temptation of novelty, if not of need and went down
into the smoking caldron. We found the tank, which was full to the brim, to be
nearly six feet in depth. It was so long and broad that there was no
inconvenience in swimming in it. We came out consciously refreshed. What a
luxury this place must have afforded to the Romans when Herod Antipas held
court in the neighbouring Tiberias, mimicking the splendour of his imperial
patron at Rome! It is to this day frequented in large numbers by sickly Jews
and indolent Arabs. What hosts of invalids and fashionable loungers would
gather to such a place, were it in Germany or England !
The next day was
almost entirely spent by us in a ride along the shores of the lake, and along
the banks of the Jordan after its outflow, our wish being to spend a few hours
on the Perean side of the river. We found the Oleander and the Hollyhock in
rich luxuriance, both on the margin of the lake and of the stream. But in many
places, especially on the banks of the river, we had to pilot our way among
reeds twelve feet high, the haunt to this day of the wild boar and the panther.
We confess to having listened nervously for the sudden crash among the reeds of
some of those wild creatures aroused by us from their lair, and we had a sense
of relief and gratitude when we were out once more upon the open ground. But
our progress was greatly impeded by a succession of thunder-showers, which
rapidly filled the clayey channels that contained the overflow of the river,
and into which when our horses descended, sinking and floundering in the mire,
it became rather doubtful whether they should ever come up with us again. We
passed a number of little villages, whose inhabitants, evidently unaccustomed
to the sight of strangers, stared upon us with vacant wonder; and we noticed
that every man we met was armed to the teeth, which indicated how unsafe and
unsettled the country becomes as we approach the region in which there is no
law but the old law of robbers.
The Jordan stream reminded us in many
places of a Lowland river in one of the pastoral districts of Scotland. The
margin was treeless; tall, rank, natural grass grew down to its very banks, and
dipped into its stream; and large stones and rocks rose in many places above
its surface. Its windings in this part were not so strangely tortuous as we
knew them to be at so many other points between the Galilean Lake and the Dead
Sea; but whenever its current was narrowed, it bounded on with the speed of a
race-horse, and here and there the raging rapids tossed the river from brink to
brink into angry foam. It must have been at some more favourable season of the
year than this that Lieutenant Lynch and his party found their way in a boat on
such a river to the Lake Asphaltites. The strongest craft must have been
shivered into a hundred pieces amid such rapids as these, and the most skilful
oarsmen must have been baffled and impaled upon those jagged crags. We passed
more than one ruined bridge, of which nothing remained but some old crumbling
pillars. But at length, when we had begun to fear that our map had misled us,
we came in sight of a large stone-bridge of considerable strength, consisting
of one large and two smaller arches.. It was without ledges of any kind, and
terrific rapids dashed beneath it. We concluded that it was the bridge by which
travellers from Egypt and the west took the road to Damascus, through the
region of Decapolis and the land of Gilead; and we were confirmed in this
judgment by finding an ancient khan at its western side, which had evidently
long stood there for the accommodation of travellers.
We had,
therefore, come upon one of the most important gateways to the distant east.
From some signs, we were led to suspect that a band of Bedouins were encamped
near the eastern extremity of the bridge; and as it was impossible to guess
whether their reception of us would be friendly or the reverse, there were some
whispers that we were passing into a snare. We resolved that we would trust
ourselves to the old law of Bedouin hospitality, and the moment we were across
the bridge enter their tent and approach them as friends. This was done :
coffee was produced, and we were on the best of terms. It was like smoking the
pipe of peace among the Red Indians of the Far West. We cantered several miles
into the country in the direction of wooded Bashan, and of balmy Gilead, the
mountain home of Elijah's childhood. It was a noble pasture-land, rank with
vegetation, on which the oxen of Bashan might have ranged and rioted at will.
We were satisfied with having thus far met the Bedouin on his own soil, and at
least touched " the region that is beyond Jordan."
We got back to our
tents in time to admit of a short visit to Tiberias. Its walls, though rent in
many places by the earthquake from top to bottom, had so grand and imposing a
look as to give us the impression that they must inclose a city of some
importance. But the casket was much better than that which it inclosed. A large
portion of the area within was unoccupied. The people have gathered into the
centre from the shattered walls, as if they feared that another earthquake
would raze them from the foundations and bury them in the ruins. Out of a
population of 2000 there are said to be a few Christian families; there are 800
Jews, and the rest are Mohammedans. The whole place is filthy, the population
squalid and sickly, especially the Jewish portion of it, and there are no
streets worthy of the name; for its houses, which are generally mud-hovels, are
placed without order, and look as if they had one day been rained from the
clouds. Its one sleepy bazaar seemed nearly empty alike of articles and of
purchasers.
Tiberias does not date much further back than the days of
our Lord and his apostles, though there are good reasons for believing that it
covers the site of a much older and larger city. It was built by that Herod
Antipas, who murdered John the Baptist, in honour of his patron, the Emperor
Tiberius; and during the period of Roman supremacy it became the metropolis of
Galilee. The peculiar and outstanding feature in its history is, that while
from the beginning it was the centre of Roman authority and the scene of
terrible severity and oppression to the Jewish people, - so much so that on one
occasion, after an unsuccessful naval engagement on the neighbouring lake, six
thousand Jews were slain in its spacious amphitheatre by command of the Emperor
Vespasian, - it ultimately became the favourite resort and refuge of the
scattered Jews not long after the destruction of Jerusalem. For three centuries
the Sanhedrim held its assemblies within its walls; it contained schools and a
university for the higher education of Jewish youths; and learned rabbins
pursued their studies in it, comparatively free from molestation. The Rabbi
Jonathan wrote here the Jerusalem Talmud, and it became the burying-place of
the truly great and learned Maimonides. It is to this day one of the four holy
cities of the Jews, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed, in which prayers
are offered up for the world twice every day, without which, it is believed, it
would return to its primeval chaos. Jews gather to it especially from Spain and
Barbary, from Poland and Russia, in order to be buried within its hallowed
precincts; for next to the valley of Jehoshaphat and the sides of Olivet, it is
the highest privilege for a Jew to have a grave here. No wonder, when it is one
of their most cherished expectations that the Messiah, when he comes, shall
emerge from the waters of the Sea of Galilee, and first reveal himself in
Tiberias; -after which he shall establish his world empire up in the
mountain-city of Safed. There are still the fossilized fragments of Jewish
schools in Tiberias, in which talmudical studies are pursued with a drowsy and
mechanical monotony.
The morrow brought with it another of our quiet,
blessed Palestine Sabbaths. We had divine service in our largest tent Those
chapters in the gospel histories were read which narrate the principal events
in our Lord's ministry on the lake, especially the sixth and the twenty-first
chapters of John. There was a mingled solemnity and joy in our hearts, such as
we have sometimes known on high sacramental Sabbaths at home; even our Arab
muleteers and servants, who gathered around the door of our tents as onlookers,
appeared to be impressed. Afterwards we sat for hours upon the silent shore,
and while its waters gently rippled up to our feet, we read aloud with our
friend many of those great parables which were spoken by Jesus on those very
scenes, and whose immortal echoes are sounding in men's hearts at this hour in
every part of the world. Far in the evening we looked forth from our tent The
placid lake seemed to be in living communion with the spangled sky above it.
"All heaven and earth were still: from the high host
Of stars to the
lulled lake and mountain coast.
All heaven and earth were still - though
not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most"
The
moon was just appearing above those heights of Gadara across the lake. We
thought how those silvery stars had often lighted the steps of Jesus, as he
went up alone into one of those mountain recesses to pray. Did he then plead
for his Church and for us ?......On the following day we were to wander among
the ruins of doomed cities on the north of the lake, and then to climb the long
and steep ascent to Safed, sitting on its " earth-o'ergazing" mountain so far
above us.
Go To Chapter Sixteen
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