IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER XVl.
Ride
through Tiberias
Magdala — Plain of Gennesareth — Khan
Minyek: Bethsaida ? — The Shore-walk of Jesus [Matt. iv. 21 ; John xxi. 9]
— Tanks — Aqueducts— Tell-Hum: Capernaum? — Description
— Discussions — "The White Synagogue" — Sculptures —
Structure of the Ancient Synagogue — Gergesa — Whited
sepulchres— Chorazin— Parable of the Sower illustrated—
Safed— The Old Citadel— Noble panorama — Earthquake tragedies
— Human selfishness — Christian sympathy — Jewish scribes and
schoolmasters — Meiron — Tombs of the Prophets — Jewish carnival
— Kadesh-Naphtali— City of Refuge— Beautiful solitude—
Plain of Huleh [Gen. xiv. 15] — "Waters of Merom"— Pharaoh's lean
kine — Hunin : Hazor ? — Tributaries of the Jordan — Site of Dan
— Kingdom of Bashan — Oaks of Baskan [Isa. it 13] — Ancestral
trees — Banias or Cesarea Philippi — Herman — Arab poets —
Modern village — Castle of Banias— Notices in Old Testament —
Greek and Roman period — Pan and the Nymphs — Banias fountain of the
Jordan — Light on the Psalms [Ps. xlii.] — "Thou art Peter" [Matt.
XVL 18] — Transfiguration scene [Matt. xvii. 2 ; Mark ix 2] — The
Lebanon.
WE rode through Tiberias on our way northward along the
western shores of the Lake of Galilee. We had no temptation to linger in it ;
for it so abounds in vermin that the Arabs have a saying that "the king of the
fleas holds his court in Tiberias." Yet those who have ventured to tarry in it
record interesting traces of art and earlier magnificence - such as a large
basin of polished granite from the ancient quarries of Upper Egypt, six feet
four inches in diameter ; and a hunting-scene skilfully carved on the surface
of a hard black lintel of basalt. When we came out again upon the shore, we
found a half-naked fellow who had waded some distance into the lake, engaged in
the revolting practice of catching fish by casting small pieces of poisoned
bread into the water. We soon ascended a great way above the shore, and our
path lay along a narrow ridge of rock, from which it almost made us giddy to
look into the deep, transparent lake, whose white pebbly bottom we could
distinctly see many a fathom down beneath the surface of the waters.
In
an hour and a half we reached Magdala - this and Tiberias being the only
inhabited places along the whole extent of the northern and western shores of
the Sea of Galilee. It is now a poor little village consisting of about twenty
wretched hovels, and protected from behind by a background of rocks. As we
passed, the people were busily employed in erecting booths on the flat roofs of
their houses, composed of green branches of trees wattled together, and rising
nearly as high above the houses as the houses did above the ground. We began to
think of the ancient feast of tabernacles, and to wonder whether the practice
had any traditional connection with it But our pleasant illusion was dissipated
in the very act of forming, by the matter-of-fact information that the people
had recourse to this expedient in order to place themselves beyond the reach of
the scorpions and other vermin which swarm in their houses during the summer
months. But this now shrunken village has a memory connected with it that will
not die. It was the home of that Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene, on whom
our Lord performed one of his most benignant miracles, which she returned by a
life of most devoted ministrations. The first of all the disciples at the
sepulchre, the first to see her Lord after his resurrection, the first to hear
him speak, the first to publish the fact of his resurrection, she has been
happily styled "the apostle of the apostles." And so this place, carrying with
it this sacred remembrance, has lent its name to many celebrated structures in
the world - such as Magdalen College, Oxford, the Madeleine at Paris, and many
others.
Soon after leaving Magdala, we were skirting along the extremity
of the plain of Gennesareth, as it touches upon the limpid waters of the lake.
It stretches a good many miles inland; and it seemed to be fully a mile broad.
It is the richest and loveliest of all the plains that descend from the
mountains upon this sacred sea. Further inland we could see it patched .with
corn fields; and on the part where we crossed it, it was covered with many
varieties of fragrant and flowering shrubs, among which the oleander abounded,
spreading over the white sand, and even dipping at times into the tiny rippling
waves. We could quite believe that there was no exaggeration in the description
by Josephus of its teeming fertility and Eden-like beauty, when it enjoyed the
benefit of industrious culture and universal irrigation, and the delicious
climate gave it an almost unbroken summer. We had not gone far beyond the
Gennesareth plain, when we came upon the ruins of Khan Minyeh, which some
travellers have, on very insufficient grounds, affirmed to mark the site of
Capernaum, but which Van de Velde affirms with unwonted confidence to be
Bethsaida of Galilee; and Captain Wilson, admitting that there must have been
another Bethsaida on the eastern side of the Jordan, with all the caution of a
scientific traveller, and after a patient research which no other traveller has
approached, accords in this opinion. Assuming this to be the fact, we recollect
to have been much struck with the correspondence between the natural objects
around and the evangelical narratives. We read in the Gospels that it was
somewhere on the shore in the immediate neighbourhood of Bethsaida, that our
Lord "called" Andrew and Peter while they were fishing; and we are also led to
believe that it was at a short distance along the shore in the direction of
Capernaum, that he invited into the ranks of his disciples James and John, the
two sons of Zebedee, while they were mending their nets, for they too were
fishermen. Now, we noticed a little way down from these ruins an exquisitely
beautiful bay, white with pearly sand, which was admirably fitted for the
protection of boats and the spreading of nets, and which, sheltered on either
side by rising ground, must have offered a most welcome refuge to boats in a
storm. We also learned that fish abound here more than in any other part of the
lake, tempting the fishermen all the way from Tiberias to come to it and ply
their rude toils; and we have seen it mentioned by a modern writer, that, even
at this day, one species of fish was found so packed together at this place,
that a shot from a revolver, in one instance, killed three of them. It is also
noticeable that, on other parts of the shore generally, large volcanic stones
abound, rendering walking difficult, if not impossible, but in this
neighbourhood there are no such impediments; and the conjecture has therefore
been reverently thrown out that this may have been the favourite shore-walk of
the Saviour, and that in some of those sheltered, sandy nooks running up into
the land, there may probably have been the spot where Jesus had the fire
kindled and "the fish laid thereon and bread," to refresh his famished
disciples after their long night of "bootless, darkling " toil on the
lake.
Again and again, as we wended our way eastward not far from the
shore, we came upon objects which told their own story of an earlier industry -
broken cisterns and tanks of great dimensions, sometimes containing water with
little fishes swimming in them, and at other times floating beautiful aquatic
plants or nearly filled with tall grass; and fragments of strong aqueducts
which had once carried vigorous streams to irrigate the Gennesareth plain, but
which now, after flowing a little way, poured out their strength into the air -
emblem of the land with its enormous wasted power.
At length, when we
were about two miles from the influx of the Jordan into the lake, we found
ourselves in the midst of ruins, whose position, appearance, and great extent
at once assured us were of no common interest. We were standing at Tell-Hum,
which discussion and examination seem more and more certainly to identify as
the ancient Capernaum. It is an entire ruin - the woe which Christ pronounced
on it having fallen on it to the uttermost; for there is not a single complete
habitation or human inhabitant within the boundaries of the old "toll city,"
once so busy with trade and vocal with the hum of multitudes. And this utter
destruction is all the more remarkable, because its houses appear to have been
generally built of black basalt - a kind of stone which resists the influence
of climate, and remains unchanged for thousands of years. The thistles, thorns,
and briers which grew among the more than half-buried ruins entangled us at
every moment, and used very unpleasant liberties with our clothes. But in the
midst of all these, and laid in every conceivable position, we could trace
chiselled columns, finely-carved entablatures, and sculptured capitals. "A few
of these, if carried home," said Dr. Deutsch, "would make the fortune of any
museum in England." At times the whole spectacle reminded us of a stormy sea
that had been instantaneously frozen. Again, it appeared like some vast
cemetery or churchyard, whose tombstones and monuments had all been upheaved
and shattered by an earthquake, and whose yawning graves stood half-open; and
we seemed to hear that solemn, omnipotent voice breaking, the doleful silence,
"Woe unto thee, Capernaum !" It stands on an eminence that projects into the
sea and gradually slopes down to its waters; and it was impossible to have
selected a more convenient place as the centre of our Lord's ministry in that
portion of the land, because, by a boat shooting out from it, he could easily
have been carried in a little time to any spot either on the Galilean or on the
Perean side of the lake.
But what warrant have we to believe that this
Tell-Hum is indeed the half-buried Capernaum of our Lord's times, for the fact
has been keenly disputed by men of acknowledged authority in such matters. We
have failed to perceive the force of some of the arguments in favour of this
opinion that have been advanced by Captain Wilson and others; but there are
three which appear to us to have much weight in them, and to turn the balance
of probabilities in favour of this spot. No experienced traveller will make
light of the evidence derived from the name which a place has long received
from the natives dwelling in its vicinity. But Capher-nahum (Capernaum) is in
fact two words signifying the village of Nahum. Nothing is more common in the
East (and in fact it is not uncommon anywhere) than for men to drop one of the
syllables of a word that is frequently in their mouths. We had evidence of this
on the morning of that very day in the crowd of importunate beggars, who had
abbreviated their everlasting cry of "backsheesh " into "sheesh." Is the
conjecture then unlikely that "Capher-nahum" may gradually have undergone this
shortening process into Capher-Hum ? In which case it was almost a matter of
necessity that, when the town ceased to be inhabited and became a heap of
ruins, Capher should be changed into Tell, which signifies a mound or heap, and
that Capher-Hum should thus become Tell-Hum. It would be easy to produce fifty
changes far more improbable in the popular nomenclature of places in our own
country. Then the distance of Capernaum from the Jordan, as stated by Josephus,
corresponds exactly with that of Tell-Hum - which is not the case with Khan
Minyeh, or any other ruin on which the conjectures of some have fixed as the
true lost city; while the topographical indications given in the inspired
histories regarding Capernaum are not at variance with anything in the position
and aspect of this ruin. And there is no little force in the question, which
was repeatedly asked by us on the spot, If this be not Capernaum, what is it ?
Is there any other city known to have stood on the northern margin of this lake
which could with equal probability be identified with ruins so extensive and
ancient?
Unquestionably the most important discovery made among these
ruins by Captain Wilson and his associates, was the "White Synagogue "
mentioned by Josephus, which may have been repaired and even in some measure
rebuilt, but which was probably the very synagogue in which our Lord was
accustomed to worship when Capernaum was his home, and in which he preached at
least one memorable discourse. Unlike the private houses, it was built of white
limestone obtained from a mountain not far off, of so fine a grain and
admitting of such delicate carving with the sculptor's chisel, that, to an
unscientific eye, it is not easy to distinguish it from marble. We can imagine
the thrill of delight with which this distinguished savan, in conducting his
excavations around the site of the synagogue, turned up a slab of large
dimensions which had distinctly sculptured on it the pot of manna; especially
when he thought how the eye of the Great Teacher must often have rested on this
very object, and how it may have suggested that allusion in the sermon which he
delivered within the precincts of the synagogue - "Our fathers did eat manna in
the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. But my
Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world."
One solid gain
to sacred archaeology was made by Captain Wilson, in his verifying the usual
style and structure of the ancient synagogues; for they appear to have been
constructed according to a common plan, and this Capernaum synagogue gives us a
distinct and definite conception of them all. We were able in part to confirm
the accuracy of his description by personal observation, especially by
comparison with another ruin, a large portion of whose walls was yet standing.
Its form is rectangular, its largest dimensions being from north to south. Its
interior is divided into four aisles by four rows of columns, the
inter-columnar spaces not being very wide; and the entrance is by three doors
opening from the south. Imagine the form of Jesus moving in the midst of those
tall columns, or the president of the synagogue looking down from his place
into that countenance which, without exaggeration or metaphor, might have been
described as "the human face divine." Modern discovery has thus dispelled the
very common illusion that the ancient synagogue was destitute of all
architectural ornament; and it may be held as having proved that the Jews of
our Lord's times did not interpret the second commandment with such an excess
of literality as to hold themselves forbidden to make any representation of
objects by sculpture, as many of the more fanatical followers of Mohammed
understand the precept at the present day. On the Capernaum synagogue there was
also found sculptured what seemed a reed in high relief, which was regarded as
meant to represent Aaron's rod that budded; while on the walls and columns of
other synagogues there were discovered, elegantly carved, the seven-branched
candlestick, bunches of grapes, festoons of vine leaves, and even the paschal
lamb. Standing on an elevated point among the ruins, and looking through a
powerful glass along the eastern side of the lake, it was not difficult, with
the help of our dragoman Nejim, who had explored the whole region with Wilson,
to identify the district of Gadara, and even the ruins of Gergesa, the
village-capital of the district, which the evangelists mention as the scene of
the destruction of the herd of swine. We believe the place was first certainly
verified through its name by our acute namesake at Beyrout. And it is
remarkable that, while the ground is usually level for some distance from the
lake, there is one point in the vicinity of Gergesa where the higher ground
protrudes with a rapid slope into the waters, so that it seems certain that
this was the steep place down which the maddened brutes ran so violently, and
perished in the sea. Thus, careful and patient research is gradually fixing the
spots of Biblical interest, and attesting the accuracy of the sacred writers.
It has been remarked that Um Keiss, which in a modern dictionary of the Bible
has been named as the scene of this extraordinary incident, would have required
the swine to have taken a hard gallop of three miles before tumbling into the
lake!
The same successful explorer discovered two remarkable tombs at
the northern extremity of Tell-Hum, which still bear the distinct marks of
having been "whited sepulchres." A valley passes down to the lake near
Capernaum; and entering this by what seem the outlines of an ancient street,
and moving northward, you come in an hour - that is, at two and a half miles
distant - upon another remarkable heap of ruins, to which the natives give the
name of Keraseh. It is the same place which was mentioned by Pococke long ago
as Gerasi, and in later times by Richardson under the name of Chorazij and
guided by the name, and also by the suitableness of the position, it seems
natural to conclude that this is Chorazin, the last in the triplet of
woe-stricken cities. Many of its houses, built of the almost indestructible
basalt, were found to be so complete when excavated, as to afford a very clear
conception of the plan and style of private houses at the time when
Christianity dawned upon Palestine. They were generally square, and varied
considerably in size; the largest being thirty feet. Two columns, passing down
the centre, supported the roof - which was flat, as in modern houses. The
doorway opened in the centre, and there were several windows about a foot in
length and half a foot in width. The larger houses were divided into four
chambers. Is it unlikely that it was some such house as one of these that
formed for a time the earthly dwelling-place of the Saviour of the
world?
We were not unwilling, after toiling and stumbling all the
morning among ruins, and tearing our way through the midst of thorns and
briers, to get out once more into the open country, and to pursue our
uninterrupted course to Safed, which was shining on its proud eminence far
above us, without a single cloud upon its head. We had not ridden far when we
came upon a scene which greatly interested us. We were passing through a
newly-ploughed field, and "a sower had come forth to sow." Every part of the
picture in the parable of the Sower, which our Lord delivered to his disciples
down on the margin of the neighbouring lake, was enacted and visible before us.
There was the beaten path on which some particles of seed had fallen, which
were speedily picked up by multitudes of wild birds. There was the rocky ground
with its thin layer of earth upon it. And here and there were dwarfish
thorn-bushes which the husbandman had not grubbed up, and which, growing with
the growth of the corn-stalks among them, would ultimately choke and destroy
them. And then there were large patches of deep, loamy soil which might be
expected to yield a various abundance. Our Lord could thus easily have found
the whole drapery of his great parable in the immediate neighbourhood of the
spot on which it was spoken, ever linking his spiritual lessons with those
familiar doings of common life which occupy
"The talk Man holds with
week-day man, in the hourly walk
Of the world's business."
We
reached Safed early in the afternoon, after a toilsome ascent of twelve miles
in which every step was a strain upon our patient horses; and we pitched our
tents in an olive-garden from which we could look down even upon the lofty
mountain city itself. The grand old citadel, originally built by the Saracens,
and which exchanged hands again and again during the varying fortunes of the
wars of the Crusaders, is the highest point from which to look out upon the
country; but it had been so riven by the terrible earthquake of 1837, and was
so inconvenient to ascend, that we preferred leaving it to the vultures which
seemed waiting there for another long festival of human blood, and to gaze down
upon the immense panorama from Safed itself. It commands the most extensive
view to be obtained from any point within the circle of Palestine. We were
considerably more than two thousand feet above the level of the Galilean lake
which we had left in the morning, and fully twelve miles from its shores; and
yet, as it spread its bright mirror in placid loneliness, incased in its green
framework of hills, it seemed so very near, that we could have imagined an
expert slinger to have sent a stone from Safed into its waters. It mirrored the
graves of buried cities, for Tiberias was the only habitation of living men
that we could see upon its shores. Far in the east were the Hauran mountains,
wrapped in hazy gloom; nearer were the green pastoral hills of Gilead. More
directly southward, familiar objects rose up before us which we had left for
ever, the cone-shaped Tabor, little Hermon, and the hills of Samaria beyond the
plain of Esdraelon; and as the eye moved westward, it fell on the promontory of
wooded Carmel, and caught glimpses of the dim Phenician shores. Even in its
desolation and decay the words of the prophet came to our lips, "How beautiful
is thy land, O Emmanuel." We felt that there was a scenic fitness in the Jewish
tradition which has fixed on this as the place where the Messiah is to set up
his throne, when he comes to take possession of the kingdom of his fathers, and
to rule the world.
It was impossible to stand where we did and not
remember that this very Safed had been the scene of one of the most terrific
tragedies of modern times, when "God arose to shake terribly the earth." On the
evening of the first day of January 1837, this mountain-city was visited by an
earthquake which swallowed up six thousand human beings in an hour. There is
not a single old house in the modern town. The old houses were either shivered
into fragments, or went down into that yawning grave when the stable earth
heaved like an angry sea, or was convulsed like some strong creature in its
agony. What harrowing scenes of half-buried men and women dying and putrefying
by slow degrees; and of faint voices, heard through the openings and crevices
by those shuddering on the surface, who could give them no relief! But we
confess that, in reading the narrative of those woes, it was not the suffering
that most shocked us, but the exhibitions of human selfishness after the
earthquake had done its dreadful work, when the survivors, becoming indifferent
to each other's sorrows, contended for the treasure for which they searched in
rents and crevices and among ruined buildings, with all the ferocity with which
the wolves and vultures were meanwhile quarrelling over their horrid banquet of
death. The despair which is the effect of sudden judgments, instead of making
men penitent, sometimes makes them fiendish, as has once more been seen in the
terrible nine days of the Commune in Paris.
"There is no love in man's
obdurate heart;
It does not feel for man: the natural bond
Of
brotherhood is severed as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of
fire."
The one gleam of sunshine which lighted up that double darkness
came from the Protestant missionaries at Beyrout, who hastened in the depth of
winter to the scene, and with their extemporized hospitals reared by their own
hands, and with all the appliances of medicine, surgery, and cordials, relieved
a world of suffering, and showed something of the true spirit of the great
Healer whose name they bore.
It is a remarkable fact that though Safed
is not mentioned, or even alluded to, in the Old Testament, and it has no
connection at any point with ancient Jewish history, it has become one of the
four sacred cities of the Jews in Palestine. Even since the earthquake, when
nearly all its inhabitants perished, Jews have crept to it from the northern
shores of Africa, and from every point in Europe, from Spain to Russia; and out
of its present population of six thousand, three thousand are understood to be
of the house of Israel, and these observe in their synagogues the same
distinctions of nationality as we have seen in modern Jerusalem. A goodly
number of them perform the work of the scribes of old, and occupy themselves in
making copies of the Law. And nothing can exceed the beauty and scrupulous
accuracy of their workmanship. Every precaution is used to secure the most
perfect exactness. Every page must contain the same number of lines, and every
line the same number of letters. A single failure in this would vitiate an
entire column of the work. It is an inherited excellence from which the Jews
have never degenerated since they first became the chosen custodiers of the
oracles of God. Among the many severe charges which Christ brought against them
as a people, he never blamed them with unfaithfulness to this great trust.
Their scrupulosity has, in fact, passed into superstition; but God has made
even this to praise him.
In all their sacred cities, also, the Jews
appear to pay a creditable attention to the education of their young. We spent
some time in one of their schools. The old teacher, with his long white beard,
his noble forehead, and nose "spectacle-bestrid," appeared as if he had walked
out from a picture of one of the old Italian masters. He used an iron pointer
to guide his pupils as they read before him, one by one, out of the Talmud. The
head of each pupil was covered by a linen cap which fitted closely to it. As
they read, they swung their bodies to and fro, and with a singing accent that
almost approached to chanting; and as often as they blundered, the venerable
pedagogue interrupted them with an air of wondrous authority, as if he were
fully conscious that he was the one ruler of that little world. The more
learned among their rabbins have many curious fancies about their Messiah,
which prove that the veil over their minds has been readjusted but not taken
away.
There was a place of peculiar interest lying in a hilly region
considerably out of our direct way northward, to which we were tempted to
diverge on our leaving Safed on the following morning. This was Meiron, the
Westminster Abbey of the Jews, where are shown the tombs of many of their most
illustrious teachers and miracle-workers, some of them dating even earlier than
the birth of Christ. To us the most interesting among the many sepulchres was
that of Hillel, the head of one of the two great rival rabbinical schools that
waged their loud logomachies at the close of Judaism, and the reputed
grandfather of that Gamaliel at whose feet Saul of Tarsus had sat for years as
an ardent and admiring disciple. It was cut out of the solid rock, and was of
great size. But more honour seemed to be put on the tombs of those who united
to their prophetical office the gift of miracles, and lamps were kept burning
before them day and night. Had we been a fortnight later in our visit, we
should have witnessed the annual Jewish carnival at these tombs, to which we
were told thousands congregate in the month of May, converging to this remote
mountain-village from almost every nation under heaven, and bringing the varied
costume and speech of lands as far asunder from each other as the equator from
the poles. There is scarcely anything of the nature of a religious element in
these festivals; the time being consumed in eating and drinking, in dancing and
mimic sword combats performed to the sound of music and the clapping of hands,
and not unmixed with that levity and excess which gave occasion to the scathing
rebukes which the old prophets addressed to their fathers. One prominent and
expensive part of the celebration is the burning of gifts, and especially of
rich shawls, dipped in oil to make them burn the more brightly, in honour of
the dead.
We were glad to come out at length from the damp and darkness
of these old tombs into the open air and the daylight, and to turn our faces
towards Cesarea Philippi, the most northerly town in Palestine, which we hoped
to reach on the following day. In the afternoon we came upon a place of much
Biblical interest - Kedes, the ancient Kadesh-Naphtali, one of the royal cities
of the Canaanites, and one of the six Cities of Refuge of the Hebrews. It
stands on a plain, in a considerably elevated mountain-region, and has near it
two great structures more than half in ruins, displaying so much architectural
skill and ornament as well as freshness, that we should imagine them to have
belonged to the period of the Roman supremacy. We thought of it as the
convenient rallying-point of Barak before his conflict with Jabin. But it was
more interesting to remember that it was one of those sanctuaries which the
discriminating humanity of the old Jewish law provided as a refuge for those
who had slain another unwittingly. Its central position, and the fact that it
was visible from a great distance and in almost every direction, admirably
fitted it for its compassionate uses. We imagined the terrified man-slayer
straining and panting along the plain, with the avenger of blood close on his
steps, and the man gratefully conscious of safety the moment that he stood
within its open gates.
Not long after leaving Kedes, our way led through
a narrow gorge which was singularly grand and solitary. We rode by the green
margin, and sometimes in the pebbly bed, of a bright joyous stream, hemmed in
on either side by richly-wooded mountains that rose far into the sky and seemed
to shut out the whole world. The solitude and silence were extraordinary,
though they were pleasantly relieved at intervals by the sight of goatherds
leading their flocks on green spots, and making rude music to them on their
reeden pipes. It seemed the very place for a hermit to hide himself in from the
shock of the world's conflicts, with its "boundless contiguity of shade." Other
persons had anticipated us in this judgment; for near the entrance to this
natural sanctuary we came upon a village with a number of peak-roofed cottages,
containing a colony of Arabs who had fled hither all the way from Algiers to
escape the dubious benefits of French discipline and drill.
A few hours'
riding on the following morning brought us up to a lofty ridge, from which we
looked forth upon objects that rivetted our attention. Beneath us was the
extensive plain, of Huleh, the scene of Abraham's rescue of Lot, and of his
victory over the five confederate kings. It was down also somewhere in that
marshy plain that Joshua, by one of those sudden, impetuous, irresistible
onslaughts which were characteristic of his manner of assault, swept before him
with terrible destruction the combined myrmidons under Jabin, king of Hazor,
and in one day secured for Israel the whole of the northern part of Canaan. At
the southern extremity of the valley was the Lake of Huleh, the Samachonitis of
Josephus, the "waters of Merom" of Old Testament story, unapproachable by us
because of its dangerous swamps, but the choice refuge of the larger aquatic
birds and of almost every wild animal that has its habitat in Palestine. We
noticed herds of lean buffaloes plunging and disporting themselves, after their
own ungainly fashion, in its mire and among its rushes. The stork and the heron
are there in their element, and even the pelican is sometimes seen -
"By
the rushy fringed bank
Where grow the willow and the osier
dank."
The aromatic reed, the cane, and the calamus abound in its
marshes. In the colder months of the year the lake shrinks into the dimensions
of a pond, being not more than five hundred paces in circumference. But in
March and the beginning of April, when the snows on Hermon have begun to melt
into innumerable rills, and the different branches of the Jordan rush down in
brimful channel, it extends to seven miles in width, and covers a large portion
of the Huleh plain. It is then that the wild beasts, dislodged from their lairs
among the tall reeds by the sudden increase of the waters, appear in formidable
numbers, mightily enraged at being driven from their hiding-place. One meeting
a panther, or even a wild boar or a buffalo, in such circumstances, would have
no difficulty in understanding how the picture should have been employed in
more than one place in Scripture, as the emblem of mingled rage and strength -
"coming up as a lion from the swellings of Jordan." The figures and allusions
in the poetical books of the Bible, everywhere reflect the scenery and the
natural history of Palestine. They are indelibly stamped upon them, like the
old Abrahamic features upon the Jew. They bear the impress of the Jordan-land
quite as distinctly as the earlier poetry of Tennyson does the imagery of the
fens of Lincolnshire, or that of Scott does of the heathy moors, the rugged
mountains, and the green glens of Scotland.
Still keeping above the
plain, and moving northwards, we came upon a fortress of extraordinary
magnitude and strength, known in modern days by the name of Hunin. The
inhabitants of the miserable village of the same name have their houses in a
narrow corner of the mysterious and moat-encircled pile and there is ample room
in the enormous ruin for their expanding, should they be multiplied a
hundredfold. The various styles of architecture traceable in the building have
not a little puzzled archaeologists; but the Phenician masonry visible here and
there, places beyond doubt the great antiquity of some parts of it. Some say
that it is Beth-roboh; even the Canaanitish Hazor puts in a dubious
claim.
Descending by tortuous paths into the Huleh valley, we crossed
the most westerly branch of the Jordan as it comes down from the neighbourhood
of Hasbelya, far up in the Lebanon. It is spanned by a bridge of three arches;
but the stream, when we passed it, was only flowing under the middle arch. Soon
after, we crossed a narrower stream, which formed a second tributary of the
sacred river; and a few yards beyond, we sat down to rest on a natural mound
under the far-spreading branches of a noble patriarchal oak that might have
rivalled in size and foliage Abraham's oak at Mamre. We could now see that this
second stream was fed from a little cup-shaped lake into which a noble fountain
discharged itself. And beyond this fountain was a grassy tell, or mound,
littered with ruins, which has been identified as the site of the old city of
Dan, the place where Jeroboam set up one of his golden calves for the
Israelites to worship, and which marked the northern extremity of the tribal
territories. "The erection of these calves," remarks the sagacious Fuller, "was
pretended for the ease of the people of Israel, to spare their tedious travel
twice a year to Jerusalem; but in effect occasioned that they were sent a
longer journey on a worse errand, even into irrecoverable captivity. Thus to
spare a step of piety, is to spend many on the road to misery."
Then our
way led us through an extensive region of great natural beauty and
inexhaustible fertility. It was part of the ancient kingdom of Bashan. Almost
every tree that had become familiar to us in Palestine grew here, except the
palm - the myrtle, the almond, the arbutus, the hawthorn, the birch, and above
all, and holding firm and fast possession of its ancient home, the oak of
Bashan. There was no tangled undergrowth of brushwood, but the trees cast their
long shadows on a beautiful carpet of green. It brought to our remembrance,
even in its unpruned luxuriance, some of the noblest parks of England with
their ancestral baronial trees. In an hour we had reached Banias, the site of
the ancient Cesarea .Philippi, and had pitched our tents in the midst of an
extensive grove of olives, and beneath the very shadow of the mighty
Hermon.
It is certainly one of the most grand and picturesque places in
all Palestine. Immediately behind, Hermon, the highest peak of Anti-Libanus,
rises to a height of ten thousand feet, densely wooded on its side, and its
summit diademed with eternal snow pure as the azure- sky above it. Its name in
Arabic is Jebel-esh-Sheikh, the prince of mountains j and it is well entitled,
as it sits there solitary in its royal state, to be thus regarded as the Mont
Blanc of Western Asia: -
"They crowned him long ago
On a throne of
rocks, with a robe of clouds
And a diadem of snow"
The Arab poets
have a beautiful saying, in allusion to the various climates that exist on
Hermon - that it bears winter on its head, spring upon its shoulders, and
autumn in its bosom, while summer lies sleeping at its feet. This has evidently
suggested one of the most beautiful stanzas ever written by Thomas Moore.
Around this grand centre rise many lofty peaks of various heights; and as we
looked up on them in their untainted virgin purity, we could have imagined an
angel visitant who was leaving our earth, flying from one pinnacle to another,
until he took his long flight to heaven. The modern village of Banias is a
confused collection of miserable huts, inhabited chiefly by the lowest class of
Mohammedans ; but a little way to the left of the village, there stands the
majestic ruin of the Castle of Banias, dating, as we may be certain from the
marks upon it of Phenician masonry, some .centuries before the Advent. It is
built on the rocky crest of a projecting spur of Hermon, which rises a thousand
feet above the village, and it is itself several hundred feet higher, so that a
stone dropped perpendicularly from its walls would fall at once twelve or
thirteen hundred feet.
There are notices in the older Scriptures which
favour the conjecture that this may have been one of the scenes in which Baal
had a temple, for the worship of this Phenician god spread over the whole
extent of the Anti-Libanus. What place so fitly answers to those words in the
Book of Joshua, of "Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon, under Mount Hermon"?
When Grecian conquest had swept over Syria, the Greeks supplanted the worship
of Baal by that of the Grecian Pan, finding in the natural features of the
place everything they could desire as a sanctuary for their favourite deity - a
cave, a fountain, and shady sylvan glades. Hence its ancient name, Panias,
which it retains in its Arabic form of Banias at the present day. On the front
of a rock, about twenty feet above a natural cave, we saw three niches which
had originally been occupied by idols. The centre niche still contains the
fragment of a pedestal on which an image once stood; and an inscription in
Greek above it, which has more than once been carefully deciphered, bears that
it was "dedicated to Pan and the nymphs." It was the only unmistakable remnant
of idolatry that we had met with in Palestine. When the mighty wave of Roman
conquest swept away in its turn the dominion of Greece, Philip, the son of
Herod the Great, erected a temple, it is probable, on the same spot, in honour
of the Emperor Tiberius who had made him tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis,
and at the same time enlarged and beautified the city as the capital of his
tetrarchy, mingling the name of his imperial patron and hero-god with his own
in its Roman designation of Cesarea Philippi.
But by far the most
interesting natural object in this magnificent region was the Banias fountain
of the Jordan. Our great Milton is mistaken when he speaks of the Jordan as
"the double-founted stream," for we had that day already crossed two
independent streams flowing from separate springs - the Hasbany, which had come
twenty miles down from the Lebanon hills; and the Leddan, springing forth at
once in splendid force, like Jupiter from the head of Minerva, from near the
site of ancient Dan. But this Banias fountain, which is the most eastward,
seems to have been regarded in the days of Josephus as the true Jordan
fountain; and undoubtedly it is that which a painter would prefer as by far the
most picturesque - the fit birth-place of the most sacred of all rivers. From a
mossy rock in the side of Hermon it gurgles forth pure and bright, and so
strong that it is some feet broad a few yards from the spot where it leaps into
light. Again and again we knelt down and drank of its waters at their very
source. We gathered a few specimens of " maiden's-hair " fern that dipped in
its sparkling current. We then followed its rapid course through the midst of
beautiful creeping plants and waving oleanders, beneath little bridges and over
broken columns and rounded boulders, until it leaped down by a succession of
cascades into more level ground beneath. We then stood and thought of this
young river as the emblem of many a life beginning pure and bright, bounding on
in beauty and hope, spreading a faithful mirror to the sunlit firmament, and by
night to the stars, but at length mingling with itself corrupting elements,
becoming turbid and violent, and losing itself at length in the Sea of Death.
Is this the region of Hermon to which David so pathetically refers in
one of his psalms? A glance at some parts of the scenery strongly inclines us
to answer, Yes. He pictures himself as having been driven by persecution to
"the utmost corner of the land," and as having found a hiding-place, with a
little band of chivalrous followers, among the roots of Hermon. His refuge
seems to have been in a natural cave, and the time of his exile during a season
of storm, when a thousand foaming cascades might be heard leaping from the
mountains, and the whole region sounding with the dash and roar of cataracts -
"deep calling unto deep." There were natural caves in abundance not far from
our tent among the olive trees; and though in the calm of a beautiful afternoon
we could only hear the ripple of the Jordan as it issued from its rocky bed,
yet when we looked up, we could see the mountain seamed and scarred in many
places by the marks of torrents, when the snows had been rapidly melting, or
the tempest had been let loose.
But beyond this, the region is
associated, by more than one incident, with "David's Son and Lord." These
"coasts" or borders of Cesarea Philippi were the most northerly point to which
Christ came in His journeys of mercy; and to the reader of the Gospel
narratives it still bears his indelible footprints. It was in this place, on
Peter's declaring his faith in him as "the Christ, the Son of the living God"
that he addressed him in those memorable words, "Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it." But is it possible to doubt that the eye of the great Master and his
disciples was turned, while he spoke, to that Castle of Banias, standing upon
its rocky base a thousand feet high and filling up the whole view eastward, and
that he doubled the impression of his sayings, as he so often did, by
surrounding them with the framework and casting on them the colouring of a
natural picture ?
And all the hints in the Gospel histories give
something beyond a mere likelihood to the belief that one of those peaks of
Hermon was the true scene of our Lord's transfiguration. That most sublime
incident is declared to have occurred when he was with his disciples "in the
coasts of Cesarea Philippi." The cone-shaped Tabor, down on the borders of
Samaria, has nothing in its favour beyond a not very ancient tradition. One of
those solitary Hermon peaks was the true " holy mount" to which Jesus ascended
with his three favoured disciples a little before sunset. We stood for a time
looking up, and wondering much which of them it might be. On one of these Jesus
appeared for a time enrobed in the heavenly body of his ascension, when his
raiment was whiter than Hermon's untrodden snow, and his countenance shone more
brightly than that setting sun now going down in his strength. It not merely
became the meeting place of the great lawgiver and the chief prophet of the
older dispensation with the apostles of the new, but the spot where earth and
heaven met; while its solitudes echoed the sounds of that Divine voice which
spake from the midst of the dazzling glory-cloud "This is my beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." Hermon became in that sacred, awful hour
something more than the holy of holies.
The next morning, we were to
proceed on our mountain journey through the Lebanon, and to leave Palestine
behind us for ever.
Go To Chapter
Seventeen
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