CORRESPONDENCE.
• A DIARY IN PALESTINE.
ONE of the first things that strikes the traveller in Palestine is the smallness of the country as compared with its renown.. Of the fact itself he was probably aware before; but there is. a marvellous difference between reading a thing in a book and. seeing it with one's own eyes. We read, for example, of the- wanderings and adventures of David during the period of his, persecution by Saul, and afterwards learn with surprise that those wanderings were, for the most part, confined to a circuit of some twenty miles round David's home in Bethle- hem. This contrast between the size of Palestine on the map. and on one's imagination arrests the attention before one has been many hours in the Holy Land. Go to the top of the White Tower at Ramleh, twelve miles south-east of Joppa, and look around from a height of 500 ft. above the sea.. Below you lies the fertile and beautiful Plain of Sharon, stretching northward along the coast to the base of Mount Carmel, and southward to Beersheba, the hills of Samaria. and Judasa bounding it towards the east. Two miles. to the north is Lydda, where St. Peter healed the para- lytic ..Eneas and restored Dorcas to life, with the result that "all that dwelt at Lydda and Sharon turned to. the Lord." Through Lydda, too, passed the Apostle of the Gentiles when he was carried prisoner from Jerusalem to- Ceesarea. And the place has, perhaps, a still deeper interest for Englishmen, if the tradition is authentic which gives it the distinction of being the birthplace of St. George of England, and also the place of his burial. To the north-east of Lydda may be seen Ramathaim (in the Septuagint, Aramathaim), the' birthplace of Samuel and of Joseph of Arimathea; and Bethel and the Valley of Ajalon, across which the routed Canaanite& fled before Joshua ; and the Pass of Beth-horon in the opposite hills, through which Joshua pursued them when he suddenly raised the siege of Gibeon after a rapid night-march from, Gilgal. It was a remarkable feat of arms, quite apart from Joshua's controverted apostrophe to the sun and moon re- corded in the Book of Jasher. Midieh, too (the ancient. Modin), is visible, the place of birth and of burial of the heroic Maccabees ; and Ekron, famous in Philistine his- tory; and Betli-Dagon near the sea, dedicated, as the name implies, to the Philistine fish-god, whose temple blind Samson pulled down on himself and its crowd of worshippers. All these places are visible from the watch- tower of Ramleh. Perhaps a still better idea may be gained of the disproportionate space which the Holy Land fills geo- graphically in our imagination if we compare the country of the Philistines with the important place which that warlike people occupy in the history of Israel down to the time of Solomon, when their power was finally broken. They fought, on equal terms with the Israelites, and sometimes inflicted disastrous and ignominious defeats on them. Yet the map. shows that Philistia* is but a strip of land stretching along- the sea coast from Joppa to a little beyond Gaza, and east- ward to the base of the mountains of judEea; fifty miles long, with an average breadth of less than twenty miles. How could a people so inferior in number offer such stubborn- and successful resistance to the Israelites ? A glance at the configuration of the country explains the matter. Philistia is a long undulating plain over which chariots could mar- cenvre with ease. But the Israelites had neither chariots nor horses till the time of Solomon, and therefore could not cope with the native tribes who occupied the plains. Thus we read. in the Book of Judges that "the Lord was with Judah, and he- drave out the inhabitants of the mountain ; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots. of iron." For the same reason, the Israelites failed to subdue the Canaanitish tribe over which Jabin (a dynastic appellation) reigned. "For he had nine hundred chariots of iron," with. which he scoured the plain and drove the Israelites, who had settled there in the first rush of Joshua's victorious invasion, to the hills. Deborah gives a graphic glimpse of the depopula- tion of the Israelitish villages under this cruel oppression. But how did Barak manage to defeat the formidable army of the Canaanites ? Deborah promised him victory; but there is nothing in the narrative to indicate a miraculous interposition.
• Palestine is a corruption of Phi ietia, a name given by the Greeks to the whole of Judea because Phi ietia was the first part of the Baty Land at which they touched.
I think we may find a natural explanation of Barak's decisive victory. He had encamped with his small force on the slope of Mount Tabor. Sisera marched against him with his "nine hun- dred chariots and all the people that were with him," and en- camped on the plain below, which is seamed with watercourses cut through the soft soil by the heavy rains of winter. To one of these downpours, which Deborah had perhaps divined, Sisera probably owed his disaster. "The river of Kishon," we learn from Deborah's song, had suddenly risen to a torrent that "swept away" such of the defeated host as tried to ford it. " The horse-hoofs were broken by means of the prancings " plungings—" so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot and fled away on his feet." The plain had, in fact, become -sodden with a deluge of rain, and horses and chariots stuck fast in the mud, when Barak's host rushed down upon them and slaughtered the retreating and entangled foe. I have seen somewhere the ingenious and not improbable suggestion that the battle took place during a November shower of shooting stars, which would give literal significance to Deborah's poetic assertion that "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera."
The road from joppa to Jerusalem rises, at first gradually, then abruptly, to a height of 2,500 ft. From that point to Jerusalem, which is about the same height, it is a. series of ascents and descents through a most picturesque country, every mile of which recalls some scene familiar from childhood to readers of the Bible. From a spectacular point of view, the fret eight of Jerusalem from the Joppa side is disappointing. You pass through rows of modern houses, most of them tenanted by Jewish immigrants, and you see but little of the hills encircling the Holy City, which the Psalmist compared -to the encompassing love of Israel's God. It is necessary to "walk about Sion," as he did, and to survey the city from various points, before one can get a clear picture in one's mind of the Jerusalem of David's time, or even of our Lord's. The rubbish of centuries has raised the level of ancient -Jerusalem some 30 ft., and the valleys of the Kedron, Tyro- peon, and Hinnom have been similarly raised above their old level. The effect of this elevation is to make the Mount -of Olives seem lower than it is. It is only when you stand in the valley and walk up to its summit that you realise its height above Mount Moriah, on which the Temple stood, and where now stands the Dome of the Rock, the local name of the Mosque of Omar.
But there is so much to say, and so little space in which to say it, that I must just pick out such excerpts from my diary as may possibly have some fresh interest for your readers.
The most conspicuous object that meets the eye on entering the Mosque of Omar is a rough projection of the natural rock, enclosed within a railing inside the building ; hence its name of " Dome of the Rock." The first impression which this mass of rock makes on the visitor is that of startling incongruity. There is little doubt that it also stood inside Solomon's Temple. Its dimensions are about 60 ft. by 50 ft., and nearly 5 ft. in height. Why was this projection left when the rest -of the Temple area was levelled? The presence of so ugly -an excrescence inside the Temple of Solomon and its two successors can only be explained by its having been con- secrated by some hallowed associations. It is probable that it marks the spot on which Abraham laid his son for a burnt -offering, and it is almost certain that here was the threshing. floor of Araunah, the Jebneite, which David bought for the site of an altar after the plague which his pride had brought tipon his people. Sir W. Dawson has discovered a cave below the rock, which, he thinks, "may have been the granary of the threshing-floor ; " and he calls attention to the sig- nificant fact that, on this occasion, David solemnly dedicated the spot to the worship of God, and as "an altar of burnt- offering for Israel." There is thus much force in his con- jecture, which he supports with some curious facts, that the rock inside Omar's Mosque is really the site of the altar of burnt-offering in Solomon's Temple, and was left in its natural state partly by reason of its sacred associations, and also because the altar of burnt-offering was bound by the Mosaic law to be of unhewn stones, and to be placed on an unhewn foundation.
I suppose that most readers of the Gospels have been struck by the meekness with which the profaners of the Temple departed when our Lord upset the tables of the money-
changers and scourged the owners out of the sacred precincts. The usual explanation is that he awed them by an effluence of divine power, as he awed the soldiers who went to arrest him in Gethsemane. Bat he was always economical of his miraculous power, using it when necessary, but never other- wise. A recent discovery has proved that it was not neoessary in this case. Herod's was the only temple which had a Court of the Gentiles. This was separated from the precincts of the Temple proper by a low partition with thirteen entrances; and along the top were placed at intervals square stones bearing an inscription that any Gentile who passed inside the wall was guilty of a capital offence. Josephus states the fact, and says that the Romans granted this extraordinary power to the Jews; but this has been commonly supposed to have been a fiction invented by the historian to magnify his nation. One of these pillars, however, has actually been found by one of the Palestine Exploration Fund workers, and is now in a museum at Constantinople, where I saw it last April, with the inscrip- tion still perfectly legible. The traffickers in the Temple Courts were, therefore, liable to summary death, and left hurriedly when our Lord ordered them away. St. Paul had experience of the peril incurred by an alleged infraction of this law, and his references to the partition wall, which meta- phorically divided Jew from Gentile clearly point to the boundary wall of Herod's Court of the Gentiles.
Where everything was interesting, it is difficult to make a selection ; but nothing in the Holy Land impressed me more than my ride (a carriage-road is only half finished) from Jerusalem to Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan. They are all visible from the top of Olivet, and most beautiful they look—the wonder-laden river, the gleaming sea, and beyond them, rising against the horizon, the splendid range of the purple mountains of Moab. It is a rough ride from Jerusalem to Jericho. From Bethany it is a steep descent all the way, through a singularly wild and desolate country, stern and barren mountains flanking the road on both sides. The valley of the Dead Sea is the deepest geological depression on the surface of our globe. It lies 3,890 ft. below Jerusalem, and 1,290 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean. Well might our Lord describe the waylaid traveller in the parable as "going down from Jerusalem to Jericho." An armed escort is still en regle, though hardly necessary. Half-way there is a khan, where travellers bait their horses and take their luncheon, and where tradition—with great probability—places the "inn" to which the Good Samaritan bore the wounded man. There was something indescribably impressive in the thought that the Saviour's feet often traversed that ground, and his eyes gazed on the surrounding scenery. For that was the route by which he usually went from Galilee to Jerusalem. We could almost fancy ourselves back in those times as we met crowds of pilgrims of both sexes, Jews and Christians, many with palms in their hands, going up to Jerusalem to worship, on their return from bathing in the Jordan. It was Holy Week to all alike, for the Jewish Passover and Eastertide in Eastern and Western Christendom synchronised this year. The Dead Sea belies its name. It is a lovely sheet of water, blue as sapphire and clear as crystal. And what a group of interesting places are visible from its banks ! Gilgal, where the Israelites encamped on crossing the Jordan ; the site of the "City of Palm Trees," whose walls fell at the blast of Joshua's trumpets ; the fortress of Machterus, where John the Baptist pined in his dungeon ; the forbidding mountain, which tradition points out as the scene of the Temptation ; and Pisgah, from the top of which Balsam
looked down on the "goodly tents of Jacob," which he was constrained to bless instead of cursing; from the top of which, also, a greater prophet than he surveyed the land which he was not to enter. I know nothing more pathetic in sacred or profane story than that wistful gaze of the great law-giver and heroic leader. Inexpressibly touching are the words in which he tells his people of God's refusal to let him enter the Promised Land. A parable of many a noble spirit since his day, dying in sight, but not in possession, of long cherished ideals. Yet in their case, as in his, God doubtless fulfils his promise in the end, in the spirit if not in the letter. The feet of Moses, after all, trode the sacred soil of Palestine centuries afterwards, when he stood on the Mount of Trans- figuration with Elijah, and talked with Jeans of his approach- . ing sacrifice. M.
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