Home of Civilisation
The River Jordan. By Nelson Giueck. (Lutterworth Press. 20s.)
THE author is to be congratulated on finding an original subject for a book about Palestine. The Jordan, which means " descender," has carried down history through the ages as well as water and mud ; end can fairly be described as " the world's most storied river." The book gives an account, archaeological, historical and pictorial, of all the sites in its valley, from the sources in the Lebanon to the fantastic rift of the Wadi Araba which ends at the Red Sea. It is the highest praise to say that in parts it bears comparison with George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land. Like that classical book, it makes the Bible story live again. We see Abraham and Lot, Moses and Joshua, Jephtha. and his daughter, Saul and David, Elijah and. Elisha, Jesus and John as living beings in the scene.
The author knows every inch of the country. As director of the American School of Oriental Research in Palestine, he has explored the Tells on both sides of the Jordan, particularly those on the less- known East side. His book is archaeology tinged with personal experience. To wide knowledge and a writer's skill. he has added photographic art. The book contains over one hundred exceptionally beautiful pictures, which match the description of the river and its jungle and the amaring valley, the lowest part of the earth's surface.
Palestine has always " seemed to distil extremes of nature." But it is not in its physical as much as in its spiritual associations that the importance of " Ole River Jordan " is paramount. History . was at home there. "The story of civilisation might start with the words : ' And in the beginning there was Jericho." Dr. Glueck makes it clear that the valley was of old a centre of a populous
.civilisation. It was and could be again the 'Garden of God. Trans- Jordan, which, after twenty-five years of British guidance, has only a population of about 350,000, had in the Roman and Byzantine ages a population of 1,250,000. " In those days the soil was sacred, and was tended with loving care that helped to preserve it from one generation to another." The same love for the .soil, the same devotion are being brought to the Jordan valley again today by the descendants of its former inhabitants. They may again transform it.
One happy feature of the story is that the author, an American Jew, has the happiest of relations with the Arabs on both sides of Jordan. He sees in them but " a step in distance and a moment in time removed from the figures familiar to him in the pages of the Old and New Testament" He speaks their language and knows their tradition. In the midst of the strife of the war-years he wandered unperturbed in all parts of the country, and everywhere enjoyed their hospitality. He gives hope that the two peoples dwelling side by side at the cross-roads of the world, when they come to know the history of the land in which they dwell, will have under-
standing for each other and live in peace. NORMAN Barrww.H.
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