Haifa, Dec. 26.—In reading the works of Dr. Kitto and other writers who
have endeavoured to present a picture of the manners and customs of the
population which inhabited Palestine in ancient times, I have been much
struck by the erroneous impressions which the descriptions of those
writers are calculated to convey in many important respects. This has
arisen from the fact that while they have portrayed, with tolerable
accuracy, the rude civilization of the original inhabitants and the
subsequent civilization grafted upon it by their Jewish conquerors, they
have left out of consideration the changes worked upon, and the
modifications introduced into, the social conditions thus produced by
that still higher and later civilization which resulted from Greek and
Roman invasions. Thus while they carefully trace back the habits of the
modern fellahin, and show that they differ slightly from those of the
peasantry of the country in the time of Christ, and invoke the testimony
of modern Bedouins as evidence of a mode of life which has undergone no
perceptible alteration since the days of Abraham, they leave out of
account altogether that magnificent Roman and Byzantine civilization,
traces of which still exist in such abundance as to astound the
traveller with its splendor and its richness, but which has passed away
like a dream, leaving nothing behind but the coarse barbarism which has
succeeded it, and which is almost identical in character with what it
supplanted. Hence it is that these writers have found those resemblances
between the modern and ancient manners and customs of the inhabitants of
this country by which they were so much struck, and which they have
given to the public as furnishing an accurate picture of what ancient
Palestine was like.
We are so much in the habit of confining our interest in this country to
its history before the time of Christ that it will probably strike many
with surprise to learn that the most flourishing epoch of its history
was subsequent to that time; that never before had the arts and sciences
reached so high a pitch; that never before had its population been so
wealthy and luxurious, its architecture so grand, its commerce so
flourishing, and its civilization generally so advanced. It is true it
had lost its independence, and was only a Roman province, but it is just
because it was one, and not a Jewish kingdom, that our impression of its
actual condition at the time of Christ is apt to be so erroneous.
This fact has been very forcibly brought to my notice in a recent trip
which I have made along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, more
especially along its little-explored northern and eastern coasts, where
the evidences of the wealth and luxury of the former inhabitants still
remain in unexampled profusion. In reading in the Gospels the narrative
of the works and life of Christ, so much of which was spent upon the
shores of the lake, in one of the cities of which he for some time took
up his abode, most of us have endeavoured, probably, to picture him to
ourselves amid purely Jewish surroundings and conditions closely
resembling those which we have been in the habit of associating with
that previous period of Jewish history with which we are familiar in the
books of the Old Testament. So far from that being the case, the part of
the country in which his ministrations were principally exercised, was
beyond all others a centre of Roman life, with all its luxurious
accompaniments. Nowhere else in Palestine was there such a congeries of
rich and populous cities as were crowded round the shores of this small
lake. Nowhere else could the Jewish reformer come into closer contact
with the rites of a worship alien to his own.
On the shores of this lake might be seen temple after temple rearing
their vast colonnades of graceful columns, their courts ornamented with
faultlessly carved statues to the deities of a heathen cult. Here were
the palaces of the Roman high functionaries, the tastefully decorated
villas of rich citizens, with semi-tropical gardens irrigated by the
copious streams which have their sources in the plain of Genesareth and
the neighbouring hills. Here were broad avenues and populous
thoroughfares, thronged with the motley concourse which so much wealth
and magnificence had attracted—rich merchants from Antioch, then the
most gorgeous city of the East, and from the Greek islands, traders and
visitors from Damascus, Palmyra, and the rich cities of the Decapolis;
caravans from Egypt and Persia, Jewish rabbis jostling priests of the
worship of the sun, and Roman soldiers swaggering across the
marketplaces, where the peasantry were exposing the produce of their
fields and gardens for sale, and where fish was displayed by the hardy
toilers of the lake, among whom were those whom the Great Teacher
selected to be the first recipients of his message and the channels for
its communication to after ages.
Thus it was, as I rode along the margin of the sea the other day, that I
was enabled to repeople its shores in imagination by the light of the
remains with which they are still strewn, and, overtaken in its
desolation by the shades of night, to fancy its now gloomy shores ablaze
with the scintillations proceeding from the lamps of at least a dozen
large cities, and the almost continuous street of habitations which
connected them, and to illuminate its now dark and silent waters with
countless brilliantly-lighted boats, skimming over its smooth surface,
containing noble ladies and gallants on their way to or from scenes of
nocturnal festivity, or indulging in moonlight picnics, with the
accompaniments of wine and song and music. That life in these cities was
profligate and dissipated in a high degree we may gather from Christ's
denunciation of Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, which he declared to
be so much more wicked than Tyre or Sidon, or even Sodom, that it would
be more tolerable in the day of judgment for those cities than for the
three he was denouncing. That among these Capernaum was the one of the
greatest splendor, and was puffed up therefore with the pride of its own
pomp and magnificence, we may gather from the indignant apostrophe: “And
thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven.” It may have been
because he considered this city the wickedest, as it appears to have
been the largest on the lake, and therefore the most in need of his
ministrations, that he chose it for some time as his residence. Hence it
came to be called “his own city.” This circumstance invests it with a
special interest in our eyes.
Unfortunately, a violent contest rages between Palestinologists, if I
may be allowed to coin the word, as to the exact site of Capernaum. The
two places which claim this honor are now called Khan Minieh and Tell
Hum respectively. Until lately the weight of opinion was in favor of the
former site; latterly the researches of Sir Charles Wilson, on behalf of
the Palestine Exploration Fund, have convinced that accomplished
archæologist and careful explorer that the true site of this celebrated
city is to be found at Tell Hum. It would weary my readers if I were to
quote all the texts relied upon by the disputants to maintain each
hypothesis, supported by calculations of distance, the accounts of
Josephus, and of early pilgrim or Arab travellers. The subject has been
pretty well thrashed out, but I doubt whether it is even yet exhausted.
I incline strongly to the Tell Hum theory, but as Khan Minieh comes
first on our way as we glide from Tiberias to the head of the lake, as
it is unquestionably the site of what was once a city, and as it is a
highly picturesque spot, and one, moreover, full of Biblical interest as
being, if not Capernaum itself, within three miles of that city, and
therefore a spot which must have been the scene of some of Christ's
labours, will begin by describing it.
The plain of Genesareth, the unrivalled fertility and luxuriance of
which, though it is now uncultivated, I described in a former letter,
when I crossed it eighteen months ago on my way to Safed, is terminated
at its northern extremity by a mountain range, which projects in a lofty
and precipitous crag into the lake, and renders any passage round it by
land extremely difficult. This projection forms a little bay, or rather
rush-grown lagoon, running back into the head of the plain. Into it
falls a small stream, powerful enough, however, to turn a mill. It is
this building and the ruins of an ancient khan near it, which was itself
constructed from the remains of an ancient city about three hundred
yards distant, which is now called Khan Minieh. The true site of the old
city is not, however, where the khan now stands, but not far from a
fountain, shaded by an old fig-tree, from which the fountain takes its
name—Ain el-Tin, or the Fountain of the Fig-tree, which suggests the
idea that either the name is very new or the fig-tree very old. A
plentiful supply of water flows from it, slightly brackish, with a
temperature of 82° Fahrenheit. The water is crowded with fish and
surrounded with green turf. It appears to be one of the seven fountains
mentioned by Theodorus, A.D. 530, as being two miles from Magdala, the
city of Mary Magdalene, in the direction of Capernaum.
Near this fountain are some old foundations and traces of ruins, but
these for the most part cover a series of mounds where a few walls are
visible, but no traces of columns, capitals, or handsome blocks of
stone, and much smaller in extent than those of Tell Hum. Indeed, the
whole area is not more than two hundred yards long by one hundred broad,
and this is one reason for supposing that it cannot be the site of that
important city. The khan itself is at least as old as the twelfth
century, being mentioned by Bohaeddin in his life of Saladin. A road
from here leads up the steep hillside to Safed. The view from it, as we
ascend to some elevation above the plain, is very beautiful. That
fertile expanse which Josephus calls “the ambition of nature,” lies
stretched at our feet, with the waters of the lake rippling upon its
pebbly beach, while we look right up the gorge of Hammam, its beetling
cliffs on both sides towering in rugged cave-perforated precipices to a
height of twelve hundred feet above the tiny stream which, compressed
between these lofty walls of limestone and basalt, winds its way to the
lake.
But it is not up the wild mountain-side that our present way lies; so,
taking our last look at the crumbling walls of the old khan, at the
picturesque water-mill, the ruin-strewn mounds, and the grassy lagoon,
we prepare to skirt the rocky flank of the ledge which here dips into
the waters of the Sea of Genesareth, and by which we hope to reach the
ruins of Bethsaida.