“Oh,” he replied, “I'm a Jew.”
After that the glibness with which he pattered off all the Christian
traditions was very edifying until my patience was exhausted, and I
said, “Well, supposing, as we neither of us believe in any of these
invented sites, we go and try and find something that is real.”
He had been in the service of some of the recent Jerusalem explorers,
and I afterwards found him an intelligent companion.
It is a striking illustration of Moslem religious toleration, as
compared with that shown by Christians in Jerusalem towards Jews, that
while this man could accompany me into the Mosque of Omar, that most
beautiful and sacred of Mohammedan temples, he was not allowed even to
enter the street in which stands the Christian Church of the Holy
Sepulchre.
So far as Christian rites are concerned, it may, then, be taken as a
fact that the interest which attaches to Jerusalem has but a very
slender relation to them. The great natural features, of course, must
always remain. Bethlehem, Bethany, and the Mount of Olives are as they
ever were, but there are two Gardens of Gethsemane, one claimed by the
Latins and one by the Greeks. When we descend to more minute details
they are either purely mythical or at best only matters of vague
conjecture. One of the best illustrations of the purely mythical is
Christ's footprint on the rock from which he ascended into heaven, which
is a good deal smaller than that of Buddha, which I have also seen on
the top of Adam's Peak in Ceylon, or of Jethro, which the Druses showed
me in the Neby Schaib.
Among those open to conjecture, the position of Calvary and the tomb of
Joseph of Arimathea are points upon which research may still throw
light. Every indication goes to show that Golgotha, or Calvary, was a
knoll outside the Damascus gate, exactly in the opposite direction to
that affixed by Christian tradition, and which would do away with the
Via Dolorosa as a sacred thoroughfare, the street shown as that along
which Christ bore his cross on his way to execution. It is only probable
that Calvary was the ordinary execution ground of Jerusalem, which is
called in the Talmud “the House of Stoning” about A.D. 150, and which
current tradition among the Jews identifies with this knoll, a tradition
borne out by the account of it contained in the Mishnah, or text of the
Talmud, which describes a cliff over which the condemned was thrown by
the first witness. If he was not killed by the fall, the second witness
cast a stone on him, and the crowd on the cliff or beneath it completed
his execution. It was outside the gate, at some distance from the
Judgment Hall. The knoll in question is just outside the gate, with a
cliff about fifty feet high. Moreover, we are informed that sometimes
“they sunk a beam in the ground, and a crossbeam extended from it, and
they bound his hands, one over the other, and hung him up.” (Sanhedrim
vi. 4.) Thus the House of Stoning was a recognized place of crucifixion.
It is curious that an early Christian tradition pointed to this site as
the place of stoning of Stephen, the proto-martyr. The vicinity has
apparently always been considered unlucky. An Arab writer in the Middle
Ages pronounces a barren tract adjoining accursed and haunted, so that
the traveller should not pass it at night.
The Valley of Judgment (or Jehosaphat), which the Arab calls the Valley
of Hell, passes not far east of the knoll, the Arab name of which is
Heirimayeh, probably from a cave in the knoll called Jeremiah's grotto.
The idea that this was in fact the Place of the Skull was warmly adopted
by the late heroic defender of Khartoum, General Gordon, who spent the
year before he went on his fatal mission to the Soudan in investigating
points bearing on these subjects as tending to uphold theories which he
held in regard to them, and which he explained to me at great length.
Before leaving England he sent some notes on these to the Palestine
Exploration Fund, and in their last quarterly statement these are
published. They are full of pathetic interest now. In regard to the
Place of the Skull, General Gordon says that “the mention of the Place
of the Skull in each of the four Gospels is a call to attention.
Whenever a mention of any particular is made frequently we may rely
there is something in it. If the skull is mentioned four times, one
naturally looks for the body, and if you take Warren's or other
contours, with the earth or rubbish removed, showing the natural state
of the land, you cannot help seeing that there is a body, that the
conduit (discovered by Shick) is the œsophagus, that the quarries are
the chest, and if you are venturesome you will carry out the analogy
further. You find in the verse in the Psalms, ‘Zion on the sides of the
North,’ the word ‘pleura,’ the same as they ‘pierced his pleuron, and
there came forth blood and water.’ God took a pleuron from the side of
Adam and made woman. Now the Church of Christ is made up of or came from
his pleura. The stones of the Temple came from the quarries, or chest of
the figure, and so on. So that fixed the figure of the body to the
skull.”
This theory led to Gordon's forming a singular and mystical conception
of the emblematic character of the city as typifying in actual
configuration the New Jerusalem, the divine bride.
The most interesting fact, however, in connection with this knoll is the
recent discovery upon it of a tomb, which has excited considerable
interest as being, from its position, more likely to be the tomb of
Joseph of Arimathea, in which never man had been laid before Christ,
than any hitherto known. From the knowledge we have now acquired of
rock-cut tombs in Palestine we are able to judge from its appearance and
construction its probable date, and these all go to prove that it
belongs to the later Jewish period, or that which terminated with the
destruction of Jerusalem. The appearance of this tomb so near the old
place of execution, and so far from the other tombs in the old
cemeteries of the city, is very remarkable. A careful plan of the site
and tomb has been made by Lieutenant Mantell, R. E., and sent to
England, where the subject has lately afforded matter for discussion.
The reason why the tomb was not found by the early Christians in their
search for it at the time of Constantine is easy to be accounted for by
the fact that, about ten years after the crucifixion, the “Women's
Towers” were built by Agrippa upon the rock over the tomb, and it must
have been hidden beneath or within the new building. Under these
circumstances the sepulchre could no longer be visited, and in course of
time its existence was forgotten, until the Empress Helena destroyed the
temple to Venus which the Romans had built on the present site of the
Holy Sepulchre Church, and “beyond all hope” (as Eusebius words it),
discovered the rock-cut Jewish tomb, which the faithful accepted as the
tomb of Christ.
A peculiar interest does nevertheless attach to these extremely ancient
tombs in the Holy Sepulchre Church, one of which is now appropriated to
Nicodemus, the nature of which I will discuss in my next letter. It is
extremely probable that either Constantine or Helena heard that tombs of
a high sanctity stood beneath the Venus temple, and they thought they
could not do better than take the most sacred tomb to which tradition of
any sort attached, and call it the holy sepulchre. Modern
iconoclasticism and love of truth have, however, proved too strong for
fourteen hundred years of unfounded tradition. If the churches had only
taken half as much trouble to preserve the moral truths which are to be
found in the teachings of Christ, as they have to preserve a cave in
which he was never buried, the world would have been so much the better
instead of so much the worse for their exertions.
TRADITIONAL SITES AT JERUSALEM—_Continued_.
Haifa, August 3.—The discoveries which have been made in Jerusalem
during the last few years, and the conclusions at which those who have
most deeply studied the subject have arrived in consequence, render it
extremely desirable that a new or revised description of the Holy City
should be inserted in the tourists' hand-books for Syria and Palestine.
Travellers should be warned against dragomans who waste their time
taking them to see Christian sites which have no relation to the facts
they are supposed to commemorate, and possess no interest of any kind
beyond the philosophical one that they illustrate the extraordinary
credulity and superstitions which exist among the professors of
Christianity in the nineteenth century, and which are certainly not
exceeded, even if they are paralleled, by those of any heathen religion.
A Jerusalem hand-book, to be of any interest, should deal with the
conclusions resulting from the excavations and researches of Sir Charles
Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, Captain Condor, M. Clermont Ganneau, and
others, during the last twenty years, and leave the traditions of the
Latin and Greek churches almost out of the question altogether. Their
researches have settled nearly all the topographical questions connected
with ancient Jerusalem, which had previously been the subject of so much
controversy and error, the doubts and difficulties connected with them
arising from the fact that the city had been more or less destroyed and
built over so many times that the original foundations of its walls and
Temple could only be determined by extensive and laborious excavations;
and in the course of these many collateral discoveries were made.
We learn from the publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund that
these excavations were carried on under difficulties of every kind, in
face of the opposition of the local government and in spite of continued
fevers and lack of funds. The mines were driven to extraordinary depths;
one at the southeast angle of the Haram being eighty feet deep, and
another, near the northeast angle, being one hundred and twenty feet
beneath the surface, where it reaches the solid rock. In consequence of
the great depths, the scarcity of the mining frames, and the treacherous
character of the débris through which the shafts and galleries were
driven, the work was one of unusual danger and difficulty, requiring
much courage and determination. Sir Charles Warren and the
non-commissioned officers of his staff worked constantly with their
lives in their hands, and often undertook operations from which the
native workmen recoiled. The prudence and discipline of the party,
however, secured valuable discoveries without an accident; and it is
generally acknowledged that the results are of an importance which fully
repays the labor and difficulty of the operations.
Sir Charles Warren was the officer who so courageously entered the
desert of Sinai after the late Egyptian war, when he succeeded in
capturing the murderers of Professor Palmer, Captain Gill, and
Lieutenant Sharrington, and bringing them to justice. The result of his
labors in Jerusalem, and that of his fellow-explorers, is a magnificent
atlas, published last year by the Palestine Exploration Fund, containing
a most elaborate series of maps, plans, elevations, and engravings,
which reproduce the sacred city in all its most striking features,
accompanied by a handsome volume of descriptive matter. We are thus able
to base an account of the ancient topography of the city on data more
exact than any previously acquired, and to read the ancient historic
accounts by the light of ascertained facts, instead of guessing at
probabilities by the aid of descriptions, which, however carefully
written, are still, as all descriptions must be, vague where the student
requires most exactitude, and deficient where he most wishes for
details.
With the assistance of these publications a guide-book might be compiled
which would enable the tourist to order his dragoman to take him
straight to the places worth seeing, instead of—following on the track
of exploded tradition—going with him like a sheep to those that are not.
Much could be done to clear away existing confusion and prevent the
perpetuation of error by a change in the received nomenclature, whereby
things should be called by their right names so far as they are known,
instead of by misleading appellations, derived from the records of early
pilgrims or the later crusaders. I will take a few examples as
illustrations. Not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the guide
shows the traveller an immense reservoir, now being filled up. This, he
says, is the Pool of Bethesda, but it has only been thus designated
since the fourteenth century. In the twelfth this pool was supposed to
be a cistern near the Church of St. Anne, and in the fourth the site of
Bethesda was shown at the twin pools, northwest of Antonia. The fact is
that there are only two sites which may be regarded as possible for
Bethesda, one being the spring of En-Rogel, which has an intermittent
ebb and flow, and which is still frequented by the Jews, who bathe in it
to cure various diseases. The other is the curious well immediately west
of the Temple enclosure, now called Hamman Esh-Shefa, or the Healing
Spring, a long reservoir reached by a shaft nearly one hundred feet
deep. None of the pools which have at various times been selected by
tradition have any supply of living water, and none can well be supposed
to have any intermittent rise and fall, such as we understand by the
moving of the waters.
Again, take the tombs of Absalom and St. James. There is nothing
whatever to connect the first with Absalom. The singular style of its
architecture shows that it cannot be the pillar “Absalom reared up for
himself during his lifetime in the king's dale.” M. Clermont Ganneau has
made excavations uncovering the bases and pedestals of the columns, all
of which are purely Greek. Indeed, it is only since the twelfth century
that it was called the tomb of Absalom at all. The author of the
Jerusalem Itinerary calls it the tomb of Hezekiah, and Adamanus, in the
seventh century, calls it the tomb of Jehoshaphat. It is possibly the
monument of Alexander Jannæus spoken of by Josephus. So, too, the tomb
of St. James has nothing to do with St. James; for there has lately been
discovered on the façade an inscription in square Hebrew in so
inaccessible a position as to have been only probably cut before the
façade was completed, which mentions that the family of the Beni Hezir
are buried there. This family of priests is mentioned in the Bible (1
Chron. xxiv. 15). The inscription seems to date from the first century
before Christ.
The so-called tomb of David is a vault over which has been built a room,
called the chamber in which the Feast of the Passover prior to the
crucifixion is supposed to have taken place. Close to it is the Palace
of Caiaphas, and in it is shown the spot where Peter stood when he
denied his Master. Near it is the rock upon which the cock roosted when
he crew. The “rock,” the “spot,” the “palace,” the “Cænaculum,” and the
“tomb” all rest upon equally invalid authority. As regards the tomb of
David, we know that it was within the walls, together with those of
eight other Jewish kings. That the place was apparently well known as
late as the time of Christ we gather both from the Acts and Josephus. It
is remarkable that one undisputed Jewish tomb still exists in such a
position as to have been certainly within the city of David. This is the
so-called tomb of Nicodemus, and it is yet more remarkable that in its
original condition, before it was partly destroyed, this tomb must have
been just made to contain nine bodies, placed in kokim, or graves cut
according to the oldest arrangement employed by the Jews. Josephus
mentions as a peculiarity of the tombs of the kings that some of the
coffins were buried beneath the surface, so as to be unseen even to
those standing within the monument. Just such an arrangement exists in
the tomb under consideration, the floor of which is sunk so that the
graves on one side are on a lower tier. It seems, therefore, quite
possible that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre preserves the monument of
the nine chief kings of Jerusalem. Of course, tradition, with its usual
ignorance, places “the tombs of the kings” on the hill of the upper
city, where your guide takes you to see them, and where there are no
ancient tombs at all, the tombs there being of a date not earlier than
the first century before Christ. A fine sarcophagus, with an Aramaic
inscription, stating that it held the body of a certain Queen Sara, was
discovered in them. Though called by a wrong name, they are,
nevertheless, well worth visiting. As it is supposed by some authorities
that Helena, Queen of Adiabene, was also buried here, they might more
properly be called the tombs of the queens.
But the really great work which recent investigation has accomplished
has mainly reference, not so much to such details as these, which must
always remain more or less matters of speculation, as to the settlement
of controversies affecting the topographical questions connected with
ancient Jerusalem. First, in regard to points upon which all are now
agreed. There is no doubt about the Mount of Olives and the brook
Kedron. It is agreed that the Temple stood on the spur immediately west
of the Kedron, and that the southern tongue of this spur was called
Ophel. It is also agreed that the flat valley west of this spur is that
to which Josephus applies the name Tyropæan, though there was a
diversity as to the exact course of the valley, which has now been set
at rest by the collection of the rock levels within the city. It is also
agreed by all authorities that the high southwestern hill, to which the
name of Sion has been applied since the fourth century, is that which
Josephus calls the upper city, or upper Market Place. The site of the
Pool of Siloam is also undisputed, and certain natural features have
been determined, which serve as data on which to construct the walls of
the ancient city and fix the site and area of the Temple enclosure in
the time of Herod. There is still some controversy in regard to the
exact position and course of the city walls prior to its destruction by
Titus, but this is chiefly maintained by those who are fatally affected
in their religious sentiments. There is also a difference of opinion in
regard to the area of the Temple building. Practically, however, this
point has been settled by the great weight of authority on one side,
which affirms that the present Haram enclosure, in which are situated
the mosque of Omar, and the sacred stone, represent the area of Herod's
Temple, only one or two standing out for a restriction of this area. If
the Turkish government would only allow explorations to be made under
the platform of the dome of the rock, the very rock upon which Abraham
is supposed to have been ordered to sacrifice Isaac, and if the
examination of the closed chambers known to exist on the north and east
sides of this platform could be carried out, the controversy might be
set at rest by actual discovery. Of the Temple of Solomon little is
known, though it is possible that the great scarps in the present
British cemetery may be as old as the time of David, or the eleventh
century before Christ. They are, without doubt, the oldest existing
remains in Jerusalem, and formed part of the ramparts of the upper city.
Meantime, the most interesting spot which it contains, whether for Jew,
Christian, or Mohammedan, is that mysterious dome of the rock, with its
gorgeous mosque covering the sacred stone, which Christ himself must
have regarded with as much veneration in his day as the adherents of the
two other religions, so widely opposed to the one of which he was the
founder, do now.