THE MODERN JERUSALEM--A VOUCHER FOR THE LITERATURE OF ITS ANCIENT
OCCUPANTS.
In the twelfth chapter of this volume, and particularly at p. 141
and to the end, we have referred to those monuments of ancient
art--buildings, sculptures, coins, which, as materials of history,
are available in confirming or correcting the statements of ancient
writers; and again in the twentieth chapter, we have brought forward
(as samples only) some instances in which the existing remains of
antiquity may be appealed to, as vouchers for the truthfulness of one
of these writers--Herodotus.
Then in the fourteenth chapter we have seen what is the relative
strength of that evidence which vouches for the genuineness and for
the authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, as compared with that on
the ground of which classical literature is accepted as real, and
trustworthy. The superiority which we have claimed for the canonical
writings results from:--1. The number of copies that have come down
to modern times. 2. The high antiquity of some of these extant
manuscripts. 3. The extent of geographical surface over which copies
were diffused at an early date. 4. The importance attached to them
by their possessors. 5. The reverential care with which manuscripts
were executed. 6. The separation, and the mutual hostility of those in
whose custody the books were conserved. 7. The visible influence of the
writings upon the conduct and opinions of nations, from age to age. 8.
The mass, and the intricacy of quotations from them. 9. The existence
of ancient versions. 10. The vernacular extinction of the languages in
which the books were written. 11. The means of comparison with spurious
and imitative books. 12. The strength of the inference derivable from
the genuineness of the books, to the credibility of their contents. The
facts referred to under these twelve heads well deserve the reader’s
careful attention, and with this view they are here recapitulated.
But now there is one ground of comparison, quite proper to an argument
of this sort, to omit all allusion to which might seem to indicate a
consciousness of weakness; for, on the ground which is now in view,
there is an apparent advantage largely on the side of classical
literature, and profane history. Let us then look into this defective
portion, as it may seem, of the Biblical evidence, and measure its
actual importance.
With this purpose in view, we return, for an hour, to the British
Museum. In passing through these saloons we find ourselves visibly
confronted with the memorials of each of the principal developments
of ancient civilization; and with some also of those that were very
limited, and obscure, and temporary. Ample and multifarious, and
admirable are the monuments--in marble and in metal, of what the men
of other countries have been, and of what they have done, in ages
so long gone by. Here, for instance, is the Egypt of three or four
thousand years ago--its people, and their employments; and here its
despotisms, its dynasties--so many--are set forth in their gigantic
semblances; and we may actually touch surfaces that were chiselled and
polished at the time when--or before that time, Abraham was journeying
from Mesopotamia towards Canaan. Here also is the Assyrian despot,
and here the Babylonian and the mighty builder, and the lord of fifty
nations--here they now hold their court, and show us before what
glories, and what terrors it was that millions of men bent the knee,
and kissed the dust, in the times of Samuel, and of Solomon, and of
Hezekiah. Here are substantial displays of the earliest developments
of the human mind, under wholly different conditions--physical,
social, political. Here are the earliest conceptions of Greek taste,
intelligence, and free ideality; all these are vouched for; and
mementos are before us of the Lycian people also, and of the Lydian,
and of the Etruscan; and as we come down to later times, Greek art,
and Roman art, bring us into familiar correspondence, not only with
national characteristics, but with the individual persons of those
ages. Now, during those times, the people of Palestine were passing
from the lower to the upper culminating point of their national
existence. Where, then, in this great assemblage of the nations of
antiquity--where is Palestine? Are there none here to represent her,
and to challenge a place for a people whose literature has pervaded
the civilised world? The books of the people of Palestine are in
every home--in every sacred edifice--they are found in palaces, and in
cottages, and they are treasured near to the hearts of the good--high
and low, and are extant in the memories of all. Why then should not
the men of Palestine, and why should not its religious rites, be
represented in the marbles, and in the metals, of our museums?
It may indeed be said that the ancient Palestine is not altogether
absent from the museums of Europe; for among tens of thousands of
samples of the mintages of antiquity, there are found a few coins of
the Maccabean times, with their innocent and homely symbols; and in
the series of the Imperial coins there are some vouchers for the fact
of the overthrow of the Jewish state; there is the woman seated by the
palm--the representative of the Judæa Devicta. Need we ask the reason
of this absence of sculptured memorials of this one among the nations
of antiquity?--The want of sculpture is, in truth, this people’s glory;
the absence of the vouchers we might look for is indeed a voucher,
attesting the noblest of all distinctions--that of having so long
possessed and maintained, a free social polity, and a true theology.
If at this time an order were given to remove from the British Museum
all memorials of the cruel tyrannies, and of the sensual idolatries of
Egypt, and of Assyria, and of Greece, and of Rome--if every article
were expelled that gives evidence of the oppressive despotisms, or of
the vicious religions of ancient nations, how meagre an exhibition
would remain after such a clearance had been effected! It is therefore
this people’s glory--a glory unrivalled--that no sculptures are extant
to represent it in the museums of Europe! Nevertheless, there are
monuments of its history to be found, if we look for them where it is
reasonable to make the search; namely, in Palestine itself, and at
Jerusalem especially.
A few--say five or six--of the principal cities of antiquity, have
continued to be inhabited from the very earliest times to this
time;--such are--Damascus, Constantinople, Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.
The consequences of this uninterrupted occupation of the same sites,
have been--more or less so in each instance--such as these--the
preservation of some of the most ancient basement structures; the
superposition of the structures of each age, in layers or deposits,
resembling the strata of the earth’s crust; the commingling of older
materials with the more recent buildings in the mason’s work; and,
generally, the creation of a modern town, lifted up, as one might
say, upon the head and shoulders of the ancient city. Such cities,
in exploring which we find evidence of their having undergone these
several conditions, may fitly be called--HISTORICAL CITIES; and from
these sources alone--or if there were none else available--we might
gather abundant materials, adapted to the purpose of illustrating the
_written history_ of nations, and of giving to it the most conclusive
confirmations.
The briefest exemplification of what we here affirm, taking up two or
three instances only, would occupy a great space. The educated reader
does not need to be told what has actually been done, in this way,
in regard to Athens and Rome. Something of the same kind has, also,
within a few years, been effected in relation to Jerusalem; but in
this instance very much remains to be done; and much will undoubtedly
be effected, at no distant time, when the Turkish guardianship of
Palestine shall have ceased; or when Mahometan jealousy shall have
given way to European intelligence. We advert to this instance, in
concluding this volume, because it properly brings into view--at once,
the several kinds of facts and statements which belong to our argument.
It is thus, then, that we bring the modern Jerusalem into our prospect.
Two short periods excepted--after the capture and overthrow of the
city--Jerusalem has been inhabited, _continuously_, throughout a
period of three thousand years; and during all that length of time a
written history has attended its fortunes, even from the earliest age,
to this present time. If in this place indulgence might be given to a
metaphor--and to such a metaphor--we should say that, looking at the
entire mass of authentic history as an organic body, Jerusalem--the
same hard material from age to age--is the vertebral stay of all
history; or, in homely phrase, that this one city is the very back-bone
of chronology. This is certain, and it has become more and more evident
from year to year of late, that in every instance in which the leading
events of the Hebrew and Jewish history may be ascertained with
precision, such fixed points send forth ribs which give support to the
loose matters of Egyptian, and Assyrian, and Persian and Macedonian
history.
It is peculiar to this one ancient city to have passed under the
hand, and to have been for a length of time in the occupation of each
of the great empires that have had a place and a name in the world,
during the course of three thousand years. Each of these powers has
solidly monumented itself within, and about its walls. A narrow space
indeed is this to contain the architectures of ten empires; or, to be
more precise, of seven empires, and of three royal holdings. Yet so
it is; and in attestation of the fact, and as a consequence of it,
if at this moment we were fitting ourselves out for a six or twelve
months’ explorative sojourn in the Holy City, we should think it
indispensable to pack our portmanteaus with books, ancient and modern,
which, retrogressively catalogued, would include--I. The principal
modern works or guide-books, which show what the Franks have done in
recent times in the way of church-building, monasteries, hospitals,
hospices, and private residencies. II. Such records as there may be
(if any) of Turkish doings in the same or similar modes; and much has
been done by the pashas in the repairs of the walls, and in alterations
and repairs within and around the Haram. III. The Arabic writers (they
are more than a few), the post-Islamic, and the ante-Islamic--such as
Abulfeda, and others, in whose writings incidental notices, at least,
occur of the Saracenic structures of their “Al Kuds.” There is much
relating to the mosque of Omar, and of Al Aksa. IV. The entire mass
of the crusading histories--the writers who are brought together in
that bulky folio, the “Gesta Dei per Frankos.” With these there must
come very many writers of the fifteenth and following centuries, who
treat of the topography of Palestine, such as Adrichomius, in the
“Theatrum Terræ Sanctæ.” V. The Byzantine writers who touch upon the
churches and monasteries of the Holy Land; with Procopius, and his
account of the buildings of Justinian: the early Itineraries, Greek
and Latin; and among these Jerome must find his place. VI. Some of the
Greek Fathers--Cyril of Jerusalem and Eusebius. VII. The Greek and
Roman profane historians, in series; from whom we learn all that can
be known of the fate and fortunes of the city after its overthrow,
and during the years of its desecration, as the Ælia Capitolina, by
heathen temples and their impure rites. VIII. Josephus, and the Book of
Maccabees, are our authority as to Herod’s structures, of which many
unquestionable remains are discernible among the ruins of the city. The
same writer, and perhaps some of the rabbis, give the evidence that is
required for interpreting the existing remains of the Asmonean period;
thenceforward, or, we should say, higher up, it is--IX. To the Hebrew
prophets and historians that we must look for the light we need, so far
as the _written_ memorials of the times of Ezra, Nehemiah, Hezekiah,
Solomon, David, may afford it.
Thus it appears that, in carrying forward those explorations which
already have in part been made, and which are now in progress, and
which may be effected hereafter at Jerusalem, what we are doing, and
what we shall yet be doing, is this--we are taking up the ancient
written records of this city, page after page, and we are verifying
each of our authorities by aid of the architectural remains of the same
times--even from the remotest periods, down to this age. It is this
Jerusalem which, beyond any other ancient site, furnishes the means,
and the material, for thus collating and verifying the literary records
of a people, by means of its extant monuments.
Architectural remains, such as those are which invite the labours of
the antiquary at Athens, and at Rome, and at Jerusalem, require to be
examined in relation to four distinguishable subjects;--as first--the
_materials_ (in a geological sense) that have been employed; and the
question to be answered is--Whence have these been drawn--whether from
quarries near at hand, or from a remote region? The _second_ of these
inquiries relates to the style and quality of the _mason’s work_--that
is to say, we have to note any peculiarity that may belong to the mode
of squaring blocks of stone, and of fitting them one to another, and
of placing them in layers; or to the manufacture of bricks, if these
are in question. The _third_ inquiry is properly _architectural_,
and it has respect to the decorative style of the structure, and its
aspect, and its beauty, considered as a work of taste. There then
follows the _fourth_, and it is a most important question--Are these
courses of masonry where we now find them--in their original, their
primeval position; or have these blocks been dislodged, and overthrown,
and scattered, and in some after-time reassembled and made use of by
the builders of a later period? This last is often the determinative
inquiry, in relation to doubtful points of history; and in the instance
just now before us, it has a peculiar significance, inasmuch as
there is reason to conjecture that some, at least, of the ponderous
masses--the prodigious blocks, whereupon the heterogeneous structures
of the modern Jerusalem take their rest--have been dislodged, upheaved,
turned about, and again replaced, as at first, more than once or twice
in the lapse of ages.
To the first of the above-named questions our answer is easy;--the
material of the ancient Jerusalem was drawn from quarries quite near
at hand: it is the lime-stone rock of the very site of the city.
This has always been supposed; and the fact has lately been more
fully ascertained by the explorations of Dr. Barclay,[12] an American
physician, and long a resident at Jerusalem. Within the vast caverns
that undermine Bezetha, and at a great depth below the surface of the
present city, the mother-rock shows, beyond a doubt, what masses have
been hewn from it, namely, those large blocks, sixty feet in length,
which underlie the Haram wall, and the city wall, in many places, and
much of the interior of the city. In those caverns, such as we now
find them, these blocks were squared, and their edges bevelled, and
their surfaces--the upper and the under, were nicely prepared for their
adjustments, according to the methods of a highly refined masonic
art. As to this art of the _builder_, it is such as could have been
practised by none but a people well advanced in practical intelligence,
and that were in the enjoyment of the opulence and the tranquillity
proper to a secure political condition. The mason’s work which is
peculiar to, and characteristic of, the cyclopean substructures of the
Haram, and the ancient city wall, is of a kind that fixes attention
when once it has been seen, and it is such as speaks its remote origin
almost as intelligibly as an inscription could do.
The _architectural_ characteristics of Jerusalem, as well of the
ancient, as the modern city, cannot but be intelligible to those who
are conversant with this branch of antiquarian lore. We easily read the
various fortunes of the city, indicated right and left, in-doors and
out of doors, scattered upon the surface, and deep in wells, tanks,
and caverns, built into walls, and confusedly mixed with the chiselled
labours of the workmen of other ages. The one source of ambiguity is
that which arises from these disorderly commixtures, when a fragment,
a capital, an entablature, which is manifestly Roman, or Byzantine, or
Norman, stands so transfixed upon a structure whereupon it is embedded,
as to conceal what might indicate the chronology of the earlier work.
Nevertheless, amid many such indeterminable questions, there can be no
question on the general ground, that, in and among the architectural
remains of Jerusalem, we are looking at specimens of the builder’s
art, in all the stages, and in all the styles and fashions that have
belonged to it, from the most remote times to the latest.
As to the fourth of the above-named heads of inquiry, fall of historic
significance as it is, a solution of the problems belonging to it must
await a time when this site shall yield itself up, without reserve or
restraint, to the industry and intelligence of European antiquarians.
We have need to be reminded of the fact, that, as we become familiar
with the books of the Old Testament in childhood, it is not until years
later that we learn to correct the wrong chronological conceptions
which have arisen from the misadjustment of them as to their order of
time. These early erroneous notions continue to haunt the imagination,
perhaps through life, and we lose sight of, or quite forget the
fact that a period of four or five hundred years intervenes between
prophets that take their turn to be read, in the mornings and evenings
of a week. Under the misguidance of these chronological errors, we
are likely to carry forward, into the era of a people’s maturity,
conceptions which belong only to the age of their patriarchal and
nomadic simplicity. Some few instructed readers of the Bible may be
quite exempt from any such misconceptions; but probably it is many
that are subject to them. Moreover, the grave tones of the inspired
writers, and their singleness of purpose, so unlike the conventional
and sophisticated manner of other writers, favours the idea that the
Hebrew nation continued, from age to age, to live on in a condition of
pastoral simplicity.
Such was far from being their condition; and a more attentive perusal
of the historical books of the Old Testament, and of the prophets,
will suggest, and more than merely suggest the belief, that this
ancient people had reached a stage of advancement in the arts of
life--substantial and decorative--which places them, at the least, on a
level with any people that were their neighbours and contemporaries, or
of any that are known to us by their records and by their monuments. It
is true that we are used to think of Solomon’s temple as a magnificent
structure; and yet the descriptions given of it in the Books of Kings
and Chronicles, convey an impression rather of its metallic splendour
and its richness of decoration, than of the cyclopean style of the
masonry that sustained it. Was it, in truth, a great work in an
architectural sense? This question admits of a probable answer. The
series of prophets, in discharge of their function as the reprovers of
national sins, mention and rebuke the sumptuous style and the luxurious
manners of those who then were the princes of the people; yet they make
no boast, as if they were proud of the wealth, and the arts, and the
instructed skill of their countrymen. Nevertheless there occur, in many
parts of the prophetic writings, incidental allusions to the splendour
of the private structures of the city--houses of hewn stone, houses
ceiled with costly woods, decorated with ivory and gold, and fitted
up with every device which elaborate luxury might ask for, are spoken
of even by some of the earlier prophets. We must believe, therefore,
that the Jerusalem of the ancient monarchy was a city of palaces and of
princely mansions, in constructing which no cost had been spared.
Here, then, the two portions of an inferential argument come into
contact; and it is just at the basement line of the palaces and the
mansions of the ancient Jerusalem that they do so. The juncture is of
this sort;--we hold in our hand the various literature of an ancient
people; this literature has traversed the fields of time in those
several modes of conveyance to which, in the preceding pages, we have
given attention; it has thus come into our hands _safely_; it stands
attested in modes so many and so sure, that now to speak of it as
if it were questionable would be a mere prudery and an affectation.
Up and down throughout these writings we find incidental notices of
the sumptuous style of the upper classes of the people, in their
modes of living, and in the decoration of their public and private
buildings; at least it is so as to what were the visible parts of such
structures. The kings and the nobles of the Hebrew monarchy were men
of great wealth; ample revenues were at their command, and they spent
their incomes magnificently. Looking to the documents--the parchment
rolls--the volumes of the prophets of those ages, such are the
inferences we must derive from them.
But what objects are those that present themselves when, with the
pick in hand, we go down to the levels of the ancient Jerusalem? What
we there find are courses of highly-wrought masonry, with which, as
to the dimensions of the single blocks, and the labour that has been
bestowed upon them, nothing can be compared unless it be in Egypt
and at Palmyra. The inference is valid, namely, that the people of
this city--even those whose structures, sacred and domestic, underlie
the monuments of eight or nine successive empires or kingdoms--the
primeval people--must have been wealthy, and far advanced in the arts,
and large also in their conceptions, and bold in their enterprises.
They were a people great and well civilised, and they were so at a time
when, as the Greek historian tells us, the ancestors of his nation were
petty marauders by sea and land, and were feeding upon acorns!
Such are the conclusions which we arrive at after a careful perusal
of the literature of the Hebrew people, if now, at this day--and yet
it is in a sense which he did not intend--we listen to the invitation
of one of its poets, who challenges us to “Walk about Zion, and to go
round about her,” and to “tell the towers thereof, and to mark well her
bulwarks, and to consider her palaces;” for in doing so we shall find
the means for confirming ourselves in those convictions, the strength
of which concerns each of us in the most intimate manner.
THE END.
B. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] “City of the Great King.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious errors in punctuation have been fixed.
Page 7: “on good evidncee” changed to “on good evidence”
Page 87: “the _Myriobiblion_” changed to “the _Myriobiblon_”
Page 99: “subjects al things mundane” changed to “subjects all things
mundane”
Page 129: “than is explicitl affirmed” changed to “than is explicitly
affirmed”
Page 167: “is rgulated” changed to “is regulated”
Page 241: “illuminations o ancient manuscripts” changed to
“illuminations of ancient manuscripts”
Page 259: “prepare for writing” changed to “prepared for writing”
Page 385: “rom the ordinary walks” changed to “from the ordinary walks”
Page 399: “over which copie” changed to “over which copies”