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Around the Mediterranean
With My Bible

By
HARRIET-LOUISE H. PATTERSON

Foreword

by
GAIUS GLENN ATKINS

PHILADELPHIA

THE JUDSON PRESS
CHICAGO LOS ANGELES

Copyright, 1948
THE JUDSQN
Revised

Printed in the United States of America

TO THREE

Two who opened doors

Jacob H. Goldner

Jacob Nusaibeh

One who smoothed pathways
My Mother

5801056

FOREWORD

MISS PATTERSON has written this work as a labor of
love, though u labor " is an inadequate word. It is
her matured contribution to a better understanding of the im
memorial and interwoven association of the Bible with the
shores and hinterlands of the Mediterranean; and she has
thus named it. It is far more than the vivid telling of a single,
sunlit voyage over the bluest of seas, whose very waters are
Spread with memories and along coasts of enchantment. She
has written out of a long acquaintance with what she studies
and describes. She has herself conducted parties over the
routes she follows here and this gives her book a rich texture.

She knows what to look for and where and how to find it.
She has seen the ports into which she sails so often that ob
servation and recollection combine in her telling. She knows
her guides and dragomen, has no fear of customs officials
though she did have a trying experience with one once over
a rug. This gives the book an ease and assurance in move
ment which is part of its charm and yet there is nothing in it
of the swagger of the blas6 traveller which is itself an
achievement. Since these are her own experiences, she uses
the first personal pronoun singular frankly and without
apology.

Her itinerary is determined both by geography, history, the
courses of the ships she used and the inland lines of travel she
followed. The book is thus naturally written out from and
around successive bases, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece, Italy,
Its handling of the great material involved is highly com
petent

And always there was her Bible, which she knows as she

5

6 Foreword

knows its lands. When she reaches the place, the proper
Biblical association is there. She meets St. Paul as they sail
east past Crete, he is waiting for her in Damascus and bids her
farewell in Rome. Here her touch is sure and sufficient; this
makes the book of very great value to all Bible students, to
ministers and teachers.

The author knows, as well, the secular history if history
is ever purely secular of the regions about which she writes*
She follows the movements of the races which have moved
through and across this middle sea since history began. This,
too, enriches the texture of the work. And finally her knowl
edge of recent archeological explorations brings the work up

to date.

***

Miss Patterson writes as she travelled leisurely. She had
time to haunt the bazaars, drink a drop of coffee with an in
gratiating merchant of fascinating wares, visit with children,
drop in on an Arab school, note flowers, plants, trees. Crafts
men hammer for her readers their brasses or blow their glass,
all as their ancestors did. The camel, the donkey, the truck
and the motor car pass through her pictured pages* The
peasant farmer goes out to work and comes home as he did
under the Pharaohs. The author has a vivid sense of color.
Her description, say of Damascus street scenes, is bright with
color. She notes the play of light across sacred mountains and
magic dawns and twilights. But all this, in detail, would
make the introduction as long as the work. But it must be
noted again and again how faithful the author is to her title.
The Old Testament is here and the New. Their persons, their
places, their mountains, lakes and rivers, their shrines, their
monuments and their memories. This is the book s central
value.

# * #

I venture, in conclusion, one observation in a time when

Foreword 7

every conclusion is a venture and all anticipation a hazard. I
doubt if any work similar to this in observed content will soon
or ever again be written. In a way and without reproach, it
is dated- It is written out of the period between the last
World War and the beginning of the next (1939). The
Near East she knows so well had already begun to change.
Jerusalem was getting modern suburbs. There were tractors
in Esdraelon* Even with continued peace, the lands which
furnish her subject matter would have been markedly
changed. But for her the spirit and substance were still there,
though the habits, customs and costumes of the West had
begun to erode the East.

And now? As this is written (April 27, 1941) the radio
announces an alien flag with a strange device above the
Acropolis* Mechanized armies whose bequest is tragedy grind
on and down into dust what seeks to hinder them; nothing
old and precious seems any longer safe* It may be that the
future will be sadly grateful to Miss Patterson for having, in
her full and characteristic way, sought to keep alive what may
become, outside a book, only a memory touched with the tears
of things.

GAIUS GLENN ATKINS.

During the two years following the end of World War II,
I have taken the opportunity of revising and rewriting numer
ous portions of this book, bringing it up to date.

HARRIET-LOUISE H, PATTERSON.

October, 1947

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I . . . . . , . , 17

I have my first glimpse of Gibraltar gateway to the Mediter
ranean. I see it at midnight

CHAPTER II 19

I begin my journey around the Mediterranean with my Bible.
Describes my recollections past and present on the subject of the
"Middle Sea," called "Mare Nostrum" by the Greeks and
" Hinder Sea " by the Hebrews,

CHAPTER III 28

I visit Marseilles where the Phoceans and Romans have pre
ceded me, I walk in the St. Jean quarter, begin ecclesiastical
history at the Cathedral, find the harbor gay with twinkling lights,
lively with little boats, and eat " bouillabaise." High above the
city from her hillside retreat the golden statue of Notre Dame
smiles her blessing and bids me * Godspeed " as I take up the
trail again that leads to the Holy Land.

CHAPTER IV 37

I spend four hours passing Crete where I see the bay which
sheltered Paul s ship during the voyage which ended in shipwreck
and remember Titus. I learn the Philistines who settled on the
west coast of Palestine are descendants of the Sea Kings of Crete
and a corruption of their name from which we get the name
" Palestine " today is the only thing which has come down to us
from them.

CHAPTER V . 46

I enter Egypt through Alexandria, stop to discover some " first
things " here, then follow the canal to Cairo. I seek Moses at the
Nile, and watch a funeral cortege. I tour the Pyramids, meet
the Sphinx, drink coffee on the desert, and have broiled quail for
dinner. I am drawn to the Museum to see the gold of Tutank
hamen and the Tel el Amarna tablets. Cairo is a city of con
trasts. I visit some of her four hundred mosques, go shopping in
the " Musky," and watch the shifting panorama at tea-time from
a famous terrace, At Heliopolis, where Moses was instructed by
the priests of Ra, there is a solitary obelisk; at Mataria, where the
Holy Family are said to have lived, are a tree, a well, and a
legend. I see a sunset from the Citadel.

io Contents

CHAPTER VI ....... 73

Describes my journey from the land of Goshen to the edge of
Sinai and up to Jerusalem, Here three great religions come to
gether, each worshipping, each dreaming, each guarding as sacred
her treasures. The Holy City on her proud hills is sacred to
Christian, Jew, and Moslem. Entering Jaffa Gate, I visit the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Calvary), the Dome of the Rock
on what once was the Temple area, and the Wailing Wall.

CHAPTER VII ....... 93

I walk about Mount Zion, linger in the Upper Room of the
Gospels, and where Peter denied Jesus hear a cock crow, I stop
at the Pool of Bethesda. At the Convent of the Sisters of Zion, I
am shown " Gabbatha."

CHAPTER VIII ...... .103

I ramble outside the Old Wall. The Valley of Hinnom
(Gehenna) holds no terrors now. Siloam Village sprawls on a
hillside. I go to see the tunnel which Hezekiah cut in the rock
when the Assyrian threatened to come down * like a wolf on the
fold." I go through the Kidron Valley to Gihon and climb the
hill to Gordon s Calvary. I visit the underground quarries which
provided the stone for Solomon s Temple*

CHAPTER IX ....... 117

I spend a morning on the Mount of Olives climbing the Rus
sian Tower s 214 steps for a view of the Judean Wilderness imd
Moab, visiting the Chapel of the Ascension, and the Church of
the Lord s Prayer. I talk with a nun at the Russian Church and
am given a bouquet of rosemary. I tarry in the Garden of Geth*
semane. The night before I leave Jerusalem, I return to Olivet
and spend an hour under a sky spangled with stars and walk be
neath olive trees whose " little gray leaves were kind to Him."

CHAPTER X . . . . . . , , 126

I spend Sunday at Hebron, City of * the friend of God,** En
route I visit Solomon s Pools and Ortus. I discover that Hebron s
" welcoming committee " is not out to greet me but the survivors
of the "Haj." Children bother me at the Mosque. A potter s
open door invites me to "Look"; a glass factory solves the mys
tery of Palestine s source of " evil eye " beads, In " the heat of
the day," I walk through extensive vineyard country and rest near
the ancient oak at Mamre.

Contents 1 1

PAGE

CHAPTER XI 140

I speed by automobile from Jerusalem s golden wall via the
Plain of Rephaim, Rachel s Tomb, Well of the Magi, and Shep
herds* Field to Bethlehem, As in the time of Boaz and David the
people are still farmers and shepherds. Bethlehem women have a
distinctive costume. Crowds jostle at sheep market on Saturday
morning; markets and houses are no different in aooo years. Re
ligion is still the inhabitants chief interest. The story of the
first Christmas unfolds itself against the historic background of
the Church of the Nativity. I watch a "stranger star" above
Bethlehem at midnight. I ride a bus to the Shepherds* Village.

CHAPTER XII 158

Crossing the Kidron, continuing up and around the shoulder
of Olivet, I come into Bethany where I visit a Moslem school. I
follow the road to Jericho as it winds down through fierce gorges
and hills which roll dull and brown into distance. Modern Jericho
has sycamores suited to the purposes of a Zaccheus and palms
reminiscent of when it was called ** a city of palm trees." Ancient,
excavated Jericho sheds light on the biblical account of the Is
raelites* invasion of Canaan, the city s capture, and explains how
the walls fell down flat. With memories of Joshua awakened, I
go on to the scene of where he led Israel across Jordan in 1400
B. a I ponder on the river s unique position among the rivers of
the world, hallowed because of its association with men such as
Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, and Jesus. I have a view of the
Mount of Temptation from the Dead Sea,

CHAPTER XIII i?7

I drop in great windings into a region of wrinkled hills ^ and
emerge from the Judean Wilderness at the Jordan. An inviting
green road leads me into Gilead. I ford the Jabbok as did Jacob.
I look in vain for footprints of Jesus at Jerash (Gerasa), best pre
served example of a Roman " city-plan." I spend the night at
Amman (Rabbath Ammon), capital of Trans- Jordan and center
of the Arab camel-raising world, I have a window full of ruins!
I wake to think of kings and crowns.

CHAPTER XIV

I look back upon Jerusalem from the Nablus Road. Every lit
tle hill north to Samaria carries the ghost of a Bible city: Gibeah,
Nob, Ramah, Mlzpah, Beeroth, Bethel, and Shiloh, I rest at
Jacob s Well, go to Shechem, climb the hill of Samaria, and walk
its deserted streets with thoughts of Ahab, Jezebel, Elijah, and
Herod*

1 2 Contents

CHAPTER XV . ......

Galilee s mountains, valleys, great plain, springs, and her tea
combine to help me realize why this region was ** the place He
loved so much to be." I have lunch on Esdraelon in view of
Gilboa, Little Hermon, and Tabor, come into the noisy world of
Nazareth to find a well, a hilltop, and a carpenter shop, At
Cana, the beggars remind me of the mobs who crowded Jesus at
the wedding feast; the " lilies of the field " growing on the Horns
of Hattin recall the Sermon on the Mount; my first glimpse of
Galilee reveals it as blue and beautiful as my dreams. I go to
Tabgha, watch fishermen, eat ** Peter s fish," and experience a
storm on Galilee. I stay with the nuns on the Mount of Beati
tudes, meet some Bedouin children who take me home to it goat-
hair tent. At Capernaum I see the excavated ruins of an old
synagogue, the site of Peter s house and read parable* by the sea,
The Plain of Gennesaret is like a vast green garden, Magdala J*
only a wretched village.

CHAPTER XVI ....... 244

Travelling along the oldest road in the world to Damascus, I
have a last view of Galilee, glimpses of the Jordan, am stopped for
contraband at Rosh Pinna, and come within sight of the Mount
of Transfiguration (Hermon). I travel the last five miles remem
bering Paul s conversion to Christianity. I wander in the " Street
called Straight " and the bazaars, see the scene of Paul s escape
from his enemies, enjoy the garden-court in a princely Syrian
house, poke around an old khan, and linger at the Grand Mosque,
formerly a pagan temple, then a Christian church, and now it
Moslem holy place. I go back to read again an almost forgotten
Greek inscription on a stone lintel.

CHAPTER XVII ..... * 263

Leaving Damascus I drive via the River Barada (Abana) to
Baalbek, City of the Sun, Few ruins at first sight create such im
pressions of beauty, majesty, and human skill as this accumulation
of masonry representing four architectural ages. I wander among
enormous blocks piled up by the Romans and through courts suc
ceeding one another in vastness and stand beside the six atu*
pendous columns remaining from the Great Temple* I am awed
by the gigantic foundation stones, perhaps the work of Phoenician
stone-cutters. I have a lovely view from the quadrangle,

CHAPTER XVIII . , . , . . % #71

I sail the Palestine Riviera between sunrise and sunset
Anchored off Jaffa (Joppa) I look over onto the Promised Land*

Contents 13

PAGE

I sail on to Tel Aviv, coast along to Caesarea where Paul lived
two year*, and come ashore at Haifa, Sunset from Mount Carmel
with memories of David and Elijah.

CHAPTER XIX 292

I approach Beirut from overland and by sea and find the city
equally fascinating. I set out north along the coast road for Dog
River to inspect the inscriptions carved on the face of the cliff by
conquerors who, at one time or another, have fought their way
through this historic pass, beginning with Raamses II to General
Giraud of France. I follow the Phoenician coast south to Tyre
and Sidon,

CHAPTER XX 304

The approach to Greece has always been by water and so I
still find it as I debark for a day here. It is a short motor trip
from sun-baked Piraeus to " violet-wreathed " Athens. I am
touched by the city s modern comforts and thrill to the splendor
of her ancient monuments; the Acropolis, Temple of Theseum,
Theatre of Dionysus, the Tower of Winds, and the Areopagus.
** Miracles of grace in stone " from the Golden Age lure me first
to the Acropolis* I sit on Mars Hill where Paul preached and
wonder what is still in Athens that he looked upon when he came
as a tourist. Sailing from Piraeus at sunset, I enjoy a charming
last view of the Acropolis towering above the city and of hills
softly turning purple,

CHAPTER XXI , * 315

Describes my voyage from the Bay of Phaleron to the Bay of
Naples. I travel to the resurrected Pompeii at the foot of Mount
Vesuvius to look for traces of the gospel there, go on to exquisite
Amalfi and think of Andrew, and drive to Sorrento over a fine
road offering ever-changing views of indescribable scenery.

CHAPTER XXII , 332

I follow in Paul s steps along the Via Appia from Puteoli to
Rome, I look up "the Apostle s ** hired house," locate Prisca s
house on the Aventine Hill, and go to the Mamertine Prison. I re
live the last days of Peter and Paul in the Eternal City, de
scend into the catacombs, and return to their churches built over
their tombs. I visit places in Rome associated with the apostles
and their disciples. My journeys end beneath the wooden cross
in the Colosseum*

INDEX 359

ILLUSTRATIONS

Ancient Olive Tree in Gethsemane .... Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

The River Nile, " Old Cairo " 52

Great Pyramid of Cheops from Mena House Gardens . 56

The Pyramids and Sphinx at Gizeh 60

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre 82

View of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives ... go

The Pool of Siloam 108

View of Olivet from Jerusalem 120

Shepherds Field near Bethlehem 142

The Church of Nativity, Bethlehem 148

" The Street of Columns," Jerash 188

" Main Street," Nazareth 220

By the Sea of Galilee 226

Remains of Roman Synagogue, Capernaum .... 238

Through Opened Doors of Grand Mosque to Booksellers

Bazaar, Damascus 260

" A Giant s Fairy Tale in Stone," Baalbek .... 264

The Headland of Carmel and the Stella Maris Lighthouse 286

A Miracle of Grace in Stone, The Acropolis at Athens . 308

The Cathedral of St. Andrew, Amalfi 328

The Colosseum from the Via dell Impero .... 352

A Map of the Mediterranean World

(Courtesy of the American Export Lines)

CHAPTER I

1 have my first glimpse of Gibraltar gateway to the Medi
terranean, I see it at midnight.

I SHALL never forget my first glimpse of Gibraltar, gate
way to the Mediterranean. It came only a few hours
after a dinner companion, a veteran sea-goer, had asked me, a
neophyte, if I were staying up that night to see the Prudential
Life Insurance sign on the Rock. Was I staying up to see the
ROCK? Foolish question!

For hours, it seemed, we passed close to the mysterious,
black, ragged coast of Africa, close enough to see the glitter
ing lights of her cities matching the flotilla of stars which had
come out of the east to welcome and to guide us. Cruising on
to u Gib/* the huge rock was outlined against an inky sky
while high up within the secret honeycombed fortress there
beckoned a solitary burning light, remote and mysterious as
a single star. With our changed position the moonlight fell
over the shoulder of the Pillar of Hercules making a beauti
ful silvery pathway along the very black, very shiny, rippling
water from the now anchored steamer in the bay to the
crouching city at the water s edge.

The city s lights were the miracle. The houses, the streets
of Gibraltar were invisible, hidden against that great mass of
rock. Lines of golden globes that marked the main traffic
arteries leading away from the crouching city were strung
out like topaz; in the cuplike hollow that borders the shore a
thousand lights blazed like jewels. They might have been a
necklace of yellow diamonds-

The night was marvelously clear: the sky a deep del-

17

1 8 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

phinium blue, the air extremely cold, the wind high. Amidst
a romantic setting, the passengers, gala in their evening attire,
swarmed about the rail of the promenade deck looking down
as low, throaty, resonant voices in strange tongues drifted up
from the bobbing tenders waiting below.

Though twas midnight the festive note of the Captain s
dinner still lingered on in a scene which might easily have
been a setting for the " Arabian Nights/ As the tenders with
passengers bound for Portugal and Spain pulled away from
the liner, we shouted, " Adios." With one accord we lifted
voices to sing a fond farewell to friends grown dear in eight
all too short days at sea. " Good-night, Ladies," floated out
over the water as the ship s anchor was lifted.

I watched the lovely curving line of glittering shore grow
fainter; the color, the gayety departed from it as the distance
widened. Cruising around the Rock, the city of Gibraltar
was lost from view, but out of the east one low, shining star
burned brightly, separating itself from all the others and
beckoning toward another world of culture, philosophy, and
religion now to be discovered by me. Ever since the star-led
Magi set out with their caravans on the road to Bethlehem
two thousand years ago a never-ending stream of pilgrims has
moved toward the Holy Places, in order to tread with their
own feet the ground trod by the Bible people and made sacred
by religious associations. I was adding myself to the un
counted millions who had preceded me. And lo, this star
which I saw in the east went before me as I began my Medi
terranean journeys.

CHAPTER II

/ begin my journey around the Mediterranean with my Bible.
Describes my recollections past and present on the subject of the
"Middle Sea" called "Mare Nostrum" by the Greeks and
" Hinder Sea " by the Hebrews,

ATER passing Gibraltar, it is only a matter of hours until
one is embarked upon a voyage of cloudless days, blue sky
curving overhead, and little islands lifting their sharp outlines
in sunlight from a blue sea, a haven of rest and enjoyment.
No longer then do skeptics scoff at the idea of blue sea rivalling
blue sky. I have gotten a peculiar joy from rising early and
remaining up late at night to see the spectacle of the Mediter
ranean in all its changing moods and colors, emerald and
amethyst, turquoise and sapphire, jade and silver which pre
dominate in turn but never once in all their evanescent love
liness repeated in exactly the same way. Hours on end I have
spent in my deck chair looking out upon this vast expanse of
water, which each hour of the day or night in any season has
a spell of its own, and musing upon the sea s long and varied
history.

The livelong day, even far into the night, I have been struck
with the majesty of this ever-changing, island-strewn inland
sea, but more than that I have found myself repeating with
new meaning as I reclined in my deck chair or walked the
decks and looked out over the Mediterranean:

" There s a wideness in God s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea/

As I have looked from the shores of southern Europe across

19

20 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the Mediterranean as it rolls away toward North Africa, I
have felt a sense of the impermanence of material civilizations
come over me. Only the sea remains.

II

" In ancient times the world only possessed one known sea
of any real importance, and that sea was the Mediterranean.
Beyond its limits lay the great unknown, while within its con
fines were concentrated all the chief events of history* Here
mighty empires rose and fell, and East and West closed in
mortal conflict. The Mediterranean formed the great trade
route by which merchants from the East brought their goods
to the markets of the West. From its shores came the great
Founder of the Christian faith, whose advent constituted the
greatest major event in the history of the world/* writes Major
General E. Poison Newman in The Mediterranean and Its
Problems.

Today this waterway is known as the Mediterranean, com
ing from two Latin words, MEDIUS meaning " middle **
and TERRA meaning " land " or " earth/* It was given this
name because in ancient times it was the very center of the
most civilized area of the world. Its waters divided southern
Europe from northern Africa. Its total length from the
Straits of Gibraltar to Syria is approximately twenty-three
hundred miles; its greatest breadth is about one thousand
eighty miles; its total area as it washes the shores of three
continents Europe, Asia, and Africa is something over a
million square miles, which is equal to a third of the area of
the United States.

It might be well to say just a word about the Straits of
Gibraltar held by Great Britain and through which travellers
enter into the Mediterranean. Often it is considered the sea s
chief outlet, yet technically it is an inlet. Due to evaporation
the level of the Mediterranean is a little below that of the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 21

Atlantic Ocean so that the fresher ocean water is constantly
flowing in through the straits. This is true in spite of the
large volume of water being poured into the Mediterranean
by such bodies of water as the Nile, Rhone, Ebro, Po, and
those waters feeding it through the Dardanelles.

Aristotle and his contemporaries did not call it " Mediter
ranean." They called it "Mare Nostrum " (Our Sea) and
by using this blue medium to float their culture, they justified
their use of the term. But to many another civilization be
fore and since it has been " Our Sea " also.

Consider briefly those who have called it and are still call
ing it " Mare Nostrum." First, there was the ancient Minoan
civilization which centered in Crete; then, there was the
Mycenaean prehistoric of the Aegean Heroic Age; third, the
Phoenician merchants pushed out from Tyre and Sidon to
the Greek islands, to Carthage, to Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica,
and Spain (Tarshish), and finally to England and the Baltic;
fourth, the Ptolemaic Egyptian kingdom used this waterway;
fifth, the medieval Crusading kingdom of Italian, British,
French, German, and Spanish dreamers; and coming to our
time never before have so many nations wanted to claim her
as "Our Sea.

The British control the narrow straits at Gibraltar and
Suez. France from her port at Marseilles keeps an eye on
restless North Africa: fertile Algeria, rich French Morocco,
and the strategic Tunisian protectorate. Italy had many air
bases within firing range of Briiish-owned Malta, which was
midway between Italian Sicily and Italian Libya. Before
Libya was lost to her in the war, needing this sea as the
link between the peninsula and the colonial life of Libya,
Italy jealously looked upon the Mediterranean, coveting it
as "Our (Italy s) Sea." Germany for the rich minerals in
Spain created the Rome-Berlin axis. Meanwhile Spain pos
sesses Morocco across the sea from her beautiful shores. Rus-

22 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

sia is interested in the body of water because she had no
southern waterway and outlet for her rich black oil from Baku
and, too, because she wants other markets for Ukrainian
wheat. Turkey has refortified the Dardanelles and has plans
to improve her Mediterranean ports of Istanbul, Smyrna, and
Mersina. The republics of Syria and Lebanon face it hope
fully. Tripoli is an outlet for Iraq petroleum. Egypt, too,
looks to Alexandria which is her Mediterranean port and to
Suez as outlets for her cotton shipments. It has become no
longer a one-track sea, controlled by one nation. Perhaps it
is more correct to say that it is the most desired. However, of
all the great events which have taken place along its shores in
Crete, Greece, Italy, Egypt, or Phoenicia, or even in events
transpiring there now, it is safe to maintain that none can
compare in importance, in influence, or in subsequent con
sequence with what occurred in little Palestine more than
nineteen hundred years ago at the time when Jesus lived at
the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, by what he said and
by what he did.

For travellers like myself journeying upon this historic
water way, it becomes for the time being ** Our Sea,** too*
For persons like myself, chiefly interested in everything as it
pertains to the Bible, it is not only a voyage to the cradle of
Hellenic beauty and culture, of Roman law, but it becomes a
fascinating journey on the highway over which the gospel was
carried to the great cities of the Roman Empire and raises
questions on the subject of the Mediterranean and its signifi
cance in biblical narrative. It is because most of the events
of the Old and New Testament took place at the eastern end
of the sea that most people have been apt to call and think
only of Palestine and Syria as the Holy Land and to forget the
role the Mediterranean and the lands bordering it have played
in the destinies of races, religions, and civilizations by dis
seminating Christian doctrines. Because scores of mission-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 23

aries carrying the gospel did their vrork about the eastern
Mediterranean and because the early Church flourished most
extensively and vigorously in the great cities along its shores,
it is possible to find a wealth of material to study with the
Bible around the Mediterranean. Then in that respect the
whole region bordering it becomes the Holy Land and the
entire voyage a pilgrimage with one s Bible.

I discovered that no one chapter in either Old or New
Testaments fully considers the important matter of this sea.
Hence it has meant subsequently a diligent study through the
Book. I discovered further that the Mediterranean, although
never referred to by that name by the biblical writers, plays an
altogether different r61e in the Old Testament than it does in
the historical events of the New Testament. In the earlier
age it was, so to speak, a wall of water, a boundary, separating
Israel from other peoples; in the days of Jesus and his dis
ciples, and Paul the evangelist, it was a highway over which
the messengers of the gospel sailed to reach the great centers
of the Roman world. Israel s boundary in Old Testament
days was this vast sea. Turning to Joshua, I read :

" Every place on which the sole of your foot treads I have given
to you, as I promised Moses; the region from the desert as far
as the Lebanon yonder, and from the Great River, the river
Euphrates, as far as the Great Western Sea, all the land of the
Hittites, shall be your domain." JOSHUA i: 3, 4. (The Bible,
An American Translation, Smith 8c Goodspeed) .

And there are other passages in the books of Numbers and
Deuteronomy which confirm it.

I was arrested by the words " Great Western Sea/ 5 I real
ized as never before that this was the largest body of water of
which the Hebrews had any knowledge and they called it be
cause of its pre-eminence " Great Sea." But they also had
other terms to designate it. Frequently, they called it the

24 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

" Hinder Sea " because It was always behind them as they
faced east, away from their enemies the Philistines. Occa-
sionally, they referred to it as the u Western " or the " Utter-
most Sea/ Sometimes they spoke of it as " the Sea of the
Philistines " since that people dwelling along the western coast
of what we now call Palestine possessed the large portion of
its shore. The Hebrews never knew it as " Mediterranean "
or " Mare Nostrum. 3

Israel was never at home on the sea; in the Psalms and the
Prophets, and even so in their history, it remained always dis
tant and foreign. It was something to gaze upon but not to
sail. Long ago the Psalmist stood upon a mountain and sang:

" Yonder is the sea, great and wide."

It might have been all Israel speaking. Their long, straight
inhospitable coast line and the lack of ports making it seem a
barrier, something to fear but not to venture upon, made it
practically impossible for them to develop a race of mariners
or leaders in commerce.

George Adam Smith in Historical Geography of the Holy
Land writes: " No ports are mentioned in the Old Testa
ment. When the builders of the second temple hired Phoeni
cians to bring timber from Lebanon to Joppa, it is not written
* to the harbor or creek of Joppa, but to the sea of Joppa.
Of the name or idea of a port, gateway in or out, there is no

trace."

To the Hebrews the eastern Mediterranean was a stiff,
stormy line of unbroken coast. It had no little isles to tempt
men in or out, to tempt them from island to island, and then
to farther continents as the Greeks had. For Israel the sea
was never intimate or alluring; the coast possessed no number
less bays to beckon or invite, no sprinkling of isles to tempt
landsmen to seamanship.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 25

It was only in the most secondary way that the Mediter
ranean was used by the Hebrews as a highway for commerce
and then almost always not for exporting their products of oil
and wheat to other world centers but for importing materials
which Israel needed: cedarwood from Lebanon, gold, silver,
and ivory from Tarshish (Tarsessus in Spain), metal- work
from Tyre, and beautiful fabrics from Sidon. The relations
of Israel to the Tyrians as seen in the account of Solomon s
building and commercial undertakings disclose the fact that
Israel had not and, indeed, never reached the point where
she could supply mariners to carry out her commercial enter
prises at sea. By his alliance with the sea-going Phoenicians,
Solomon acquired the services of ,a Mediterranean fleet and
that together with the timber from Lebanon enabled him to
build and man another fleet at Ezion-geber on the Gulf of
Akabah, which became Israel s seaport. It is very evident
that the Hebrews were not sailors.

This sea plays no important part in the life of Jesus. In
fact, it is referred to only once in all the four Gospels, and
then only incidentally. And yet, strangely enough, at no
time in his life was Jesus more than one hundred miles from
its shores- He must have looked often upon its waters, near-by
or at a distance, because the sea can be seen easily from many
elevated places in Palestine. He must have enjoyed walking
along its yellow sandy beach as he journeyed into the region
round about Tyre and Sidon and watching the sea as it rolled
in along this coast. Many a time Jesus must have stood on
the western hill, turning his back on sordid, filthy, vitriolic
Nazareth, and looked west to where the sea came pounding in
against that long, dark green arm of the Carmel range as it
reaches out toward the Mediterranean. It was only fifteen
miles away. From Tabor, from Hermon, he must have seen
its placid blue waters sparkle as with diamonds in the sunshine
or watched it change its tranquil mood and beat angrily

26 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

against the rocks and spend its fury in high waves and thirsty
white foam. Influenced as he was by the whole world of
nature, which is reflected in his parables, I was struck by
the omission of any mention of it in his teachings, especially
when I remembered that Jesus ministry was accomplished by
its shores. How strange that living in such close proximity to
it for more than thirty years Jesus remained silent on the sub
ject of the " Great Sea."

In the history of the early Church, the Mediterranean as
sumes pre-eminent importance. One of the most distin
guished historians, Harnack, has said ; ** It is hard to imagine
the Christian faith spreading so rapidly to Rome and beyond,
if the imperial people had not promoted maritime intercourse
throughout the empire. Viewed in this respect, the Mediter
ranean figures as a mighty mixer of peoples and beliefs; for it
connected the East and the West and promoted the inter
change both of products and ideas/*

If in the Old Testament the sea was a boundary or bar
rier shutting in Israel, in the New Testament it becomes the
highway over which the gospel was earned to the great cities
of the Roman Empire. If no desire for wealth or commercial
supremacy could possibly persuade the Hebrews to venture
out on its waters, then a passion for proclaiming the glorious
gospel of Jesus Christ did drive the apostle Paul and others
out to the uttermost parts of this sea again and again. On
Paul s first missionary journey, he took ship at Antioch in
Syria and sailed to Cyprus; at the farthest end of this island
he took ship again for Attalia in Pamphylia; after preaching
in some of the chief cities of Asia Minor, he returned to
Antioch again by ship. On his second journey with Silas and
Timothy, when he went down to Corinth, he crossed the
northern end of the Aegean Sea, sailing from Troas; return
ing, he crossed the southern part of the sea, sailing from
Cenchrea near Corinth to Ephesus, and then continuing down

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 27

the coast to the island of Rhodes, and then to Caesarea on
the coast of Palestine. On Paul s third journey, he followed
more or less the route he took on his previous one, with the
exception that on his return journey he went from Rhodes to
Patara in Lycia and sailed from there to Tyre-Sidon and
thence down that lovely coast to Caesarea, The record of
Paul s journey to Rome where he was to be tried before the
Emperor s tribunal has been recorded so vividly by Luke, his
travelling companion at that time, in the Book of the Acts.
The chapter has been called " the most vivid account of a
voyage and shipwreck in the whole of Greek and Latin litera
ture/* But more of that voyage later in this book.

Often as Paul sailed on this same wide sea, when he was
planting Christian colonies from the borders of Syria as far
as Spain and to the city of Rome, he had plenty of time on
his hands to think things through. From the deck of a coast
ing vessel he could look out upon the sea reaching far and
wide to the borders of this Mediterranean world, north, east,
south, and west, restored to public order, peace, and unity
under the authority of a single power Rome. It must have
suggested to him a truth in the world not seen by human eyes
where God in His abundant mercies calls not only " Jews
but also Gentiles " and makes of one all nations of peoples.

The example of national unity in the " inhabited world "
around the Mediterranean Sea must have suggested to him a
time when all who bear the name of Christ shall live in peace,
bound together in one great fellowship of love and liberty.
In that kingdom, stretching from shore to shore, Paul en
visioned as had Hosea:

" I will call them my people, which were not my people; and
her beloved, which was not beloved.

"And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said
unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the
children of the living God." ROMANS 9:25, 26.

CHAPTER III

/ visit Marseilles where the Phoceans and Romans hav$
ceded me. I walk in the St. Jean quarter > begin ecclesiastical his*
tory at the Cathedral, find the harbor gay with twinkling lights*
lively with little boats, and eat ef bouillabaise** High abov$ th$
city from her hillside retreat the golden statue of Notr$ Dam$
smiles her blessing and bids me ff Godspeed " as I tak$ up th&
trail again that leads to the Holy Land,

FOR some days we cruised along the north shore of the
Mediterranean with its deeply indented harbors, past the
Spanish peninsula. We stopped to enjoy briefly the unique
island beauty of Minorca and Majorca from where white
gulls as a " welcoming committee " fluttered out to greet the
ship. Early one morning, I saw a new harbor looming in the
distance. A massive cathedral, high on a hillside, topped
with a fine gold statue of the Madonna and Child dominated
our seaward approach. The city kneeling at the Virgin s feet
looked neat and white. I knew it was Marseilles*

We swung into the new harbor, crowded already with
shipping; as we moved into the dock all the sounds of a busy
port were about us. I looked down on long lines of sheds*
crowds of porters and officials. How different it all was from
what the Phoceans saw when they landed here in 600 B* a

Wanting to colonize, these Greek traders consulted their
goddess Diana, the same as Artemis of the Epheslans,
Through priestesses they were told to set sail from their home
land with the goddess statue aboard and in time they would
be guided to a suitable landing-place. Bearing the statue of
Diana conspicuously placed, they set sail A fresh breea*

28

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 29

sprang up and it carried the fleet along the Ligurian coast to
a bay, the site of the present Marseilles.

Upon arrival, the handsome young Greek chief Protis was
made ambassador to the chief of the tribes inhabiting this
new country. Nannus, the local chief, was giving a feast that
same evening to his young warriors. At this banquet his
daughter Glyptis was to choose herself a husband from among
the young gallants. Immediately, Protis was invited by his
host to be present on this great occasion. When the guests
were all assembled, the lovely princess entered the banquet-
hall bearing in her hands the cup she was to present to him
whom she would choose as a husband. Slowly she passed by
all the nobles of her race; finally she came to Protis whose
beauty and polish attracted her. She stopped and presented
the cup to him. The Greek youth accepted it and that eve
ning the betrothal of Protis and Glyptis was celebrated.

Nannus then gave to the young bridegroom a large tract
of untried land upon which to settle himself and his country
men. Soon the Phoceans were established on this coast and
they set themselves to build a town, which in 600 B. c. they
named Massalia.

That city was already ancient when in 49 B. c. Caesar
" came and saw and conquered. 5 Massalia, had unfortu
nately espoused the cause of Pompey. Immediately, the con
queror set about to form a new province with its capital at
Aries in which Greek culture blended with Roman magnifi
cence. The " Provincia Romana " is not yet forgotten be
cause its outline has been preserved irx the charming region
known as Provenge. The area forms a triangle with the Medi
terranean at its base and Lyons at the apex and is dominated
by the Rhone River.

Whether Provence is explored from Nice, Cannes, or Mar
seilles, some remember Aucassin and Nicolette, Petrarch and
Laura because this was the land of troubadours and me-

30 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

dieval romance. But far more remember that in early Chris
tian centuries it was a center of culture and religion unique
in Europe. In the Rhone Valley, more particularly at Aries,
not a few recall those energetic first century Christians who
with Trophimus preached the " good news " of Jesus Christ
here so that by the second century Roman Provence held
many believers; at Aix, others are reminded of King Rn6>
" Count of Provenge, King of Sicily, Naples, and Jeru
salem " ; and back again in Marseilles with a wide view of the
sea and the heavy shipping in the harbor still more recollect
that for many, many years this city furnished all the galleys
used by St. Louis and his armies in the eighth Crusade to the
Holy Land,

Marseilles is one of the principal ports of southern Europe
and gateway to French colonial possessions* One is not apt
to forget this after he has seen the great ships in the harbor
and the vast amount of cargo for import and export, after he
has listened to the loud clamor and confusion, and been
jostled by the cosmopolitan crowds which throng this large
and important city o France.

II

Not far from the new dock was an old suspension bridge,
until the Nazis came here. It was a good starting place for
exploring the old harbor section, but nothing remains of it
now. I remember the tall houses of the town stretched on
either side. In this neighborhood I found a queer, new
symphony of sound; the squeaky honks of tiny French horns
on antiquated rattling taxis, the clang o trolley cars, the
hoarse shouts of laborers, and the put-put from the engines
of the darting harbor craft. I walked past one tiny sidewalk
cafe after another and, after resting at first one and then
another, discovered them all excellent places from which to
watch the hum of harbor life.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 31

Turning north from the quay, I wandered about in a
labyrinth of narrow, dark streets between tall houses that
must have been mansions in the eighteenth century- A tu
multuous life as well as a lively collection of odors crowded
them. The wrangling fruit and vegetable vendors disturbed
the daytime dreams of these old mansions on what once was a
street of fashion. But at night it was a different story. Taxi
ing back around midnight to the dock through the St. Jean
quarter of the " Vieux Porte," I heard the whining and whirr
of mechanical pianos. These disturbed its peace and provided
melody for sailors furtive love-making. It is history now.

Coming back through the avenues and boulevards of the
old part of town, I reached the Place de la Major and the
Cathedral, which is sometimes known as La Major or Ste.
Marie Majeure. Designed in the Byzantine style by Leon
Vaudoyer, it is an impressive building in appearance with
its alternate courses of green and white stone. It is compara
tively new as churches go in the Old World. This building

was begun only in 1852; the work was continued until 1893;
but it is still unfinished and escaped war damage.

Imagine, if you can, this striped church with a Gothic
ground-plan. It is four hundred and sixty feet in length. Its
huge dome is two hundred feet high. Its interior is impres
sive, being so richly decorated with marble and mosaics. Its
crypt is the burial place of the Bishop of Marseilles.

This French city is a good place to start ecclesiastical his
tory since it is supposed to have the cell used by Lazarus when
he visited Marseilles and the cross upon which Andrew the
apostle of Jesus suffered martyrdom.

Close by the Cathedral de la Major, on the site of an an
cient temple to Diana, who was worshipped by the Phoceans
on this soil, stands perhaps a more interesting old building
also undamaged by war, Church of St. Victor. Within
this twelfth-century ProvenQal-Romanesque building beside

32 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the apse are two chapels dating from the fifteenth centur)
The Chapel of St. Lazarus on the left aisle contains an alta
surmounted by statues of Lazarus and his sister Marths
Church tradition claims that these two, who lived in Bethan
most of their lives, finally came to Marseilles in the first cen
tury to preach the " good news." This altar, a reminder o
these two good friends of Jesus and of their sojourn in Europe
is the earliest example of Renaissance sculpture in France*

Ru de Canebiere, which most American tourists pro
nounce " a can-a-beer," is Marseilles* busiest thoroughfare
It is lost when it merges into Rue Noailes. By turning left or
this broad avenue I came directly into tree-shaded Boulevarc
de Longchamps and saw ahead of me the imposing Palais d<
Longchamps, built by Esperandieu.

This monument consists of two wings united by Ionic colon
nades with a central " chateau d eau " or water tower whidb
brings the water a long way from Durand to Marseilles,
There is a simple, beautiful cascade of water in the front of
the monument, which is also fronted by a colossal group in
stone. There is always something fascinating about watching
leaping waters play. The crowds gathered in front of the
Palais de Longchamps and the backward glance of sight-seers
testify to the attractiveness of a silvery waterfall

On the main streets, even in the narrow steep alleys of
this hill-town, I was impressed by the shellfish stands, the
" Coquillages." Mussels, clams, crabs, and lobster have an
appeal when temptingly displayed on beds of cool green sea
weed, decorated with lemons and odd-shaped shells. On the
side streets I sought out the fishwives quarters with their
heaps of rainbow-hued fish. Here can be found aU the in
gredients for that famous dish " bouillabaise," which only the
cooks of Marseilles can concoct. Cries of " Ici, Madame, des
poissons frais/ resounded as I passed through.

Another feature of the outdoor curb market, peculiar to

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 33

the " nouveau touriste," is peeled oranges and their skins for
sale. There is no waste on the Continent; everything has
value. Frenchmen buy the skins to make liqueur.

My first French violets came from the curb market.
Their sweet fragrance lingers yet in my memory. And lilies-
of-the-valley ! Arrive some May in Marseilles on "lily-of-
the-valley" day as I did once. You ll never regret it and
you ll never forget it,

I am the kind of traveller who enjoys pushing through the
market places, rubbing elbows with the natives, snooping over
discarded, second-hand odds and ends literally dumped on
pushcarts. For that reason I am not likely to forget that
Marseilles street markets fold up and silently steal away at
precisely noon, There are individuals to whom the Rag Mar
ket in Rome, the bazaars in the " Street called Straight " in
Damascus, and the " Musky " in Cairo hold more allure in
prospect than the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Taj
Mahal in India, or the Campanile in Florence.

Somewhere I have read that coffee caf<s appeared in Eu
rope first at Marseilles. It is not hard to believe when I re
member that Marseilles stands as a sort of signpost at what
in normal times is one of the world s crossroads. Coffee
houses abound throughout the Near East and why not at this
place where East meets West and West bids West " adieu " ?

There are enough inviting places to find refreshment along
the main street of this cosmopolitan city. The average vis
itor wonders how the male population finds time to make a
living since there seems to be .always time for Frenchmen to
sit at sidewalk tables sipping cool drinks and watching the
world go by. It is always easy enough to find a boat friend
here. All one has to do is simply pass up one side of the Rue
de Canebiere and down the other, giving a good sharp look
among the occupants of the tiny caf6 tables which occupy
more than half the spacious sidewalks.

34 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Thinking about " bouillabaise " took me to dinner near the
" Vieux Porte " in the late twilight, at the hour when all
Frenchmen are sipping an aperitif. On the balcony at the
Restaurant Basso, which was above the noise, dirt, and crowd
of the quay, I sat in comfort. While enjoying a delicious
dinner and with moonlight making a path for dreams, I
looked on the evening spectacle of the whole harbor. With
a pleasant dinner companion, I enjoyed just that much more
the scene of this harbor gay with twinkling lights and lively
with bobbing boats. At another time I went to the Caf< de
Strasbourg on the Place de la Bourse for excellent food, ex
cellently served, It was possible here to select a fish from
among others swimming in a tank. The " gar$on " caught
one with a net and had it fried for my supper*

Marseilles is still a small city from whose streets you can
quickly escape into the country by following the Prado, which
runs along through a fine botanical garden, past the race
track, and comes head on into the coast road, Follow the
Cote d Azure farther east toward Cannes or Nice or Monte
Carlo or San Remo for miles of breathless beauty, sections
bathed in Riviera sunshine where mountain beauty is en
riched by vineyards, glorified by riots of floral beauty, and
graced by a necklace of colorful beach resorts, for views of lit
tle islands lifting their sharp outlines in brilliant sunshine from
a blue, blue sea.

There is one building which means Marseilles to anyone
who has ever visited here. The church called Notre Dame de
la Garde, high above the kneeling city, is an imposing land
mark from any approach because the golden statue of the
Virgin holding the Child in her arms atop the church gleams
by night and glistens dazzlingly by noonday.

Notre Dame de la Garde is the mariners Lady* Sailing
away from the French coast or returning home after adven
tures modern sailors as eagerly watch for a glimpse of her as

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 35

ancient mariners sought the glint of bronzed Athena s gold-
tipped spear around the Bay of Phaleron. They never forget
her and they leave votive offerings at her shrine.

I took the " ascenseur " or elevator built on the face of the
cliff and rode up to visit the church. All the way I had
broader views of the city as it retreated. Nearing the top, I
looked out over a city of cream-colored houses and red roofs,
made lovely by patches of vivid green and splashes of purple,
and beyond harbor confines to where lay a calm blue sea with
its sprinkling of little islands blanched by a brilliant sun. My
eyes followed the course of a small motor launch as it skimmed
over the waves to where the grim Chateau dTf, immortalized
by Dumas in " The Count of Monte Cristo," is built on rocks.

The lift came to a stop. I was near enough now to have
a good view of this huge church. Looking about me, I felt
this commanding site had been a fortunate choice for a holy
place.

I was still some distance from the church. I dropped
down on the terrace steps to watch the people as they came
here. Many of them stopped to buy white tapers from old
women whose arms were filled with them. These I knew
would go immediately to the marble-lined chapel and leave
their candles among others burning there continuously. One
group coming up was led by a priest who herded them to
gether as a shepherd does his sheep. There were a few sailors.
Perhaps they were coming to leave offerings at the shrine be
lieving that "Notre Dame" had brought them success or
saved them from shipwreck in the past months. Perhaps they
were coming to pray because they would soon be off to un
known fortunes on the big battleship lying in the harbor. An
other group mounted the steps. They looked definitely bored.
This was only another church in a series of churches in Euro
pean cities just another one on a day s program of organized
sight-seeing, After rounding up a few laggards, making sure

36 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

his " party " was together, the guide reciting facts " largest
built in France since the Middle Ages ... by Esperandieu
. . . 1864, . . . site formerly occupied by a chapel - . J"
led the way into the building. Only a very few who came up
the steps hesitated for a view of the city from the church
terrace.

At last I rose and, like all the others, I turned, went up a
few more steps and disappeared into the Church of Notre
Dame de la Garde.

All who come to look around and remain to worship are
not Catholic. Standing on the terrace another day I watched
a man come from the darkness of the church unashamedly
wiping tears from his eyes. His wife remarked to me: ** In
seventeen years I have never seen Amos cry before*" After
wards at dinner he told us the story*

" I was over here in France with the American Expedition
ary Forces during the World War. When the confusing days
of the war were over, I came to Marseilles and to this church.
For the first time in many months I found a sense of peace.
Today, when I returned after all the years, I was seized with
a desire to kneel just where I had knelt then and thank God.
I was more moved than I have ever been before; it was like
coming home/*

III

When sailing out of Marseilles at midnight, it is worth
while remaining up to watch for the magnificent gilded statue
of the Virgin holding the Child surmounting this church, I
have seen unsentimental people stirred by the beauty of the
gleaming Madonna against a velvet sky. Twice it has seemed
to me that the gracious Lady has been smiling her blessing
upon me and bidding me " Godspeed " as I set forth again
with thoughtful heart toward the land immortalized by her
son, Jesus.

CHAPTER IV

/ spend four hours passing Crete where I see the bay which
sheltered Paul s ship during the voyage which ended in ship
wreck and remember Titus. I learn the Philistines who settled
on the west coast of Palestine are descendants of the Sea Kings
of Crete and a corruption of their name from which we get the
name fe Palestine " today is the only thing which has come down,
to us from them.

WE spent about four hours passing Crete. The island
rose up high and mountainous in the distance. The
coast was rugged and inhospitable and looked perilous to sail
ing boats. On this April day it had snow in its conies. The
sunlight made patterns in the green and saffron-yellow of the
lowlands descending to where the Mediterranean s waves
creamed themselves around the shore.

From my deck chair, looking over upon this outpost of
the Aegean islands which was the link in ancient days between
Europe and the Orient, I began to think of Paul and his
companions Luke and Aristarchus and how they made a brief
stop here once. Somewhere among one of these bays, num
berless little bays which treacherously invite and beckon on its
southern coast, is Kali Limniones or Fair Havens, the harbor
which sheltered Paul s ship during the voyage which ended
finally in shipwreck at Malta.

I thought back to the fall of 58 A. ix when Julius, the cen
turion, put his prisoner Paul and the latter s two friends on
board a ship of Adramyttium at Caesarea. The next day they
stopped at Sidon where Paul was allowed to go ashore to visit
friends, A week later after a very rough journey due to the

37

38 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ship being exposed to strong westerly winds they reached
Myra. Paul and the rest were transferred to a wheat ship
from Alexandria, one of the Egyptian grain fleet bound for
Italy. I remembered a night I had spent once on this storm-
tossed sea because of the heavy winds in this easterly part of
the Mediterranean. It was a terrifying occurrence for all of
us on shipboard. I realized then something of the dangers
that first century Christians knew firsthand in little ships ex
posed to such strong winds. Seeing Crete reminded me.

The small ship carrying Paul toward Rome was heavy-
laden and clumsy. The time for the winter storms was near.
They were all uneasy aboard ship; Paul perhaps the more so
since he had made at least eight crossings and had already
been in three shipwrecks. They started out on this ugly sea,
hugging the shore until finally they were forced out into the
open. Soon they were glad to take refuge in the Cretan port
of Fair Havens. The unusual weather continued. Now they
were forced to make a serious decision. It seemed certain
death to venture out into the raging storm* There was strong
feeling in favor of laying up where they were for the winter
but the captain thought he could creep along the coast to
Phenice which was a safer harbor although in so doing there
was some danger of being blown out to sea.

" When the south wind blew softly," they sailed along close
to Crete. But the south wind blowing softly was a traitor.
The Euroclydon swept down from the Cretan hills and seized
the ship. For fourteen days with neither sun nor stars, with
a sky that was black as ink, they struggled with this sea be
cause now they had run out into the open being fearful of
being cast upon this treacherous rock-bound coast. During
the struggle, at the time when " all hope that we should be
saved was taken away," Paul steadied the two hundred
seventy-six persons aboard and gave them courage. They re
sponded to his hopefulness.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 39

Paul is magnificent here as Luke in the Book of the Acts
reveals his confidence and his brave heart which had been
strengthened by his consciousness of God s indwelling pres
ence and God s love for all His children. He had already been
in three shipwrecks, a day and a night tossed at sea, had faced
furious crowds, scourgings, and stoning. Now off the shore
of Crete he seemed faced by certain death by drowning. He
remained calm in the midst of others intense fear, indecision,
and excitement. Why? Because he had taken time to refresh
himself with prayer, to withdraw for a time from the troubles
of the earth to commune with God on spiritual things. Prayer
to him, as previously it had in the life of Jesus, meant power,
victory, peace, and calm. Through his vital experience of
prayer he was able not only to cheer himself but to comfort
his terrified companions with: " Be of good cheer, I have as
surance from God that not one of you shall lose his life."

I remembered again the night on this same sea when taking
my Bible I had read the story of the stilling of the tempest on
Galilee, and of how I was comforted and able to fall peace
fully asleep while a terrifying storm raged outside.

Heartened by Paul s hopefulness they began to take food of
which they had not tasted for fourteen days and to grow more
calm. After the dawning of hope in their hearts which for
days had held the black night of despair, there broke the dawn
over this hitherto darkened, howling Mediterranean world.
They beached the sinking ship on the island of Malta and
" they escaped all safe to land/ the crew coming ashore on
planks. Another crisis in Paul s life was ended.

II

This island of Crete at which Paul touched on his last
eventful voyage to Rome is the place where Titus became the
first bishop, as similarly Timothy had been appointed to the
church of Ephesus. Titus was young for a bishop and it

40 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

would seem that his authority was questioned. It was neces
sary to write the young man advice and directions. The sub
stance of what Paul wrote his friend we have in the Letter to
Titus.

Ill

But there is a longer history than this about Crete* Her
first kings were rulers of the sea. Some believe she was the
first naval power in history- At Cnossus under King Minos
there grew up a powerful kingdom; it held possibly one of the
most luxurious palaces of the time, having numberless apart
ments, many terraces, balconies, porticoes, and courts cun
ningly and invitingly placed.

The earliest high civilization of the Mediterranean ap
peared on Crete. This island became from its strategic posi
tion, which was almost like a breakwater shutting off the
Mediterranean from the Aegean Sea, a bridge connecting the
Orient and Europe. The trade routes from the Nile and the
Euphrates converged here. It became the link between Egypt
on the south and the lands on the north of the Aegean.

While the great Pyramids of Egypt were being built*
Cretans were learning from Egypt the use of the potter s wheel
and the closed oven, which was to mean beautifully wrought
vases which were prized in the ancient world. Many fine
polychrome vases from Crete have been found in tombs ia
Egypt, while swords and vases of Cretan-make have been ex
cavated at Gaza.

By 2000 B. G., Cretans were a highly civilized people. Com
merce between Crete and Egypt was constant, the latter
bringing to bear much influence on the northern island in her
industries of pottery and metalwork. Her galleys carried her
art and industries far and wide. Under the influence of
Egypt and the greater speed required by her increased com
merce picture signs were developed into phonetic writing,

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 41

which was the earliest in the Aegean world. Crete became
the home of the third great civilization in the ancient world,
which formed the link between the civilization in the Orient
and the later progress of man in Greece and western Europe.

Cretan power waned. In the fifteenth century B. a, she
became a vassal of Thotmes III, Pharaoh of Egypt. The pal
ace at Cnossus, erected about the time of Abraham, was de
stroyed about the same time that Joshua took Jericho, 1400
B. c. Many refugees fled to what we know as Palestine today,
settling there and attempting to drive out the Canaanites
already established in the land. They are not mentioned as
the Habiru (Hebrews) are in the Tel el Amarna correspond
ence but in biblical narrative they are mentioned as the
Cherethim or the Pelethites from Caphtor. Probably these
refugees entered Canaan about the same time as the Israelites
were entering it from the desert. They became in time the
Philistines, which means " immigrant."

At first they remained a somewhat pastoral people living
at Gerar. Then they developed their strength and began oc
cupation of the whole coastal plain at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean, They gave to this section in time their name,
calling it Philistia. Gradually, a corruption of this name,
Philistina, was given to the whole country between the Medi
terranean and Jordan. It is from the Greek " Palaistine "
and the Roman " Palaestina " that we get today the name
Palestine for the country lying between the sea and Jordan.
We are indebted to the Cretan refugees for this name and it
remains perhaps the only thing which has come down to us
from them.

The Philistines, who inhabited the Promised Land along
with the Canaanites and the Hebrews, were descendants of
the Peleset tribe, the last of the Minoans or Sea Kings of
Crete. Breasted believes that they entered Canaan from
Egypt rather than being lured there by the attractiveness of

42 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the eastern shore to establish commercial relations with the
Canaanites. It is quite likely that they were scattered by an
invasion of Crete and that they took up their abode farther
east in the Mediterranean basin. They did finally establish
themselves in five independent cities on the coast; Gaza, Ash-
kelon, Ekron, Ashdod, and Gath.

For many years, like those other invaders from the east,
they warred with their neighbors, which were shepherd tribes*
It was a warfare between a primitive and a highly cultured
invading civilization. Later the Israelites found these Phi
listines their most difficult foes after the Canaanites had been
dealt with successfully, according to the Book of Judges. The
Philistines saw no good reason why they should be ousted
from their new home by those who felt the land had been
promised to Abraham and his seed forever- They retained,
even though well-established in a new country, the arts of their
Cretan ancestors. This was made evident in the many fine
buildings and the strong fortifications which they erected and
in the examples of their skilled goldsmithing.

All this reminded me I must see Gaza and those new exca
vations. I hadn t thought a great deal about the origins of
those ancient people who lived about there. Yes, it was a
good thing we were sailing past Crete in the daytime; it led to
dreams and dreams lead to many things 1

The Cretans had been goldsmiths* Well, so had the
Philistines. The Bitile records they made six golden mice and
five golden tumors to be placed within the Ark when they
returned it with superstitious dread to the Israelites,

I remembered it had been a Philistine, a descendant of the
Sea Kings of Crete, who had stood out in an open valley one
day and defied the gathered armies of Israel How he
laughed in derision when the shepherd stripling came against
him with one of those woven woolen slings and a few stones
gathered from a brook! There was great rejoicing when

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 43

David slew the giant from Gath, the chief city of the Philis
tines, that giant clad in a coat of mail and a helmet of brass.
Here again was an instance of two types of civilization
clashing for supremacy, a primitive and a highly cultured.
It came to me quite suddenly that the Philistines were not of
Semitic origin, but of an entirely different race from that of
the Hebrews. Might it have been a clash between these two
for not merely more territory but a struggle for racial su
premacy? It went on for many years, for hundreds of years in
fact. The stories begin in the Bible with the time when the
Philistines captured the country-yokel Samson, brought him to
their heathen city of culture and exhibited him in the temple
at Gaza. They go on to the time when Jonathan was slain,
and despairing Saul killed himself, and David sang his im
mortal lament:

<#
" Tell it not in Gath,

Publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon;

Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice."

Finally, Philistia was included in Solomon s empire. At the
time of the Babylonian captivity the old hatred of the Philis
tines for the Jews flared again. It was somewhat abated when
the Jews returned to Jerusalem and a few of them married
Philistine women, but this brought severe condemnation upon
them from within their own ranks. Even the Bible people
were race-conscious.

As I sat in my deck chair leisurely sailing past the inviting
little island to the leeward, I pondered on these things. No,
the Philistines and the Hebrews couldn t get along peacefully
together in Canaan. The Philistines with such a brilliant
background and civilization to their credit, with their ability
to wage a modern warfare, to build beautiful buildings, and
erect strong fortifications, to produce art, despised these primi
tive mountaineer Judeans, who were forced to borrow from

44 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

other cultures with whom they came in contact in the fifteenth
century and for many years thereafter; they despised them
for their race as well. Likewise the Hebrews despised them
for their idolatry,, their heathen practices, their culture, and
were conscious of themselves always as the 1 ** chosen people "
of Jehovah. Intolerance has reared its ugly head in every
age; human nature does not change; we have not seemed to
learn from experience,

Palestine is torn today by the same passions and fervors
which tore it in the Bible days. Two peoples still want and
fight for possession of the land. The Jews say it was promised
to them as a homeland and they go back in their history to
prove their right to possession. The Arabs plead their long
occupation of more than twelve hundred years as giving them
prior rights to the land. The Jews claim they can bring cul
ture and the scientific knowledge of the Western world to
make it a " land flowing in milk and honey ** as the Israelites
envisioned it. The Arabs declare the West and its methods are
driving out morality and the things of the spirit, religion, and
they deplore modern Zionism as a political idea rather than a
religious ideal. The Jews despise the slowness, the ignorance,
the ineffectiveness of Arab methods which are essentially
Eastern, their contentment to continue in the ways of their
forefathers, and their resignation to fate. As in the Bible days
when the Philistines from Caphtor and the Hebrews occupied
the land and fought for its possession, so again Palestine today
re-echoes with the old strifes of its peoples,

IV

" Island of the Blessed " was the ancients* characterization*
Through levelled glasses I had glimpses of this isle s fertility
which even Homer praised. There were rich fields within
the deep, wide valleys whose hillsides were covered with vines,
olive orchards, and fruit trees.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 45

" One-hundred-citied Crete," the poet sang. The archaeol
ogists have proven that it was not embellishment but honest
truth. And now upon this countryside there lay a deep, en
during peace.

When Rome was an infant, when Athens was an adolescent,
before the Phoenicians became a power in Tyre and Sidon,
before- the Egyptians went to Assyria, while slaves were
building the Pyramids, Cretans had culture and power in the
Mediterranean. Fifty centuries of picturesque history in four
hours!

CHAPTER V

/ enter Egypt through Alexandria* stop to discover some f * first
things" here* then follow the canal to Cairo. I seek Moses at
the Nile., and watch a funeral cortege, I tour the Pyramids,
meet the Sphinx, drink coffee on the desert, and have broiled
quail for dinner. I am drawn to the Museum to see the gold of
Tutankhamen and the Tel el Amarna tablets. Cairo is a city of
contrasts. I visit some of her four hundred mosqm$ 9 go shopping
in the "Musky" and watch the shifting panorama at tea-time
from a famous terrace. At Heliopolis* where Moses was in*
structed by the priests of Ra, there is a solitary obdisk; at Ma*
taria, where the Holy Family are said to have limd, are a tree,
a well, and a legend. I see a sunset from the Citadel*

IT is only sixteen days by steamer from my restless Western
world to the leisured grandeur of the East, to Egypt! to
a country of magical charm, ideal in climate, full of interest,
comfort, and diversion for the Westerner, After one visit no
one ever wonders again why the Arabic name for Egypt means
" Fortunate Land."

After the interlude at sea, travellers approach the dean of
seaports and the ship drops anchor at Alexandria in the oldest
harbor in the world. I have entered Egypt both by her sea*
port and via the route of Abraham over the old caravan trail
from Canaan across the Sinai Desert through the land of
Goshen to arrive finally in Cairo late in the evening, when her
lights are dancing* Frankly both have been thrilling!

Sailing into the harbor, it has come to me as I have leaned
over the ship s side and seen on the horizon a hazy flicker of
sandhills and nodding palms that I am five thousand miles
from home, New York. But more than that the past has

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 47

come back to me and I have remembered that the famous
Castor and Pollux, the Alexandrian grain ship which carried
Paul and his friends to Italy from Malta, set sail from here
proudly carrying her cargo in the spring of 59 A. D.

Approaching nearer, I have seen the Isle of Pharos in the
bay, the site of where the famous Pharaoh lighthouse was
built in the third century B. c., and one of the seven wonders
of the world. It guided Greek and Phoenician ships into this
harbor. The world s first lighthouse is gone but another car
ries on* Travellers to Egypt have an opportunity to see rem
nants of many other " firsts " during their stay, no matter how
brief or prolonged their visits may be.

As the liner docks, Egypt swarms upon the decks in native
costume. It becomes a sort of " Arabian Nights " come alive.
The neophyte is bewildered by the great amount of color, the
incessant shouting in the strange Arabic tongue, the pictur
esque costumes of the natives. The " gulla gulla " man, ex
pert in Oriental juggling, has held me enthralled . . . inci
dentally, he has produced a fluffy chick, maybe two chicks,
from my hand, from my pocket, even from the mouth (his
mouth), meanwhile calling most anyone, "Mr. McKenzie."
There are always tumblers on the dock, too, doing all sorts
of fantastic feats. Oh, my yes ! the arrival of the steamer into
Alexandria harbor is the curtain call for the carnival to begin
and it never ends until travellers bid the land of the Pharaohs
good-bye. But don t forget that this world was the same in
the days of the Bible.

II

In the city of Alexandria, the age of the Ptolemies lives yet
in the checkerboard pattern of its streets, but in other respects
it is a Western city and quite modem. Its main business sec
tion is Mohammed Ali Square, so named for Egypt s first
viceroy who freed this country from vassalage to Turkey.

48 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

It is significant to remember amoftg other " firsts " that
here, during the rise of Hellenism, the Hebrew Scriptures
were translated for the first time into a foreign language,
Greek. It was during 275 B, a that the Jews were persuaded
the great library at Alexandria should contain, a copy of the
masterpieces of Hebrew literature, the Law and the Prophets,
The Septuagint version was prepared by seventy workers, so
legend tells us. This translation served to show a skeptical
world that the Hebrew literature was as powerful and beauti
ful a literature as had ever been produced- But more than
that, at last the Jews living in Diaspora could read the Law
and the Prophets in a language which was familiar to them
from their everyday life.

For Christians, it is significant to remember that tradition
claims John Mark, St. Mark, proclaimed the gospel here. To
him belongs the honor of establishing the first organized com
munity of Christians in Egypt in 44 A. D % This occurred be*
fore his journey to Cyprus with his uncle Barnabas and before
he travelled with Peter to Rome where he acted as Peter s in*
terpreter. He was not the first preacher here because Simon
Zelotes is believed to have been the first to preach the gospel
in Egypt. A small, picturesque church in Mohammed AH
Square is erected supposedly on the site of Mark s first preach
ing in this ancient city.

Many people speed directly to Cairo upon landing. In
stead I have enjoyed lingering here a day or two. The tall
white buildings, the beautiful gardens and museums, and the
glimpses of native life along the Mahmoudieh Canal with its
large cotton barges slowly making their way to the sea have
interested me. But it also has given me time to become ac
customed to the tempo of life in Egypt.

Ill

Through the window of the train as it speeds on its way

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 49

through the Delta, which is spread like a green fan to Cairo,
which is the jewel of the handle, the countryside is unfolded to
the gaze. If one is a candid camera fan, anxious to preserve
for the folks at home moments in this Old World, it is wise to
buy a second-class ticket so as to take pictures, freely from the
open windows. Many new sights, " first things," greet the
eye. They are definitely worth watching out for since they
are a part of the spell of Egypt.

The fellah, who has probably changed less with time than
any character in Egypt, burned almost black by the sun, will
be tilling his fields along the canal or leading home to mud
villages strange cattle. I hope every visitor to Egypt is fortu
nate enough to see this picture from the Bible days when
Israel dwelt here: a father seated well astern on the rump
of an ambling, demure, white donkey heading a procession;
behind him straggle the family goats and sheep; behind them
his children lead a heavy trio of water-buffaloes; and bringing
up the rear come his womenfolks in their rusty black gowns,
the fronts held high in their teeth for greater ease of move
ment, the long trains dragging dustily through the black
powder, dirt.

Canals, fed by the waters of the Nile, follow the train
route. This region is the luxuriant delta of the Nile River,
that " ole riber " which rocked the baby Moses, gave the fat
and lean years to Joseph, the Hebrew overseer in Pharaoh s
palace, and which earlier protected Abraham when he came
from Canaan. The canal s embankments carry the traffic;
behind and below often as much as twenty feet, the flat land
which can be made to yield three annual crops will be em
erald-colored with grains. Set in groves of date-palms are the
interesting, bare, mud-hut villages, which every traveller longs
to explore but which might prove on close investigation hardly
inviting. Teeming with life these houses are crowded with
brown babies, turkeys, chickens, donkeys, camels, water-buf-

5O Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

f aloes; thousands of blue and white pigeons flutter from the
roofs; doorways hold old women pounding corn for bread,

Egypt is held to be the originator of irrigation projects.
True that the Nile overflows her banks annually, but rain is
conspicuously absent during the growing season. Early this
situation had to be remedied to take care of a growing de
mand for food among Egypt s large and prolific population.
For me, the " Sakiyeh," dating from 2000 B, o>, which any
observant traveller can watch in operation along this route,
is one of the great fascinations of the train journey to Cairo*
The " Sakiyeh ** is an endless chain of earthen jars on a
geared sprocket-wheel; the motive power is furnished by
camels, water-buffaloes, but, more often than not, by trudging
men who sometimes work eighteen hours a day. It is a
simple, inexpensive, and effective means of supplying water
to as many as ten acres*

IV

Reaching Cairo, another charming sight is tht Nile River
with the big-bottomed " feluccas " with their multicolored
prows just waiting, their sails folded; or their graceful sails
stretched upon the blue velvet sky like butterflies. Boats like
these have been in use for hundreds of years* It is no stretch
of the imagination to say that Moses must have gone " feluc-
can on the Nile."

The Nile is beautiful at some hours of the day: when the
sun sparkles on its waters or when the night falls with a sky
pulsing with heavy stars. It is worth while hiring a boat and
cleaving through these historic waters to watch in the day*
time native boats loaded with sacks of wheat and sugar,
pyramids of Standard Oil cans, crates of fruit, mounds of
vegetables or to observe the life of swarming Egypt passing in
review as the fertile banks slide by. But at night it has an
other side. A golden moon, a desert breeze, and bright star*

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 51

combine to make it one of the most restful and romantic spots
in the world,

" The Nile, forever new and old,
Among the living and the dead,
Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled,"

proves the greatest fascination on any visit to Egypt. Travel
lers may be shown all sorts of historical monuments and
buildings, told marvelous, thrilling stories of weird unusual
happenings, excited by the " finds " from tombs, but yet the
Nile, river of mystery, mother of Egypt, draws them time
and again to her banks and, while gazing there, to ponder on
her long, slumbering history.

The river calls up different things to different people. I
have overheard visitors recalling that once upon a time the
ships of Crete and Phoenicia in their days of power sought Its
commerce and its wealth. I have overheard others telling how
Cambyses came down the long stretch over the caravan
route from Persia to overthrow Egyptian power. Others
mused upon those days when Arab desert wanderers made
themselves masters of it banks- Others have told the ro
mantic story of Bonaparte^ conquest of this world. By far the
largest majority remembered Cleopatra, Egypt s proud and
laughing queen, who fascinated by turn the calculating Julius
Caesar and Mark Antony. But there, were those who spoke
of Moses, remembering that he looked first upon these wide
waters from a floating cradle and lived beside it for the first
forty years of his life.

Every child in Sunday school is thrilled by the story of
the baby who was found in the bulrushes along the banks of
the Nile. Upon arrival in Egypt, Sunday-school days are re
called and one and all inquire WHERE he was born and
WHERE the lovely princess found him in "an ark of bul
rushes ... in the flags by the river s brink." I was no ex-

52 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ception. More than anything else the Nile meant Moses to
me. So one morning I set out to discover Moses in Egypt.

I reached the part of the city called " Old Cairo," the
Fostat quarter, then turned in toward the riverbank and
drove along some distance. The golden banks of the muddy
Nile were swarming with natives in soiled white gowns and a
flotilla of close-massed feluccas with their prows against the
blue sky were moored along the edge of the water. Moham
med AH indicated that ** over there ** on green Roda Island
was the traditional site of the finding of Moses by the Princess
Hatshepsut when she visited the Nile Delta in 1515 B. G.
The place where Moses was born? That he didn t know.
Suddenly, by a shrug, he indicated it made no difference* He
had little interest in Moses when all Cairo s mosques and the
bazaars were waiting for " milady/*

Standing here on the narrow foreshore with men and boys
singing or calling from boat to boat, with a guide who was
little interested in a lady s musings, and in a glare of sky and
water, it was difficult to get the atmosphere of the long, long
ago or even to recall the hush of Sunday school when the
teacher talked of a mother, a princess, a sweet baby, and a
floating cradle. At the edge of the Nile it was more difficult
to hear the lapping of the water, or the wind as it lightly
stirred the tops of the bulrushes, or the low cries of an infant
than it had ever been at Sunday school in America* It was
more difficult to see the little cradle at the base of the reeds in
the water at the river s edge or lovely Hatshepsut and her
maidens as they stepped down to bathe, or waiting, watching
sifter Miriam, and not too far distant yearning Jochebed than
it Kad ever been as a child at home, .listening to this Bible
story.

I turned back and threaded my way into a long desolate
street, thick with rubbish, lively with odors, with wailing,
moaning black bundles of dirty rags crouched against a high

Photographed by Hfifrlft-Lowf II. Patterson

This is "Old Cairo," the Fostat quarter. Standing on the
narrow foreshore near-by where a flotilla of close-massed
Nile feluccas with their prows against the blue sky were
moored at the water s edge, Mohammed Ali indicated that
"over there" on green Roda Island was the traditional site
of the finding of Moses by Pharaoh s daughter.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 53

white wall Plaintive and pitiful were the cries, disturbing
was the sight of such abject sorrowing poverty. I walked on
between the squalling line-up who paid not the slightest at
tention to me or to Mohammed AH. Suddenly I stopped;
verses from the Bible were actually coming alive:

u Call for the mourning women that they may come, let them
make haste and take up wailing for us, that our eyes may run
down with tears and our eyelids gush out with waters; wailing
shall be in all streets and they shall say in all highways, fi Alas,
alas. Cry and howl. Put on mourning apparel. They rent
their clothes. Put earth upon the head; and wept and sat
there." JER, 9: 17, 18; AMOS 5: 16; EZEK. 21: 12; II SAM,
14: 2; GEN. 44; 13; II SAM. 15: 32; JUDO. 20: 26.

Standing in the open gateway leading to the old Ben Ezra
Synagogue where earlier Moses had " spread abroad his hands
unto the Lord " and the plague of hail had ceased, I waited.
It wasn t long until the funeral procession came into view.
The body of a dead Coptic (Egyptian Christian), lying in a
shallow open coffin, was being carried past me. Except for
his face wrapped in silk damask, he was covered with flowers
and beside him were bowls of food to be used in the next
world. Behind the bier walked the mourners, the women in
the family, and one or two public wailing women whose pierc
ing shrieks rent the air at intervals when the family paused
for strength and breath. Wailing, beating their heads and
their breasts, tearing their hair, lifting loud their voices in
public lamentation, they trudged along. It was some such a
procession as this one that Jesus came upon that day in Nain
when he raised the widow s only son from his bier. The
cortege passed on. My disappointment over the place where
Miriam deposited the ark with its precious bundle in the bul
rushes was forgotten in the contemplation of a scene from the
Gospel of Luke.

54 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

V

Is there much in Egypt to remind one of the time when
Israel dwelt there, is a question that I have been asked. Yes,
the countryside, as you may have gathered from what I have
already mentioned, bears a similar aspect. In 3000 B. a* Egyp
tians stood in fields bent above the same kind of hoe or walked
behind the same kind of plow drawn by an ox and a camel;
they sowed and reaped fields of wheat, barley, and beans as
now. Grainfields stretched away to the Libyan Desert
bounded by thick fringes of palms then as now. The thresh
ing machine still has rollers to roll over the grain and is drawn
over the floor by a yoke of oxen till the grain is separated from
the straw and the straw ground into chaff, as it has through
all the centuries. Men irrigated furrows with the same me
chanical devices the " Sakiyeh " and the " Shaduf." Poets
in the days of the " Oppressor " in Egypt sang of verdant
meadows and bowers of blooming garlands and still flowers
flourish here all the year round. Ancestors of these chil
dren travelled along the canal-banks in the same bright cos
tumes, holding out scrubby little hands for ** Baksheesh ** and
looking up with the same smiling black eyes* Then as now
donkeys ambled along weighted down with produce for mar
ket and goats nibbled green shoots and tender leaves but
there were no camels here in Abraham s time*

Then as now the common people enjoyed garlic, leeks, and
onions as a regular part of the diet* Nearly two million dol
lars was spent to supply the workmen who built Cheops with
these vegetables- The Pyramids stood on their plateau on the
day that Moses was born in a mud-hut village along the river-
bank. They looked much as they do now except that since
then their smooth casing has been stripped off by vandals and
the stone used to build Cairo, Sheeted in finest white stone,
immense Cheops looked as if it were made from one solid slab

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 55

of polished stone to Abraham and Sarah when they visited
Egypt. That is the only difference between the way the an
cient world saw them and we see them and the reason why
today Cheops is a series of stone steps.

VI

More than once I have motored five miles out along a
beautiful highway past the Zoological Gardens to the terminus
at the Pyramids. Hiring camels there I have ascended to the
plateau for a tour of these monuments. To the measured,
swaying step of a camel falling and rising like a pitching ship,
my dragoman has woven for me a tale of Cheops, Chephren,
and Mycerinus, the three royal tombs of Gizeh, of the in
scrutable Sphinx, and of the Granite Temple of the Sphinx,
while I gazed out over a vast expanse of motionless waves of
golden sand dunes. Mohammed Ali, clad in his striking garb
of multicolored silks, always tells his tales as only a gabbering
dragoman can. It is easy here to be transported back to the
days of the Pharaohs.

One day having " done " the circuit of the Pyramids on
camel, although I might have chosen a sand-cart or a donkey,
and seen their jagged sides glowing in the hot afternoon sun,
I was tired and as usual slightly overwhelmed by their size.
As many times as I have seen them, they always have the same
effect upon me. I stopped for a cool drink in the garden at
Mena House, which nestles at the base of the Pyramids. I
dallied over my cooling drink, just waiting for the sunset to
cast its glow over Cheops, a monument of a civilization that
existed fifty centuries ago. I shall never forget that adventure
of seeing the desert aflame with a crimson light, the intensity
of which I had never seen before. Returning later to my hotel
in Cairo along the tree-lined Gizeh road, it came to me that I
was moving from the world of Abraham into the world of
Henry Ford.

56 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

I promise that moonlight hours spent at Gizeh are hours
to be remembered for the whole of one s life because the won
der of this ancient land stands forth in yet another guise than
that which it presents by daylight. There is perhaps no more
romantic place on earth than the Pyramids underneath a full
moon when the mysterious blue dimness all about them seems
to shimmer with the ghosts of the ancient dead who lie in
mausoleums covered by the sands. The charm of the night
on the desert, underneath a canopy of stars, must be experi
enced to be believed. No one has ever defined it. Probably
no one ever will.

Upon each return to Egypt, I shall want to see the Pyra
mids first by moonlight. One year I had friends with me,
newcomers to the land of the Pharaohs, who in the eerie
night time first met these emblems of eternity. After standing
in the shadow of Cheops, we wended our whispering way
along the rapidly cooling desert sands, lighted only by the stars
and moon, until we came at last to meet that strong, silent
male, the Sphinx. In the silence of the late evening hour,
which was broken only by the intermittent barking of troubled
dogs in far-off Mena Village, we rested near-by the gateway
to the Granite Temple and looked up into the fixed face of the
Sphinx as it was outlined by the light of the moon against a
deep blue sky. Silently, almost stealthily, the children of the
desert crept round us until we were at last surrounded more
by soft, gentle voices than by swathed bodies, who scarcely
seeming to breathe whispered a low "Saida" (Good eve
ning). As a part of the mystery of the night they seemed to
have come up from out the sands, As silently and mysteri
ously as they came upon us, as silently and mysteriously did
they fade away into obscurity again. Ghosts from the past
or only the reality of the present breaking in upon us there?
I wonder every time. They were gone when, with a burst of
magnesium flares upon the face of the Sphinx, Mohammed

i

M

*5 e

O OS

a

*
a -a

^S-a

88,

s s

l

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 57

All served us tiny cups of syrupy Turkish coffee. In that
charmed instant Egypt wove its magic spell again.

VII

To the vast rooms of the Egyptian Museum where the
golden treasures of five thousand years are kept, I have been
drawn more than once to see hundreds of statues and busts of
imperious kings and proud queens with princely heads,
sensual lips, and haughty brows, who ruled this land so long
ago and ruled it so magnificently in splendid courts. I have
searched among them for a glimpse of Queen Hatshepsut, the
princess who found Moses "in the bulrushes." Her reign
was marked by great prosperity, so much so that the lofty
obelisk she erected at Karnak in memory of her father and
her lovely terraced shrine at Deir el-Bahri survive to this day.
Most representations of her are in male attire because she car
ried out her intention of reigning over Egypt as a man. But
the head of her in the Museum shows her to have been a very
beautiful woman in spite of her strong-minded ways.

I have viewed with increasing astonishment what archaeol
ogists have brought forth from the darkness of tombs to dis
play here: tomb furniture, priceless art objects of gold and
alabaster, intricate jewelry and costly, delicate ornaments.
The treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen gave me the
best idea of what " the treasures of Egypt " were like in the
days of Moses, although his early life in Egypt was lived a
good one hundred and fifty years before this Pharaoh
ascended the throne. The " Tut " treasures are segregated by
themselves and defy my description. They must be seen!
But all of this .illustrates the life and luxury in which these
nobles lived.

Tomb paintings from the Old Empire revealed as no read
ing nor study in school ever had that ancient Egyptians were
REAL human beings, just ordinary men and women con-

58 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

cerned with the same basic life problems as we in our day and
world. They were employed as agriculturists, as cattle-raisers,
as shipbuilders and carpenters, in white-collar jobs. Women
had a definite function in ancient daily Egyptian life beyond
" sex appeal" Hieroglyphics, picture-writing, evolved in the
Nile Valley, recorded history and everyday life here since the
dawn of civilization. All this is priceless to the student inter
ested in reconstructing the past,

Here at the Museum huge granite gods still sit with hands
on knees and wait eternally beside sarcophagi, I have been
lost in admiration for these ancient people who conceived such
glories and for the artists who executed aU this splendor in
ages past,

I stood in awe one morning in the Cairo Museum before a
collection of inscribed clay tablets under glass. They had
been found by a native woman of Tel el Amarna on the
Upper Nile in 1887. Altogether three hundred of them were
saved. She sold her " find " for fifty much needed pennies !
You can imagine the excitement aroused when it was realized
that here was a buried filing cabinet of the royal capital of
Akhnaton; these were the letters and despatches sent during
the years 1380 to 1360 B, a. to Egypt, to the courts of Amen-
hotep III and his successor Akhnaton- And by whom were
they sent? That s the most thrilling part to the Bible student.
Most of them had been written in the Holy Land by kings of
Canaanite cities mentioned in the Bible and by the very King
of Jerusalem himself to their overlords in Egypt

I was not able to read them, of course, since they are in
scribed in the medium of international correspondence for
the fourteenth century B, a Babylonian cuneiform script.
But knowing their interesting story and historical importance,
I marvelled just the same as these things passed through my
mind. On some of these clay tablets are found the first men
tion of the Holy City, Jerusalem, in all the records of the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 59

past, the first mention of the Hebrew people, and many com
plaints by the King of Jerusalem that the Hebrews or
" Habiru " were attacking Palestine, besieging Jerusalem and
Lachish,- and had captured Shechem. The " Habiru " are
identified by some with the Hebrews of Joshua s invasion.
In fairness it should be explained that another school of
Bible scholars, believing the Hebrews did not leave Egypt until
two centuries after the Tel el Amarna period, under Raam-
ses II, reject the Habiru-Hebrew identification and evidence
that this was Joshua s invasion from the east which is recorded
on these tablets. More than these things, I was impressed
with the fact that the Tel el Amarna correspondence paints the
same picture from the Canaanite point of view which the
writer of Joshua- Judges paints from the Hebrew point of view.
Too, the Tel el Amarna tablets have helped Bible scholars to
fix the date of the conquest of Palestine but more than that
they illuminate the Hebrew account of that conquest consider
ably. Imagine such a bargain for fifty cents! New light on
one of the most obscure yet important periods of Palestinian
history which opens up a new epoch in the study of Bible his
tory with Egyptian history.

VIII

One night for dinner at the hotel in Cairo, I was served
with delicious tiny broiled birds. They looked to me like
baby robins on the platter. I was informed upon asking what
they were that these were quail such as Moses fed the Israel
ites with in the Wilderness of Sinai. Every year, regularly in
the spring, the quail in vast numbers fly with the wind from
Cyprus over Gaza and down into the Wadi el Arish. The
inhabitants of Gaza catch them in nets as they fall wearied
from their long flight across the sea. But sometimes they
come down on the ground so thickly that nets are unneces
sary. They can be caught by hand. The flight lasts one

6o Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

month. It is all in accordance with the account found in the
Book of Numbers, Chapter u. It must have happened a
thousand times before and since Moses that the migrating
quail has come to rest in the regions of Sinai and the vicinity
of some sea-bound plain in the Bible lands*

IX

Travellers arriving in Cairo are thrust immediately into a
city of contrasts, New World and Old, into a city which is a
curious, colorful kaleidoscope of East and West* No doubt if
the average visitors were asked why they come to Pharaoh
Land, they d reply: "Because of the country s historical
past." But so few who come to Egypt are Egyptologists, nor
do they during their brief stays learn much of dynasties and
Egypt s storied past. After a few days* visit, the average
tourists know the Pyramids are BIG, the Sphinx is inscrutable,
the King " Tut ** treasures are marvelous, and hieroglyphs
are a Nile Valley invention to record by picture-writing his*
tory since the dawn of civilization,

It is easy for me to believe that the average tourists come
and come again to Cairo because they delight in the topsy
turvydom which prevails in the streets of this Eastern city, the
contrasts between Islamic and Christian art, native and Euro
pean, the old, the new, the modern and the old-fashioned, the
twentieth century and medieval times, all close together. Per
haps it is best seen in the two sections of this great cosmopoli
tan city. First, there is the Arab quarter- Here can be seen
still wooden lattices built out over the narrow, alley-like
streets. These are the mushrabiyeh d harem windows, the
balconies of mystery, behind which often sit charming,
voluptuous Eastern ladies. In the crammed with traffic,
winding lanes of the bazaars, the colorful turbans and flowing
robes of the men are in contrast to the black, sombre garb of
the veiled Moslem women. The magical charm of the Near

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 61

East is found in these native markets, which are haunted by
snake charmers, water sellers, story-tellers, fortune-tellers^ and
lemonade vendors, jangling brass cups. Here can be discov
ered hundreds of glorious antique mosques and minarets, pur
est relics of the Arab art to be found anywhere, more perfect
than those of Damascus, Seville, or India. Then there is the
modern, Western quarter, which is characterized by wide, fine
streets lined with beautiful buildings and with little charming
gardens adorning minute squares. Here the latest fashions
predominate. But in both sections there is still to be found
a contrast not only of fashion but of vehicles : luxurious motor
cars, fast motor-busses, electric street cars, and . . . donkey
carts. In both it isn t surprising to hear as many as a half
dozen languages spoken in the short space of five or ten
minutes.

X

It is almost absurd to attempt anything approaching a list
of mosques of great historical and architectural interest to be
seen in Cairo because there are something like four hundred
of them* Simply walking at random through the dilapidated
streets of " Old Cairo," it is easy to discover unaided some of
its many beauties. The shortest walk through winding alleys
lighted by thin streaks of sunlight will bring within sight at
least one of these graceful, domed buildings. It may be the
muezzins mystical calls to prayer from high in their minarets
will lure travellers to some portals. For others the helpful
green and white enameled plaques on a gateway will assure
that some interiors are interesting. The mosques are a treas
ury of Islamic architecture, a revelation of Arabic art and
workmanship,

Cairo s " Blue Mosque " is lovely. It is one of the authentic
antiques, having been erected in 1347. It is so named " Blue
Mosque" because of the peculiar beauty of the blue tiles

62 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

adorning its walls, which are set into the panels, showing be
tween vaulted colonnades.

The towering minarets, if not the fine bronze gateway, of
El Muayyad attract many visitors. In Cairo this story is told
concerning this mosque* Before El Muayyad s accession to
the throne, he was imprisoned by his rival While awaiting
developments, he determined to change his prison into a
beautiful mosque if, by the will and goodness of Allah, he
found himself once again a free man. This lovely building,
the Mosque of El Muayyad, testifies to the realization of his
hope and the ultimate carrying out of his plan. It is a gem
of art.

There is another splendid mosque, the Mosque of Sultan
Hassan, which is directly across the narrow street from the en
trance to another impressive building, the Mosque of El Rifai.
Sultan Hassan is of all examples of Islamic architecture to be
found in this great city probably the most universally ad
mired. Its superb proportions tend to remove the impression
of its immense size. Built in the fourteenth century, it was
constructed in the shape of the cross. In each arm of the
cross hang down unevenly many lamp chains* The funda
mental idea in mosque construction is an open court sur
rounded by a covered cloister. The main variation of design
consists of converting the four cloistered sides into four deep
transepts. This results in a cruciform interior like Sultan
Hassan possesses. Very often Christian architects were em
ployed in mosque building and, no doubt, it was they who in
troduced the variant.

There is an atmosphere of quiet worship in Sultan Hassan*
Silent figures, seated cross-legged on the matting floor, slipper-
less worshippers who have previously performed ablutions at
the canopied fountain, the " faithful " preserve the atmos
phere of quiet recollection that always seems an integral part
of the Mosque of Sultan Hassan,

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 63

El Rifai, which is misnamed by dragomen " Coronation
Mosque/ is designed in the purest Arab style even though it
is a modern building completed during the twentieth century.
It is here that King Fuad lies buried. It was to this mosque
that young Farouk hurried immediately upon becoming king
of Egypt upon the death of his father.

The peace and sanctity of a mosque are seldom disturbed by
" Baksheesh " hunters and souvenir vendors beyond the door
way where they accumulate in varying numbers and add
greatly to the confusion caused by slippers being tied on over
European shoes. But El Rifai is the exception. I have been
pursued around this lovely building and been annoyed by an
Egyptian with souvenirs of alabaster, paper weights in the
form of pyramids and obelisks.

Among the oldest of the Gairene mosques is Abuna Ibn
Tfilfin, 879 A. D. This splendid historical building has not
been touched by rebuilding or restoration. It remains with its
unique spiral minaret in the shape of a ram s horn a curiosity
of architecture. Its immense size and the majesty of its clois
ters and arches are what linger long in memory. Its silent
courtyard is a haven of rest after hours of busy native streets
and exhaustive sight-seeing. Impressive by day, it is majesty
itself by night when seen under the magic of Egyptian moon
light.

These graceful mosques of Cairo are a delight to see, a joy
to remember; their beauty cannot fail to excite the admiration
and curiosity of all who visit them; their atmosphere of peace
and selfless devotion is beautiful to feel. They leave an im
pression of Islamic Egypt that time cannot erase, especially
if the traveller bids farewell to Cairo from the Citadel where,
towering above him with the city below, stand the dome and
the slender minarets of Mohammed Ali Mosque, sometimes
called " The Alabaster Mosque," silhouetted against a cloud
less blue sky.

64 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

XI

" Eastern cities miles apart
Are with mosque and minaret
Among sandy gardens set;
And the rich goods from near and far
Hang for sale in the bazaar."

The " Musky/ 5 that s the magic sounding word in Cairo,
a vast, happy hunting ground for shrewd shoppers. Here
amid streets with names reminiscent of medieval corporations
Street of the Goldsmiths, of the Perfume-sellers, of the
Brass-workers may often be found the bargain " bought for
a song."

As of yore caravans bring their treasures to these narrow,
shady, winding streets: brass, Tunisian and Persian rugs, sil
ver and gold ornaments, leather cushions, and silks, all are
on display and for sale sometimes at ridiculously low prices.

What does one see?

In the native quarter either side of the street is lined with
open shops and stalls. In some places they are covered over
with brilliant striped awnings. Dresses, carpets, walking
sticks, clocks, hats, sweets, cakes, bread, and meat are hung
up in multicolored array to tempt shoppers pushing through
the narrow lanes. In peaceful corners, I have come upon na
tives huddled together, just sitting. Elsewhere sidewalks and
lanes have been crowded with shoppers and natives pushing
their way in either direction. I couldn t help brushing against
heaps of silken gowns and scarves, shawls, and cotton piece
goods. Neither could I help brushing against the natives here,
where riches and costly brocades are displayed before the eyes
of many who have nothing in the world to call their own but
dirt and rags. Riches and poverty meet as fellows here.

Farther up the street are the jeweler shops. The windows
bulge with precious stones, fascinating bracelets, intricate

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 65

necklaces, silver ankle rings, earrings, and bangles. There are
more of these in Cairo than in any city of equal size in the
world. Why? Because native women have one pleasure, the
diversion of wearing jewelry. It is not uncommon to find an
Eastern heiress carrying her entire fortune displayed in
anklets, bracelets, and rich festoons strung from her neck and
shoulders.

Most of the business is transacted in the streets, instead of
within the shops, by voluble negotiations. There is no pri
vacy in the Near East. It has been with sounding of brass,
and shouting of wares, the cries of a lemonade vendor, the
far-away call of a muezzin to prayer, and the noise of creaking
wooden wagons that I have made my way through the art
and perplexity of this Oriental maze.

Sometimes the air is full of incense wafted from the
Scent Bazaar. Intrigued by pungent odors, heavy perfumes,
I reveled in the tiny shops, more like cupboards, whose
shelves hold bottles of almost every describable essence of
heavy perfume. When I have purchased, it was measured by
the gram, put into a tiny flask. Every tiny drop has been dis
tilled from thousands of flowers or extracted from sandalwood
or amber. But if I did not purchase, the shopkeepers have
put a dab on the back of my hand. Either way I carried back
to my hotel the scent from the Scent Bazaar.

Following my nose again I have come to the Spice Bazaar
where fragrant, tantalizing-smelling spices in a stone mortar
were in the process of grinding. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg
with thoughts of far-away lands have been my own simply for
the bargaining!

Going on to the Khan Khalil, the real bazaar world of
Cairo, one walks through narrow lanes, entranced by the
shining, almost glittering array of brass and copper wares
. . . brass vases, copper trays, cigarette boxes, inlaid jewelry
boxes, coffeepots, silver salvers, and brasses inlaid intricately

66 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

with copper and silver. Inside doorways in dimly lit interiors
the native workmen, master-craftsmen, have been busy carv
ing the unique designs on trays and bowls. Never since have
I taken a bit of brass goods lightly and matter-of-course. This
class of merchandise is real Egyptian. In buying the prices
will vary according to quality and cleverness of design. How
ever, I discovered that my friends at home who were not
connoisseurs were as happy with the rough, well-cut, deep
designs, which are the less expensive variety.

Travellers should never be surprised if any of the indolent-
appearing, happy shopkeepers invite them for a cup of tea,
a drop of Turkish coffee, a drink of lemonade, or for cig
arettes. It is a charming, disarming gesture of the East. One
never refuses. If slightly ill at ease, the host will regale with
stories. Business in the East has been carried on in this non
chalant fashion for five thousand years. It provides a splen
did opportunity for visitors to observe a custom that has with
passing centuries become a fine art.

These are the Arab bazaars of Cairo with their fascinating
merchandise, their clever, ingenious merchants, whose streets
teem with Oriental pageantry ... an inexhaustible source
of amusement and delight for any tourists. Here one is sure
to find the East with its mystery, its color, its queer scents and
smells, and its everlasting charm. The time spent in the
" Musky " in early morning coolness passes quickly. It is
then that the merchants have taken down their shutters and
are chattering away their time as they lounge outside door
ways waiting until the first customers arrive* I have spent as
long as I liked then handling lovely embroideries, admiring
jewelry and brassware, or choosing a piece of leather goods,
even searching for something unusual to buy.

But whether travellers want to purchase or not, the
" Musky " is worth a visit. Perhaps it is the one place in
Cairo of which people always speak with pleasure and amuse-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 67

ment of their experiences and of the " bargains " they
achieved. Emerging from the bazaars with my bargains:
leather goods, some " Dearest " beads, a bit of brass, a fly-
whisk, another box, and a piece of Egyptian tent- work, I have
always been in exactly the same frame of mind as that old
and shrewd Oriental shopper characterized in the Book of
Proverbs :

" It is naught, it is naught, but when he goeth his way, then he
boasteth." PROVERBS 20: 14.

XII

Only a short walk from the romantic regions which have
not changed greatly since the time of the Caliphs is another
Cairo, where emphasis is placed upon luxuries and the super
ficial modernities of European life. Modern Cairo is fascinat
ing, but it lacks, however, the romance of " Old Cairo." Its
life is varied, too. I promise that travellers will have moments
here to be stored away in memory, to be recalled with pleas
ure in remembrance; moments not to be lightly ignored by
anyone, even if he is interested primarily in the antiquities of
Egypt. Here he will rest briefly from the mad rush of organ
ized sight-seeing.

Tea on either Shepheard s or The Continental-Savoy s ter
races is a red-letter occasion in any traveller s life, presenting
as it does opportunity for fascinating and amazing glimpses
into the variety of this crowded city s life. Just as all the
world is supposed to pass Forty-second and Broadway, or to
go through Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, so it seems all the world
journeys by Shepheard s or Continental-Savoy in a single
afternoon.

Let me tell you what to expect at tea-time at either of these
famous hotels. The dragomen, resplendently robed in silks,
satins, and brocades, will hover on the pavement below await-

68 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ing clients. The vendors like a flock of lively sparrows, with a
supply of beads, fly- whisks, walking-sticks, imitation scarabs,
and gaudy-colored postcards will be waiting there, offering
their wares in soft, persuasive voices. There will be vendors
of licjuorice water hovering near-by. Paper boys, bare
legged and barefoot, will tear past loudly screaming. The
plaintive cry, " Baksheesh " or " Lottery ticket," will linger on
the air. Egyptian students in European suits, wearing crim
son tarbooshes cocked at a jaunty angle, will stroll past and
cast eyes upon the terraces. Provincial notables, stalwart and
faithful to old dignified fashions, in robes of rich stuffs, silks
of blue and purple, with shawls draped artistically about their
shoulders, will pass nonchalantly by or mount the terrace
steps.

A string of camels will pad along the streets like haughty
dowagers. The ladies of the harem, their luminous eyes
glancing interestedly this way and that above the filmy veils
of Islam, in luxurious gleaming motor cars ride smoothly by
on the asphalt pavement. In the midst of all this variety will
be found the usually calm British Tommy, Jews, Persians,
Turks, Indians, Irakies, Hejazis, and attractive Americans,
each of them with characteristic features and distinctive attire
. . . tourists from all the nations of the world. Big, brown
birds measuring five feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, who have
scavenged the streets of Cairo for centuries, keep watch as
they fly whistling from roof to roof. This is the shifting pano
rama of East and West, riches and poverty, twentieth century
and centuries before the Christian era, which I have watched
pass by either hotel s terrace as I have languidly sipped my
tea. It is always the same*

XIII

Heliopolis is no longer the University section of lower Egypt
as it was during the time of Moses, Today it is a smart sub-

Around the Mediterranean With My &ibte 69

urb of Cairo with beautiful houses, gardens, and hotels. It
has a fine race track and an airport. I rode out there on one
of the electric trains which runs frequently the six miles be
tween it and Cairo. I wanted to see the land where Abra
ham, Jacob, and Joseph had dwelt, Moses had lived as a
student and a royal favorite, and where Joseph, Mary, and
the Babe had been fugitives from Palestine.

" Stephen testifying before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem in the
first century regarding Moses said that he was " learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians." It is likely that Moses ac
quired that learning at Heliopolis.

Nothing remains of the site of ancient Heliopolis, the City
of the Sun, or the once mighty City of On, or Beth-shemesh as
it was called by the Hebrews, but a single beautiful obelisk of
red granite rising in a sugar-cane field. It is the last of many
that stood in front of the immense and magnificent Temple of
the Sun when Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of Poti-
pherah a priest of On, when Moses was laying the founda
tions of his learning, and were still here later when Plato was
a student But in course of time vandals from Europe robbed
the place, destroying its beauty. One of the obelisks is in the
Piazza del Popolo in Rome; two others more familiarly known
as " Cleopatra s Needles " are in New York City s Central
Park and in London.

I stood before the solitary obelisk, which is an expression
of an old religious faith as well as a memorial of the oldest
seat of learning in the world, the forerunner of all the schools
of Europe, and read from a piece of paper the translation of

the inscription found thereon.

" The Horus of the Sun, The life of those who are born.
The King of the Upper and Lower land, Kheper-ka-Ra :
The Lord of the Double Crown, The life for those who

are born.
The Sun of the Sun-god, Ra, Usertsen;

70 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

The friend of the Spirits of On, ever-living: The

Golden Horus,

The life for those who are born, The gracious god,
Kheper~ka~Ra, has executed this work
At the beginning of a thirty years cycle,
He, the dispenser of life for evermore/*

Surely Moses read that many times when he came here to be
instructed by the priests of Ra. And is it too much to believe
that this obelisk cast its shadow on Mother and Child when
they went by the then almost deserted seat of learning?

When the curious ask where the Holy Family stayed in
Egypt there is a perplexing choice of locations, because many
improbable places have been claimed by devout monks who
wrote centuries after the event. The oldest and most likely
tradition is that the Holy Family stayed at a place now called
Mataria, which is near the site of ancient Heliopolis*

The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is the only one of the
evangelists who mentions the flight of the Holy Family into
Egypt to escape the cruel decree of Herod and then only
briefly and reservedly. In the Apocryphal Gospels are fuller
and more detailed accounts but they have little historical
value. Matthew simply tells us that Jesus was taken out of
Palestine by Joseph and his mother Mary in infancy and that
he remained in Egypt until Herod s son, Archelaus, came to
the throne in Judea. On their return journey Joseph ** turned
aside into the parts of Galilee,** being afraid to venture into
the territory of Archelaus.

I went to Mataria where in a garden a sprawling, ancient
sycamore tree and a well are pointed out and associated with
the visit of the Holy Family, Tradition says that for a time
Mary and the Babe rested beneath this tree, which is hence
known as the " Virgin s Tree," It is very old, certainly not
two thousand years old, but two or three hundred years old at
any rate, perhaps a descendant of the original, as the present

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 71

trees in Gethsemane are of the olive trees which were not
" blind to Him." It stands within a round enclosure in a
garden where there are growing shrubs, tall palms leaning
down, and flowers blooming just as flowers must have
bloomed all about the child Jesus when he was in Egypt.
Much of the old tree is a mass of gnarled, dead branches from
which hang and flutter colored rags tied there by sick folks
who come here hoping to cure their ailments by the grace of
this tree.

Near-by is a well, which, it is said, became sweet because
the Babe was bathed there. From the spots where drops of
water fell from his clothes, after they had been washed in
water drawn from there, sprang up a crop of balsam trees.
These grew for many hundreds of years thereafter and were
made into a fine oil much used and prized for use in baptisms.

I thought that Heliopolis perhaps suggests better than any
other place the true progress of the human race. There
once stood here the oldest link in the chain of schools of
learning. Conquerors and vandals destroyed the Temple of
the Sun; the ancient On where lived the ancient wise men is
g 0ne the Nile has deposited mud here and the peasants have
ploughed across the site. When Mary and the Child rested in
Egypt, the government was in the hands of the Romans.
Nearly two thousand years later the government was under
the supervision of Great Britain, whose civilization has been
created upon and inspired by the teachings of this same Jesus.
Looking back through the ages, measuring the gain in knowl
edge that has been won by patient scholars, I realized the
deathlessness of wisdom. Where the lamp of learning had
been lighted first, other lamps were lit. And where in turn
these have shed their light, still others have been lighted until,
ever-renewing her youth, immortal Wisdom leads onward to
the pure flame, Truth.

72 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

XIV

There is one place I have liked to visit just before leav
ing Cairo. Hiring a horse-drawn open carriage, I have clip-
clopped out to the Citadel. Coming up Sharia Mohammed
Ali and long before I reached it, I have seen the Citadel on its
splendid plateau under the grim Mukattim Hills, and the two
tall, tapering minarets of the Mohammed Ali Mosque pierc
ing the blue sky. It shelters within its walls Saladin s fortress,
a palace so large as to be almost a town, and two mosques.
Leaving my carriage at the top of the hill, I have entered
through the massive, magnificent Saracenic gateway in the
colossal walls which ring this huge fortress. It was planned in
1 1 66 A. D. to protect Cairo from assault. Today it garrisons
Egyptian troops. Slowly I have climbed up into the inner
regions, searching for a grilled window, facing west. In the
late afternoon, about sunset, the beauty of the view from here
is almost heart-breaking.

Below and beyond the huge walls lies stretched a vast city,
a wilderness of flat roofs and minarets. It holds the City of
the Dead and the Tombs of the Mamelukes. Easily, I have
distinguished the Arab quarter by the rising minarets and the
round domes, literally hundreds of them, everywhere break
ing the monotony of flat, brown roofs. It has seemed almost
like a background to a romantic theatre-piece come true.
Beyond, cosmopolitan Cairo drifts down to tufted palm trees
which fringe the Nile, winding like a silvery snake through
the golden sands of the desert on its way to the sea. Looking
hard at the flat, remote Gizeh Plain, I have made out the
grim outlines of three pyramids. Waiting, I ve watched the
sun sink behind the Pyramids and purple twilight, pin-
pricked by golden stars, come softly over Egypt.

CHAPTER VI

Describes my journey from the land of Goshen to the edge of
Sinai and up to Jerusalem. Here three great religions come to-
gether, each worshipping, each dreaming, each guarding as
sacred her treasures. The Holy City on her proud hills is sacred
to Christian, Jew, and Moslem. Entering Jaffa Gate, I visit the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Calvary), the Dome of the Rock
on what once was the Temple area, and the Wailing Wall.

GOSHEN S few mud sun-baked huts faded. Our train
plunged on across a flat, barren landscape except for
fertile portions directly along one of the Nile s many canals.
We arrived at Kantara. It was a moonlight night. I was
glad of that because of the novelty of the experience of a ferry
trip across the Suez Canal to El Kantara on the Palestine side
where my train for Judea was already waiting. I found it an
interesting adventure. I mingled with other tourists like my
self from England, France, and even far Norway, Bedouin
and City-Arabs, " Tommies " on leave. It seemed that a cross
section of all types of people were represented on the ferry
that night* For once in this world catering to first, second,
third class distinctions, these were forgotten. I had an Eng
lishman, a Lord Somebody or Other, on the seat beside me.
He had mountains of luggage, a distinguished manner of or
dering people about, and a marvelous pair of moustaches. An
Egyptian with his crate of chickens balanced on his head
towered over me.

There is a memorable pause of waiting two hours at East
Kantara. I spent the precious time not inside any stuffy,
dim-lit train compartment but outside at the far end of the
station s platform which was bordered by acacia. Its fuzzy

73

74 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

yellow pellets gleamed in the moonlight* It was hard to be
lieve that already my " magic carpet " had brought me to the
very edge of the land of my dreams. Palestine had lived so
long for me only in imagination.

In the East the night seems audible with angel voices.
Only infrequently is there an intrusion of the present world.
At Kantara, it broke through with the distant intermittent
bark of a lonesome dog, the grumblings of a resting camel,
and the incoherent mumblings of the "stranger within the
gates." I listened to the night sounds enveloping me. Above
them all I felt that I could hear the angel choir again and
share the comfort of those words sung centuries ago:

" Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth, peace among men of good will."

In the penetrating silences I was compelled again and again
to look upward into the moonlit, star-burdened sky. Many
times in the Near East I have been overwhelmed by the mag
nificence and splendor of the heavens, but this particular
night, standing alone on the edge of Sinai, I felt stirrings of
an extreme exaltation of spirit. It was greater by far than
any I had ever experienced in the finest cathedrals at home.
That night and many nights thereafter while out-of-doors in
Palestine and Syria I was to respond to this calling of " Him
who is invisible " and understand the meaning of the Proph
et s words : u The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth
keep silence before him," for "the earth is the Lord s, and
the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein."

All too soon the hours of waiting were over. It was time to
hunt my compartment. The train went off into the night,

II

I stirred in my berth before sunrise. From the train win
dow the sky was clear but still quite grey. It took me only a

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 75

few moments to make myself presentable for the corridor. I
hoped to see Gaza on the very fringe of the Sinai Desert
which we had crossed in the less than five hours since mid
night, but we were still too far away. I could see nothing but
sand. The patriarchs coming up over the old caravan route
from Egypt must have known this moment: the grey light,
the last star, the cold wind, and the sudden hush preceding
day. Gaza was still far off, but I could see in the east, where I
knew it to be, the first movement of dawn. Waiting alone in
the corridor (no one else had cared enough to get up), I
thought of the strange roads I was about to travel, of cities I
hoped to visit, of mountains I was to climb, and valleys
through which I was to walk. I whispered the names of these
places: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tyre and Sidon,
Mount Garmel, Mount Hermon, Olivet, Tabor, Damascus,
Jericho, Jordan River, the Gh6r Valley, Esdraelon, and the
Sea of Galilee. They were not mere names, mere towns, vil
lages, or sheets of water. Almost endless seemed the echoes
aroused by such whispered names; they were like stones
dropped into a pool starting ripples that prolong themselves
indefinitely.

The light grew in the east as the sun struggled with the
night clouds. Suddenly with only a short preamble of bright
ness, a faint pink shaft shot up and then the sun came into the
sky. In that moment I saw, far off, a fringe of palm trees
around a group of white buildings. I knew I was looking at
Gaza, once the capital of the Philistines and the scene of Sam
son s exploits.

As we rushed on splashes of ancient color seen in mud huts,
black hair tents, and Moslem sanctuaries began to break the
monotony of the landscape. There was all at once movement
in the camps of the Bedouin as women began doing their
chores. One carried a tray on her head. Long robed figures
moved among sleek black goats leading them forth for a day s

76 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

grazing. I thought of Joseph, Mary, and the Child when
they fled from Herod s wrath as I saw a family on the move
from one location to another more habitable one, walking be
hind laden donkeys. There had been one unburdened donkey
in this m6nage and so the householder himself rode In comfort
upon his back while the householder s womenfolk trailed be
hind. They balanced huge bundles on their heads and car
ried hammocked babies on their backs and managed to
maintain in spite of it all a stately carriage, This sight spoke
louder than words to indicate woman s inferior position in
this Eastern world* Bells began to ring sweetly as camels
wended their way out of this undulating sea of sand.

Speeding through the country of the Philistines, past once
powerful cities now reduced to mere villages or crumbled
ruins, I soon noticed the khaki sand gradually withdrawing,
giving way to patches of green grass, and finally being swal
lowed up completely by the growth of the dark green orange
plantations. I noticed large greyish-white boulders in flower-
dotted fields. All at once these stones stirred slightly, changed
shape, and moved off. I realized that these were not boulders
but huddled men who had spent the chilly night like some
Jacob at Bethel.

Surely the train journey from Egypt to Palestine is the
proper approach to the land of the patriarchs and prophets
because only then can the traveller understand to any ap
preciable extent why Israel thought of the Promised Land as
a paradise, as " a good land, a land of brooks of water, oi
fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; a
land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pome
granates; a land of olive-trees and honey." From any other
approach Palestine, and especially Judea, seems dour, grim,
and forbidding; but from the old caravan route, teeming with
biblical interest, it looks green and lovely.

Coming into Lydda with its miles and miles of sweet-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 77

scented blossoming orange trees, which hang their golden
globes against a cobalt sky, I saw fields of brilliant red anem
ones, beautiful clusters of yellow acacia, I heard the gay notes
of birds. And I wasn t as surprised as I might have been if I
had not been prepared for all this springtime splendor by a
poem in my guidebook.

" For, lo, the winter is past;
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land."

SONG OF SOLOMON 2: 1112.
(American Standard Version)

Through the mountains of Judea from Lydda to Jerusalem
and not so far from little cypress-clad Ain Karem snuggled on
a hillside, a haven of peace as her white houses peek through
watching trees which guard her sanctity, I saw hills rolling
away into the distance, covered with a soft carpet of wild
flowers, all colors, reds, blues, yellows, and even purples.
They mingle so indiscriminately and blend so beautifully
when Nature plants in her inimitable way. Those purple
blossoms . . . what could they be that the Arab children are
hugging in their bosoms just waiting for an opportunity to
throw into open train windows? They are cyclamen blos
soms!

In the distance I could see dazzling white crags and roads
that looked like white ribbons slipping in and out and around
these Judean hills. Against the horizon I saw a shepherd lad
with his flock of sheep and black goats. I thought of the
Bible story of the shepherd lad David and the giant Goliath of
Gath because it was among these hills that the encounter took
place. Later in Bethlehem, I bought a woven sling just like
the one which David used to slay the giant. Once I saw a

78 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

patriarch leaning on his staff to watch the train go by. For
all the world he reminded me of Abraham since fashion never
changes among the Bedouin of the Bible lands.

The train made the ascent slowly through these hills of
stone, enlivened only by small patches of green, brief and bril
liant wild flowers, and an occasional round olive tree. It was
not the lush green landscape of the Maritime Plain here. I
understood now why so many travellers have considered them
bleak, savage, ugly, and thoroughly grey. I remembered
that this awesome mother Judea had nurtured Isaiah and
Jeremiah, had encouraged no armchair philosophers nor
weaklings among her children- Today her children rebel
against her severity and sometimes they are able to snatch
from her grim hillsides the peach, plum, grape, and olive rich
in oil, turning parts of it into a green paradise,

UP, UP, we climbed; PUFF, PUFF, snorted the engine,
each time as if to gather strength and courage for another at
tack on these hills. I said to myself again and again as I rode
that bright sunshiny morning with my body half out the open
train window: "As the mountains are round about Jeru
salem, so the Lord is round about his people*" The beautiful
words of the Psalmist had a meaning before unknown to me.
These hills of beauty were a spiritual preparation for our en
trance, one hour late, into " the city set upon a hill."

Ill

Perhaps no spot on earth appeals so powerfully to intellect,
emotion, or imagination as this Holy City, Jerusalem, the city
of Abraham, David, Solomon, Jesus, Titus, Tancred, and Al-
lenby. It is certain that no equal area has been the theatre of
events which have so influenced the history of mankind. It is
with an almost overwhelming rush that religious memories
sweep over the pilgrim, be he Christian, Moslem, or Jewish.
These surging religious memories blot out completely the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 79

hurry and confusion,, the bustle and the shouting of an Ori
ental railroad station; they possess the very heart.

It merits the name " city upon a hill " because its altitude
is two thousand five hundred and fifty feet above sea level.
It is built upon a natural bluff whose three sides look down
at ravines. At its west, south, and east are the Hinnom and
the Kidron valleys. What would it have meant to this city
had there been a fourth valley? The list of peoples who have
at one time or another besieged and captured this hill reads
almost like a catalogue of nations: Egyptians, Babylonians,
Persians, Greeks, Assyrians, Romans, Turks, Tartars, Arabs,
Crusaders, and British. The world little realizes that Jeru
salem has been besieged close to fifty times, partially destroyed
thirty-two times, and totally destroyed five times. What
would a fourth valley have meant to her? THE PEACE,
which she has never known.

The first glimpse of Jerusalem, the part which signifies the
Holy City to three world faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism, is of the historic encircling walls. These
present the appearance of a huge fortress. With the brilliant
sun upon their soft brown the city becomes " Jerusalem the
golden." Its present appearance is in a large part what has
been given to it by the Saracens who in the seventh century
made conquest of it. Its present walls were for the most part
built by the Turks in the sixteenth century. The two and
a half miles around the City Wall, which is thirty-eight feet
high, are marked here and there by towers and gates, en
trances to the Old City, the city which is interesting to the
whole world.

Of the principal gates, some mere breaches in the Wall,
there are two. One is Damascus Gate, Its towers, turrets,
and projecting parapets and above " the chamber over the
gate," such an one as David mourned Absalom in, present an
appearance both beautiful and imposing. To this site came

8o Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

pilgrims from Nazareth to pass into Jerusalem in Jesus day.
From here went Saul of Tarsus " breathing out thrcatenings
and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord " in the first
century. The principal entrance to the Old City is Jaffa
Gate. More footsteps of Israel have passed through here, past
the Tower of David, than anywhere else in the whole world.
It is the place to meet your friends; it is the place to observe
many Oriental types; it is the real entrance to the city which
is the home of about thirty thousand people* (1946)

From the moment that one enters through Jaffa Gate one
is beset by pandemonium. I shall tell you of the Holy City
today, not as David knew it even though he did build a Jeru
salem in 1000 B. c., nor as Jesus would have seen it. To know
it as Jesus knew it, we should have to peel off what nineteen
hundred years have laid on, almost sixty feet of debris in the
Tyropean Valley between the two hills of the city, Zion and
Moriah.

The streets within are narrow, in some cases narrower than
many of our sidewalks, averaging at the very most but three
yards. No room for vehicles. Here jostle people of every
race and religion, soldiers, vendors, priests, pilgrims, tourists,
and beggars. They are clothed in many contrasting materials,
designs, and hues. The man in the purple velvet cloak and
the heavy fur hat is on his way to the Wailing Wall where he
will join others who have come to pray, to read, to wail out
their woe for the lost glory of Jerusalem and the Jewish
Temple. The tall bearded patriarch, a Greek from the Or
thodox church, and the black-robed priest are on their way
to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Dressed like Jacob and
his sons the group of Arabs in flowing " kuffiyehs ** and woven
" abbas " step out of shadows and move along with stately
mien to the Dome of the Rock, the Moslem sanctuary. Shape
less feminine figures, swathed in black, as necessary in this
gaily-colored man s world as punctuation is to fine prose, slip

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 81

past barely noticed, never heard. In this close-packed democ
racy there mingle also with equal rights sheep, goats, donkeys,
horses, and camels.

Beyond Jaffa Gate, diving into David Street is the best de
scription of the manner one enters to go to the most interest
ing places in this comparatively small town. Visitors seldom
recover from the surprise of how small Jerusalem actually is*
David Street, the Broadway of this world, is narrow, a cobble
stone, step-street, slippery and treacherous on damp days, and
so packed with people of all types that often I have stood
helpless in its midst. Down past stalls with an amazing array
of oranges, melons, giant cauliflowers, red tomatoes, arti-r
chokes, and the most disgusting-looking fish, past smoking
charcoal braziers, strong-smelling, creamy-white cheese, and
hanging mutton, through aisles of cotton goods, festoons of
brass coffeepots, and dangling shoes. On a sunshiny day it
is a glittering chaos. It is not unusual to see a sleepy-eyed
little donkey lean his shaggy head upon a convenient shoulder
if traffic gets tied up in David Street.

In the booths, mere " holes in the walls,* 5 along the streets
of Jerusalem, which constitute the famous bazaars, sales are
made with a minimum of assistance. Here again the tourist
must bargain to buy. The Oriental shopkeeper purposely
raises his price in order to have a little game with the cus
tomer.

In most of the principal streets can be found these " holes
in the walls/ where men, ignorant of mass production, can be
seen manufacturing the necessaries of Jerusalem life. There
are some streets in which various trades are carried on. The
cobblers are grouped together; the butchers in their red coats
occupy another lane; and in still other byways men can be
seen carding wool as it must have been done in David s day.
Simon, the tanner, has opened a branch office in Jerusalem
and is apt to extend an invitation to step inside over his laid-

8s Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

out leather; and it might even be Alexander the coppersmith
who looks up from his noisy work to wonder why a visitor is
so interested in pots and pans*

Some bazaars are arched over with masonry. These
" suks " date from the time of the Crusaders in the Holy Land.
Arched streets are apt to keep rising odors from mutton too-
long-killed and cheese far-too-ripe stifling and slightly over
whelming. Holes in the masonry tops, which are the only
sources of light and air, are frequently almost filled in with
green growing grass and wild flowers offering brief glimpses
of fresh,, blue sky. In none of the streets within the ancient
city is any color or any odor lacking.

It has been my experience that there are several places in
the Old City to which every visitor and every Bible student
comes more than once ; even if only visiting Jerusalem a mat
ter of hours instead of days or weeks, one finds himself slip
ping off for a memorable moment or two more at the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, the Temple area, and the Wailing
Wall.

IV

From David Street I have often turned left onto Christian
Street and come finally to an entrance at the top of a flight
of steps. I have passed through a short lane of booths, dis
playing brightly decorated candles, glaring pictures of red,
blue, and gold painted on wood, rosaries, mother-of-pearl
ornaments for tourists, baskets of ** Jericho roses," and
" crowns of thorns," I have gone down the steps, past the
beggars and a man with his small store of necessities for pil
grims, beads, rosaries, crucifixes, which many neglect to buy
before visiting the cathedral church of Christendom, Thou
sands of prayer-beads are blessed every year by the priests of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be distributed the world
over to friends and relatives of visitors. And I have found

Photographed by tlarrlft-Lonisf //. Patterson

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem covers the
sites identified in the first archaeological excavations in
the Holy City in the fourth century as Calvary and the Tomb
of Jesus. Permanent iron girders today destroy the beauty
of old doors and pillars and support its facade, because in
the earthquakes of 1927 this landmark suffered badly.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 83

myself before the great Crusaders church, where the tradi
tional tomb of Jesus and the site of Calvary is located.

Today the church has iron girders upholding its fagade.
These destroy the beauty of the old doors and pillars and are
apt to leave a bad first impression with visitors. In the earth
quakes of 1927 this church, which covers sites identified in
the first archaeological excavation begun in this part of the
world as Calvary and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea,
suffered badly. In order that time would not witness the
total destruction of this landmark all precautions have been
taken since then to safeguard worshippers within the church.
It has been braced within and without. It has been ia sharp
contrast to the brilliant sunlit courtyard that I have passed
into the gloom of a once glorious church.

To many visitors the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a
bewildering chaos, a confusion of pillars, statues, banners, pic
tures, chapels, altars, gilt and colored glass, candles, and in
cense. I have heard them revile the ecclesiasticism which pre
vails here. Yet it seems to me that no reverent visitor can
have his visit to this church spoiled if he will only remember
the Bible lessons from the past. It is possible with sincere
willingness to understand men s motives and the sheer power
of wishing to have the jewels, the statues, the pictures, and
the incense fade away and there will be left a bare hill, three
crosses, the Master and the thieves, an empty tomb, a winding
sheet, Mary his mother in the arms of John, and weeping
women at an open door from which a stone was rolled away.
If there ever has been criticism in my heart when entering this
church perhaps because I am not sympathetic to the worship
ping creeds and their respective rituals, I have reminded my
self to look beyond the outward symbols of worship and know
that through the ages humble men and women worshipping
here have caught a vision of the Christ and touched the.
fringes of eternity.

84 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

There are discordant notes in this edifice which was erected
in the name of Jesus Christ. And yet, they are not as bad
as many writers and guides would have the world believe. I
have never seen any hatred flare into open flame to be
whipped into a fury warmed by hot, red blood. Yet I have
been here many times when the church was thronged with
pilgrims. The strongest evidence I have ever seen of the
enmity among the competing branches of the Catholic church
has been on Sunday morning when I have watched and
heard five simultaneous religious services. Standing within
the sanctuary with my guide and friend, Jacob Nusaibeh, the
present Keeper of the Key to the door of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, I have thought on these things: how since
the time of Saladin this family has -been entrusted with the
key to open the one door of this huge church to worshippers
daily; how since this long time Moslems have been en
trusted to keep peace among Christians whose Way-shower is
called u The Prince of Peace/* When the British came to
Palestine and took up the duties of administering the Man
date, to this same Moslem family was given the continued
honor of keeping peace among the many sects of Christianity
worshipping here. Watching, Jacob and I have seen in gor
geous ecclesiastical vestments the five sets of churchmen: the
Greeks, the Latins, the Armenians, the Copts, and the
Syrians parade around this sacred sanctuary, carry on their
solemn liturgies without joining once one with another,

Later I have entered a small cell completely lined in
marble. It is six and a half feet long, six feet wide. Only two,
possibly three, at the most, can enter at a time. Here is
found the slab of cracked marble covering the rock upon
which Jesus was placed after the crucifixion. From the mar
ble roof of the compact cell hang lamps, which belong in
various proportions to the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Cop
tic churches. Standing at the head of the marble slab is usu-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 85

ally an impassive Greek monk, wearing a black cassock and
a high black, rimless hat beneath which his hair is pinned in
a round bun in the back. He holds a bunch of candles and
as pilgrims enter he gives them one which they light from
others burning in this tomb of Jesus.

I truly believe that these discordant notes of ritualism and
pious enmity of which I have only briefly spoken are forgotten
in the contemplation of the Christians who, in exalted faith,
come here and pray reverently. All tongues, denominations,
and nationalities, each bringing the special character of adora
tion peculiar to his own heart, his own creed, his own land,
come together here about a common center, the tomb of
Jesus. I feel I must impress upon you, as it has been indelibly
impressed upon me time and again as I have lingered in the
shadows of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it is the pil
grims who stir one most within this sacred area. They come
from distant lands; they are members of all branches of the
Church. But here they kneel in patient, earnest prayer and
meditation. They pray, many of them, in the name of Jesus
the Christ with a deep, deep desire in this Holy of Holies. To
many this pilgrimage to the tomb of their risen Lord means
the end of a life s dream. I have seen joy, peace, and content
ment written upon the faces of these faithful as they have risen
from their knees.

I promise you, my reader, that a visit to the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre can be the Easter lesson coming to Life, ris
ing from the dead. It can be, I say, it is not always ... it
depends upon the attitude.

V

Wandering from this church along the street known as the
Via Dolorosa from a holy site for Christendom, I have
come within view of another sacred site; but this time to the
third holiest site for Moslems in the world. In brilliant sun-

86 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

shine, on cobblestone, uneven pavements lined with beggars
and resting pedestrians, some lying like bundles of rags in the
shade provided by ledges and arches, I have found myself at
buildings now occupying the traditional site of Herod s Tower
of Antonia. This is the first station of the Gross for the Latins,
where Jesus was crowned with thorns.

I came to the site of the Praetorium at three o clock one
Friday afternoon. Beneath a Syrian blue sky, in a glare of
sunshine and the extreme heat of mid-afternoon in May, I
saw faithful ones kneel down in prayer. Nothing seemed to
break the sanctity of this moment as the priest s voice was
lifted to intone the Latin words at the first station of the Cross
on the Via Dolorosa. The ritual of the " Way o Sorrows " is
observed every Friday afternoon by the Franciscans on the
actual streets of the present-day Jerusalem.

But behind those kneeling Christians, I looked through
open windows to a broad area of thirty-five acres within the
present city s walls, which has occupied the pages of history
for thirty-eight centuries. Here came Abraham to sacrifice
his son Isaac; one thousand years later it was Araunah the
Jebusite s threshing floor, which David bought as a site for the
Hebrew Temple; here Solomon built the imposing structure
known as Solomon s Temple, which was destroyed five hun
dred years later in 586 B. c. by the Babylonians. A second
Temple rose upon the same site to be torn down afterwards to
make way for the magnificent Herod s Temple of Roman
times. This latter was the one which Jesus visited when he
was twelve and the one which he cleansed during the Last
Week of his earthly life. But of it he prophesied: "There
shall not be one stone upon another that shall not be thrown
down." In 70 A. D. the prophecy was fulfilled. Titus Ves-
pasius* armies totally destroyed Jerusalem, neglecting the in
structions to save the Jewish Temple. Today on the same
site of all these events, upon the same vast platform upon

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 87

which the beloved Temple stood, stands a Moslem sanctuary
called the Dome of the Rock. They say in Jerusalem that the
stones of this elevated platform are little changed from Roman
times. The vast area is encircled by graceful arches, pulpits,
prayer niches, marble fountains, groups of olive trees, tall
cypresses, but rising above them all like an exquisite jewel in a
perfect setting is the Dome of the Rock, glistening and ethe
real. It is a picture scarcely to be surpassed anywhere in the
world.

Descending from, the height overlooking the Haram area
to the streets again, I have come to one of the direct entrances
to the Temple area, to the handsome fountain at the Gate of
the Chain which lies at the end of David Street. The large
flagstones just inside the double gateway are considered Hero-
dian. If so, then they may well be said to have been crossed
by Jesus. Turning to the right from this entrance and coming
to a pretty fountain, there is one of the great staircases leading
up from the surrounding court to the elevated platform upon
which stands the Moslem shrine.

This beautiful mosque, whose blue lead dome excels in
grace, was built in 691 A. D. Its windows are remarkable for
their delicate tracery and brilliancy of coloring. No two of
the Saracenic windows are alike. Its octagonal walls are
decorated with colored, glazed Persian tiles. Their encrusta
tion was ordered by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1561. The
effect of the tiles covered with beautiful arabesques and grace
ful tracery of Arabic writing and the exquisite mosaics is
superb.

When the visitor to the Holy City enters into this pride
and ornament of Jerusalem, perhaps it is the subdued light,
colored by the stained glass windows, which produces such a
rare effect upon him. The mosque is seen to best advantage
when there is a full blaze of Syrian sun streaming through the
windows. The beautiful interior gives an air of mystery and a

88 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

prominence that it might not otherwise possess to the Sakhra
or living rock, which it now covers* This building is ap
propriately called Dome of the Rock rather than the Mosque
of Omar.

Surrounded by an intricate screen of metalwork is a huge
slab of living rock. In some lights it is a soft brown, polished
in surface. This rock formed part of the threshing floor of
Araunah; west of this rock which became the Altar of Burnt
Offerings, Solomon built the Hebrew Temple; behind it
Herod constructed that enormous sanctuary which was still
in the building when Jesus visited Jerusalem. These are a few
of the thoughts which crowd one s mind*

Interesting, too, are the ideas and history of another age
and faith, Moslems believe that from this rock their prophet
Mohammed ascended to heaven* They believe, too, that the
rock started after Mohammed and only because the angel
Gabriel put his hand upon it to stay it did it remain behind.
Further they believe that the Sakhra stands suspended in mid
air ever since that fateful day, This latter I cannot attest for
I have never been able to see all the way under the rock.

It is quite easy to imagine Jesus preaching in the open
spaces here at what is now known as the Haram area. There
is an astonishing resemblance between the Temple of Herod s
day and the Mosque which stands here now; perhaps it is
that which helps the Bible student to preserve the illusion, per
haps it is that which makes him believe that this is a ghost of
the Temple In whose courtyards Jesus preached and from
whose gates he drove hucksters. Remember that this area has
not been built upon again and again since the first century.
It has come to us essentially unchanged. There is a central
shrine with sacred buildings clustering about it surrounded by
paved courts. The Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple stood
uplifted above surrounding courts in much the same manner
as the Dome of the Rock. The open spaces found here today

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 89

correspond to the open spaces found on the Temple area in
Jesus time. The sheiks who perform services at the Mosque
live in quarters under the colonnades as the priests of the Tem
ple used to do. They have regular terms of office. Upon
completion of them they return home until the time of min
istration again occurs. This was the custom in Bible days
among the Jews. Zacharias, who was the father of John the
Baptist, entertained an angel visitant at the Temple during
the course of his term of ministration which lasted only a
week, from Sabbath to Sabbath. Afterwards the Bible re
cords: " That as soon as the days of his ministration were ac
complished, he departed to his own house." It is not unusual
at all to see an old i^ian talking to some boys in the shade of
the porches. Sometimes they seem to be disputing among
one another. It is the same as when Jesus both heard and
asked questions of the teachers as they sat in the cloisters of
Herod s Temple.

Wandering here another day I came upon a squatting
Bedouin mother with her little brood of tanned children, who
tumbled and huddled around her knees and clutched at her
capacious skirts as she suckled an infant held lightly to her
breast. Only two lustrous, black eyes but enough to include
them all in her broad gaze and watch their every move; only
two hands but enough to steady stumbling first steps and guide
a hungry mouth to food; there she sat the All-in- All of her
children, the queen of her woman s world. I thought back
many years ago to a time when another mother came after
the days of her purification to this broad area to present her
new-born son before Simeon in the Temple. Mary must have
sat down in the cool shade of one of the sacred buildings to
suckle her infant son, while she waited for Joseph.

There are a number of other structures around the present
Dome of the Rock on the Haram area. The Dome of the
Chain is a miniature copy of the central building. At the ex-

go Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

treme southern end is the Mosque el Aksa, That it was origi
nally a Christian church is immediately evident to the most
casual sight-seer from its cruciform interior. Beyond the tall
cypresses and the splashing fountain in front of Mosque el
Aksa which is fed by Solomon s Pools on the Hebron Road
and beneath the southeastern end of the Haram is a myste
rious, great-vaulted substructure, known as Solomon s Stables.
Descending the steps of this huge underground cavern I was
speechless the first time before the spectacle of a hundred or
more vaults with roofs upheld by pillars and mighty arches of
stone. Some stone blocks are enormous; eight feet wide and
fifteen feet high, said my guide. They are beautifully set in
place and closely joined. The pillars are, I should say, about
four feet square and a good number of them have holes bored
through the corners. These holes in the columns were the
hitching places for the horses. In some my guide pointed out
stone mangers. Hardly a relic of Solomonic splendor, the
place may date from the first century, but, at any rate, the
Crusaders stabled their steeds here.

Coming up into the daylight from Solomon s Stables, I
have liked to climb the eastern wall of the Temple area for a
view of the city and its environs. Jerusalem rises like an am
phitheatre to the west, south, and north with hundreds of
those box-shaped limestone houses which form the greater
part of Jerusalem proper. To the east is a splendid prospect
past the Mount of Olives spotted with churches, monasteries,
convents, and gardens to the hills of the Judean Wilderness.
And one dazzling glance down the outside of the Old Wall
seventy feet straight down reveals the steep slope of the
Kidron Valley covered with tombstones.

VI

One of the most pathetic sights in the whole world is to be
seen just outside that sacred area of which I have been telling

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Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 91

you against the southwestern wall in a paved space given to
the Jews. It is the Jews 3 Wailing Wall. Here they come to
pray and to read from the Hebrew prophets and to wail out
their woe under the very shadow of the area upon which once
stood the pride of their nation, the Temple. Here with tears
streaming down their faces Jews of both sexes and all ages
stand, sit or bow as they read or chant. Perhaps they kiss the
walls or insert in the cracks little hopeful, prayerful messages
written in Hebrew. Occasionally one is seen to pound in a
nail in accordance with Ezra 9, verse 8, which symbolizes a
possession or a sure abode. They chant a litany, read portions
of the Psalms, parts of Jeremiah s Lamentations. After all
these hundreds of years, men and women still stand at the
Wailing Wall bewailing the lost sanctuary, shedding bitter
tears of sorrow for the lost glory of Israel, and praying with
a hopeless hope for the return of their ancient worship in
Jerusalem.

Why do I say an almost hopeless hope? Because I have
stood here so often and watched reformed Jews of our mod
ern world as they have come to the Wailing Wall to gape, to
be amused, and to ridicule their Orthodox brethren to whom
religion and its ritual is the whole of life. They are not sym
pathetic to this old form of worship; it seems so unavailing to
modern Jewry who has other methods at its command to
remove the mountains of this present world. Ask any mem
ber of the Zionist movement in Jerusalem to go down to the
Wailing Wall and then watch the look of disdain and disgust
which comes over his face at the mere mention of the out
moded ritual continued there. That is why I say the Wailing
Wall is a pathetic place. Not because of the customs perpetu
ated nor the visible intensity of devotion manifested there but
because the attitude of their modern Jewish brethren is so in
different to religion as a solution to mankind s problems. The
remnant at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem seems a symbol of

92 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the reduction in their ranks throughout the world of those who
make " first things first."

Sometimes as I have stood listening to their pleading
prayers, I have remembered Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet of
faith, who urged complete reliance upon Jehovah in all eco
nomic, social, and political emergencies. His intensity in
supplication must have equalled fervor such as this here.
Listening to the low wails, the plaintive murmurs, the sobbing
lamentations, I have remembered Jeremiah, the prophet-
pacifist, who urged his countrymen to bow to the inevitable
yoke of Babylon and thereby preserve the peace of Jerusalem.
The " Weeping Prophet " was stirred by the lack in his peo
ple, their futile attempt to save themselves and their beloved
city of Jerusalem, and it wrung from him a bitter outcry:
" Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of
tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the
daughter of my people ! " His must have been a vocal fervor
such as one hears here.

CHAPTER VII

/ walk about Mount ^ion, linger in the Upper Room of the
Gospels, and where Peter denied Jesus hear a cock crow. I stop
at the Pool of Bethesda. At the Convent of the Sisters of %ion, 1
am shown ff Gabbatha"

r I *HE Psalmist s injunction was in my head this early
JL morning:

"Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers
thereof.

" Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces." PSALM
48: 12, 13.

Poets have called Jerusalem itself Mount Zion; tradition
locates it on the western hill occupying the southwest por
tion of the town and partly outside the present City Wall.
In reality Zion was south of the Temple area.

I was interested in it because this was the Upper City where
the palaces of Herod and of Caiaphas stood and where be
hind them stretched their extensive and beautiful gardens.
But something more compelling drew me. It was on Mount
Zion that the house of John Mark s mother was located where
Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples, to which the
apostles fled in fear after the crucifixion, where Christ ap
peared to the eleven after the resurrection, and where fifty
days after Passover on the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit
was made manifest among the company of believers. Here
Matthias was chosen to fill the place in the Circle formerly
held by Judas. Here, too, gathered friends praying for Peter s
delivery from prison when he suddenly appeared at the door

93

94 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

for Rhoda the scatter-brained servant girl to admit him. A
building stands on the site of all these events which attaches to
itself one of the strongest traditions in the history of Christian
ity and that place was what I was on my way to see.

Down Jaffa Road I went to Jaffa Gate. The Citadel, a
mighty fortress with three large towers, loomed high and im
posing. The great blocks forming its foundations date from
when Herod the Great had a fortified palace here, but the
present building was constructed mainly in the early four
teenth century. This morning I did not pass through the gate
but went on to the break in the Wall and entered from there
into the Old City.

It was early and so I stopped at Jerusalem s principal fruit
and vegetable market at the base of the Citadel on Zion.
Women come here from near-by villages at sunrise with their
produce. .Dark reds and blues are their favorite colors. Long
white veils stream backward from their bronzed, tattooed
faces. I watched many a woman walk erect with a baby
slung on her back in addition to a shallow basket of vegetables
atop her head. Cabbages, lettuce, beans, peas, artichokes,
parsley, and vine leaves predominated among purple egg
plant, white marrow, and green cucumbers. The fruits in
cluded luscious oranges from Jaffa, apricots from Bethlehem
and Beit Jala, nectarines from near-by Jerusalem, bananas
from Jericho, and watermelons from the coast around Caesa-
rea. Up from David Street came a shepherd marching at
the head of his flock, carrying in his arms a new-born lamb.
As they passed me, I heard the patter of the little feet and as
they skipped along the Bethlehem Road, I saw them kicking
up little clouds of dust.

I rounded the Citadel and continuing my walk moved
slowly along with a motley crowd on Zion Street through the
Armenian quarter, I found the neighborhood a confusing
maze of walls, churches, and monasteries.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 95

The Armenians are very rich in church property. The
Monastery maintains hospices capable of housing several
thousand pilgrims at a time and there are schools here for
boys and girls. The Church of St. James, their most beauti
ful church, was built to glorify the martyred Apostle, the son
of Zebedee, who was beheaded at the order of Herod. I
found it very interesting and handsome, especially the beauti
ful old tiles adorning its walls. I lingered a long time in the
porch looking at some curious old wooden gongs, relics of the
days when intolerant Moslems forbade the ringing of bells in
Jerusalem.

Just a few steps outside Zion Gate I came to another group
of modern ecclesiastical buildings. In the courtyard of the
Monastery, standing on tombstones which pave the court, I
tried to realize that legend places the house of Caiaphas, High
Priest at the trial of Jesus, on this site. If this is so, I said to
myself, then Jesus came from Annas here after he was arrested
in Gethsemane, in this place he must have stood trial before
the hastily assembled Sanhedrin, and somewhere in a near-by
court Peter warming his hands before an open fire denied his
Lord three times to a questioning maid.

Not caring to visit it, I passed by the church which covers
the place where Mary, his mother, lived her latter years and
died. At the end of the road I entered an arched gateway,
went through a corridor, and climbed a staircase into an
upper room.

This site is known with something approaching certainty.

Epiphanius mentions a tradition, which goes back as far as the
time of Hadrian, that a little house, the first Christian
church in the world, was one of the few buildings left stand
ing when Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 A. D. A long, unbroken
chain of tradition which seems trustworthy identifies the so-
called Coenaculum with the Church of the Apostles and the
scene of the Last Supper. Some kind of Christian building

96 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

has marked this site until the Moslems wrested it from the
Franciscans. When a report spread that the tomb of David
full of treasure lay beneath the Chamber of the Last Supper
the Moslems drove out the Christians, seized the church, and
converted it into a shrine, which they call En Ncbi Daoud or
the Prophet David*

Fortunately, the site of the Upper Room has not been spoilt
by gaudy decoration and embellishment; the simple, plain
vaulted room looks old and I felt that the strength of old tra
dition actually lingered and was at home in this place.

Christians are denied worship here. Since no one hurried
me off I lingered meditating in its subdued light as long as I
wanted.

It was a wonderful experience to stand in what is still an
upper room and recall the story of Jesus* last night. I could
see it all again. A long room built on the flat roof of an East
ern house, which had been prepared by Peter and John for
their Master s final meal with his disciples* A room sup
ported by pillars. I could imagine in this now emptied room
the low table, only slightly raised from the carpet-strewn
stone floor, and the mats on which they reclined at an angle
with it. The lamps suspended from the ceiling shedding a
soft light over the participants in the drama and over the
common dish, the cups of wine, and the bread assembled on
the table. The air of suspense and impending tragedy. Jesus
saying, " Take and eat this, it means my body," Taking the
cup of wine, and, thanking God, giving it to them, and de
claring, "Drink of it, all of you; this means my covenant-
blood which is shed for many; truly I tell you, I will never
drink the produce of the vine again till the day I drink it new
within the Realm of God/ (A New Translation, Moffatt,)

The simple, symbolic rite of the broken bread and out
poured wine only Jesus fully understood; the disciples and
Christians since have only imperfectly glimpsed its meaning

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 97

and purpose. Many have thought that by some magic the
bread and wine in this rite were transmuted and that they
were eating his actual body and blood. But might it not also
be, I queried of myself here in the Upper Room, more than
symbols of his flesh and blood but of his spirit and life? Does
its meaning not go beyond the fact that he lived, beyond an
attempt to make it a means of selfishly and easily getting the
benefits of his bitter earthly experience vicariously? Surely
the meaning of the rite is found in a Christian s fidelity to the
moral and spiritual qualities which the Christ embodies and
his dedication to the realization of the ideals and spirit of
Christ " in earth, as it is in heaven."

I have said that Christians are not allowed to worship here
and so no observance of the last earthly meal is practised in
the place. Notwithstanding, I felt a tremendous new sense of
what he meant when he suggested: " This do in remembrance
of me." My thoughts lingered with the notion that the aims
of Jesus make it quite certain that:

" The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another s need;
Not what we give, but what we share,

For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Certainly there was much in the atmosphere of this plain
room which made me feel that it was the starting-place from
which Jesus that Thursday night went out unto the Mount of
Olives.

I left and wandered along an old street constructed of wide
paving blocks on the southwest hill. Descending a broad
street of steps, all at once the landscape opened. High on
the hillside but far below the frowning southeast corner of

98 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the Wall, there was a well-worn track that leads down sharply
into the valley. A man and his donkey were coming along it.
Idly, I wondered if perhaps that spring moonlight night Jesus
and the apostles followed this road now outside the Wall from
Dung Gate to Gethsemane. Olivet in its quiet and sunny
peace came into view; thousands of white sepulchres rose out
of the Kidron Valley; every little goat path was clear and dis
tinct; the hovels of Siloam clung to the Mount of Offense,
their green gardens deep in shadows stretched south and west
away to the Hinnom Valley. A cock crowed in the vicinity of
Siloam Village. It was the only sound, but it brought Peter
vividly before me.

In the chill morning light in the courtyard of the High
Priest s palace, Peter three times denied the accusation that he
was a follower of the Galilean. The cock crowing recalled to
his harassed mind not only his earlier declaration, " If all shall
be offended in thee, I will never be offended," but also Jesus*
prophecy, " This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny
me thrice." The Apostle may have overestimated his loyalty
but not his love. Peter failed a good many times in following
his leader, but he, nevertheless, loved him with all the strength
of his impulsive nature. When the noisy cock recalled to him
the prophetic words of his Master, he went out to weep
bitterly.

A distant cock crowed again a gay, bold note as I turned
back toward Zion Gate.

II

The way to the Pool of Bethesda leads through the crooked
duskiness of David Street, a turn to the left into Christian
Street, another turn right and a descent of steps to the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre. Across the courtyard and through a
door in the wall and it comes onto Via Dolorosa. This street
was laid out by men who have attempted to reconstruct the

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probable path of that grievous journey from the Judgment
Hall of Pilate to Calvary, a path which now lies buried far
below the present level of Jerusalem. There are nine prayer
stations along here for Latin Christians; the other five are
within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Lining this sacred
way are white walls which hide nunneries, churches, mon
asteries, and convents.

Almost at the end of the narrow streetway, near to St
Stephen s Gate, I stopped another morning before a door in
a stone wall. I pulled the bell string. A whiskered monk

looked through a window at me, opened the door, and bowed
me into the courtyard of the Monastery o St. Anne. Through
the small room where souvenir postcards were for sale, the
monk led me to a staircase which runs down between the
church and the wall to the Pool of Bethesda, one of the mi
raculous healing places of ancient Jewish times. Seeing a
framed bit of Scripture on the wall, I hesitated to read :

" Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which
is called in the Hebrew tongue, Bethesda, having five porches.

" In these lay a multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt,
withered, waiting for the moving of the water . . .

". . . whosoever then first after the troubling of the water
stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
JOHN 5:2-4.

I followed my guide down the steps and in the dim light we
stood together looking at the floor of the pool. It held a little
dirty water, but it is usually dry, he explained.

" In early days superstitious people thought an angel trou
bled the waters that mysteriously came in here because at
times they became agitated. See, it has c five porches/ as the
writer of the Gospel of John says, because the pool is a long
rectangle one porch on each of its four sides divided into
two squares or twin pools by a porch across the middle. The

ioo Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

sick, palsied, lame, blind, and halt waited on the porches or
balconies around the pool of water until there came at one
time or another a ruffling of these still waters, as if they were
troubled by angels wings. At that instant if the waiting mob
rushed down into the pool, they were instantly healed. But
for thirty-eight years one man had had a hard time of it. Be
cause he was too helpless and weak, he was always just too
late getting into the water. One day Jesus came here. When
the man told him of his difficulty, he healed him with the
words, * Take up thy bed, and walk/ "

I rather wished as I looked at the pool and listened to the
monk s explanation that the Pool of Bethesda looked as it
used to when the lame, halt, and blind bathed in it, and when
the man who had waited so long to be helped into the waters
was healed by Jesus. But then there are many places in the
Holy Land that need imagination.

Ill

Returning along the Via Dolorosa, I came to a large, high,
graceful arch spanning an otherwise unroofed street. It is
called the Ecce Homo Arch in Jerusalem. According to tra
dition, it marks the place where Pilate in turning Jesus over
to the Jews said: " Behold, the man." Under this arch Jesus
walked, here Paul was brought when in the near-by Temple
court the mob seized him, and on a stairway here he turned
and addressed his captors,

I knocked at a door in the wall and waited, I was wel
comed by a nun in the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. I was
invited into a reception room and motioned to a seat among
those surrounding the wall. This sister, who spoke no English,
went away and before another came into the room my eyes
looked around at the rugs and religious decorations on tables,
floors, and walls. This second nun could speak English.

She bore me off to a room where there was a door in the

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floor. She went ahead, but she glanced about to see if I were
following. I saw that her eyes were twinkling beneath her
stiff, white headdress as though she had something very in
teresting in store to show me. Come, she beckoned. The
stairway led down far beneath the convent. As I followed
along, I heard her soft voice explaining that, although three
sites for the Praetorium are discussed by scholars, this place is
generally accepted as the location of Pilate s Judgment Hall.

Soon I was standing on the excavated remains of a paved
street, an actual pavement of a former Jerusalem dating from
Roman occupation of Palestine. The paving blocks here were
of heavy, yellowish slabs of stone, a yard square, a foot or
more thick. They were ribbed with the wheels of chariots.
The nun reminded me that these very stones had felt the
sandals of Jesus when he stood before Pilate sitting " on the
judgment-seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew,
Gabbatha." Above the din and uproar of the Jews outside
the Praetorium, who had not entered fearing defilement
before their great feast, and from the open-air platform here,
Pilate formally opened the historic trial of Jesus of Nazareth.
Acquiescing to Jewish demands and delivering the man to his
enemies, these same stones had heard the Procurator as he
called out to the Jews, " Behold, your King! "

She pointed out markings of one destroyed Jerusalem
beneath another; and evidences of walls that once were the
walls of a great house. She took me, too, to see the markings
for games which had been scored into some parts of the
pavement for the amusement of the Roman guard. A
favorite pastime with the soldiers was a game called " Mock
ing the King." I remembered the stark tragedy in Mark s
account of the Roman soldiers sporting with Jesus.

" They clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of
thorns, and put it about his head,

" And began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!

102 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

" And they smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit
upon him, and bowing their knees worshipped him.

" And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple
from him, and put his own clothes on him, . . ." MARK
15: 17-20.

I went back to gaze once again at the old roadway at
Gabbatha. The agonizing trials which Jesus had been forced
to endure: before the Sanhedrin, in Herod s court, and before
Pilate here in the sudden and astounding collapse of Roman
justice at the demands of a frenzied mob of priests and rabble,
passed in review in my mind and left me numb in heart.

The nun had long since ceased speaking* She was waiting
quietly for me when suddenly I became acutely aware of the
solemn stillness in this place. What was it that this silence
would have me remember?

It was this Jesus stood alone here in the Judgment Hall
while others marvelled at the silence of him. He did not hear
the scorn nor laughter because his ears were deaf to the jeer
ing populace. He did not see their lustful faces because his
eyes were straining for his Father s face. And from this place
Jesus set his feet firmly and without fear upon the road that
he must tread leading to the top of a green hill where three
crosses stood. As I stood here, believing for the moment in its
historical accuracy, I thought: " God moves in a mysterious
way His wonders to perform/ 5

Then in the noonday heat I walked from the Convent of
the Sisters of Zion home through the enchanted streets of old
Jerusalem, back to have lunch with my friends. And all the
way back, my heart was filled "with wonder, love, and
praise."

CHAPTER VIII

*

I ramble outside the Old Wall. The Valley of Hinnom
(Gehenna) holds no terrors now. Siloam Village sprawls on a
hillside. I go to see the tunnel which Hezekiah cut in the rock
when the Assyrian threatened to come down ff like a wolf on the
fold" I go through the Kidron Valley to Gihon and climb the
hill to Gordon s Calvary. I visit the underground quarries
which provided the stone for Solomon s Temple.

IT was a blustery March afternoon, I came out of the
Y. M. G. A. Across the road was the new King David
Hotel My guide was waiting for me. My purpose was to
walk around outside the Wall.

I knew he disapproved of my determination because he
criticised my shoes as unsuitable. He warned me more than
once of the difficulties involved in a walk outside the Wall:
rough roads, sometimes scarcely a footpath, the meanness of
Siloam s villagers who might detain us, the loneliness of the
walk. Again he suggested using donkeys. Up to that time I
had never ridden a donkey and, knowing something of the
topography, I was loath to try it. I knew I could run. I
didn t know I could stay " put " on a donkey! I have since
changed my mind. I love to ramble outside the Old Wall on
the back of one of these nimble-kneed, wise beasts, who need
no guides to follow. Finally, seeing it was to no avail, he
capitulated: " For you only, Miss Patterson, would I do this
never for anyone who has come to the Holy Land would I
take such a walk! "

From Julian Street, we struck off across an olive orchard,
passing an old windmill. Ahead of us was a picture I shall
long remember. At one glance I saw a long section of

103

104 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Suleiman s mighty wall from the Citadel to the tall tower of
the Dormition Church on the southwest hill, with the Sultan s
Pool lying far beneath me and the Valley of Hinnom sinking
away to the great gap in the hills which leads down to Jericho.
We crossed the Bethlehem Road where we met a group of
resting Bedouin shepherds, veiled women, and dirty children.
I found myself stumbling down the steep, dusty, cruelly
rocky path into the Valley of Hinnorn, which is Gehenna
otherwise hell of the New Testament. I had not counted on
a desert wind to blow me down the hills, sand to fill my eyes,
and an occasional shower while the sun shone to add to the
rigors of this excursion. Stopping occasionally to catch my
breath and rearrange my clothing, I d look around me. To
the north and to my left rose Mount Zion, " beautiful for situ
ation." To the south and my right were olive trees that on a
pleasant day make this valley a gracious place. Out from
under the trees came a shepherd with his goats and sheep

scrambling after him.

" Naharic said " (May your day be blessed) , he greeted
us. He passed on up toward Sultan s PooL

In imagination I was beginning to see the dire events that
had cursed forever the valley s name. As each gust of wind
and sand cleared away, picture after picture rose in my mem
ory. It was in this region that the abominable rites of Baal
were observed. Somewhere there on the rocky southern hill
was Tophet, a " high place " where parents gave their chil
dren as sacrifices to the god Molech. I had a good view of the
Hill of Evil Counsel. I remembered Jephthah s lovely daugh
ter, a reminder of a time when Hebrews practised human sac
rifice in the worship of Jehovah. I remembered the sons of
Ahaz and Manasseh who were made to " pass through the
fire," burned alive in sacrifice to Molech in this valley. Micah
proclaimed a God of righteousness among a people whom he
saw coming before Jehovah with " burnt offerings, with calves

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a year old . . . with thousands of rams . . ." and asking,
" Shall I give of my first-born for my transgression? " Per
haps he had seen them doing so in Hinnom. As late as the
seventh century, Jeremiah still could cry :

" And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in
the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their
daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not/ 5 JERE
MIAH 7: 31.

Josiah purged the country of pagan shrines and turned the
fires of Molech into an incinerator for Jerusalem. Dead
bodies of animals, foul meat, and garbage were dumped into
the pit ,to be burned. Offensive, unceremonially clean, filthy,
not until Titus destroyed Jerusalem was the perpetual fire ex
tinguished.

When between the Old and New Testaments, the Hebrews
took over the idea of a place of eternal torment, and devel
oped it, they decided upon this awful place, one of their own
valleys running southwest of the Holy City. From its cere
monial defilement, from its detested fire of Molech, from its
supposed ever-burning funeral piles where their own fathers
had practised human sacrifice, it became for them the dreadful
place whose name should signify hell Gehenna (land of
Hinnom ) .

Jesus in telling of the fate of the wicked found no other pic
ture so applicable to his meaning as the everlasting fires of
Hinnom :

" And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it
from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell." MATTHEW 5: 29.

Some of the terrors of Hinnom have been overcome. My
guide led me to an old rock surface, a sort of " high place." It

io6 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

might easily have been an altar. At some such place as this
Molech with his arms outstretched over an eternal fire sat
ready to receive his victims. Where, once upon a time, human
sacrifice was offered to gods, a fellah family makes its home
among an aggregation of emptied gasoline tins.

Once more I looked up at the Hill of Evil Counsel Ac
cording to tradition, Gaiaphas possessed a country house here.
Hither the Jews came to consult how they might put Jesus to
death. Among an aggregation of cemeteries, my guide
pointed out Aceldama or the " Field of Blood." This is be
lieved to be " potter s field " which the chief priests bought
with thirty pieces of silver returned to them by Judas,

I visited some of the crumbling tombs, " whited sepulchres/
dotting the hilly southeastern banks of Hinnom, Crawling in
to some, my candle searched out bones and skulls lying about
in confusion.

We went on to the junction of the Hinnom and Kidron val
leys. We paused for some time at Job s Well or Sir Ayoub,
as the Arabs call it. This place is thought to be En Rogel,
where the fullers plied their trade of cleansing and whitening
garments. I was interested in the scarp of rock here which
appears to have been bleached by some strong solution, per
haps the cleansing process used by the Hebrews, and whitened,
perhaps with chalk. It bore no resemblance to the rock in
the rest of the valley.

I was reminded by the dreadful stench here that fullers
were always located some distance outside a city because of
the offensive smell of their trade. Looking about, I noted too
that here was plenty of room for drying clothes.

We started up the Kidron Valley in single file, picking our
way carefully, tripping over stones. Vividly, I recalled the
Psalmist s figure of speech when he promised: "They shall
bear thee up ... lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."
Below our rough track lay " king s dale." A few villagers

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were working in carefully laid-out garden plots, in terraced
fields upheld on the hillside by walls of stones in this green
valley which supplies Jerusalem s markets with fresh vege
tables.

Looking ahead I saw the Kidron curving to the right
around the great golden wall of Jerusalem. From this depth
she seemed like a city rising out of an abyss.

On the opposite cliff sprawled Siloam Village (Silwan),
a mass of dirty caves, tombs, stone dwellings, and stables. It
stretches north and south, a straggling community on the
lower slopes of the Hill of Offense. This is the " hill that is
before Jerusalem " or " the mount of corruption," where
Solomon grown old and harassed by his harem allowed his
wives to persuade him to erect heathen temples. Making
concessions to idolatry, he thereby incurred the displeasure of
Jehovah. Later, royal recorders in investigating causes for
the Kingdom of Israel s downfall attributed it to this infiltra
tion of pagan forms of worship and to Solomon s spiritual
decadence.

We turned northward into the Tyropean Valley in the
direction of the Pool of Siloam. In America I had sung:

" By cool Siloam s shady rill,
How sweet the lily grows."

It meant peace and beauty to me. I sat down on the
masonry above the pool. It took a few moments for me to
adjust my mental picture of this place, to which Jesus had
sent the blind man to bathe, to the facts of reality. It was
wet, messy, and noisy.

The valley in which the pool lies has been filled in with
thirty to sixty feet of debris since the beginning of the Christian
era. Consequently, the cleared pool is far below the present
level of the Tyropean. Stone blocks cemented into place hold

io8 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

back the crowding earth; stone steps, at least twenty, lead
down to the water and to the entrance to a black tunnel.

I looked down upon a busy scene : Siloam villagers washing
clothes in the primitive way, kneading the cloth like dough
and rubbing the bundles on the round, flat stones in the
water, which are relics of pillars in a fifth-century church
which once covered the pool. The sound of gossip drifted
up to me. I called down: "Assallam" (Peace). They
looked up from their labors and, with grins spreading over
their tattooed faces, returned my greeting. Their children,
scattering glistening beads of water, scampered up to where
I sat. This was an excellent opportunity to get " Baksheesh "
for posing for their pictures !

I watched modern Rebekahs from Siloam descend the
steps with Standard Oil cans and after filling their tins at
the same pool where the others were washing, mount the
steps again with the heavy tins balanced on patties of wet
cloth on their heads. Mounting the steps as though the
weight of these spilling tins was nothing at all a mere
twenty or thirty pounds perhaps !

My thoughts went back to 701 B. a when this pool lay
within the walls of ancient Jerusalem.

Hezekiah was king of Judah when word was brought that
the Assyrian was preparing to come down upon this rebellious
people " like a wolf on the fold." Forced to contemplate a
siege, Hezekiah strengthened first the city s defenses; but he
was troubled by the fact that Jerusalem s only source of
water Gihon lay outside the walls of the Old City of
David, on an open slope of the Kidron Valley. Jerusalem
could not long resist if her water supply was cut off by the
enemy.

"And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that
he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem,

by Harriet -Louis r H. Patterson

The Pool of Siloam lies outside Jerusalem s "wall in the
Tyropean Valley. Its waters glisten in the sunshine as in
the days when Hezekiah s workmen built a conduit from
Gihon to Siloam and Isaiah encouraged a people terror-
stricken by threats from Sennacherib s armies, and when
Jesus sent the blind man here to bathe.

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<c He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to
stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city."

II CHRONICLES 32: 2, 3.

Gathering his people, Hezekiah put them to work cutting
a long underground tunnel for a distance of 1750 feet through
solid rock to carry the waters of Gihon to the Pool of Siloam
within the city. He then sealed up the outer entrance to
the spring so that the Assyrians could not find it.

Isaiah was living during this dangerous time. He must
have watched with bated breath the construction of this
conduit which would guarantee the city s population against
Sennacherib s armies and at the same time cut off the enemy
from the only spring in these hills.

Terror filled the people of Jerusalem as runners from
distant outposts brought news of the surrender of one after
another of the forty-six fenced cities of Judah. Feverishly the
men must have worked, excavating from both ends. They
had to hurry or the Assyrians would have been there before
the tunnel was completed and Jerusalem would have been
lost, all would have been lost.

To whom could these anxious people turn for encourage
ment as the " great day *of the Lord " drew momentarily
nearer? Ever faithful Isaiah was at hand. He, who had
rebuked Jerusalem for her sins, was waiting for her to return
to her God. He counselled:

" In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in
confidence shall be your strength." ISAIAH 30: 15.

Many times during these trying days Isaiah in comforting a
terror-stricken people must have shouted:

" Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid:
for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is be
come my salvation.

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" Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of
salvation/ ISAIAH 12: 2, 3.

Finally, he gave them this encouragement, a message from
their God:

" The king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor
shoot an arrow there, . . .

" By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and
shall not come into this city . . ." ISAIAH 37: 33-34.

And then the Assyrians were at the gates, with their
battering rams against the walls. Although for months they
besieged Jerusalem, they could neither break down the
strongly-fortified walls, nor starve the people, nor discover
the city s source of water. At last they began an enforced
retreat to Nineveh,

I came down the steps and walked over to the tunnel, a
black hole in the side of the hill I stepped onto a ledge
inside the two-foot-wide entrance* My candle lit up the
flow of water and the dark clammy walls. The marks made
by the picks of Hezekiah s workmen were sharp and clear on
the stone. They had worked in haste, making no effort
about uniformity of workmanship. Some twenty-five feet
inside, Hebrew workmen at the completion of this task
scratched a six-line scrawling inscription describing this
engineering feat which is mentioned three times in the Bible:
in Second Chronicles, Second Kings, and again in the Book
of Isaiah. This inscription which has been removed to the
Imperial Museum at Istanbul is most notable, not only be
cause it illuminates a rather meagre biblical account, but
because this tablet when finally deciphered gave to the world
the key to the ancient Hebrew language. This is the simple
story of the triumph of Hezekiah s engineers :

" Behold the excavation. Now this is the story of the excava-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

in

tion. While the excavators were lifting up the pick, each
towards his neighbor, and while there were yet three cubits to
excavate, then was heard the voice of one man calling to his
neighbor, for there was excess of the rock on the right hand and
on the left. And after that, on the day of excavating, the ex
cavators had struck pick upon pick, one against the other, and
the waters flowed from the spring to the pool for a distance of
1,200 cubits, and 100 cubits was the height of the rock over the
heads of the excavators,"

After almost three thousand years, I was watching water
flow through this conduit from Gihon to the Pool of Siloam.

It was with thoughts of Isaiah that I was occupied as I
skirted the hill of Ophel and came to Gihon. Ophel has been
so tumbled by the spade of excavators that today one finds
little to remind him of its history as the Jebusites capital city
or later as David s royal city. My guide pointed out ancient
remains of city wall; wall probably from the fortifications of
the Jebusites, but my mind was still taken up with physical
details of Isaiah s Jerusalem that exists for the inquiring
Bible student today its conduits and pools, the softly flowing
waters of Siloam, its rock-hewn sepulchres dotting the barren
Judean landscape, its fortified walls against which the Assyr
ians cast up their mounds and brought up their battering
rams before its gates, the crowded housetops, the Temple
courts, and the precipitous valleys that surround it.

We crossed over a smelly little stream that trickled along
its rocky bed. How could the Psalmist by the wildest stretch
of imagination have cried out about the Kidron as " a river,
the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God " ! Yet
my guide told me that she rushes along a torrent in the early
spring.

On the hill above us Adonijah waited one night with his
supporters to be crowned king of Israel when they heard
shouts coming from Gihon where Solomon s friends had

112 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

anointed him king. I looked back. How easy it would have
been to have heard the merry-making at Gihon that night;
how easily I could hear the laughter of Arab women who
were* filling their empty receptacles at the plentiful fountain
which witnessed Solomon s coronation.

Stopping briefly at Absalom s tomb, we went on through
the Kidron Valley, Its gleaming crowded sepulchres re
minded me that in this arid valley the final Judgment will
take place, according to Jews and Moslems. We came to
the foot of the Mount of Olives and saw the little walled
garden of Gethsemane green and peaceful. Crossing the
concrete bridge we began to trudge upward toward the
Palestine Museum. It is a massive white-stone building in
which are kept the many precious discoveries made by excava
tors who in recent years are digging into the ancient hills of
Palestine, which are yielding the " hidden riches of secret
places."

Our road now paralleled the Old Wall. Motor coaches
speeding to Jericho and Amman whizzed by. Camel caravans
loaded with heavy bags, led by their masters in saffron-
colored " abbas" (cloaks), padded wearily along toward
the Damascus Gate.

We came within sight of that weird hill whose skull-like
features led General Gordon to call it " Golgotha " and to
identify it with the " Place of a Skull " mentioned in the
Gospels. Since an ancient Jewish tomb has been excavated
here, it has become one of Jerusalem s traditional Golgothas.
Situated as it is at the road-junction it might have been
chosen for executions for the sake of publicity by the Romans.
From the distance as the light fell across this ancient stoning-
place, which lies in full view of the City Wall, it looked
bleak, much like everyone pictures Calvary. Which is the
true site that covered by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
or this place? No one can be quite sure, but wherever the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 113

crucifixion took place, it was in the open air and beneath the
wide sky. There wasn t time to visit Gordon s Calvary this
afternoon.

II

Instead I came one morning, pulled a bell string hanging
outside a heavy door, and waited for the caretaker to stop
pottering among his flowers and answer my insistent summons.
I stepped into a restful, quiet little garden. As I stood
among the flowers, olive trees, and vines, and looked up
toward the green hill shaped like a skull, this place seemed
to satisfy the gospel story. If Gordon s Calvary is authentic,
then in the place where Jesus was crucified there is still a
garden.

The caretaker led me along a path to the Garden Tomb.
A low oblong door, which once possessed a " rolling stone "
to cover the entrance, led into the sunken rock-cut chamber.
Bending, I entered and sat down on the stone bench alongside
one wall int^Spded for the mourners. I looked directly into
one of the three open burial vaults hewn in the solid rock.
Only one of these is completely finished.

The body was supposed to have been wrapped in a wind
ing sheet and placed on the sunken stone shelf where a body
could rest. I could see the support for the neck and a dent
for the head. It answers the description that it was " a
sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before
was laid." The caretaker stepped outside and showed me
how it was possible for John " stooping down, and looking
in to see the linen clothes lying " on the small shelf cut beside
the recess where the body had lain until that morning. I
came out of the tomb feeling that if one must see an empty
sepulchre, then go to the Garden Tomb; it is reverent and
beautiful.

I walked in perfume-scented air along the paths laid out

1 14 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

among growing spring flowers and budding trees. I felt that
if one must see the garden of the resurrection where, when
the full glory of the sunrise came, a triumphant voice ex
claimed: " He is not here. He is risen, even as he said," then
walk in this garden. It spoke a very real message to me that

" The earliest Easter greeting

Was breathed on garden ground,
Where Life and love were meeting,

And joy and hope were found;
And every tree and flower

Speaks with a living voice
Of Resurrection power,

And bids the world rejoice! "

*~~***TY. J\.* \jr*

I came away thinking not of a sepulchre because the pall
of Calvary was lifted, but of a quiet, little garden all aglow
with resurrection symbols, I came away this bright morning
remembering the rosemary and the rue, *jfr daisies and
pansies, the mustard trees with their bright yellow blossoms,
and all the other flowers with which " God writes His Easter
story upon His world so fair/

III

The entrance to Solomon s Quarries, called by Josephus
the " Royal Quarries," lies directly across the highway from
Gordon s Calvary. The old Arab, who stood inside the
entrance in a patch of daylight that came through the dilapi
dated doorway, gave me a twisted bit of candle and a lantern
to my guide. Together we walked off from cool shadows
into pitch blackness.

Our path led steeply down into an enormous cave like a
large assembly hall. I was told that this is where visiting
Masons congregate to hold midnight meetings because they

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 115

believe King Solomon organized his workmen into a brother
hood who were the first Freemasons.

From this cleared place I noticed that corridors led off
in many directions to lower and more distant caverns. This
excavation in the Bezetha Quarter undermines Jerusalem for
two hundred yards to the south and reaches out for almost
three hundred yards. I couldn t shake off my amazement
that pedestrians in the Old City were not aware of our
presence in the quarry and neither were we conscious of the
sound of the footsteps of those who were constantly moving
over our heads.

Chips and abandoned half-hewn stones cluttered the way
and made walking laborious. Several times I drew back
quickly from the edge of deep chasms. When light from the
lantern fell against the roof, it revealed a pure white stone,
almost giving the appearance of cotton clinging there. It is
this resemblance which has made the Arabs call these caves
the " Cotton Caves." A flash of the lantern or my flickering
candle revealed signs of workmen. I could see where they
had cut niches in the walls to hold their lamps while they
worked; a few of these had smoked. I could see the clean,
clear, sharp marks the Phoenician stone-cutters made when
they removed the soft white limestone from its bed; in some
places blocks still hung from the walls of the cave, partially
worked. We walked on a floor of chips which they left
behind them when the task of shaping the stones for Solomon s
Temple some three thousand years ago was finished. If I had
not known the story of how this quarry had been lost to the
world for so long while the source of the stone used in the
Temple remained a secret until about eighty-five years ago
and then discovered only by accident one day, I should have
believed I was visiting a modern quarry whose workmen had
quit for the day. There seemed nothing about it to suggest
an abandoned place.

n6 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

One method of quarrying here was to use wooden, water-
soaked wedges, allowing the water to stand in the crevice and
loosen the stone without the sound of chisel or hammer. Then
it was passed to masons to be shaped and smoothed. It went
straight from here ready to take its place in the Temple
building. On another visit I watched Arabs using this method
as they obtained stone to shape into souvenirs triangles and
keystones and gavels for tourists.

A puzzling verse of Scripture in connection with the extra
ordinarily detailed account of the building of the Temple took
on meaning for me. Verse seven in First Kings, Chapter
6 says:

" And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone
made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was
neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the
house, while it was in building."

The ring of tools in these corridors woijM never have
reached the Temple area. I was quite convfiKed of it after
Arab workmen had shown me how workmen of Hiram and
his principal architect Hiram had labored cutting stone in
Solomon s day.

The afternoon sun was almost gone when I left the Quarry.
Camels lay alongside the Old Wall near the low iron door,
their long legs folded comfortably about them. The drivers
squatted in the cool, dusty shadows. Out of the Damascus
Gate came a shepherd and his flock of sheep. My road fol
lowing the Wall dipped and turned to Jaffa Gate.

CHAPTER IX

/ spend a morning on the Mount of Olives climbing the Rus
sian Tower s 214 steps -for a view of the Judean Wilderness and
Moab, visiting the Chapel of the Ascension, and the Church of
the Lord s Prayer. I talk with a nun at the Russian Church and
am given a bouquet of rosemary, I tarry in the Garden of
Gethsemane. The night before I leave Jerusalem, I return to
Olivet and spend an hour under a sky spangled with stars and
walk beneath olive trees whose " little gray leaves were kind to
Him."

BEFORE Jerusalem on east, across the Kidron Valley r
there is a green hill far away, beyond the City Wall,
which makes the same curved, graceful line against the sky,
which has the same zigzag path up its slopes leading over
the hill "out as far as unto Bethany, 5 and at whose base
there lies a garden, the garden, so the Fathers say. All as it
must have been nineteen hundred years ago when Jesus
roamed this countryside at will.

My second morning in Jerusalem, I hurried alone, a pil
grim, to the Mount of Olives. I carried a New Testament to
read again the Passion Week narratives in their setting. I
chose the route to the top of Olivet that I might descend from
the summit to the garden, the little garden where Jesus
triumphed through prayer, because I felt that here amidst
these stony paths that twist and zigzag I could follow in his
steps.

As I stood on the height, Zechariah s prophecy and location
of this site, " His feet shall stand in that day upon the mount
of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east/ 3 echoed in
my heart.

117

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Entering the garden of the Russian compound, a nun came
forward with a large key to open the tower door. Then she
left me to slowly climb the narrow, winding staircase. There
was no one eke about; no one to hurry me. There were no
harsh noises, only the singing of the birds. I was alone but
not lonely. Full of keen anticipation, I stepped up the 21 4th
step of the tower, yet I was wholly unprepared for the spread
ing panorama before me. This was my first glimpse of the
Jordan Valley. Straight down to the east I gazed into a
world of silent, brown, domed hills, savage in appearance,
bare of any vegetation. Farther in the distance I saw a
streak of startling blue which marked the waters of the
Jordan and the Dead Sea, and beyond them a long, misty
barrier of violet hills., the hills of Moab. How close they
seemed! This was a view that Jesus knew! This was the
view he sought when he came over the road fronT Bethany
. * . this sky, these hills, these stony valleys, and yonder
Jordan s banks.

How often sad thoughts crowd in with happiness and make
the two seem one. The pious, reverent visitor to the Mount
of Olives will often find the tears welling at the game time
his heart is singing a noble tune. So, I dreamed in the
pregnant stillness of Moses as I gazed on that violet wall,
because

" By Nebo s lonely mountain,

On that side of Jordan s wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave."

From the lofty Russian Tower set amid the cypress
trees, the crown of Olivet, I walked down a stony lane into
the very center of a tiny Arab village, Kafr et Tur. By this
time I had a self-appointed guide. Here he left me to go to
tell his wife, or so he said, that he had found a lady on the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 119

mountain and would be late getting home to dinner. Peculiar,
isn t it, how such homely, ordinary things of life can crowd
in upon this hill which lives mostly in the imaginations of
men? Somehow at home in America I had never thought of
really poor people, concerned with the business of daily
living, dwelling on this mountain so rich in memories.

As he disappeared into an alley, I went on to the Chapel
of the Ascension, accepted by the Occidental as the site of
the ascension, notwithstanding that Luke says, " He led them
out as far as unto Bethany." Yet here is the traditional site.
Eusebius mentions its popularity among pilgrims. In 351
A. D. Constantine built here a roofless, round chapel. The
present domed, octagonal building set in a paved court is
owned by the Moslems, who revere the Christians 5 Jesus, too.

What had I come to see? A venerated slab of marble within
the chapel which shows the impression of a right foot, the
right foot of Jesus, so they say. I didn t remain here long.
Somehow I didn t feel his presence among these white build
ings. So, out into the sunshine, out into the clear, refreshing
air, listening to the singing of the birds, I continued down a
stony road with grey-green olives to my right. And other
verses came to me from the Bible :

" And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain
place . . , one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to

P ra 7 ~ -r,

" And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father

which art in heaven . . ." LUKE u : i, 2.

Until now I should have preferred to have these simple,
trusting words in the out-of-doors of Palestine, upon this
flowered hill fragrant with the smell of waking earth, with
only the birds singing in delirious ecstasy and the whispers
of olive trees moving in the slight breeze to break its early
morning stillness, but there is the inevitable church here, of

120 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

course, to mark where Jesus taught his disciples to pray. The
Church of the Pater Noster is not a disturbing place. In its
hushed courtyard his followers have placed thirty-two tablets
containing the Lord s Prayer in as many different languages.

This particular day two German lads stood before the
German tablet; I stood before the English version; my Arab
guide looked up at the Arabic. I knew the precious words
by heart and my lips formed them soundlessly again. German,
American, and Arab, we stood all one for a time before his
prayer. I remembered later that we whispered and tiptoed
out together.

By the way that Jesus might have walked down the
mountain on fragrant spring mornings and again during
Passion Week, by the route which is called in Palestine
" Hosanna Road," I continued. My heart was singing :

" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you : not as
the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be
troubled, neither let it be afraid." JOHN 14: 27.

How lovely, I kept thinking to myself, that the Mount of
Olives is not completely built up. All along the right side of
the slope are olive trees which name it, while at their trunks
grow in profusion the red anemones, " the lilies of the field,"
and the sheep wander here and there reminiscent of the days
when this land was truly a pastoral country. Along this
hillside pious fathers and nuns have, together with their other
work, managed to plan and tend gardens, places of refuge
from the relentless stones of the twisting footpath. These
oases bespeak the infinite patience of saintly people who from
the chalky limestone ground have brought forth " a thing of
beauty."

Into almost a bit of heaven I wandered this spring day,
into" the most luxuriant greens, stately cypresses, tall cedars,
flowering shrubs, and beds of old-fashioned pinks, purples,

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Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 121

and forget-me-nots. Around and about them all was a
mossy green grass. I was in the garden of the Russian Church
of Mary Magdalene, a beautiful structure erected by Czar
Alexander III. It stands with its glittering domes, upturned
like golden turnips, just above Gethsemane. Some say that
this garden was part of the original garden. We don t know.

A nun, exiled from Russia, greeted me. She had known
keen mental suffering and yet her face bespoke the peace of
a conquered fear. We spoke of her motherland. I said how
sad it was that Russia had sold herself for " a mess of pot
tage " since the worship of the One, Universal God seems
today to have so little share in its people s lives. Her face
lighted and she said : " Never say that again, never give it the
power . . . there is no place where God is not and He lives
in the hearts of all Russians; He is with them."

Exiled from her homeland but loving it, she had come to
have faith in that country s religious future even while she
toiled an alien in Palestine. We talked and talked. In the
pauses I thought perhaps Paul s words written to the church
at Philippi, which was begun with a nucleus of worshipping
women converted to Christianity by him on the Philippian
water-front, were sounding down the ages of womanhood to
us, two women in a garden. Paul had written to them: " The
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your
hearts and mind through Jesus Christ." Does it mean that
peace must start and thrive in the hearts of men who would
rather love than hate, rather give than possess? So it seemed
that morning on Olivet.

As I was leaving with her words and Paul s echoing in my
ears, she walked to the gate of the garden. She stooped to
pick a bouquet of rosemary from " a bed of spice."

" For remembrance," she said, handing it to me.

Yes, of " peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto
you . . ,"

122 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

II

There is a place on this hill \vhere " when he drew nigh,
he saw the city and wept over it." What did he see? A great
city enclosed within walls of cyclopean masonry; a mass of
tortuous, twisting streets just as I have seen it. In Jesus 5 day,
two thousand years ago, perhaps there was more contrast
between the houses of the poor and the marble houses of the
rich than there is today. Jesus gazed upon the palaces of the
Maccabees, of Caiaphas, and of Herod. These are no more.
He saw the sinister Tower of Antonia, the Praetorium, which
sheltered the Roman garrison within the city, and which is
pointed out to visitors. He saw a gleaming gold and white
Temple crowning them all where I have seen only the
Moslem shrine, the Dome of the Rock. To the right and to
the north of the fortified walls he saw as I have those " hills
round about Jerusalem " of which the Psalmist sang.

Ill

I came to the foot of the mount, and there was the
Garden of Gethsemane. In the center of the retreat and not
far from a near-by church stands one gnarled, old olive
tree. It is at least nine hundred years old since these eight
trees in this garden have never paid the taxes assessed on
such trees in Palestine. Some religious believe it stood among
the seven others when Jesus prayed here nineteen hundred
years ago on Thursday of the Passion Week. Around the
trunks of the venerable trees the Franciscans tend their flower
beds and from them pluck a leaf or a pretty posy for the
pilgrim s hand. The simple gesture is not so much as a
reminder of this specific garden, as some pilgrims believe,
but a reminder of what Gethsemane meant in the life of the
Master.

" Tarry ye here and watch," the Garden invited me as

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Jesus had earlier bidden his followers. I sat down to watch
an old monk as he moved from flower bed to flower bed
among the ancient olive trees, seeming to touch everything
with beauty and reverence. I heard in the stillness the thrill
ing, trilling songs of warblers, the drone of bees over flowers,
much as Jesus must have heard them long ago, I understood
somewhat in the golden silence, pure air, and springtime
fragrance why the man came to this hillside so often and why
he sought this Garden; and watching, I felt truly that time
has not altered the Garden ... its healing, its peace are
still here.

I raised my eyes and looked west. I beheld a long slope
covered with the debris of centuries, thick with tombstones.
I saw the high fortifying wall of the Holy City with the
massive, closed Golden Gate separating today as yesterday the
city s noise and confusion from the absolute peace and quiet
of this almost paradise. I saw the ethereal blue lead dome
of the Moslem shrine as it rises above the gigantic wall under
a blaze of Syrian sun. Its windows remarkable for their
delicate tracery and brilliancy of coloring, its octagonal walls
decorated with colored, glazed tiles blotted from view by the
encircling, protecting masonry. In fulfilled prophecy a
voice seemed to echo from the past: " The days will come, in
the which there shall not be left one stone upon another . . ."
The Dome of the Rock stands where once stood Solomon s
Temple, Zerubbabel s Temple, and Herod s magnificent
shrine for the Jews about which Jesus had spoken those words.

I left the Mount of Olives and walked back up the dusty-
road to Jerusalem. The noonday sun burned above the city.

IV

I came again to the Mount of Olives one midnight, the
night before I left Jerusalem. There was a new moon in the
deep midnight-blue sky; the myriad stars hung like God s

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own lanterns from the heavens, their rays came down like
fine-spun golden threads to earth. Twinkle, twinkle came
and went the lights within the close-packed Holy City yonder.
Barely discernible were a church spire, a minaret, and the
rounded domes of El Aksa and the Dome of the Rock. The
massive, irregular walls loomed dark and forbidding beyond
the starlit valley of the Kidron. Only the sighing of the old
olive trees broke the hushed silence of the night as if they
still kept watch in Nature s way as once they watched while
others slept on a night long years ago. In

" the silver green of olive sheen
Oh, can my soul forget "

that on Thursday evening in the year 30 A. D. Jesus came
with his disciples into Gethsemane ("oil-press") and said,
" My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death: abide ye
here and watch " ? And I remembered that Jesus went for
ward a little, " a stone s cast," says Luke the historian, to be
accurate. He wanted to be alone and yet not quite alone.
Still he wanted the nearness of three: the most strong, the
most faithful, the most loving; these three, Peter, James, and
John. In the dead, sensitive stillness of Gethsemane did they
hear his voice as it opened its healing prayer and prayed,
"Abba, Father . . ." ?

Jesus came over the Brook Kidron with the disciples into
this place where there was a garden lighted by stars even as
now. He, too, watched the lights that twinkled within the
festive city ready for the Passover. Here beneath olive trees
like these, he walked alone with God. Remembering again,
time seemed suspended and I whispered:

" Into the woods my Master went,
Glean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.

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But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him,
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him,
When into the woods He came.

" Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with love and shame. *
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
Twas on a tree they slew Him last
When out of the woods He came."

SIDNEY LANIER.

Copyright, Charles Scribners.

CHAPTER X

/ spend Sunday at Hebron, City of " the friend of God! 3 En
route I visit Solomon s Pools and Ortus. I discover that Hebron s
ff welcoming committee " is not out to greet me but the survivors
of the "Haj." Children bother me at the Mosque. A potter s
open door invites me to " Look "; a glass factory solves the mys
tery of Palestine s source of " evil eye" beads. In ff the heat of
the day/ I walk through extensive vineyard country and rest
near the ancient oak at Mamre.

IT was about nine o clock on a beautifully bright, sun
shiny Sunday morning that I set out from Jaffa Gate in
Jerusalem for Hebron, city of "the friend of God." Va
grant cottony clouds floated in a brilliantly blue sky. In an
swer to my exclamation of delight at the wondrous beauty of
this morning world, Jacob replied that I should see the skies

in the summertime.

Jacob Nusaibeh is the son of a prominent old Moslem fam
ily in Jerusalem. He had agreed to show me the countryside
where Abraham had dwelt for a time, where he had built an
altar after Jehovah had commanded him to leave his country
and go into a land which he would give to him, and where he
now lies buried. Since I was now journeying to a real Mos
lem community, Jacob informed me that Moslems are not
worshippers of Mohammed but that all true Moslems worship
Allah (God) and that Mohammed is but His prophet. So
with that bit of religious instruction we went on.

II

Not far from Jaffa Gate we passed Animal s Market Pool,
which in the springtime is a pool of very dirty water, far too

126

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filthy to have so near a large city. Here the natives bring
their animals on Fridays to clean and sell them. We passed
by the beautiful Scottish Church and then were out into the
Judean hills. Busses marked " Bethlehem-Hebron " sped by
in both directions. The road itself is not rough, but it winds
in and out among these striking hills. The sides of the road
are built up with stone fences, the rocks for them having been
procured from the adjoining fields. In springtime these hills
immediately out of Jerusalem are grassy but in places enor
mous bare, harsh spots suddenly show. These are stones!
Their coloring may be white, sometimes cream, occasionally a
soft brown; they blend into the wild greenness almost like a
patterned green paisley.

Herds of black goats and flocks of sheep branded with
henna grazed quietly that morning in near-by fields or else
stampeded either up or down along the motor road as our
honking car flashed through their ranks. A few donkeys here
and there unequally yoked together with camels plowed in
the ancient manner, with only a stick of wood to upturn this
stubborn, rocky soil belonging to Arabs. The patches of cul
tivated land are small and so divided as to show distinctly the
boundaries of various landowners. Stumps of oak trees

abound along here, the oaks having been cut down during the
World War I, the stumps having never been blasted from
their bed. Life is still evident because every spring tender
green shoots push forth from the neglected stumps of trees
and they look instead like enormous flourishing bushes.

Ill

We came into the Rephaim Plain, situated in a beautiful
valley, with memories that this was the place where the Phi
listines encamped twice against David who had surprised
them once by having himself proclaimed king over Israel and
a second time by securing Jebus as a site for his capital city.

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The Old Testament records that word filtered through to
the enemy, the Philistines, but the one-time friends of David,
that surprisingly enough David had been anointed king over
Israel and Judah after a separation of the two Hebrew king
doms for seven years following upon the death of Saul at
Gilboa. The Philistines came and encamped at Rephaim,
Meanwhile, David inquired of Jehovah if he should go up
against them. Jehovah answered, " Yes," It was in despera
tion that the enemy finally fled from before David s armies
and in their haste left behind them their images. David was
victorious. But once again the Philistines encamped at
Rephaim. Again, David, exponent of theocratic rule in gov
ernment, obediently inquired of Jehovah how to conduct the
second campaign. Listening to the voice of Jehovah, David
followed His directions. And the second time the Philistines
were defeated on this historic plain. Very much earlier than
this in Israel s fortunes the Plain of Rephaim marked the
boundary between the tribe of Judah and the tribe of
Benjamin.

IV

Not far from here the road branches into two. The upper
is the road to Bethlehem. From this fork in the road we
chose the lower highway and continued on to Hebron. Beth
lehem would wait for another day.

Through wild country now and brilliant sunshine, we hur
ried on. With a turn in the road suddenly we saw an old
khan, a square building erected centuries ago to protect
travellers at night from marauding Bedouin bands. Once
upon a time, long before the days of swift-travelling motor
cars which accomplish these twenty miles in much less than
an hour, it was a convenient stop for merchants and others on
their way from Hebron to market in Jerusalem. They would
spend the night here in safety and then starting out before

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sunrise reach the great city in time for market. Likewise, on
their return home, they would reach its massive walls of
safety before sunset.

Walking behind the khan, I saw three large reservoirs.
Jacob said that these were erroneously called " Solomon s
Pools " since in reality they had been built by Pontius Pilate
in an effort to supply Jerusalem with much needed water in
this " dry and thirsty land." The restless Jews reported him
to Caligula in Rome and Pontius Pilate was punished.
Through the years since Jerusalem has had to depend upon
these pools and her own cisterns for her meagre water supply
until just recently when pipe lines were laid from Jaffa to
Jerusalem. These latter now supply the " city set upon a
hill " adequately with pure, fresh water.

The name of this lovely place where we stopped briefly is
Ortus, meaning " garden." The name fits this fertile, luscious
green valley with its luxuriant trees and flourishing green
grass which is like a velvet carpet spread beneath a canopy of
blue. Ortus is made vivid and beautiful with pheasant s eye,
cyclamen, anemones, soapwort, and pimpernels.

It is quite possible that Solomon s gardens used to be here
and that Ortus once was Etam. Possibly, I reminded myself,
Solomon was recalling Etam when he sang:

" I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me
vineyards :

" I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in
them of all kind of fruits :

" I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that
bringeth forth trees." ECCLESIASTES 2 : 4-6.

Some authorities believe the scenes in the Song of Solomon
are laid in these gardens whose plants were once " beds of
spices and orchards of pomegranates with pleasant fruits."

130 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

V

Only a short distance from Castle by the Pools as the an
cient khan is now called we came to a pile of tawny, natural
rock. At one side of it grew a number of tall cypress trees.
Glancing ahead to them it seemed to me as if they might be
sentinels to guard a precious site. I was not wrong. Jacob
explained as we drew nearer and stopped that this is where
tradition says Philip the evangelist met, converted, and bap
tized the eunuch from the court of Candace, Queen of Ethi
opia, who was earnestly reading from the prophet Isaiah but
couldn t understand a difficult passage. The eunuch was on
his way to Egypt; Philip had been bidden to go to Gaza; both
were travelling the ancient caravan route which led from the
East through Gaza and across sand-strewn trails to end in
Egypt; we were travelling on that same historic route only
as far as Hebron this day. Philip overtook him, explained
Isaiah, Chapter 53, in the light of the gospel message and
the sufferings of Jesus. Accepting Philip s ready explanation
and understanding it, the eunuch became one of the few in
dividuals in the New Testament the process of whose conver
sion is recorded. Here an individual s life began to take on
new meaning, new purpose, new aspirations as the Christ sud
denly laid hold upon him, as he confessed: " I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God/ 5 and then he continued on
his way rejoicing.

VI

Somewhere near to the right of the road is the Plain of
Mamre, but as we had planned that day to visit it on our re
turn from Hebron, I shall not pause here to recall its history.

We came into the vineyard district. This section of Pales
tine has been noted always for its grapes. Tradition claims
and it is believed as true that Joshua and Caleb came as far

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as here when they spied out the Promised Land for Moses in
1400 B. c. They returned, I remembered as I gazed on these
vineyards, with cc one cluster of grapes, and they bare it be
tween two upon a staff." It certainly isn t hard to believe
tradition here after seeing this countryside around Hebron;
the hills are striped with terraces of vines,, olives, and figs. At
the spring season the vines are not in bud yet and on this
spring day the small branches stuck up out of the ground or
lay upon it like black snakes because the Palestine husband
man never poles his vines or attaches them to trellis as we do
in America until they begin to leaf.

Soon we saw some modern residences, comfortable, clean-
looking, stone-built houses and a few domes glistening in the
sun. We were approaching Hebron, a well-known city in
even Abraham s time as early as 2000 B. c. and still an im
portant city when it served as David s capital when he was
king of Judah. In age it rivals Damascus, being close to four
thousand years old in recorded history. From Hebron Joseph
set out to seek his brothers in Shechem, and to Hebron those
same brothers returned carrying a blood-stained coat of many
colors to a father who mourned many days for his beloved
son. Absalom, David s favorite son, was born here. At the
gates of Hebron Abner treacherously killed Joab and paved
the way for his master to be king of Israel. Hither came re
bellious Absalom under pretext of performing a vow and from
here sent spies through all the tribes of Israel saying, " As soon
as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say,
Absalom reigneth in Hebron." Later it was fortified by
Rehoboam and was repeopled at the end of the Captivity. It
belonged for a time to the Edomites, was recaptured by
Judas Maccabeus, became later a town of Idumea, and
finally was destroyed by the Romans. Today its population
is chiefly Arabic and Moslem. Only a few Jews dare to live
among these fanatics, who so often give vent to their feelings

132 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

in riots, outbreaks, and killings. Hebronites seem to resent
outsiders poking around their town. In subsequent visits to
Hebron, I have seen them stone tourists automobiles, harass
sight-seers by begging persistently for " Baksheesh " and gen
erally make nuisances of themselves.

Quite by accident I seem to have an antidote for their
cantankerous ways. On a later visit the children were being
unusually bothersome, chattering like a swarm of magpies,
and hindering my progress in taking some good exterior
" shots " of the mosque, when quite unconsciously I let out a
" SH . . . U . . . U . . . U . . . S . . ; S . . . SH! " The ex
treme silence which followed my explosion caused me to look
up and around me to see some of these awful, dirty children
cowering, some of them slinking away with backward looks,
and some of them absolutely respectful. I have no idea what
soever what this noise on my part conveyed to them but it had
its effect. Now when I go to Hebron I have quite a peaceful
time with the pestering children since I know that I have a
remedy which has never failed me in an emergency here.

This particular day children lined the stone road walls;
women clothed all in black* with the exception of white head
cloths, wearing "mandeels" (face veils) either of figured or
heavy black cloth, sauntered through the streets or stood gos
siping in groups. It seemed to me unusual that all the town
was out to welcome us. I needn t have disturbed myself for
none of this was in our honor at all! It developed that this
was the day scheduled for the return of pilgrims from Mecca.
These stay-at-homes were lined up or standing in groups
waiting to greet the survivors of the " Haj." The pilgrimage
to Mecca is a long, arduous one even in the twentieth century.
Formerly in the days of the Turks and even later during the
regime of King Hussein many pilgrims never survived the
rigors of the long trip nor returned alive to their loved ones;
however, under King Ibn Saud the dangers of the pilgrimages

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have been lessened, the hardships and privations become less

severe.

We went on into Hebron. Leaving the car and by
walking but a short distance, we came to the Haram el
Khalil. The Mosque is built over the Cave of Machpelah
where an old shepherd lies, who pitched his tent here more
than four thousand years ago, a pilgrim in a land where he
was known as " the friend " El Khalil. It ranks among the
holiest of Islam s mosques. But Jew and Christian regard the

tomb as holy and dear.

With some of the town s children who had trooped per
sistently through the narrow streets at my heels, I had my pic
ture taken on the steps to the southern entrance to the huge
building. The Mosque is strong and fortified-looking like
the walls about Jerusalem. Just inside the entrance non-
Moslems are permitted to approach just seven steps unless they
receive special permission before leaving the Holy City. Pious
Jews, since Jews revere the cave as the burial place of the
patriarchs and their wives, are permitted to go inside and up
the seven steps on Fridays only. Here at this time in the
cracks of the large building stones they can insert written pe
titions to Jehovah or mourn as they have done for about five
hundred years or imprint kisses on the ancient stones. It re
minds one of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The Mosque
at Hebron is perhaps one place iix Palestine which Moslem,
Jew, and Christian regard with equal affection.

VII

Sarah died in Hebron and Abraham had no grave in which
to bury her, yet he felt that she should rest in the soil that
was to be Israel s. And so he went to the Canaanites, who
recognized him as a prince among them, and asked to buy
" the cave of Machpelah " and the field in which it was situ
ated from Ephron. After a delightful bit of Eastern bar-

134 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

gaining, the seller pretending to care nothing for the price
but skillfully indicating what he should expect its worth
being four hundred shekels of silver Abraham paid and pos
sessed the coveted plot of ground. " And after this, Abraham
buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah
before Manure." When he passed on, he was buried in the
cave beside Sarah his wife. In time there were laid in the
family vault Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. Cenotaphs
directly over these graves can be seen inside the Mosque, but
there is no entrance to the sealed cave itself.

VIII

I stopped within the town to look into a dark interior be
cause the wares upon display before an open door beckoned
to me to " Look." I was glad that I had because almost im
mediately a few verses from the Book of Jeremiah came alive:

"Arise, and go down to the potter s house, and there I will
cause thee to hear my words.-

" Then I went down to the potter s house, and, behold, he
wrought a work on the wheels.

" And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand
of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed
good to the potter to make it.

" Behold, as the clay is in the potter s hand, so are ye in mine
hand, O house of Israel." JEREMIAH 18: 2-4, 6.

Upon a swiftly revolving wheel which he turned deftly with
a foot treadle, the potter plumped another lump of soft, wet
clay; under the manipulations of his supple fingers this
Hebron potter brought forth for my delight graceful jugs,
useful lamps, long-necked water bottles, and a " potter s
earthen bottle." Occasionally a delicate shape " was marred
in the hand of the potter so he made it again another vessel."
All sooner or later found themselves carried wet from this
dark interior out into the glaring hot sun where " Sol " dried

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them thoroughly for market. I purchased a reproduction of
an " Abraham " lamp for the huge sum of two cents. It holds
a few drops of oil and with a cotton wick gives forth a very
feeble flicker of light. Reliable persons assured me later that
in humble homes lamps like these are still in use to ward off
the " evil eye " at night but before the first World War
lamps like these were used in many Palestine homes where the
inhabitants did not retire immediately upon nightfall.

Not far from the potter s are the ancient bazaars which
date from the days of the Crusaders in Palestine. They are
easily recognizable as Crusader remains because they are built
on the plan of the cross. Here we saw men preparing hides
for market. There is little to tempt visitors in Hebron s
bazaars; the spices perhaps send forth the most tantalizing
aromas and make one s thoughts begin to dream of even
farther away lands in the East than this one.

There is an industry, which is peculiarly Hebron, and
which every visitor to Hebron ought to visit. Far more fasci
nating than a visit to the Mosque is a visit to the glass factory,
which turns out the most exquisite, fragile finger bowls, sau
cers, dainty pitchers, glass rings for bracelets, beads, a varied
assortment of bottles all in a rare shade of blue.

This industry is a hold-over from the Phoenician glass-
blower period which flourished on the seaboard. Two
Hebron families now hold the secret for making this rare glass
which is in demand the world over by Moslems. One some
times wonders while travelling the Holy Land where all the
blue " evil eye " beads could possibly come from which adorn
the necks of donkeys and camels, radiator caps of automobiles,
and even the caps of infants. The answer is Hebron, from
these two small factories which make beads in all sizes ranging
from very tiny ones to great large ones almost the size of a
half dollar. They may be in the form of a camel s eyes, a
cock s eyes, or the hand of Fatima.

136 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

IX

Through a silent countryside of beautiful and extensive
vineyards we walked along a stony footpath toward Mamre
to visit the venerable oak tree, the traditional site of where
Abraham entertained three angel visitants, A mile away, it
was a long warm tramp as the sun rose steadily higher in
this radiant spring sky. Occasionally a flock of fat-tailed
sheep and a few silky black goats quietly passed us, urged
along by a strong, patient voice who gave us no other notice
than a brief "Assallam" (Peace). Joyous, singing birds
circling above us, lightly resting for brief moments on bushes
and trees and then swiftly winging off again, carried us along
on wings of thrilling music. Hovering over buttercups, pop
pies, and anemones, the droning of bees seemed praise as if
it struck a sincere hymnal chord in all this solitude and
peace. I seemed to " breathe the breath of beauty more than

air."

At last we came to an entrance, an opening in the stone
fence that had lined the right side of the road for some dis
tance. The open gate invited us to come through and try the
deserted lane leading to the venerable oak standing lonely
and remote on the slight hill beyond.

We came up to the oak at Mamre detached from the
cypress trees which keep vigil here and from the hospice
buildings which hover over the historic scene by a high,
square wire fence. And, as I rested beneath the old tree s
frail leafy shadows, I opened the Bible and read a chapter
of Genesis.

" And he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;

" And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood
by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the
tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground,

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c: And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight,
pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant:

" Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your
feet, and rest yourselves under the tree :

"And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your
hearts; and after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come
to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said."

GENESIS 18: 1-5.

With memories revived, I wondered if the angelic visit
might not have happened on such a perfect day as this one
when the whole earth seemed full of His glory. Surely it
must have been amid such peace as this that Abraham enter
tained his guests and was later rewarded for his hospitality
and faith with a promise of an heir. With my imagination
free to roam at will in " the heat of the day " and the peace
of this ancient countryside, I seemed to see Abraham in the
door of his -black goat-haired tent sighting his visitors in the
distance, stretching forth his hand, and then bowing himself
low in Oriental greeting, and saying, " Assallam aleitkum "
.(Peace be with thee), as they approached the tent from the
rear. I could see him offering his guests food in the spacious
men s quarters of the tent. It had been hastily prepared by
Sarah and her maids. It seemed as if I could hear Sarah s
laugh as she hovered near-by in the women s quarters and
overheard the astounding news " thy wife shall have a son. 35
Then I saw Abraham standing forth to bid the visitors good
bye, and Sarah standing a discreet distance behind her hus
band in the shelter of the tent. I saw Abraham start forth
from the tent door to "bring them on the way" toward
Sodom.

I thought on this man who went out from his own com
fortable surroundings into a country which he had never seen,
following an inward moving, a voice, which urged, " Get
thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy

138 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

father s house, unto a land that I will shew thee." A divine
urge awakened in him; listening and following it without
question for the unknown future nor regret for the comfort
of the known past, Abraham went out to seek what he was
pleased to call " the land of promise/ 3 It became for him not
only a pioneering into a new world of ideas, experiences, and
friends, but a venturing into a wider spiritual realm. He
came into Canaan and there he lived the remainder of his
natural life. Never much of a material success nor con
spicuous for his worldly possessions beyond his flocks and
herds, the only earthly land he possessed at his death was a
field and a cave that he had bought for a burial plot. He had
come to " the land of promise," he had lived here, he died
here; and not in any obvious way did he come to possess the
land. But he came in time to have a far surer and more valu
able possession than lands or houses or silver. He possessed
" a conviction of things not seen/ 5 Throughout his repeated
tests and trials he did not hesitate for lack of faith in God, be
cause he was fully confident that what Jehovah promised He
was able to perform and when tried his faith supported him.
Leaving Ur, Abraham did not need to know where his
path led, he did not have to see the end before the beginning,
because " by faith " he knew that beside him and around him
was God. He sought a " promised land " and he took up a
sure abode first in a land of the Spirit, bounded by truth,
righteousness, honor, and faith, the chief city of which is in
visible and eternal, and " hath foundations whose builder and
maker is God/ 5 Abraham won a spiritual victory and God s
approval while yet he sojourned a pilgrim and a stranger in
Canaan " as in a foreign country."

X

From the oak at Mamre, we crossed country and by walk
ing a considerable distance came at last to the main highway

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between Jerusalem and Hebron. Almost simultaneously with
our appearance a great commotion began, such shouting, such
wailing! The pilgrims from Mecca were returning and the
people were still here waiting to welcome them. It startled
me back from the twentieth century B. c. to the twentieth
century A- D. I was no longer visiting Abraham and his
blessed wife Sarah.

The Hebronites could not contain themselves in their ex
citement. The pilgrims kissed the unfortunate ones, the stay-
at-homes, many of whom would never in their lifetime have
sufficient money to make the coveted journey to their Holy

City. The pilgrims were venerable old men, patriarchs in the
town, holy men now; they wore a bit of green to prove that
they had been to Mecca, were now the privileged ones in the
community. There seemed no notes of envy in that shouting,
crying mob. They were simply expressing uncontrolled joy
over the fact that some of their number had lived to see the
day of which they all had dreamed practically all their lives,
when the fulfillment of a life ambition, the pilgrimage to
Mecca, was " fait accompli/

I, too, had had a dream fulfilled. But I am a product of
a different civilization since I come from a world of controlled
emotions. In contrast to the Hebronites my fulfilled dream
to walk hand-in-hand with the patriarch along his highways
and to see the countryside in which Abraham had lived " as a
dweller in tents" while patiently, faithfully, and obediently
he looked forward to and prepared to live in the " city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, 35 made me
very quiet, very humble, wholly at peace with the world.
" Faith is rewarded according to faith " hummed the wheels
of the motor car over and over as we rolled faster and faster
back toward Jerusalem.

CHAPTER XI

/ speed by automobile from Jerusalem s golden wall via the
Plain of Rephaim, Rachel s Tomb, Well of the Magi, and
Shepherds Field to Bethlehem. As in the time of Boat and
David the people are still farmers and shepherds. Bethlehem
women have a distinctive costume. Crowds jostle at sheep mar
ket on Saturday morning; markets and houses are no different in
2000 years. Religion is still the inhabitants chief interest. The
story of the first Christmas unfolds itself against the historic
background of the Church of the Nativity. I watch a fe stranger
star " above Bethlehem at midnight. I ride a bus to the Shep
herds 3 Village.

" How far is it .to Bethlehem?

Not very far.
Shall we find the stable-room

Lit by a star?
Can we see the little child,

Is he within?
If we lift the wooden latch
May we go in?

FRANCES CHESTERTON.

THE road from Jerusalem s golden wall beneath a blue
sky is like any other road covered with a fine dust of lime
stone; stone walls lie on either side and beyond them are
orchards of gnarled olive trees. There is nothing to mark
this as any different from any other road in the whole of
Palestine, yet there is ONE thing. IT IS THE ROAD TO
BETHLEHEM!

Few rides in the world can compete in memories and as
sociations with these five miles of uphill and downhill between

140

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 141

the two mountain cities. They begin to crowd in almost im
mediately as one comes into the open country.

By this route Abraham with his son Isaac must have come
from Hebron and from it caught glimpses of Mount Moriah*
Two centuries later Jacob made a mournful halt to bury his
best-loved wife Rachel alongside this road.

A little domed white building marks Rachel s grave. Be
cause it sets me dreaming, maybe it will make you dream, too.
Beauty and love! Jacob loved Rachel who the Bible says
" was beautiful and well-favored." He served for her twice
seven years " and they seemed unto him but a few days "
because of the love he had for her. In time she bore him Jo
seph and then later along this Bethlehem Road she gave birth
to Benjamin; but she died in childbirth. Here along this
highway which was in time to become the " Road of Moth
ers/ 5 Jacob in his great grief set up a pillar to mark her
grave. His pillar of stones has long since gone, crumbled
away by time, but because the memory of the love which in
spired the token has never passed away a little Moslem domed
building has taken its place. Three thousand years have come
and gone since Jacob loved Rachel but love is sacred to all
peoples. Today Moslems, Jews, and Christians still pause at
Rachel s Tomb and remember with longing " the love he had
to her."

Not far from here I have enjoyed tarrying at a well; it is
such a pleasant place. There is a stone basin beside the well
so that shepherds and cameleers can pour out water for their
thirsty beasts. This is called the Well of the Magi.

Stopping, I have remembered that Mary came by here once
on her way to be enrolled in her ancestral town and while
there to give birth to the world s illustrious son. Tradition
says she rested by the well and drank of its sweet waters
while travelling by donkey the last long five miles between
Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the end of a tiresome three-day

142 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

journey from Galilee, I ve remembered, too, that it was
along this same road that the Kings of the East came riding.
Tradition tells us again that on their way they lost their
guiding star and, coming to this well, halted on the night
when they were seeking him " that is born King of the Jews."
Stopping to slake their thirst, they found it again shining in
the clear water.

To the left of the highway, the earth falls away suddenly
and every available inch of the slopes is terraced and planted;
here the olive, fig, and pomegranate thrive and in the open
valley below, far below, wheat and barley ripple in the sun
light. In one of the fields Boaz reaped and Ruth gleaned.
Far off lies the Dead Sea with a slight greyish haze rising
from its waters. In the late afternoon the western sun lights
up a long distant line of pink in the east; these are the hills of
Moab beyond Jordan which had been the girlhood home of
Ruth.

In one of these sunlit fields to the left, shepherds watched
their flocks by night nineteen hundred years ago. Here when
the heavenly glory suddenly shone around, they heard the
sweet concord of holy voices as the first Christmas carol came
floating through the skies:

" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men."

Shepherding does not change much in Palestine where
wild beasts may descend still upon unprotected sheep and sud
denly destroy them. The Palestine shepherd lives night and
day with his animals. He establishes a degree of intimacy
with them which is touching to observe. He leads his flocks
and they, having complete confidence in him who is not an
hireling, follow. He calls them all by their names and they,
knowing his voice and hearing his only, heed. He protects
the sheep from thieves and preying animals who would devour

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them at night by sleeping in the opening of the often make
shift sheepfold and they, sensing his watchfulness, fear " no
evil." He provides pasture and water even in the wilderness
and the presence of enemies and they, casting all their anxiety
upon him, are fed. There is a singular communion between
the shepherd and his sheep which, after one has visited
Palestine and observed it, makes the symbol of the Good
Shepherd peculiarly apt and the Twenty-third Psalm strangely
moving.

For those who have travelled extensively in Palestine to
go out with the guardians of the sheep and keep vigil under
the stars is to be carried back through the centuries to the
first Christmas Eve. The scene of the night-watch is now ex
actly as it was when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

It is no uncommon sight to see on the horizon a Beth-
lehemite lad, having gentle eyes and manner, clad similarly
to David in an " abba " and wearing on his head a white
" kuffiyeh " held in place by the black " agal," carrying a
long crook, and leading a straggling flock of fat-tailed sheep.
It is like being carried back swiftly to the days of the young
David when he tended and defended his father Jesse s sheep
on the hillsides of Judea.

But on ahead there is Bethlehem, crowning two hills. Slen
der cypress trees rise above her flat roofs; white buildings
shine among olive trees; terraces of olive, fig, and pomegran
ate fall away into the distance, because every available inch
is striped with terraces. Her white flat-roofed houses of
dressed stone cluster on the hillside; they almost seem to
crouch on the very edge of the road as if to look well on
tourists bound for the holy site the only truly Christian
community in the Holy Land today. But above them all rise
the bell-towers of convents, orphanages, and monasteries.
There is always a bell softly chiming in Bethlehem!

I shall always remember the town as small and unspoilt,

144 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

as neat and substantial, in pleasing contrast to the ordinary
fellaheen villages of mud-huts.

" This is humble Bethlehem

In the Judean wild;
And this is lowly Bethlehem

Wherein a mother smiled;
Yea, this is happy Bethlehem

That knew the Little Child."

Until 1938 no noise, no mental conflicts had engaged the
people for many years, because only a handful of Moslems
lived among the ten thousand Christian Arabs in amity. Not
until 1938 when all communities in the. Holy Land were
stirred again as they had not been since Turkish days by po
litical and religious animosity, only then was this peaceful dis
trict disturbed. What had contributed largely to those years
of quiet and well-being? Nothing more than the mechanical
and artistic skill, business ability, and thrifty industry of the
^ people of Bethlehem.

As in the time of Boaz and later of David, the people are
farmers and shepherds, but many today are occupied as well
with the manufacture and sale of souvenirs. Their tiny shops
line the narrow streets, mere winding alleys, and they offer
their lovely hand-wrought products of olivewood and mother-
of-pearl: New Testaments, rosaries, crucifixes, dainty beads,
and medallions, and trinkets made from the bituminous shale
of the desert. This is the chief industry today.

Waking Bethlehem, jarring itself to activity shortly after
sun-up on a Saturday for sheep-market is a custom as old as
Christian Bethlehem itself.

Through winding alleys of cobblestone-step streets, past
cube-like houses of substantial native limestone, revealing
very little of what goes on within, and up a broad, romantic
flight of steps, the serene matrons go to market to select

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 145

oranges, cucumbers, fresh, dewy-cool grape leaves, squash,
juicy red-ripe tomatoes. The women from surrounding vil
lages and from gardens near the town sell their fruits and
vegetables which they bring here in baskets on their heads.
In season huge piles of grains are offered for sale " heaped up
and running over." Bethlehem has always stood for fertility;
its very name means " House of Bread." Here at market chil
dren play games, running in and out among the sheep and
camels being bartered by their owners.

The problems of Bethlehem haven t changed much in two
thousand years. These people are neighbors today as Mary
had neighbors in Bethlehem. Crowds jostle at market as they
did at the enrollment time of Caesar Augustus. What to eat
and the current price of foodstuffs still concern the Christian
wives of Bethlehem. But more than all else, these Christian
women speak to one of homes, real homes with normal,
happy, family ties, of home as the center of the affections,
of love in humble homes such as Mary s must have been.

The dress of a Bethlehem woman is unique and in this
land of memories is a memory of the Crusades. The married
women wear a high headdress covered with a flowing white
veil which is pinned neatly under the chin, and which falls
down the back and over the shoulders gracefully. Under the
veil is a tall, pointed red cap like a small tower which has the
woman s dowry gold sewn row upon row upon the front.
From it hangs the " znekb," a chain which holds ten coins
and a central pendant. The coins represent the bride s
dowry. After seeing the headdress of the Bethlehem costume
never again does one wonder WHY the woman of the parable
was so anxious to find the " lost coin " ; and " what woman
having ten pieces of silver, if she loses one piece, doth not
light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till
she finds it " has a deeper significance. In Jewish days, they
told me in the Holy Land, ten pieces of silver were sewn on

146 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the headdress of a married woman. Was this the custom to
which Jesus referred? To lose a coin was a reflection on a
woman s carefulness, evidence to her neighbors of her negli
gence, disrespect for her husband, and the occasion for arous
ing superstitious fears*

The dresses of present-day Bethlehemites are of the heaviest
spun silk or wool, depending upon the wealth of the wearer;
the bodices are embroidered heavily and brilliantly; while
over these are velveteen jackets. The unmarried woman s
headdress is different. Before marriage the virgins of Bethle
hem wear a double circle of coins encircling their faces, sur
mounted by a white veil. If the sun s rays catch the glitter
of the precious metal, the reflection suggests a halo. Pos
sibly this is the origin of the golden circles surrounding the
heads of subjects in early religious art.

Marvel of marvels in this land which is so rapidly chang
ing with the introduction and adoption of many twentieth-
century ideas and ways, religion is still the chief interest of the
inhabitants of Bethlehem.

All through the day the white-veiled women come to pray

within the shadows and stillness of the Church of the Nativ
ity. It is the very core of town life from early morning when
the bells peal out a welcome to the returning sun until they
chime a benediction as the shadows of the evening hours
gather.

The worshippers look like nuns as singly or in groups they
tread with courtly grace across the spacious courtyard of the
church and disappear through its low doorway. However,
they are ordinary Bethlehem women wearing the conspicuous
spotless headdress flowing down about their ample skirted
gowns. Their faces have a tranquil look from inner peace;
they have a rarer beauty shining from a source within.

On Christmas Eve these white-veiled women sing at even
song, as did the angels once, who sang of " peace, good will to

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 147

men"; these Christians sing instead of Jesus, born of Beth
lehem.

II

All mountain paths and winding streets lead to the market
square in front of the Church of the Nativity. Here stand
burdened donkeys. Here come the camels from over the
mountain trails. Here ends the motor road. In this land
where antiquity and modernity meet sometimes so incongru
ously, it is still something of a shock to find here in the mar
ket square an electric street lamp an electric star burning
during the evening. And so today " in thy streets shineth * a

quite efficient light.

In the center of Bethlehem stands the oldest existing
church of Christendom, used now in common by three Eastern
denominations: Greeks, Latins, and Armenians, but revered
by all Christians. Authorities do not doubt that the church
stands on the site where the Radiant Child was born and the
place of the first Christmas.

The building resembles a huge, feudal, fortified castle set
within an immense courtyard. It has at times been used as a
fortress to protect the residents from massacre. The present
church is substantially the one built by Justinian in 527 A. D.,
but churches and monasteries have been added to the main
structure through the centuries. Others repaired the church.
St. Jerome visited it, even made it his home while he was
engaged in preparing for the world the Vulgate version. We
of the twentieth century seldom realize the enormity of his
task and the hardships he underwent while engaged in his
monumental work of translating the Scripture into Latin
from Hebrew manuscripts until we visit the small, dark,
windowless, underground room like a cold, damp cell in
which he toiled fourteen years.

The front and main entrance to the imposing, massive

148 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

church is a miniature doorway, but four feet high, called by
some reverent pilgrims c< The Door of Humility." High and
wide originally,, gradually it has been filled in as worshippers
there demanded protection from unsympathetic religious fa
natics who threatened their peace and their very lives. No
danger now that more than one person can enter this low,-
narrow doorway at a time; nor that armed persons can ride
in on camels; nor that anyone can step in erect surveying at a
glance immediately the situation within the Church of the
Nativity.

Each time I have visited Bethlehem s church, I have hesi
tated a moment to glance down at the old doorsill, to see the
two grooves which pairs of pilgrim feet before mine have
worn down deep through passing centuries; then, I have been
forced to stoop to enter into the best-loved church in Chris
tendom. It has always taken me some moments after
straightening up before my eyes accustomed themselves to the
dullness of the light and before the beauty of great dignity
impressed itself upon me.

This is no ornate church with dark and burdened altars but
an austere basilica of almost studied simplicity. IVe stepped
forward then between two double rows of pinkish limestone
Corinthian pillars, which some do say were brought from the
ruins of Herod s Temple in Jerusalem to adorn this temple.
Above the supporting columns is the old wooden roof, the gift
of Edward IV and Philip of Burgundy in the fifteenth cen
tury. About the walls are scattered and often faded patches
of gold and colored Byzantine mosaics. They contrast
strikingly with the white plaster which has filled in portions
where the beautiful mosaics, which once elaborately covered
the walls, have fallen off with passing time.

- By lifting a trap door in the present flooring in the nave of
the Church of the Nativity, I have looked down upon a mag
nificent mosaic carpet the remains of the flooring placed in

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Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 149

the original church by Constantine. It was only rediscovered
in 1934 during some repairs at the church.

" Why isn t it all uncovered for the world to gaze upon, to
walk upon? " someone is asking. Because, my friend, all the
masses, all the baptisms, all the weddings, all the funerals of
Bethlehem take place within this church. It would be hardly
wisdom to subject these rare mosaics which are more like
faded rectangles of rich old carpets, which any museum would

be proud to number among its treasures, to the wear and tear
of everyday demands. Necessary to replace the flooring, only

a few squares have been left to show to visitors.

I shall never forget an afternoon service, a special service,
in this darkened church. I saw altar boys with censers, a
priest upholding a tall, gold cross, the venerable Armenian
Bishop in gorgeous ecclesiastical vestments followed by other
church dignitaries as in solemn procession they advanced in

the church. I heard the reverent tones of the ancient liturgy.
Like shadows there the people stood in stillness as the serv
ice began, their forms but dim upon the elevated transept be
yond the nave. And then , * . the light shone through
. . . rays of shining sunlight broke through the lofty windows
over their bent heads to fall in blessing on the high altar.
Solemnity and peace. The peace of which Christ Jesus spoke
pervaded this house of prayer.

From either side of the elevated transept are circular stair
cases which lead down into the Chapel of the Nativity. Be
neath the high altar is the cave which tradition claims as the
site where Jesus was born. Before I have descended that
flight of steps to the underground portions of this church, be
fore I have descended a dark staircase slippery with the drip
pings from many pilgrim candles, I have stopped to remind
myself of the first Christmas. Reading a few passages of
Scripture, I ve found the whole story unfolding itself against
the background of this old shrine.

150 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

III

Hurrying on from the Well of the Magi with thoughts of
the necessity for shelter and rest for this night, Mary and Jo
seph must have glimpsed such a scene as other travellers
through the years have: of Bethlehem sitting upon her hills
which are higher than the hills upon which Jerusalem is built,
sitting there as a promise of a haven for weary humanity.
The town holds that promise today for weary, seeking in
dividuals doubting the promise of the birth, and many have
been restored to faith by visits here. But during the twenty-
fifth year of the reign of Caesar Augustus, it was the end of a
long journey for two wayworn travellers and Bethlehem was
crowded with pilgrims summoned to the city of their ancestors
for the census ordered by the Emperor*

They must have sought shelter in one of the old cave dwell
ings, part masonry, part cave, a human abode built against
the side of a hill. Many of these humble dwellings dot the
landscape of Bethlehem today. The grotto in the Church of
the Nativity, this grotto which the Christian heart has associ
ated with the nativity for more than eighteen hundred years,
was such a place as that originally. These dwellings are one-
room houses, built over caves which are level with the road;
the room slightly above being for the family. The cave part
is used as a stable for the animals at night. There is in most
of these a stone trough or manger cut directly from rock. To
this the animals are tied; from here the animals are fed.

Mary and Joseph did not use the stable of an inn, nor such
an awful place as Western imagination has conjured in con
nection with the blessed event. In ancient days a khan was an
open place built around a central courtyard. Under the
colonnades were the travellers 5 rooms. At these caravansaries
the animals were never stabled in our Western sense of the
word " stabled. 5 They were only gathered together into the

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open enclosure. I saw some of these khans not far from the
" Street called Straight " in Damascus, no longer caravansaries
but storehouses. The prevailing Western idea that the Holy
Family found refuge in the stable of a caravansary is unthink
able to anyone who knows the Near East, the simple but
abundant hospitality of its peoples. Instead Mary and Joseph
were welcomed by such humble folk as lived in a home, part
cave and part masonry, part stable and part human abode,
such as one still finds in Bethlehem today. The animals pro
vided precious heat on cold nights in December in the Holy
Land. So, it was here in such a place as this that:

"The days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

" And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him
in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there
was no room for them in the inn." LUKE 2 : 6, 7.

Joseph, the simple carpenter, stood near-by, awakened from
his sleep, awed by the wonder; and he pondered slowly on
what the morn might mean to them. Moving over to the
manger upon which lay the baby cradled in the hay, Joseph
" called his name Jesus."

I have watched Christian pilgrims as they have come to
these steps which lead down into the grotto. Unseeing, they
passed by the antique symmetry of carved columns and arches
in this old shrine of Justinian. Their eager hearts were
not stirred by fine pillars, by gold lamps, by gorgeous trap
pings, by burning incense, by religious quarrels among sects;
instead their feet pressed onward toward one precious spot.
Their feet pressed on to a dimlit shrine, a tiny chapel, to find
a star, which Catholic fathers have placed in the flagstones of
the floor of the crypt lest some hurrying pilgrims along life s
busy way forget that here Jesus was born. These sought
a star symbolic of that child, himself a shining star. Their
yearning eyes would lovingly caress, their lips would homage

152 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

pay "the time-dulled silver star, sunk deep within the pave
ment, footfall-worn. 35 They read these reverent pilgrims who
had come from near and far:

" Hie de Virgine Maria Jesus Ghristus Natus Est."
Here of the Virgin Mary, Christ was born.

I have seen lifted faces, tear-stained, wan, and brown glow
then into a worship that is rapturing. Despite the mummery
which obliterates for casual, pleasure-seeking visitors all sense
of the Infinite, these rapturous ones had felt a thrill of some
thing more divine than they had glimpsed before. Although
their mortal feet touched the floor of the rock-hewn chamber,
although their mortal eyes beheld the spot, their spirits had
taken flight; and with an almost immortal sight they passed
on to the place of the manger. In vision where the Wise Men
stood of yore around a baby cradled in the hay, the pilgrims
stood in very ecstasy of adoration.

While in the Chapel of the Nativity, beneath the high altar
of the church, is the site of the place of the manger, this one
here is of marble instead of being cut from the natural rock
of the cave. The original crib is resting in the Church of
Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome having been taken there in
the eighth century. It was my privilege in 1937 to be in
Santa Maria Maggiore when visiting dignitaries of the Catho
lic church were shown the precious manger of the child. And
so, just happening there, I saw the relic of that bygone day.
But returning to the GospePs story, the scene is shifted.
Outside the gloom of the rude cave-home, the night was aglow
with brightness on the first Christmas Eve; all was still.

" And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in
the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the
glory of the Lord shone round about them."

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And in the peace and solitude of these Judean hills the first
strains of the solo of the " angel of the Lord " came floating
on the air:

" Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be
to all people.

" For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
which is Christ the Lord.

" And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the
heavenly host praising God, and saying,

** Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men." LUKE 2: 8-11, 13, 14.

A hushed, fearful silence greeted the strains of the angel s
song. Those without the cave in Shepherds Field gathered
nearer together as sweetly flowed on the clear night air the
voices of the angelic host. They inquired of one another:

"Hark! what mean those angel voices sweetly sounding
through the skies?"

It was the first carol and the first cradle hymn.

There was a lingering echo to the celestial song of praise.
Within those listening and adoring shepherds hearts there
must have echoed such a song as this :

" Sing on, sweet angels, though your song

Floats down to scenes of sorrow ;
Ye tell of peace, goodwill to men
Be this the strain we borrow."

Dix.

So, when the angels were gone away, the shepherds said to
one another, " Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see
this thing, which the Lord hath made known unto us, a babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And they

154 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

hastened to Bethlehem, to the cave-home now covered by the
Church of the Nativity, and they found Mary, and Joseph,
and the Babe.

The Y. M. C. A. lays claim to a cave in Shepherds Field
which easily might have been the one where resting shepherds
first saw " the glory of the Lord/ 5 Each year on Christmas
Eve the Y. M. C. A. members, their friends, and neighbors in
Bethlehem come to the cave. A lamb is roasted in the old-
time manner, round loaves of Syrian bread such as are rel
ished by the natives are baked, and a common meal is shared.
It has always been the custom for keepers of the flocks to. con
gregate at night to partake in common of their simple food.
The Y preserves this custom in Shepherds Field. There is an
address, and then the Christmas Scripture is read in Arabic,
Hebrew, and English so that everyone may hear the " glad
tidings of great joy, which are for all people." Finally, all to
gether, Bethlehem s residents, Y members, and their friends
climb up the mountain slope to the town, even as the shep
herds twenty centuries ago climbed up the terraced height to
see a mother, a carpenter, and a sleeping baby in a manger.

IV

Only a trip to the Holy Land reveals WHY the Gospel
makes so much of a mere star. Have you ever thought of
clear stars as silver eyes? I am sure that you would in the
Holy Land, because all such lovely thoughts, come to anyone
who has time to linger in her out-of-doors and let the spirit
take possession. Stars mean a great deal to Near Easterners.
It is not unusual for a Syrian to travel by the direction of the
stars or in giving travel directions to advise the inquirer " to
take a certain star in his hand."

One evening a Londoner now living in Jerusalem offered to
drive me to the Shepherds Village. I had always wanted to
see Bethlehem underneath a canopy of stars. I stood by a low

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 155

wall not far from the market place and looked up into the
night sky.

" Like silver lamps in a distant shrine
The stars are sparkling bright."

Bethlehem had a hushed, waiting stillness. I continued to
whisper to myself:

" The stars of heaven still shine as at first
They gleamed on this wonderful night."

No one can make a successful tour of the Holy Land with
out all the lovely hymns and poetry from one s childhood. I
have found that these are the angels which keep one s thought
above the sordid things of life in Palestine.

We lingered around Bethlehem. We were the only per
sons astir in the peaceful, serene countryside. So silently it
came to me standing there in the clear, midnight air with a
" stranger star " high in the heavens above me that:

" Faith sees no longer the stable floor,

The pavement of sapphire is there,
The clear light of heaven streams out to the world,

And the angels of God are crowding the air,
And heaven and earth,

Through the spotless birth,
Are at peace on this night so fair."

Dix.

But to go back to the Christmas story far in the East,
Wise Men had seen a star and they came through Syria seek
ing him " that is bora King of the Jews." The star went be
fore them for a time until at long last they lost it. But coming
to the well on the road to Bethlehem, they found it again re
flected in the shining water. Again it went before them until
finally it came and remained over where the young child was.

156 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

The Magi, history does not tell us how many, brought with
them gifts, representative of their country and expressive of
their country s homage to a new-found king, gifts of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh. They passed afar and if any came
after them, no one has told us.

But what of the gifts that these Wise Men bore? The
Church has said that the gold is symbolic of his royalty, the
myrrh of his humanity, and in the incense is the emblem of
his divinity. And what became of these gifts that the Magi
bore? No one can say what happened to them, but of this we
know very well: all that Christ hath he will give away.

V

I think of a thrilling morning pilgrimage that I made to the
birthplace of my Saviour.

I saw American-made motor busses leave Jaffa Gate regu
larly every fifteen minutes for Bethlehem. Upon inquiry I
learned a round-trip ticket cost two piastres (ten cents)* The
eagerness on the faces of the natives as they approached the
busses and piled in one on top of another crowded around
with bundles and even a tiny lamb and a few chickens told me
that here was an experience that would prove illuminating.
IT DID!

Gingerly, I sat down in the front seat, which later I real
ized was a precarious position on a bus whose front door was
never closed. We started, but without any warning, with
such a lurch that I wondered if my head were still attached to
my body. We flew down the Bethlehem Road. No matter
how many flocks we met or men astride donkeys we proceeded
straight ahead to the business at hand with the horn screech
ing. If Satan had been after us, I am sure we could have
gone no faster.

A friendly Arab in a bright costume sat beside me. Be
tween us we talked a sign language all our own of nods, of

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 157

smiles, violent shakes of the head, and lofty waves of his right
arm as frequently he leaned far over me to point out the open
window to sights I must not miss.

I was amazed when the driver seemed to know just where
to drop his passengers, one by one, without any sign from
them. Each time we stopped with the same fierce jamming
of the brakes; the bus screamed in its fury at the sudden inter
ruption of its service, and we sat and shook like puppets, that
is, those of us fortunate enough to be left in our seats. It is
peculiar how Arab bus drivers never slow up to stop. Instead
they stop at full speed.

Each time we resumed our journey with the same jerks.
The engine always coughed, its fumes were oily. And I real
ized that the unseen inhabitants of my friendly seat companion
had come over to visit me when my flesh began to tingle.

Many times since 1935 I have made round-trip pilgrimages
to Bethlehem, via the native Arab busses. I have chosen that
means of transportation when I have been in danger of build
ing up around these holy places like Bethlehem, Jerusalem,
Nazareth, and all the rest a wall so high that I forget that
other human beings like myself are living there. I have met
in my travels some people who have forgotten this and so the
Holy Land was quite without beauty for them.

CHAPTER XII

Crossing the Kidron, continuing up and around the shoulder
of Olivet, I come into Bethany where I visit a Moslem school. I
follow the road to Jericho as it winds down through fierce gorges
and hills which roll -dull and brown into distance. Modern Jeri
cho has sycamores suited to the purposes of a ^accheus and
palms reminiscent of when it was called ef a city of palm trees. 93
Ancient, excavated Jericho sheds light on the biblical account of
the Israelites invasion of Canaan, the city s capture, and ex
plains how the walls fell down flat. With memories of Joshua
awakened, I go on to the scene of where he led Israel across
Jordan in 1400 B. c. I ponder on the river s unique position
among the rivers of the world, hallowed because of its associa
tion with men such as Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, and
Jesus. I have a view of the Mount of Temptation from the
Dead Sea.

I DECIDED to run down to Jericho, following the road
which the man took who fell among thieves and was
beaten and bruised. I set out from Jerusalem by car in the
early morning. We passed Damascus Gate, crossed the Brook
Kidron marked by only a bare trickle of water, and on
through a crowd of whining, importuning, sightless beggars
and loiterers always at Virgin s Tomb, and continued up and
around the shoulder of the Mount of Olives past the Moslem
and Jewish burying grounds to little Bethany with its mem
ories of " little holy, loving home. 53 Here we stopped while
the hillsides, the square, flat-roofed houses of tan stone, the
flowers in the fields, the one shimmering olive tree with a flock
of resting sheep beneath its protecting branches, a luminous
blue sky, and some crumbling ruins spoke of rememberable
things.

158

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 159

The home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus is gone, but the
brown village houses with matrons in the doorways revealed
that friendship and hospitality are still not unknown in Beth
any. The perfume of the alabaster box of ointment poured
upon the feet of Jesus was not lost upon the air of Bethany,
because its fragrant memory lingers in the joyful flowers on
the rocky slopes. The laughing, happy, begging village chil
dren are symbolic of the abundant life of which Jesus re
minded Lazarus in his tomb.

Wandering through Bethany, I found my curiosity aroused
by a building ahead of me. I didn t know what it housed but
there was a terrific buzz issuing from it. I stooped from the
embankment to look through a high, grilled window. I could
hardly believe my eyes and ears that school was in session.
Scrambling and sliding down the embankment, I came around
to the entrance. I stood rooted in the doorway* watching
about one hundred boys at narrow tables and backless benches
busily and excitedly engaged in reciting aloud their lessons in
the Koran. Entering the narrow, long, dark room, it became
so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. It was quite the re
verse to the method employed in reception of visitors in Amer
ican schools where study means absolute quiet and the visitor s
claims upon a teacher s attention are a signal for disorder
among the pupils.

Fashion means little in this part of the world and so these
young Mohammeds, Mousas, and Jacobs were dressed as their
ancestors were centuries ago. On top of thin, light trousers
they wore long, striped robes fastened sometimes at the waist
with a bright-colored sash like a scarf. Most of them had
small, flower-pot, red hats and a few of the more fortunate a
pair of sandals on their brown, bare feet.

I was keenly interested in this school at Bethany. Since
1920 there has been a dual system of education, Arabic and
Hebrew, developed along a racial and linguistic basis, in

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Palestine. In 1936 there were three hundred and fifty gov
ernment schools with an attendance of thirty-six thousand pu
pils; nine-tenths of the village schools are Moslem. This was
one at Bethany.

Jewish children are educated in non-Government schools
which are controlled by Jewish authorities with some money
grants from the Government. Agricultural education for men
is cared for by three agricultural schools supported by Jewish
agencies; the technical school is Jewish controlled. The lack
of schools for Arabs along agricultural and technical lines is
deplorable. Most of the education which a Moslem receives
has very little relation to everyday life, present or future world
affairs. One searches in vain for any syllabus on agricultural
or scientific courses, anything which would be valuable to the
Arab, give him an occupation other than government clerk
ing (a field already overcrowded) to stabilize him for citizen
ship or to accept responsibility for community life.

Therein has lain much of the reason for unrest in this

*

Arab world. Nomad by nature he is not being taught to be
useful nor cooperative; formerly as a tribesman the policy
was to acknowledge only the strongest sheik and loyalty
among the various tribes was guaranteed by force or pur
chased as was shown in the first World War when Lawrence
endeavored to unite Arab tribesmen. For too many centuries
the Arab has believed that whatever happens to him is " the
will of Allah," that disastrous events in his world cannot be
averted or prevented. Yet he sees measures being adopted to
do just that in the world around him, in political affairs, in
the Zionist colony beside his own field where modern agricul
tural methods are practised. Without proper education to
cope with his pressing problems, he is powerless to act. Yet
Palestine is slowly feeling the influence of the West in educa
tion. The American University at Beirut and the American
Friends 5 School at Ramallah are seeing to that.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 161

II

Not far from Bethany, the road begins to drop in great
windings into a deep, disconsolate valley, among ragged,
wrinkled hills. The landscape becomes more and more arid,
starved and stricken, honeycombed with yawning black caves,
which would be excellent places of refuge for robbers, dire
places of destruction for unwary travellers like the man in
Jesus* parable.

. I saw shepherd lads with their flocks upon the haggard
hillsides, rugged Bedouin watching scores of lop-eared, black-
haired goats, an Arab come running out from the Good
Samaritan Inn, a ruin today, long strings of mangy camels
shilly-shallying along the side of the road or disappearing
over the horizon.

Past a gloomy gorge we sped, a gorge five hundred feet
deep, through which a stream of water sings as it rushes on
its way between its prison walls which are an ancient aque
duct. The Judean Wilderness on the way to the suffocat
ingly hot Dead Sea region is a symbol of violence, desolation,
and forsakenness. It affords very few flowers, almost no
green at any time. Across the gorge I saw the Monastery of
St. George, clinging precariously on the face of this dreary
precipice. But miracle of miracles ! I remember seeing amid
such apparent barrenness a scraggly palm tree near the mon
astery, living there incongruously on a rocky ledge a precari
ous existence, eked out by what water the monks could illy
spare its thirsty roots; the only bit of living green in all the
vast, lonesome waste of silent, brownstone hills. It is a monu
ment to Hope which springs eternal in the human breast.

As we emerged from a narrow valley and came into the
furrowed grey and yellow ridges and peaks of the Judean
Wilderness, the wild country into which Jesus retired for
forty days, another of those grand panoramas unfolded which

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are known only to Palestine. Scenes of almost breath-taking
beauty coupled with history made poignant through hallowed
religious memories. It was a sweeping view from the snowy
summit of Mount Hermon in northern Syria past the buried
cities of the Decapolis to the immense Jordan Plain with its
silver ribbon winding through a jungle-green valley of palms
and balsams and gliding noiselessly on into the steaming blue-
grey waters of the Dead Sea. While the mighty purple back
drop for this scene of splendor was those towering mountains
of Gilead and Moab marching down to Edom.

It had been cool but windy when I left Jerusalem; it was
hot and the air was filled with a fine dust at Jericho. There is
such contrast between the " city set upon a hill " two thousand
five hundred and fifty feet above sea level and this Jordan
Valley sunk in a trench almost thirteen hundred feet below
sea level and only about twenty-three miles between them.

The modern Jericho has many fertile, flourishing gardens.
It was here that the sycamore tree (Ficus sycamorus) was
pointed out to me first. It is prized throughout the East for
its dense shade as shelter on a hot day. Obviously it was
suited to the needs of the meditating Nathanael, who was
marked by Jesus whose heart went out to him. Growing by
the roadside with an almost joyous abandon of twisting
branches, possessing a grotesque and curious attractiveness as
it sprawls hither and yon, it eminently suited the purposes of
Zaccheus, the tax-collector, as a place to catch the Master s
eye. There are, many date-palms (Phoenix dactylifera)
which reminded me they once grew so abundantly here that
Jericho was called " a city of palm trees." They are beauti
ful proud trees having a tall, straight trunk ending in a crown
of emerald-green plumes which droop ever so slightly at the
ends, and which in a light breeze seem to whisper a low soft
song of beauty. There are no words to describe the delicious-
ness of the Jericho banana. Oranges encouraged to grow

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 163

here by irrigation have a good flavor if not the tremendous
size of the Jaffa variety.

From here I went over to investigate the now excavated
ruins of ancient Jericho, the city near-by Jordan which was
utterly destroyed in 1400 B. c. at the time when the children
of Israel entered the Promised Land. This historical incident
recorded in the Bible is only one but perhaps the greatest in
vasion of a conquering horde from over Jordan that this small
land of Palestine has ever known. Under Joshua the Hebrews
approached the city after having crossed the river absolutely
unopposed by artificial defenses. Perhaps the inhabitants of
Jericho felt that the city s strategic position on a slight eleva
tion and considerable distance from the river s bank was suf
ficient protection for them and, too, that the Jordan provided
sufficient natural barrier to give them ample warning of im
pending siege.

For thousands of years the campaigns of Joshua have been
among the great military romances of history. The campaigns
are now clear from recent events in Palestine which supply in
teresting comment upon them. It was one of the biggest thrills
of my first trip to Palestine to go to ancient Jericho for a day
and have all my doubts concerning its walls, its gateway, and
the intense conflagration put to rout.

I entered the excavated ruins through the only gateway
that has ever been found to the city. The archaeologists have
been considerate enough to leave the stone hinge upon which
the massive gate revolved in its proper place, just where it
was in Joshua s day. Then I tramped through the ruins, fire-
scarred masses of brick, charred bits of timber, house walls
knee-high in places until I came at length to all that is left of
the historic wall which faces north. During a subsequent
visit no one was permitted to view the remains of the old wall.
Instead after wandering for some time through the city s
almost rabbit-warrens of streets, I visited Jericho s necropolis

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with its many funerary chambers, where unbroken pots and
scarabs terminating with three of the reign of Amenhotep III
(14131377 B. c.) were found to assist in verifying dates.

There was one memorable incident which occurred during
this latter -visit. As I stood on the height of the ruins survey
ing the countryside, I spoke to my companions who had come
down from Jerusalem with me to look into the distance and
see the hundreds of black goat-hair tents pitched on the Jeri
cho Plain. I reminded them that Joshua and the children of
Israel encamped on the Jericho Plain as they waited for word
from Jehovah to take the city. Encamped there, they must
have looked to the frightened inhabitants gathered within the
massive city walls for protection just as these Bedouin looked
this day to us. In ancient times when conditions were fairly
peaceful the whole population did not live within the com
pact, walled city which was inadequate for comfortable ac
commodation of its entire population, but they dwelt, the
largest part of them, on the surrounding plain in tents as we
could see these people living. It was a picture from the past,
a picture from the Bible days of Joshua, for all of us to carry
away in memory.

The question naturally arises why there was a collapse of
such a massive wall as encircled Jericho, " two massive paral
lel walls of brick erected on somewhat insecure foundations
of uneven stone and rising probably to thirty or forty feet.
Over the space between the walls cross-beams of timber had
been laid, and upon such timber had been built ordinary
dwelling houses such as Rahab occupied when c she dwelt
upon the wall/ " One explanation is a miracle. A second is
an earthquake because they are frequent in the Jordan Valley.
It makes an event no less miraculous to me when God appears
in natural phenomena and in ordinary events and processes in
human experience more than once as well as in the unusual
phenomena beyond my comprehension and explanation. The

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 165

modern and scientific explanations of " miracles " within the
Bible only tend to increase my assurance that " every common
bush is afire with God."

Excavations here have shown that some extraordinary ca
tastrophe overwhelmed the city about 1400 B. c. The ex
planation is that the wall collapsed down the slope of the hill
upon which the city was built, dragging with it the inner wall.
There is very little doubt that an earthquake aided Joshua in
bringing the children of Israel into Jericho.

Far more interesting to me than the confirmation of the
collapse of the walls " flat " as the Bible records were the
results of exhausting examinations within the walls. The
archaeologists began to dig among the ruins, sifting the
debris, sorting, checking everything of consequence, and tabu
lating their findings. They picked up preserved specimens of
wheat, barley, onions, lentils, dates, all of which had been
carbonized by the intense heat of the fire set up by Joshua s
followers. They found lumps of dough which housewives in
their fright had run off and forgotten when destruction befell
the city. Inside storerooms they found pottery vessels neatly
arranged in rows; a few had been crushed in their positions
but investigation showed that at one time they had contained
something of a fluid nature; others were still intact after
thirty-four hundred years. Joshua s men did not plunder
the foodstuffs ! Bits of broken sherds, carbonized remnants of
timber and food, even fragments of human bones can be
picked up by visitors to old Jericho, who want a memento
from this city over whose fate many Bible students have specu
lated and wondered. There is one thing that no one has been
able to find among the ruins. It is any piece of metal! The
Bible records:

" The silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of
iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. *

JOSHUA 6: 24.

1 66 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Not one piece of metal has ever been found by recent visitors
nor by tie more careful, investigating archaeologists among
the ruins of Jericho, which lay hidden, unknown, and unmo
lested for centuries under the exterior of a hill which to casual
observers and tourists was merely another hill between the
wilderness and Jordan.

The new light on Jericho and the exploits of Joshua is so
recent and astounding that scholars are having to reconstruct
a good deal concerning what they thought was true in Bible
history. Dr. Garstang argues, excavation of this site has
established the date of the Exodus from Egypt as approxi
mately 1447 B. c., the name of the princess who fondled the
baby Moses as Queen Hatshepsut, the name of the famous
Pharaoh of the Oppression as Thotmes III, the name of the
actual Pharaoh of the Exodus as Amenhotep II, and Amen-
hotep III as the Egyptian ruler at the time when Jericho was
destroyed since his scarabs were the last Egyptian monarch s
to be found there, and, finally, the date when Joshua entered
the Promised Land with the Hebrews as 1400 B. c.

Ill

I went on to visit Jordan now that memories of Joshua had

been awakened. I stood on the AUenby Bridge, which is the
only large bridge along the length of this body of water
dividing nomad from husbandman, East from West. I gazed
north toward Mount Hermon standing a snow-capped sentinel
in the far distance. A British Bobby stood near-by. Because
that day I had no visaed passport into Trans- Jordan, he
wanted to make sure that I did not leave Palestine to try the
inviting road east off into a green valley which leads into
the land of Gilead. Not that day; it must wait for another
time.

Rushing muddy along through banks of mud, what could
have stopped those waters long enough for the Israelites to

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have crossed over the river dry-shod?. Someone was beside
me, telling me a story, and I was listening,

" Yes, north there about sixteen miles at East Damieh, just
about where Joshua led the Hebrews across, there is a
crumbling cliff that slides at intervals into this river and
dams it up. It happened only a few years ago in the earth
quakes of 1927. The waters of Jordan were dammed for
twenty-four hours so that many people crossed and re-crossed
dry-shod. It must have been an earthquake which aided
Israel s leader in landing his forces on the western bank.
Doesn t the Psalmist say as much wheq he commemorates the
event? Don t you remember that he sang:

" e The Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
The little hills like lambs.
What aileth thee, O thou sea, that thou fleest?
Thou Jordan, that thou turnest back?
Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams;
Ye little hills, like lambs?

Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob^
Who turned the rock into a pool of water? "
PSALM 114: 3-8.

(American Standard Version)

It is no myth that Joshua crossed over Jordan on dry land."
His voice trailed off.

I stood thinking again of the earthquake which facilitated
the momentous crossing; what an outstanding event it was
in the lives of these desert wanderers, what a remarkable proof
of the omnipresence and omniscience of Israel s God. An
earthquake made possible their entrance into the Promised
Land toward which under the able leadership of Moses they
had labored for forty years. It was as great a crisis in their
affairs in 1400 B. c. as the crossing of the Red Sea had been

1 68 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

earlier in 1440 B. a; in both instances the Hebrews gave all
the credit to God. " Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among
the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in
praises, doing wonders? " they sang.

I turned and looked south; I saw dense heavy foliage lining
both sides of the Jordan, foliage covered with brown mud as
though it had recently been sprayed, stumps of trees, and
tangled bush. The river was high because it was April and
the winter rains were just over. I gazed at this fresh river
rushing and tumbling along to its final destination, the Dead
Sea. Daily, hourly, minute by minute for hundreds of years
the Jordan has desperately forced fresh water into the sea as
though endeavoring to sweeten and purify its brine. Many in
ages past have thought it was a useless sacrifice. Sometimes a
defeat is a blessing in disguise. Here is a perfect example in
Palestine. Hourly the Jordan has poured in valuable min
erals which in the years to come will yield her untold billions.

In Jerusalem I had heard how during our time the Jordan
River is becoming of vast importance as an economic factor in
the life of the peoples of the Near East. Annually, it de
posits in the Salt Sea tons of minerals which are being har
nessed by scientific enterprise. Th<|| Palestine Potash, Ltd.,
operates a concession at the Dead 9fa to obtain potash, sul
phur, bromides, and other salts. It comes as a surprise to
many to discover that Palestine ranks among the chief bro
mide-producing countries of the world and that these nat
ural resources brought down by the Jordan to be deposited in
the Dead Sea are one of its chief exports and sources of reve
nue. Farther north at the junction of the boundaries of
Palestine, Trans- Jordan, and Syria at the confluence of the
-Jordan and Yarmuk rivers, the waters have been dammed
and diverted and at this point are the hydro-electric works.
These works produce power for domestic and industrial re
quirements in the cities, towns, and villages of the Near East.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 169

The steel pylons towering above Nazareth s well, the electric
star street lamp in the market square at Bethlehem, the flood
lights playing at night upon the Wall of Jerusalem, the
twinkle, twinkle of lights in far-off Jericho as seen from Olivet
all testify that finally through scientific enterprise the Jordan
is now becoming an economic factor in the lives of many
people.

Turbulent, narrow, winding are only a few of the words
which describe this river s course from Banias in northern
Syria to the Salt Sea in southern* Palestine. It is really the
only river of the Holy Land because of the peculiar contour of
the country which makes long rivers and navigable ones im
possible. Yet to anyone who has seen the mighty Mississippi
or the beautiful Ohio or the historic Hudson this is a mere
rivulet. What few streams like the Kishon or the Kidron are to
be found are absolutely dry in summertime with the exception
of this one which finds its source among the snow-filled cran
nies of the Anti-Lebanons.

The Jordan Valley is not now populous as you and I
are apt to think in terms of that word. Usually a river
means great and large cities along its banks, thriving trade
centers, the focus of traffic for a wide area. Instead this
river has flowed through a section which for a long time
has been called a wilderness, has been looked upon as
something to be feared and people have lived inland away
from its banks. Has it merited the stern, forbidding name
Wilderness?

From early spring to late autumn the heat in this valley is
almost intolerable. The temperature is often during these
months May, June, July, August, and even September
ranging from 104 to 118 degrees. It is small wonder that
vegetation hereabouts is parched unless in sections where
constantly watered and in many places there is nothing grow
ing a few feet back from the bank. Right along the river

i jo Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

where the vegetation grows in tropical abundance the birds
from all the valley haunt the banks and sing their happy
melodies. During the days of the " judges " in Israel and
even as late as Jeremiah s time the wild animals roamed in
the jungle along the Jordan in freedom. When the Israelites
took over Canaan and settled further inland along the
central ridge of mountains which divides the present Palestine
into two sections, they drove out the wild beasts which they
found there in order to make the settled part of the country
more habitable. For a place of refuge the beasts came down
into this Jordan Valley. While no lions are found here today
nevertheless natives still report wild boar, leopard, and wolf
and warn that they are still something for the tourist to con
jure with while travelling by foot. When I was in Jerusalem
in the spring of 35, they were still telling of the two young
men who had gone down into the Judean Wilderness, lost
their way, and fell afoul the wild beasts.

Frequently desert hordes from east of Jordan, the Arabs,
used to make raids and cross the water boundary. They
have continued to do this down to comparatively modern
times. No ancient cities seemed able to resist these raiding
bands. So altogether with the intense heat of the valley in
summer, the danger of hungry, wild beasts, and the perils of
marauding desert hordes led the Hebrews and even later in
habitants during the Christian era to believe that it was much
safer to build and settle further inland.

In all the years since it first appeared in historical narrative,
the Jordan has been defenseless. It is true that there were a
few cities along the river s route: Bethshean (Beisan) was
one city between Lake Galilee and the Dead Sea. The region
around there was famous for corn, dates, balsam, and flax.
Jericho was another city which was built upon the fertile,
plain some distance inland. This was the city which Joshua
knew, and which fell so easily to his invading forces in 1400

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 171

B. c. The modern Jericho is a struggling, little scraggly vil
lage set today in a beautiful setting of palm and banana
groves. Not so very long ago along the banks of Jordan north
of Jericho men uncovered mounds which consisted of dried
bricks. It was thought at the time that these must be re
mains of ancient cities. Some archaeologists declared that
they were the remains of brick fields since the clay from the
valley region has been discovered excellent material for
moulding. They were settlements once.

The extreme heat, the wild beasts, the dangers of invasion
by desert tribes have been some hindrance to settlement
and conquest of the Judean Wilderness, which is no Wilder
ness of Delight such as Omar painted of Paradise. It is only
now in some places where extensive modern irrigation meth
ods have been applied that the region is showing promise.
Already winter homes for the wealthier of Jerusalem s fam
ilies and the Jewish colony at the Dead Sea prove that in time
with further dissemination of scientific knowledge many un
pleasant aspects of the wilderness will be overcome.

IV

Why, I asked myself here, among all the rivers of the world
does this river of the Holy Land, the Jordan, hold such a
unique position in the heart and memory of mankind? Hun
dreds of other streams are more picturesque, far more useful,
and certainly more mighty in size. It bears no resemblance in
majesty or beauty to the great rivers of Europe or America.
Other rivers have awakened a richer, fuller poetry among the
peoples through whom they have passed; yet wherever civi
lization has penetrated the name of the Jordan is known. It
is important chiefly for its place in religious history. In this
respect it surpasses the Mississippi, the Rhine, the Danube,
and even the Nile. Perhaps the latter is the Jordan s only
competitor because it, too, has captured and enraptured the

172 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

imaginations of men. It has drawn to its valley one after an
other of the great races of the world, compelled there by the
mystery and the annual miracle which has impressed itself
not only upon the thought of ancient man but modern man
as well. But the Nile never gave the world a living religion.
For most of us it is as part of ancient history alone that the
Nile is interesting. We travel to visit its "Valley of the
Kings" and "Valley of the Dead/* But dividing east and
west Palestine, there is another valley, called by the Arabs the
Ghor, through which flows the Jordan and pilgrims still come
in large numbers from the far corners of the earth to bathe in
its waters made holy for them by religious associations.

They come quite humbly to this thin almost thread of a
stream which through the medium of religion has become for
them a symbol of the separation of matter and Spirit. The
Jordan is a sacred river for three living religions: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. In this one respect it surpasses in in
terest any other river in the world. It is quite true that until
the present day its chief importance has been historic since at
its shores was marked the termination of forty years of wan
dering by the children of Israel from the banks of the Nile and
the beginning of their history as an independent nation in
Canaan. Here began some hundreds of years later the blend
ing of the Old and New Covenants; here dawned a new era
for civilization with the birth of Christianity, because it was
by Jordan s banks when John baptized Jesus that we might
say: " Old things are passed away; behold, all things are be

come new."

The Jordan has been associated with many of the great
figures in Hebrew and Christian history. Abraham knew the
name of this river as " Jordan " from the time when he first
migrated into Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees. It derived
this name which means " descender " or " downcomer " from
its own peculiar character. It just hustles along, muddy be-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 1 73

tween banks of mud, careless of beauty, careless of every
thing, even life, intent only upon its own work which for all
the ages has been that of a separator, border, or barrier. Peo
ples have felt this influence. Moses dreaded the separation
this river would cause among the tribes, some of whom were
to be left east of it in the land of Gilead. Throughout the
centuries the Jordan has drawn a strong distinction between
nomad and husbandman, between East and West. Always
the people living west of Jordan have trod their land with the
consciousness of a higher destiny than those living east of
Jordan. It has exerted a powerful moral effect upon na
tionalistic consciousness.

Elijah, the fiery prophet of Jehovah,- mysteriously emerged
from east of the river, from the land of Gilead, to go north
into the Kingdom of Israel to preach repentance and right
eousness to the faithless and idolatrous. Later, he withdrew
to this same low-lying wilderness region as he was directed.
Here he was fed by the ravens and watered by the Brook
Cherith as he waited patiently for his fatal announcement of
drought and famine to fulfill itself in the land of Israel.

At the end of this adventurous career, with his successor,
Elijah came down from the heights of Palestine around this
lonely wilderness.

" Tarry here, I pray thee; the Lord hath sent me to Bethel
... to Jericho ... to Jordan," said Elijah.

At each place, at Bethel, at Jericho, and again at Jordan,
Elisha answered, " As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I
will not leave thee."

And so these two trudged down through piles of dead rock,
twisted by ancient volcanic disturbances, possibly in burning
sunlight down and down and down,- steadily downward from
the high, cool Judean hills into the hot, dry, parched wilder
ness about Jordan. Always ahead of them was the view of
the blue and* violet mountains of Moab in which lay some-

1 74 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

% where Moses 5 sepulchre. Did Elijah wonder whether God
was to lay him to rest beside his noble forerunner? " In front
was no promised land visible . . . nothing but that high sky
line eastward under the empty heaven. Behind was no nation
waiting to press into the future , . . nothing but a single fol
lower who persisted to the end/ 3 writes George Adam Smith
in " Historical Geography of the Holy Land."

Two lonely people in an unpeopled wilderness, by the de
serted bank of the Jordan, the end came. The river which
had drawn back at a nation s feet parted as Elijah smote the
waters with his mantle, which was the symbol of a prophet,
and " they two went over on dry ground." Possibly feeling
the approach of the great moment of his life, Elijah turned
and with the tender feeling of a father for a loved son who is
to carry on a lofty heritage, he said, " Ask what I shall do for
thee, before I be taken from thee."

They talked, the Bible says. I wondered of what wondrous
things they talked that day by Jordan. I felt sure of one
thing that if this grand, romantic character had been familiar
with the Book of Job he would have echoed Job s own words
as from his own deep experience he persuaded his gentler fol
lower of the necessity for absolute reliance upon God and of
the presence of God in the consciousness of the faithful to
guide, to comfort, and to strengthen. In proof of the moral
support in his crusade and the strength to push radical re
forms he himself had enjoyed as a prophet of Israel s God, it
seemed he would have echoed: " His candle shined upon my
head, and by his light I walked through darkness."

" And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that,
behold, there appeared a chariot *of fire, and horses of fire, and
parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind
into heaven." II KINGS 2: n.

And so as suddenly as Elijah passed away to God from whom

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 175

he had as suddenly come, it was Elisha whom he acknowl
edged as his heir and to whom he left his spirit.

Elisha smote the waters a second time on his return from
" the other side of Jordan/ 5 He was the first to utilize this
river for sacramental purposes. Now I remembered that he
said to Naaman, the Syrian general and leper, " Go and wash
in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come to thee again,
and thou shalt be clean." I looked this day at the muddy
river twisting and swirling along; I thought of the crystal clear
stream called the River Abana that I had watched sliding
glistening along its bed near Damascus. I sympathized with
Naaman s hesitancy.

Perhaps these two events in Israel s history determined
John the Baptist s choice of a site for the beginning of his
ministry in 26 A. D. In fact, I rather like to think it was the
haunting memories of Elijah and Elisha which came to John
and would come to the crowds which followed him here
which decided his choice. Here by Jordan at Bethabara, he
had two requisites : solitude and plenty of water. Here where
Elisha had bade Naaman to bathe his leprosy away, John
called upon the multitudes to come, wash, and be cleansed
from unrighteousness, because by the act they signified their
intention to repent " change their attitude " toward right
eousness and sin. Here where Elijah had bequeathed his spirit,
the spirit of God, upon his successor, John was to meet his.
But this time it was no Elisha who came. It was in John s
own words:

" One stronger than I am, one whose shoes I am not fit to
stoop down and untie. I have baptized you in water, but he will
baptize you in the holy Spirit." MARK 1: 7-8. (Goodspeed)

After his baptism by John, Jesus withdrew not far from Jor
dan into the stark hills of the barren Judean Wilderness.

176 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

V

Mount Quarantania was within my line of vision when I
finally turned my back on Jordan and the Dead Sea and set
my face toward Jerusalem late that afternoon. I had been
sitting for a long time by the sea. I had watched tiny waves
curl in. The near water was pale blue, the distant dark blue.
On the pebbly beach a lot of driftwood was lying. Not a boat
was visible. In all the time I had not seen a bird.

Mount Quarantania or the Mountain of Temptation is situ
ated back of the sea in a turmoil of rocks, amid the beauty of
extreme " desolation and desertion on the very edge of the
ghostly Judean Wilderness. Here during the forty days fol
lowing the baptism by Jordan, Satan is said to have shown
Jesus " all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them." The wilderness exerts a peculiar magic at all hours
but the strange fascination of this world increases as afternoon
wanes and the evening light gradually comes over it.

CHAPTER XIII

I drop in great windings into a region of wrinkled hills and
emerge from the Judean Wilderness at the Jordan. An inviting
green road leads me into Gilead. I ford the Jabbok as did Jacob.
I look in vain for footprints of Jesus at Jerash (Gerasa), best
preserved example of a Roman ff city-plan" I spend the night at
Amman (Rabbath Ammon), capital of Trans-Jordan and center
of the Arab camel-raising world. I have a window full of ruins!
I wake to think of kings and crowns.

NO longer contented to read what other people saw when
they " looked over Jordan/ 5 I determined on another
trip to the Bible lands to visit the country known since Bible
days as " over Jordan/ 3 talk with its people, see how they live,
and make the history of the ancient land come alive amid its
pastoral setting. Each time my travel plans were discussed, I
talked mostly of Trans- Jordan; each time someone asked my
itinerary, I found myself answering, "I am going over
Jordan. "

The morning I set out from Jerusalem, we were quite a
party: Jacob from the Holy City to guide us, Charlie from
Kafr et Tur on Olivet to handle the big car, and four women:
a thin one, which was Miss Craig, a plump one, Miss Stanley,
a middle-sized one, Miss Beach, and myself with my whole
eighty-nine pounds the smallest of them all but possessed of
the biggest curiosity.

The road to Jericho wound down through the bleak, almost
terrifying Judean Wilderness, through fierce gorges and hills
which roll dull and brown and stark far into distance.

The nearer we drew to the Jordan, the more languid be-

177

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came the air and we gladly slipped from our heavy coats
which we had needed earlier in the mountain-city of Jeru
salem. We did not intend to visit Jericho of Joshua s day,
nor Jericho of Herod s time and Cleopatra s fame, but we
must pass through the banana groves and gardens on the out
skirts of present-day Jericho and on through the straggling
village to the strains of Oriental music from a phonograph in
one of the street cafes.

Palestine ends and Trans- Jordan begins at the bridge over
the Jordan known as " Allenby Bridge." While the car, the
driver, and our dragoman were going through customs for
malities, we walked onto this iron-clad, army bridge. We saw
the dull green of tangled thickets, ragged clumps of reeds and
grasses, the sombre, silent flow of yellow muddy water. Some
natives were bathing not far from the shelter of the bank.
Their clothes were bright and colorful in the searching sun
light. Was it some scene such as this when John baptized
with water here?

The inviting road beyond the immediate sterile waste of
the Dead Sea into the foothills of Gilead ran up into a green
and lovely valley, because the spring rains had spread a thin
bloom of green over the plain, veiling the stony ground with
a fair array of flowers. There was plenty to see along here
. . . great flocks of storks, scattered herds of bleating, breed
ing camels, many with their long-legged young grazing on the
short grass, black lines of Bedouin tents spread out north and
south, young goats leaping stiff-legged amid the tangle of
tent ropes, sombrely-clad Moslem women busy with tasks un
hampered by heavy silver bracelets, necklaces, or babies
swinging on their backs, tall, graceful men accustomed to the
vast spaces of this world and possessing a peculiar dignity and
charm. We stopped but once and then for Jacob to gather us
some fruit called " Sodom apples," so apparently good and
luscious. We were each given one large, apple-like green

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 1 79

fruit indigenous to this region. Imagine our surprise to find
that each of our luscious-looking apples was only inflated skin!

Beautiful to look upon, inviting to pluck, but when gath
ered and opened are hollow inside, containing nothing.

In only a short time we made the transition from modernity
to the days of the Old Testament in both mind and spirit.
We seemed now to be moving not through Trans- Jordan
which was under British control although it had Abdullah,
son of the late King Hussein, as its virtual king, but to be
moving through Gilead of the days of Moses.

A lovely, flowery wadi with luxuriant vegetation paralleled
our motor road which was ascending rapidly this broad valley
into high and treeless hills. This is Wadi Nimrim. A mur
muring, limpid, clear brook winds down through fertilizing
and making this land rejoice; a twinkling watercourse under a
curtain of glistening green foliage and glowing pink oleanders
" the willows of the brook " which contrasted with the nat
ural setting of sun-baked rock. The smell of the rushing
stream came fresh to our nostrils. Eagles circled on wide,
straight wings, their heads and tails now in shadow, now daz
zling bright in the sun as they veered lazily, mightily, circling
farther and farther into the distance of the Gilead mountains.
A lithe, swift, sure-footed fox picked his way from the moun
tain fastnesses, stood silent as a sentinel at the edge of the road
with his one foot lifted, nose keen to scent, ears alert to sound,
eyes sharp, and then quickly he sped across the motor road to
disappear into the protecting underbrush hard by the Wadi
Nimrim.

On farther in Gilead on sheltered slopes soaked in sunshine
were shelves of wheat and barley; ridges were covered with
some forests; valleys held orchards of pomegranates, fig trees,
apricot, and silver-grey olive. We came upon an orchard of
pomegranate trees in their natural habitat. I was reminded
of this verse from the Song of Solomon :

180 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

" I went down into the garden of nuts,
To see the green plants of the valley,
To see whether the vine budded.
And the pomegranates were in flower."

SONG OF SOLOMON 6: n.
(American Standard Version)

This flowering shrub-like tree has bright red or white blos
soms and a globular fruit. Cultivated everywhere in the Bible
lands, it is indigenous to Gilead. Valued by the ancients, its
juice was mingled with wine as a beverage; admired for its
beauty, it was reproduced on the hem of the High Priest s
robe and sculptured round the capitals of the pillars in Solo
mon s Temple; prized today both for its fruit and its flowers,
the latter are regarded superstitiously as a power against the
" evil eye."

This is a place for cattle, too. We understood now since
we had " crossed over Jordan " why Reuben and Gad asked
for this country saying, " The land is a land for cattle and thy
servants have cattle/ George Adam Smith writes in Historical
Geography of the Holy Land: "Flocks and pastures have
ever been the wealth and charm and temptation of eastern
Palestine/

Until one enters Trans- Jordan one rarely sees the genuine
Bedouin. Here the tribes circulate from grazing ground to
grazing ground, perpetuating the earliest customs of the chil
dren of Israel. So long as they can find pasturage for the
goats and enough food to keep the camels alive, they are
happy. They pitch their tents where fancy strikes them,
amongst the rocks of the countryside sometimes, because the
goats can always find enough to appease their hunger. The
Bedouin and their goats are closely bound together. They
live almost exclusively from these animals; with many they
are their pride and wealth; they drink their milk, eat their
flesh; from their hair they weave the black cloth of their

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 181

tents; the surplus they exchange for necessities such as salt,
matches, cotton cloth.

The goatherd plays a prominent part in Bedouin life. He
plays on his reed from morn to night. His pipe is made from
the tall reed or cane abounding on Jordan s banks, the " reed
shaken by the wind " of Matthew 1 i, verse 7. In time the
goats learn his strange symphony by heart and with his play
ing he appears to have an unusual control over every member
of the herd.

The whole tribe works . . . men, women, babies, adoles
cents, dogs, sheep, goats, camels . . . every single living crea
ture has a function to perform in this scheme. The scenes in
Trans- Jordan are pages from the Old Testament; they are the
days of the patriarchs come to life. Someone has remarked
that Abraham and Lot would be quite at home in any of
these " tents of Kedar/ I quite believe it. Numbers and
Deuteronomy, those usually dull Bible books for most people,
take on a live significance after a journey here. The people
of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were no
mads, tent-dwellers, masters of flocks and herds, whose herds
went wandering from pasture to pasture, just as nowadays
in Trans- Jordan.

The gentle art of hospitality is as vigorous as it was in the
patriarchal days and it is never refused to wayfarers.

The Bedouin cannot read nor write but their memories are
better than those of the literate because they cannot reduce to
writing the things they have to remember. Either they must
store things up in their heads or else they must be forgotten.
Hearing them recite for hours some old tribal legend is to
know how the early stories of Genesis were circulated and pre
served until committed to writing by various Bible historians.
The patriarchs would be at home around any camp-fires in
Trans- Jordan today, accustomed as they were to flocks and
herds as an occupation, hospitality as a virtue, and story-

1 82 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

telling as an effective method of teaching the younger genera
tion tribal lore. With Western civilization encroaching upon
the Bible lands, it is problematical just how long these vestiges
of Bible days will continue in the future as they have done in
the past.

Story-telling, as every visitor who stays any length of time
in the Holy Land knows, is an instinct. As the sun sets, story
tellers among the Bedouin take up the thread of a legend the
beginnings of which may be traced back thousands of years.
But for the brief visitor to the Bible lands, Arabs may tell
short stories much like this one. " What did Allah say when
he had finished making a camel? He couldn t say anything;
he just looked at the camel, and laughed, and laughed."

In spite of the ridiculous appearance of this beast which is
supposed to have made even Allah laugh, the hunch-backed
ship of the desert always seems to me quite satisfied with
himself. He has a look of supreme contempt for men, espe
cially when he drops that pendulous lip, wrinkles that nose,
and nonchalantly continues to chew his cud.

Story-telling among the Bedouin is of a primitive nature,
full of repetitions, possessing a simplicity. Jacob is a city-
dweller, an Arab, yet he enjoys this pastime, too. Usually he
likes to relate stories in the evening after dinner as we wait
somewhere in Galilean hills or at the amphitheatre at Amman
for the moon to come up or for those lustrous eyes of the
night to be turned on in sparkling beauty. Sometimes as we
hear the tinkle of the lead camel s bell in the distance, he tells
me this story again.

" Why does the camel despise his master? " After an im
pressive pause during which I am supposed to be occupied
with such an astounding situation, he shakes his head over
this intolerable, shocking, irritating circumstance as a beast
disgusted with his master, Jacob continues : " Because man
only knows ninety-nine names for Allah, but the one hun-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 183

dredth name, the beautiful name, the wonderful name for
Allah was revealed only to the camel. Consequently, he
scorns the whole race of men."

II

There was one discordant note in this Old Testament scene
that day. Its incongruity startled us all back for a time into
the twentieth century. A motor bus, filled with Arabs, lung
ing along this newly surfaced macadam road, passed us on its
way to Amman. You can imagine with what mingled feel
ings we watched this modern caravan of natives speed into
the distance through the mountains of Gilead. It is only re
cently that travel here has not been confined to horseback
riding, donkeys, or camels. We were assured that motor bus
travel is popular and that it has become a successfully op
erated service between Jerusalem and Amman.

One of the surprises on the voyage to Palestine was to see
the large cargo of American-made busses which we carried as
imports to the land of the camel caravan.

I must confess that as much as I am accustomed to modern
conveniences and enjoy the comfort of them in my own coun
try, I did not mourn not having the opportunity to see any
airplanes winging from Jordan to Amman, where the Royal
Air Force maintains an aerodrome. Airplanes are the mod
ern " chariots of fire " for passengers who like Elijah take off
for the country " across Jordan."

If I were a barker at the midway, instead of a Bible lec
turer and traveller, I d begin right away to holler: " Hurry,
HURRY, HU . . . RR . . . RY, if you want to see the
land of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles before the
twentieth century obliterates all traces of their occupation of
the land."

Presently we came to a bright little brook whose cool, clear
water made a pretty murmur as it curved and gleamed

1 84 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

through the wild gorge and gushed and plunged along to dis
appear into other parts of the mountains of Gilead. We were
in the deep, grand valley of the Wadi Zerka, or the Brook
Jabbok, the boundary between Ammon and Gilead in Old
Testament times. Yonder where the slopes were shaggy with
oak trees was fought a memorable battle. There the army of
Absalom went out to meet the army of his father David.
There young Absalom rode upon his mule which " went under
the thick boughs of a great oak and his head caught hold of
the oak, and he was taken up between heaven and earth/ It
is with pathos one remembers the story here.

Down in this sunlit valley, where the smooth meadows
spread fair and green, the River Jabbok dashes merrily
through thickets of pink oleanders that border it in spring.
We drew nearer. We must cross this swift, singing current of
silvery water but there is no bridge. Neither was there any
bridge when Jacob "rose up that night, and took his two
wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and
passed over the ford Jabbok."

The ford was not deep; the spring rains had been over
about a month. Our motor car slipped easily into the famous
little river. The wheels scattered the waters into showers
which glittered in the sunshine. " Can it be that this is the
brook beside which a man once met God? " we asked of one
another.

Beyond midstream, almost to the other side, I asked Charlie
to stop the motor. We opened the car doors and looked down
to watch the current swirling merrily along over stones and
pebbles. We reached down for handfuLs of stones; the water
was fresh and cooL With the car standing in the riverbed,
and here in the same ravine where occurred the story told in
Genesis, Chapter 32, I read aloud this glorious narrative.

It is good for man to be alone with nature and himself, to
be in places where man is little and evidence of God is great.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 185

So Jacob separated himself that night from his worldly pos
sessions and his family, got alone with God out here where
the " earth is full of His riches." He met God face to face in
the grip of his spiritual testing when he realized he could not
live without goodness and there was no lasting satisfaction nor
reward from selfishness, greed, sin, and evil. He strove not
with a human enemy but was seized by the spirit of Truth,
who tarried with him until through his new enlarged con
sciousness of Spirit and of spiritual power,- Jacob was helped
on toward righteousness, peace, and purity. With his new
understanding of right and wrong, he prevailed in this strug
gle between the things of Spirit and the things of materiality
and came off with a new name " Israel " and a new sense of
being. No wonder Jacob called the spot " Peniel " because
his changed life attests the reality of his experience and here
indeed he saw the face of God.

We were sure that we, too, met God face to face at the
River Jabbok under the same sky which had sheltered Jacob
because we saw Him in the flowers, the wild mountain crags ;
we heard Him speak in the murmuring stream and the singing
willow trees; we saw Him move in the lightness of the wing
ing birds and the fleetness of the fox; we felt His touch in the
soft breeze.

Night was gone, the dark shadows of Jacob s agony lay be
hind him. No wonder when the sun rose gloriously in the
Wadi Jabbok on him the next morning that he was ready to
go forward to meet Esau his brother coming with four hun
dred men. It was a dawn flushed with the gold of a new
hope. The unexpected gentleness and friendliness of Esau in
the morning encounter inspired Jacob to say to him whom he
had earlier wronged: " I have seen thy face, as though I had
seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me." And
as Jacob perceived the face of God even in the face of human
kindness, I believe we perceived the same in the faces of one

1 86 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

another. And so we said as Esau said, " Let us take our jour
ney, and let us go."

Ravines, abrupt descents, a series of sharp hairpin bends,
an almost total absence of inhabitants and no villages now
characterized the remainder of our journey. We attained
one height only to be challenged by another. We missed the
macadam and concrete roads. We passed through scores of
road-builders who looked fierce, wild, and daring.

We women, who seemed now to be in a civilization of men
only, put up the car windows in self-defense. We suddenly
felt that our pale faces, uncovered to the gaze of men not ac
customed to such boldness, our keen interest in everything,
our fearlessness in venturing into this inaccessible world with
out male relatives were not understandable to men, who
are still thinking, living, and conducting themselves as in the
Bible days. I had never felt so far away from home in all my
life as that morning. In fact, I had never been so far away
from home. I silenced my fears long enough to remember
that once upon a time in Israel s history this country through
which we were travelling had been considered the dwelling
place for Jehovah and that from those feeble beginnings of re
ligious truth Israel had come to see and proclaim: "The
earth is the Lord s and the fullness thereof." With my Bible
to guide me in this strange new experience, it occurred to me
that God had never moved out of the mountains of Gilead but
was still here ever watchful, I soon discovered as we passed
through these hordes who were engaged in making safe roads
along mountain ridges barely wide enough for our car that
their " Saidas " and " Assallams " were reassuring. We low
ered our windows and called back " Saida " and " Assallam "
to them.

From one lofty point I glimpsed a zigzag road, our road to
Jerash. Following it, soon there were columns on the ho
rizon. They rise like a dream. Here was ancient Gerasa of

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 187

Jesus 5 day, one of the famed cities of the Decapolis, waiting,
deserted since 786 A. D. Passing the Triumphal Arch with its
three gates and lofty Corinthian columns, we reached the
verge of an oasis with well-watered gardens. We passed
through a Circassian village and over a tiny bridge. Bridges
I had crossed before in my travels but never any quite like
this. It seemed a spiritual boundary separating the living
from the dead; isolating sordid village life from the glories of
ancient Greece and Rome.

In May Jerash was a scene of loveliness. There were white
columns massed against a cobalt sky. The silence of deser
tion was eloquent. Yet it impressed us all as a place in which
to linger, to meditate. Unanimously, we decided to delay
exploration of this " towering wreck of Time," this model
Roman city-plan, until we had had our lunch.

The hotel in Jerusalem had packed each of us a delicious
lunch basket containing fresh ham, roast chicken, three hard-
boiled eggs, crusty bread, appetizing cucumber pickles, a
wizened apple, a huge orange, and included bottles of clear,
pure water. I had brought along an alcohol stove to boil
water for tea. In looking about for a sheltered place to pro
tect the slender flame, I found an alcove which had once shel
tered a statue of a deity in the Temple of Zeus. So among
the "high places" our tea was brewed. After a motor
journey of ninety miles, it seemed that warm day a drink fit
for the gods. We lingered over lunch, absorbing the refined
beauty of a deserted city. It was quiet with the exaggerated
stillness of desertion. We murmured of its long and varied
history; we marvelled at its magnificence even now in its de
parted glory.

Ill

From the Forum, the market place, which corresponds to
David Street in Jerusalem, the Agora of ancient Athens, or

1 88 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the " Street called Straight " in Damascus, we set out upon
Gerasa s main street. This exclusive shopping center is called
today "The Street of Columns" because stately groups of
tall pillars line this thoroughfare which is paved with huge
blocks of paving stone. Seventy-five of the original five hun
dred and twenty have withstood the ravages of time, earth
quake, and plunder. I noticed that there was a high protected
sidewalk for the safety of pedestrians. The traffic at night
must have been heavy because the blocks of paving stone are
worn in ruts as they are at Pompeii. Our streets in the West
ern world grow quiet and deserted at night, are thronged
with people and vehicles during the day. In this metropolis
on the trade routes between Damascus, Arabia, India, Egypt,
and the Mediterranean during the Roman period, owners of
noisy carts were fined in the daytime for disturbing the peace
ful slumbers of her inhabitants who spent their days in rest
after a night of gayety.

In thought we mingled with traders, petty officials, sol
diers, and with the esteemed citizens of Gerasa, who were not
always Greek by birth but choice; for many of them their
mother-tongue was that of Peter, James, and John, but who
through adoption had accepted Grecian ways and names.
The lure of Greece had captured them. They were Hellenized
and they gloried in their cultural progress. Is there a lesson
at present-day Jerash? If so, it would seem to be that mate
rial things, the very things in which most men lay their high
est hopes, pass away. One of the splendid cities of the
Decapolis, a federation of ten Greek cities east of the Jordan,
it is now a dead city, almost forgotten except by a very few
who study Roman " city-plans " of which this is the best pre
served example, by those who travel just to see the beauty of
arches, pillars, porticoes, domes, and noble edifices in the an
cient world, and by some few who wonder if Jesus ever came
this way and wandered through these streets. Broken col-

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Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 189

umns, remains of temples, empty streets are all that are left
of cultural, corrupt, and pleasure-loving Gerasa; its govern
ment, religion, and business are long since gone.

We stopped for a moment at the Public Baths, a huge place
resembling a palace with a marble dome. When the luxury-
loving .Geraseans inhabited this place it was supplied with
both cold and hot running water.

There were theatres, too, as we could see from their domi
nant places on the hillsides. This was the little Athens of the
ancient world. In the now deserted seats beautiful women
and distinguished-appearing men took their places in the re
served seats. They watched with interest the comedies of
Aristophanes, the tragedies of Aeschylus, and the newer
" hits " from Alexandria.

We needed no one to point the way to the Temple of
Artemis, whose remains stand high on a massive platform on
the hill to the left of the main street. Each morning in the
first and second* centuries worshipful pilgrims climbed the
steep steps of the Propylaea, a superb gateway which leads to
the Temple. Here coppersmiths, sandal-makers, brokers, in
fact all the citizens of Jerash gave their offerings to the Gre
cian gods. The majestic flight of steps must have been a
spiritual preparation for approach to the " high place." Not
so long after this magnificent temple to a pagan god wa$ built,
this city made the transition from paganism to Christianity.
The Church of St. Theodore was dedicated in 494 A. D. Its
interior is a jumbled mass today of fallen columns. The Ca
thedral not far distant was completed in 375 A. D.

After we made this discovery that Christianity had found a
foothold here in this pagan stronghold, we four women set
to speculating on whether or no Jesus ever really came to
Gerasa when he went " over Jordan." Most pilgrims would
like to find his footprints here, would like to imagine that
when Jesus " came through the midst of the coasts of Decapo-

i go Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

lis w he entered this stately Greek city, listened to opinions
in the Forum, talked with the people, and saw something good
in each of them. It seems so likely Jesus once walked through
the " Street of Columns " to the Forum since he would
scarcely have avoided the city during his Perean ministry
that we were disappointed when we looked in vain among the
ruins for a carving of the face of Jesus or something to show
he had visited here. We found no more here to remind us of
its brief acceptance of his gospel beyond the church and the
cathedral than a marble fragment in the Museum upon
which is carved a square cross with the circle (eternity) bear
ing in its four corners the symbolic Greek letters, Alpha and
Omega, and IG-XG. On an early Christian mosaic floor
now preserved in the Museum can be seen one of the square
crosses used by the early Byzantine church and one of the
Latin crosses with its longer upright. These are the only wit
nesses today of Christianity at Jerash.

In recalling the hours we spent here, it seems to me that
they were among the most hushed, most eloquent of my
travels that year. With the vista of pavements, public baths,
ruins of temples, theatres, elegant fountains, the Forum, and
the houses spread before me in the dry golden sunshine, I
seemed to hear the sobs, jokes, bargainings, commands,
laughter, prattle of happy children, grumblings of the aged,
the groaning of slaves, oratory of the actors in the theatres, the
dim rumble of chariot wheels on the paving stones, and
to smell the fragrance of the perfumes of Araby. Were they
hushed hours because I had no actual companions here be
side these three women, a guide, and a driver, and only these
hushed voices breathed through the silence? Jerash is not like
Pompeii with its scores and scores of tourists, making casual,
meant-to-be-funny remarks. Yet human interest is not lack
ing here. Were they eloquent hours because these hundreds
of columns, small and gigantic, spoke of the longings of the

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 19 1

inhabitants of this once famous, cultural center? The columns
reveal a civic pride, a cultural ambition. It seems civilization
has not changed her ambitions yet. Yes, Jerash speaks an
eloquent story of the futility of wealth, culture, and corruption
as men s sole aims; Jerash has a story for mankind to hear.

IV

From here to Amman, I don t remember that we talked a
great deal among ourselves. I do remember that I stole
" forty winks " along an uninteresting stretch of road. I
awoke refreshed and ready to explore the sights of Amman,
Philadelphia in Jesus 5 day, Rabbath Ammon of David s time.
We came swiftly into the present capital of Trans- Jordan and
the place of the official residence of King Abdullah.

This second son o King Hussein of the Hejaz had been
since 1921 maintaining a sort of independence as the head of
an Arab state set up within the Palestine Mandate yet
separate from Palestine. He administered the government
with the assistance of a "council of advisors" and a legislative
assembly of elected deputies and together they worked under
the direction of the British High Commissioner for Palestine.
His land is larger than Palestine, largely desert, but well-
watered. Most of his people are nomadic Arabs and all but
some twenty thousand of the three hundred thousand are
Moslem. In 1946, Abdullah became king.

V

As we motored through the main street of Amman we
found it to be a strange admixture of East and West because
modern motor cars alongside oxcarts and Bedouin caravans
of asses and camels vie with the picturesque natives for a place
in a street which is not paved. With its very great activity, it
seemed to me to be a lively, busy shopping center. Shopping
is always an adventure in an Eastern city in any age. Amman

1 92 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

is still on the trade route of India, Arabia, Jerusalem, and
Baghdad. Perfumes, silks, rare rugs, silver bangles, lovely
gems. Surely all of them would be awaiting us here.

After registering in at the modern three-story Hotel Phila
delphia, I hustled with my companions to the bazaar. I
searched up one side and down the other and into narrow
byways with their stalls of vegetables and fruits* I peeked
into dimly lighted stalls ; I gestured, but in vain I searched for
something smacking of " Trans- Jordan " to buy to show off
later in America. The bazaar of this present-day Arab me
tropolis at close range is no attraction to tourists. It offers
much to an Arab sheik because there on display in the open
air with its dust and flies are all the savory delicacies which
tempt his appetite even a stuffed sheep s head with glaring
eyes and bared teeth. This is the town where camel-ships
stock up with desert delights.

I saw one " Ad " for the Singer Sewing Machine high up
on a building. I saw more cucumbers than I would have be
lieved were grown in one year in the world. I guessed that
the prophet Isaiah was thinking of Trans- Jordan and espe
cially Amman when he talked of " a garden of cucumbers."
I saw plenty of Japanese stuffs, cheap cotton goods, and brass
camel bells.

Finally, our purchases consisted of a few postcards, a half
dozen oranges, and a bottle of cologne made in Syria. This
latter we bought at a corner drugstore to ward off fleas and
disagreeable odors which seemed a trifle overwhelming since
Amman was taken over by the cameleers who had brought
their herds in for next morning s market. Amman is the cen
ter of the camel raising world; the city was noisy with the
grunting of the disgruntled animals. The presence of sheep
and camels recalled Ezekiel s prophecy: "And I will make
Rabbath a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching
place for flocks/ 5 But about that drugstore ... a returned

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 193

Arab son had seen in America drugstores specializing in
everything from drugs to cookstoves. So here on the very
edge of the desert he has set up his emporium to cater to the
catholic tastes of the natives. By the way, the cologne " Flow
ers of Araby," made in Syria, was the most lasting perfume I
have ever bought.

I returned to our hotel, disappointed in what the bazaar
had to offer and ready rfow to investigate the attractions of
the Hotel Philadelphia. The proprietor in excellent English
informed me that the hotel was not named after the Ameri
can city but that Philadelphia had been the name of the
Arabian metropolis when it was a commercial center of the
Decapolis in the first century. The city was then so called
after and in honor of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

We sat down in a chilly, tiled-floor lounge with its chairs
all neatly arranged round the walls of the room. We thought
to write postcards to America or to play a game of cards as
we waited for dinner at eight to be announced. We needed a
light. And there was light . . . from a single hanging elec
tric bulb!

From a near-by room we heard a familiar sound, the
whirr of a dial telephone. Then we heard the voice of Dr.
Nelson Glueck from Cincinnati, Ohio, then the Director of
The American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem as
he talked with his wife. Private telephone booths have not
yet been installed in Trans- Jordan. His explanation later at
dinner that he had just talked with Mrs. Glueck and was
going up to Jerusalem to spend a few days was quite unneces
sary because his voice which was pitched for a none-too-clear
telephonic connection had penetrated to the farthest corners
of this hotel. Dr. Glueck had just come up from Akabah,
where he had been excavating some remarkable evidence on
early Hebrew history, and the origins of Solomon s wealth.
Even Arabian sheiks are becoming accustomed to sliding from

194 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the hairy humps of their camels and dialing telephone num
bers. Electric lights and the telephone, twin marvels of the
twentieth century, have arrived in the heart of the Arab
world.

And dinner? We questioned among ourselves whether the
many successive courses of Arabian food would ever cease,
because this hotel on the edge of the desert is nothing less
than generous in quantity and variety.

Some readers are probably speculating on our bedrooms.
We were amazed at their cleanliness and their good, com
fortable furnishings. The tall wardrobe would have hidden
me in an emergency. There were twin beds; even hot and
cold running water. Our clean, white beds were tempting.
It wasn t long after nine o clock that all the beds had occu
pants.

The night was clear; the moon was high; the air was crisp
as nights always are in this part of the world. I turned off
the electric light and stepped to open the lattice of my win
dow. I stood entranced. I HAD A WINDOW FULL OF
RUINS ! In the night s beauty lay the amphitheatre of an
cient Philadelphia. It is a splendidly preserved Graeco-
Roman theatre built into the rocky hillside. Dramas were
presented here before audiences of four thousand people in
the third century before Christ. I looked along these lofty
tiers of seats. In the clear starlight I thought I saw shadowy
figures sitting there; I thought I heard light whispers and the
ripple of clapping hands. I couldn t catch the flash of wit, I
couldn t hear the tragic words which stirred them to applause.
I wondered is it a comedy of Plautus, or Terence, or Aris
tophanes or Menander? or is it a tragedy of Seneca? What is
this night s attraction? I shall never know. The play at
Philadelphia was ended. There were gay times in this ancient
city when this theatre was filled with people.

The lights outside twinkled, one above another on the hill*

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 195

side; above them were the stars; on the hilltop burned a soli
tary light in the home of the son of Emir Abdullah. All was
silence. I lay me down to sleep and dream.

At intervals I heard the dogs salute the stars in chorus.
Far, far away a leader lifted a howling, wailing, shrieking
note and then the mysterious unrest that torments the bosom
of Oriental dogdom broke loose in a hundred answering
voices, which swelled into a yapping, howling discord. Sud
den silences cut into the tumult until some mystery which
alone stirs the canine heart burst out again into a dissonance.
As dawn approached, the donkeys raised their long lament;
cocks crew; and then with the burst of the sun I heard men
disputing and the thousand meaningless shouts and cries of an
awakening foreign city. The Arab world arose to work. I
was in a strange land and very far from home.

I awoke to think of kings and crowns because this happened
to be Coronation Day, May 12th, throughout the British
Empire. At the Citadel I was reminded that once King
David of Israel came here when Rabbath Ammon, royal city
of the Ammonites, was ready to acknowledge defeat at the
hand of David s general Joab. At the moment of victory
which was to extend Israel s boundaries considerably, David
was far away in his mountain-capital city of Jerusalem enjoy
ing the illicit love at Bathsheba. During one of the attacks
upon the Ammonites, Bathsheba s husband Uriah, who was a
victim of foul play, surrendered his own life while serving his
trusted sovereign s interests. When notified of victory, David
with additional troops came hurrying down through the
Judean Wilderness, across Jordan, and up against Rabbath
Ammon in answer to Joab s request for reinforcements. Tak
ing the city in his own name, David had placed upon his head
the crown of the king of Ammon which, by the way, weighed
" a talent of gold [about twelve pounds] with the precious
stones."

196 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

It was with these reminders of David s early acquisition of
this city and the whole territory of the Ammonites as a part
of his far-flung empire and of that crown which he had had
placed upon his head that I left Amman for Jerusalem. I
wanted to be in the Holy City that evening for the celebration
in honor of the coronation of another monarch, King George
VI of England.

CHAPTER XIV

/ look back upon Jerusalem from the Nablus Road. Every
little hill north to Samaria carries the ghost of a Bible city:
Gibeah, Nob, Ramah, Mizpah, Beeroth, Bethel,, and Shiloh. I
rest at Jacob s Well, go to Shechem, climb the hill of Samaria,
and walk its deserted streets with thoughts of Ahab, Jezebel^
Elijah^ and Herod.

THE road to Samaria led around the city; through Ma-
millah Road, it descended from the mountains upon
which Jerusalem is built down past the Damascus Gate and
along the Old Wall to the Quarry, Herod s Gate, and then up
another hill onto the well-surfaced Nablus Road. It was
from the hill at the beginning of the north road, just at the
top before it dips down into the Kidron Valley, close by the
Mount of Olives, that I looked back upon the Holy City. I
saw a walled city of domes and towers, sleeping in the sun
shine, full of earthly dreams and disappointments, and pos
sessing yet the beauty of a " high place/ Previously I had
looked down upon the Old City from the Mount of Olives
both by moonlight and when the early morning sun lights up
the Dome of the Rock, but I felt on this day, as I still do
today, that Jerusalem could not be more beautiful than when
seen from the Nablus Road. As I looked back I was reminded
of that passage from the Psalms beginning " If I forget thee,
O Jerusalem. 3 One does not readily forget Jerusalem,

II

The highway northward twisted and turned through land
that was hilly and rugged but gay with spring flowers; now
up and now down it led into the country of the tribe of

197

198 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Benjamin. Almost every little hill carried on its crest a little
village, usually a ghost of a Bible city. Just out of Jerusalem s
new suburbs, it seemed, I looked across to Nebi Samwil s one
white tower against the sky, the loftiest " watch " in Judea.

Some three miles out of Jerusalem, we passed a bare hill
towering up high, but once Gibeah, where Israel s first king,
Saul, with fine judgment built a strong fortress and made his
home and royal residence. We sped past Nob, the home of
the priests and whither David fled for refuge. A few minutes
beyond, the road bent sharply to the right and I saw a white
track leading away over a green sea and another crossing this
grassy plain leading into an opposite direction. The first was
the road over which Paul was led by night to the seacoast at
Gaesarea and the other was the old Roman road leading north
to Damascus over which Paul travelled on his mission of per
secution.

Another mile or so farther we passed Ramah, Samuel s
birthplace and burial-place. It is a small village resting on

the horizon. When I had read that Samuel went on circuit
judging Israel from Ramah, to Bethel, to Mizpah, and back
again, I had thought of a long journey. As a matter of fact,
he was never more than fifteen miles from his home.

Now high and charming on its hilltop loomed Mizpah
where Samuel called Israel and offered sacrifice before Je
hovah, and where he chose Saul as the first king of Israel.
Here for the first time "God save the King" rang through
their ranks. We left Mizpah behind us.

Eight miles from Jerusalem we began to climb a little hill
and came into ancient Beeroth, now El-Bireh, one of the
earliest towns that Joshua entered. We had come this far in
perhaps fifteen minutes; this short distance was considered in
New Testament times a day s journey from Jerusalem sev
eral hours walk or donkey ride. The ruins of an old khan y
and a plentiful fountain spoke of its suitability as a stopping-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 199

place for pilgrims bound north. Caravans getting a late start
from the Holy City after a festival usually reached Beeroth the
first day. It was while camping here that Joseph and Mary
discovered the child Jesus was not among the company of
Passover pilgrims bound for Nazareth. From here for the last
time I looked back on Jerusalem. Her distant domes were a
blur.

Leaving Beeroth, we came into the stoniest section I had
yet seen in Palestine. Nothing strikes the eye but rocks, huge
and tangled masses of rock, scattered everywhere with an oc
casional daisy, red anemone, or blade of green grass pushing
up among them, wherever they can find a foothold among the
stones. Bethel, three miles off the road, tempted me. It
brought up the name of youthful Jacob who here while on his
way to Haran tarried overnight, slept under the stars, using a
stone for a pillow. Except for a stone there is little room for
a man s head anywhere. " And he dreamed, and behold, a
ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to
heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending and descend
ing on it."

Here Jacob prayed, but that is not all that happened. At
Bethel the Ark once rested, Samuel held court, Elisha taught,
Jeroboam set up his golden calf and rival altar to the Temple,
and hither came Amos from Tekoa denouncing the northern
kingdom s paganism and idolatry. A miserable hamlet of
half-ruined stone huts on a terraced hill, stone walls enclosing
fields of scattered loose stones this is modern Beitin on the
site of ancient Bethel or " House of God."

North of Bethel the country changed. The road dipped
into green valleys and climbed hills terraced with rock fences
which held enough ground to grow olive trees and vines. On
a rough slope Shiloh greeted us. The Arab village of Seilun
sits calmly over remarkable Bible history. After the conquest
of Canaan by Joshua, the twelve tribes met together in confer-

200 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ence at Shiloh. Here where the Ark was kept for four cen
turies,, Eli, the High Priest, lived and ministered. It was at the
sanctuary at Shiloh that Hannah in remarkable faith prayed
and later sang her song of thanksgiving; because her prayer
was answered, she later brought her son Samuel and commit
ting him to the charge of Eli to be trained for prophethood,
dedicated her child solely to Jehovah. Near-by where the
Ark of Covenant had been kept within the Tabernacle, aged
Eli waited all that fateful day for the sacred Ark that had
gone down to battle. After his death and the loss of the Ark,
the Tabernacle was removed to Nob. After that Shiloh seems
to have been forgotten and disappears from history.

The sixteen miles from Shiloh to Shechem repeated with
increasing frequency views of valley, ravine, and mountain-
top. Climbing onto another hill we came out all of a sudden
on top of the world. The road went running out onto the
warm, green, and fertile Plain of El Mukhnah, cuddled by
the terraced mountains of Samaria rich with olive orchards
and vineyards. We pressed forward to two rounded hills
Ebal and Gerizim separated by a white track and came to
some trees on the right side of the road shading a half-fin
ished church standing over Jacob s Well.

Along this road one summer day came Jesus on his way to
Galilee. He reached this spot where several old roads met
and sat down beside the well to rest while John, James, An
drew, Peter, Philip, and Bartholomew went to the neighboring
village of Sychar to buy food.

Today, as in Bible days, a well is a good resting-place on a
journey. I found this place quiet and pleasant. Even the
beggars outside the high wall were somewhat subdued by its
silence. They begged, yes, but not blatantly. I stepped
through a door into the court and followed a priest down a
few steps into a chapel surrounding the well. He held a
dripping candle over it that I might see that it still contained

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 201

water. Then winding up a little dripping bucket, he offered
me a cooling drink from the same well which Jacob dug when
he was at Shechem and where Jesus talked in symbols of liv
ing water.

Outside in the sunshine., I sat down and my New Testa
ment opened itself to the fourth chapter of John. There are
points in this narrative which when I read it on the spot coin
cided remarkably with the scenery. The Arab village of
Askar, the location of ancient Sychar, lay in plain view across
the eastern valley on the stony eastern slope of Mount EbaL
Sitting beside the well, weary from walking the long, tiring
road over the hills from Judea, Jesus could have watched his
disciples all the way to the village and could have seen the
woman with the water-pot on her head as she passed them on
her way to the sacred well,

As he waited and thirsted, the Samaritan woman drew
nearer and coming up, Jesus spoke to her.

" Give me to drink/ 3

Simply and gently, Jesus began his conversation on spiritual
verities; step by step, he led her on into a discussion of God.
The unknown, unfriendly, and unhappy woman of a hated
race revealed to him then her eagerness to know God and her
perplexity over how to find Him. Discussing the competing
claims of Gerizim and Jerusalem, she said, cc Our fathers
worshipped in this mountain," indicating towering Gerizim;
" the Jews say in Jerusalem," pointing south, " is the place
where men ought to worship." The steep flanks of naked
Gerizim rose a few hundred feet across the road from where I
was sitting. With words that have been a spring of living
water to weary, seeking individuals ever since, Jesus answered
her, " Neither for God is Spirit." He was trying to tell her:
" not a tribal God, not a Jewish God, not a Samaritan God; "
he might be telling us: "not a British God, not a German
God, nor an American God but a universal God. God is

2O2 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Spirit, and His worship cannot be confined to any building
whether it be the Temple in Jerusalem or the sanctuary on
Gerizim, but they that worship Him must worship Him in
spirit and in truth."

When the woman of Samaria at the well pointed to
Gerizim, saying, " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain/ 3
she was true to tradition. Gerizim has been their holy moun
tain as Moriah has been for the Jew. Here they think Abra
ham would have offered Isaac, here they are sure is Jacob s
Bethel, and here they read Joshua pledged the Israelites to
Jehovah.

Annually on the mountain which loomed before me the
celebration of the Passover as set forth in the Pentateuch is
observed by a remnant of Samaritans dwelling on the outskirts
of Nablus. These people believe themselves the descendants
of the Exodus, but in truth they have little Hebrew blood in
their veins.

The Samaritans have had a long and variety history. After
the capture of the northern kingdom in 722 B. a by Sargon II
only a remnant was left behind when all the chief inhabitants,
some thirty thousand Israelites, were carried off into captivity.
Subject-peoples from ten races were imported by the As
syrians and planted in the ruined and evacuated cities of
Samaria in place of the exiled Israelites. Idolatry, strange
customs, traditions, and religious rites of the East were intro
duced by the colonists and mingled with Jewish tenets. The
result was an offensive religion to the Jews. Meantime these
strangers intermarried not only among themselves but with
the remaining Israelites. The result in the following centuries
from the. amalgamation of all these races was a new national
ity a race of Samaritans.

With the return of Judean exiles to Jerusalem at the time
when Samaritan aid in rebuilding the city was refused be
cause of what Ezra and Nehemiah considered their apostasy

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 203

from true religion, a bitter, hostile attitude arose between
them. The antipathy which was rooted in difference in race
as well as religion became deeper between Jew and Samaritan.
When the Samaritan women questioned Jesus, " How is it
that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a
woman of Samaria? " she revealed the prejudice existing be
tween the two peoples yet in New Testament times. But to
the woman of a race that his countrymen hated, Jesus re
vealed one of his greatest truths. Knowing the enmity be
tween Jew and Samaritan, he preferred as a rule to make his
journey between Galilee and Jerusalem east of Jordan. Thus
on all but a few occasions he avoided this unfriendly territory.
He built his parable of the good Samaritan around one of
that despised race who succored the wounded and stricken
traveller. It was a Samaritan, one of the ten lepers, Jesus
healed, who returned to give thanks. Yet withal his example
of " Love thy enemies " and his breaking down of artificial
barriers of race and religion which divide man from man, the
prejudice which began in reality as far back as when Sol
omon s kingdom was divided between Jeroboam and Reho-
boam, intensified during the Exile and Return, is evident
today among this dwindling tribe generally regarded as a
peculiar people who are contending for Gerizim against the
world.

Ill

We followed the narrow, deep pass separating the two fa
mous mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, to where ancient
Shechem (Balata) lay huddled against Nablus in a well-
watered valley. This hollow between the two mountains
forms an almost perfect amphitheatre. Here the tribes of Is
rael may have gathered while the priests chanted the curses of
the Law from Ebal and blessings from Gerizim. The cliffs
were sounding boards and sent out the loud voices to all parts

204 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

of the Vale of Shechem. It was easy to imagine the scene.
The Ark of Israel was placed in this valley, guarded by the
priests. The tribes with their elders and judges were on this
side and that of the Ark, half of them ~ ranged on Mount
Gerizim responding joyously to the promised blessings, the
other half stood on Mount Ebal re-echoing threatened curses,
while loud " Amens " uttered by the whole congregation re
sounded from hill to hill. But this day there was no Ark and
the children of Israel are scattered. Instead Arabs worked in
fields and orchards. The ancient pasture-land of Jacob yields
an abundant harvest of wheat and barley, a good supply of
beans and lentils, and a wealth of wild flowers on every uncul
tivated patch of ground. Black goats were climbing Gerizim,
browsing on the scanty and prickly pasture that springs up
among rocks and stones. Gerizim s lower flanks were ter
raced for extensive olive orchards.

Shechem has had a lengthy and interesting history. It is
the first town in Palestine to be mentioned in connection with
the Hebrews. When Abraham left Haran with Sarah, his
wife, and Lot, his brother s son, it was their first halting-place
after they had passed over Jordan and entered Canaan. Be
fore leaving it to go on to Bethel, Abraham erected his first
altar to Jehovah under an oak tree where it is said " the Lord
appeared unto him." So Shechem is the first place at which
the Hebrews worshipped in the Promised Land.

To this same neighborhood where his grandfather had
pitched his tent, Jacob was attracted. Here he dwelt for a
time with Leah and Rachel, and their handmaidens and men-
servants and womenservants ; his wealth like that of the
Bedouin sheik today consisted of " flocks and herds and
camels."

After Israel s sojourn in Egypt and wanderings through
Sinai, Joseph s bones which they had carried with them some
forty years were finally laid to rest in that " parcel of ground "

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 205

which had been purchased by Jacob from the children of
Hamor. The white dome of the little mosque at Joseph s
Tomb on the side of Ebal can be seen from the well dug by
his father.

At Shechem, ten of the tribes renounced the house of David
and transferred their allegiance to Jeroboam. From that time
on its history has been blended with that of the Samaritans.

IV

Six miles beyond Nablus, we turned off the main road to
climb the great hill of Samaria itself. It was noon. We de
cided to delay visiting the excavated historic stronghold until
after lunch. We opened our picnic basket in an orchard of
olive trees whose scarred old trunks bore up their delicate
foliage with the ground beneath them covered with a gay car
pet. These may have been young trees but they looked old.
The trunks as usual were knotted and gnarled or twisted into
fantastic shapes. In some were great hollows in the center of
the trunks and these were filled with stones to give the neces
sary stability. Twisted, weather-beaten trees leaning on stone
supports are strongly reminiscent of age and dignity.

Fortified with lunch, a brief siesta under an olive tree, and
a quick rehearsal of the major events in the history of Sa
maria, we drove on along a wretched, zigzag road to the
squalid village of Sebastieh where we left the car.

V

Until this day I had seen this immense and lofty hill only
from the main highway, as it rises some five hundred feet
above the plain. The situation of Samaria is very beautiful
indeed in a quiet and peaceful way. In the center of a fertile
basin rises this rounded, terraced hill, which before the days
of gunpowder must have been almost impregnable. Difficult
to be taken by assault, it has been starved out more than once.

206 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Upon the summit stood the luxurious capital which Isaiah
called " the crown of pride " of the northern Hebrew king
dom, the " flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head
of the fat valley." Even now the circle of surrounding valleys
is " fat " with olive orchards and hillsides covered with vines
and wild flowers, and from the western gate is a charming
view of hills and dales to the Mediterranean Sea where a
golden strip of sand marks the site of a later capital,
Caesarea. Doubtless, Jezebel often looked out from Ahab s
palace with a wave of homesickness for the Great Sea whose
waves beat upon the coast of her native Phoenicia.

This stronghold has been oftener under the grip of heathen
masters and heathen faiths than any other city in Palestine.
Its important history began about 875 B. c. when Omri be
came the original purchaser of the site for a strategically-
placed capital city for two talents of silver or about
thirty-nine hundred dollars. Under the Roman level it is
quite possible to see remnants of masonry dating from the time
when Omri built extensively on this Acropolis. Nowhere in
Palestine have remains of Israelitish masonry been found com
parable to that in Samaria beautiful, long, squared stones,
walls occasionally ten feet thick, residences built in conformity
to the native rock-contours which were filled up to give each
room a level floor. Omri knew where to build and loved wide
prospects the glory of Samaria was the view over the Sa
maritan highlands to the sea but it was Ahab who made
the city a metropolis with a sophisticated population.

OmrTs son, Ahab, was one Israelite king who loved beauti
ful things. It was he who beautified Samaria with a lovely
" ivory house " for his infamous queen. The thorough ex
cavation which this site has undergone has revealed remnants
of these ivories which were used effectively in ninth-century
B, c. interior decoration. The famous ivories that I saw in the
Palestine Museum in Jerusalem were found by Crowfoot in

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 207

1933 near the recovered site of Ahab s palace above Omri s
palace on the Acropolis and give tangible proof of their real
ity. Most Bible students in reading of the " houses of ivory "
have thought it was a figure of speech referring perhaps to
the dazzling whiteness of the masonry or perhaps to whole
palaces and their furnishings of ivory. But that Ahab s palace
was decorated with panels of ivory let into the wainscoting of
the walls as friezes and that the furniture was decorated with
delicately carved ivory pieces, sometimes overlaid with gold
leaf, set into the framework like Damascus furniture is inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, is not an exaggeration. Although Sa
maria was destroyed in 722 B. c. after a three-year siege by
the Assyrians, by good fortune some ivories escaped destruc
tion and are sufficiently well preserved to reveal their beauty.

At what the guide called " JezebeFs Tower/* a magnificent
ruin of a round tower, I began to think of the princess from
Sidon who became the wife of Ahab. Jezebel was the most
colorful as well as the most unscrupulous queen who reigned
in Samaria. She encouraged its society to acquire a taste for
jewels, earrings, ivory inlays, lovely furniture, perfumes, fine
needlework, and wine, while at the same time among these
sophisticates she cleverly conducted a campaign for the gods
of Phoenicia. Not content with a shrine built in honor of
Baal at Samaria, she wanted to see Baal supreme in Israel.
Baal- worship swept like a flood over Samaria and in time the
foreign cult had transformed the Kingdom of Israel into
everything that was vile and impious.

Elijah was the first of the Hebrew prophets who came into
the northern kingdom to denounce Ahab s apostasy, to con
demn Israel s frivolity, waste, and exploitation, and to argue
for the purity of the Hebrew faith. This champion of Je
hovah-worship was followed by Elisha who brought to an end
the Omri-Ahab dynasty by sending a deputy to anoint Jehu
as the future king. It was against this background of wealth

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and splendor begun during Ahab s reign and encouraged by
later monarchs ivory houses, palaces of hewn stone, ivory
couches, wine, and revelry that Amos saw in sharp contrast
the conditions of the poor, who were trampled, set aside, and
exploited on all sides by the rich. During the reign of
Jeroboam II, the nation reached its peak of prosperity, but
Amos denounced its ease and luxury, argued for social right
eousness, attacked its paganism and idolatry, and called for a
return to true worship. It was Amos sermon on " justice "
that led Hosea some years later to begin preaching in Israel,
calling upon them to " return unto God, for the ways of the
Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them."

The Assyrian restoration of Samaria has been unearthed
over the remains of Jeroboam s city. Remains of a Greek
city were found over that. Then came the city which Herod
the Great built and which Jesus must have looked upon when
he used the route through Samaria from Jerusalem to Galilee.
These impressive ruins are still above ground for all to walk

among.

Samaria s Bible history ends with Herod, who built
here a temple to Augustus Caesar on the site of an early tem
ple to Baal. He not only fortified it but erected upon the
Acropolis a palace, a race course, and a magnificent " Street
of Columns."

I took the colonnaded street, which was the main thorough
fare to the west, until I reached the ancient city gate flanked
by two round towers high above the sudden drop of the
mountain to the green, flat plain below. At this gate the
lepers lay at the time when Ben-hadad, the Syrian, besieged
the town so long that famine stalked its streets and women ate
their children. From here they crept down into the enemy s
camp, found it empty, and returned again to tell the good
news that Ben-hadad s army had fled.

These columns are the most prominent objects today at Sa-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 209

maria. Some as I have indicated are still standing in their
original positions along the road. Many are built into walls
and houses of the Arab village of Sebastieh. A multitude lie
where they fell, broken, weathered, and half-covered with
earth among carved sarcophagi and heavy foundations of
long-vanished buildings.

Samaria today is a heap of broken stones, fallen pillars, and
crumbled masonry. The present village is built at the east
end of the hill on rubbish and of rubbish. The city of Omri
and Herod, for all its beautiful situation and surrounding fer
tility, has fallen from ruin to ruin, has become a desolate ruin,
"even as it was foretold by the prophet Micah.

" I will make Samaria as a heap of the field, and as places
for planting vineyards; and I will pour down the stones thereof
into the valley, and I will uncover the foundations thereof."
MIGAH i : 6 (American Standard Version) .

CHAPTER XV

Galilee s mountains, valleys, great plain, springs, and her sea
combine to help me realize why this region was " the place He
loved so much to be" I have lunch on Esdraelon in view of
Gilboa, Little Hermon, and Tabor, come into the noisy world of
Nazareth to find a well, a hilltop, and a carpenter shop. At
Cana, the beggars remind me of the mobs who crowded Jesus at
the wedding feast; the ec lilies of the field 3 growing on the
Horns of Hattin recall the Sermon on the Mount; my first
glimpse of Galilee reveals it as blue and beautiful as my dreams.
I go to Tabgha, watch fishermen, eat fe Peter s fish," and experi
ence a storm on Galilee. I stay with the nuns on the Mount of
Beatitudes, meet some Bedouin children who take me home to a
goat-hair tent. At Capernaum I see the excavated ruins of an
old synagogue, the site of Peter s house and read parables by the
sea. The Plain of Gennesaret is like a vast green garden. Mag-
data is only a wretched village.

ALILEE is a word which awakens in the mind of every
VJT Christian the most sacred and tender memories. At the
sound of the word memory kindles as does the earth in
spring until past days rise again for visioning. It calls up the
family and the early home of Jesus and the scenes of the
large part of his three years* active ministry. One remembers
Nazareth, the City of the Carpenter; Cana, the site of the
first miracle after Jesus baptism by John; Capernaum, "his
own city 95 ; Tiberias, which still remains from the days of
Herod Antipas whom Jesus called " that fox " ; and finally,
the quiet lake upon which the Master sailed, by which he
taught, and " did many mighty works."
Anyone who has been to the Holy Land, to Galilee, adds

210

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 211

more visions. Immediately he sees a sweet mother holding in
her arms a swaddled infant as she stands in the doorway of a
square, flat-roofed building of gleaming white stone; a car
penter shop such as Jesus knew; three camels trekking slowly
along the highway as did those earlier three who bore the Wise
Men from the East. He thinks again of dim bazaars and
highways where folk go sandal-shod or barefoot; of graceful
Nazareth daughters with their slim-necked water jars; of an
other Joseph leading a donkey who bears another Mary and
her child. He dreams of domes and towers glistening under
neath the Syrian sun; of lovely flowers, yea, " the lilies of the
field " in splendid crimson, nodding in the soft sweet breeze;
of olive trees which silver in the gathering darkness hour by
hour; of a tiny bay with water lapping gently gainst a shore
where on the slopes a multitude in vision sit among red, blue,
yellow, and white wild flowers unsurpassably lovely; of a vil
lage well and rendezvous. He seems to hear again the rip
pling laughter in a humble* home; the sound of tumbling
bells on camels and sheep; a lilting desert melody older than
time played by a minstrel Bedouin-boy.

Since a child, Galilee had loomed very large in my imagina
tion. Now, when I was actually on my way there, questions
filled my thought and kept me silent the nearer we drew to
the border. Would the centuries roll backward like a scroll
and would Jesus walk again in Galilee? Would its natural
beauty, its mountains, valleys, great plain, copious springs,
and the sea help one to realize why this was the place he
loved so much to be? Would there be anything left to re
mind one of when he dwelt here and its paths knew his feet
and the woods echoed to his voice? I would soon know.

II

From Dothan which was one of the ancient strongholds of
Samaria, I approached the mouth of the pass which leads

212 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

directly onto the Plain of Esdraelon. The little village which
guards it is Jenin, which never in all its history has been a
fortress because it was strong only in water. We hesitated
at Jenin, a frontier town separating Samaria from Galilee dur
ing New Testament times. It impresses one as not only a
boundary between two provinces but as marking the end of
an old order and the beginning of a new. Hitherto travelling
in Palestine I had been concerned chiefly as I journeyed with
memories of bloody battles, faithful heroes, and thunderous
prophets, stories from the Old Testament. From now on I
would pass rapidly from the beginnings of Israel to the be
ginnings of Christianity as found in the stories of the New
Testament. Here at Jenin tradition places the healing of the
ten lepers of whom only one returned to give thanks to Jesus.
From now on, the farther I travelled into Galilee the more I
would be concerned with the teachings and mighty works of
a new kind of prophet, " a son of peace," who was " anointed
to preach good tidings unto the meek . . . sent to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim
the acceptable year of the Lord ... to comfort all that
mourn," and who said: "My peace I leave with you, my
peace I give unto you . . ** Already the countryside looked
greener, the gardens more fruitful, and there were little springs
to make glad the land; it was in contrast to the harsh, stem
world of Judea to which I had become accustomed. Defi
nitely, I could feel the beginnings of the new order. Coming
now into the locale of the New Testament, I could begin to
feel the charm and the picturesqueness of Galilee taking pos
session of me.

The road ran on through a lovely, gently sloping valley
stretching like a smooth, green sea. Jezreel was to the east
and right of me, Megiddo to the west and left of me. Almost
immediately upon passing little Jenin there rise simultane-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 213

ously views ahead of Mount Gilboa and to the west that long
wooded range of Garmel.

I had persuaded a doctor and his wife whom I had met
first en route to Egypt and later again in Jerusalem, and who
had no plans for the Holy Land, to go to Galilee with me for
a few days. There was room enough for us all, including
Mark the chauffeur and Sabri the guide, in the touring car
I had hired.

Where this day flocks were grazing on the goodly pasture-
land, Sabri ordered Mark to stop the car and he began draw
ing forth lunch boxes. The doctor, his wife, and I alighted
and sought some stones in a flowery field not too far from the
motor road. It was a perfect picnic spot. Opening our lunch
consisting of Syrian loaves split to hold broiled mutton, quar
ters of ripe tomatoes, and cubes of onions, and gingerly
sampling a Nablus delicacy concocted from wheat flour,
goat s milk cheese, honey syrup, and almonds, we attempted
to satisfy the inner man. After honest efforts to appear satis
fied with Syrian delicacies, Sabri drew forth another package
which held ham sandwiches for these fussy Americans and to
top it all luscious Jaffa oranges.

Seated on the Plain of Esdraelon, we were enjoying our
lunch in view of Gilboa s range with once-royal Jezreel
near-by. Beyond Gilboa rose Little Hermon and nestling
there at her base was tiny Shunem. It is an unattractive
mud-hut village surrounded by hedges of prickly pear, yet
Shunem holds a charm for Bible students from its association
with the history of Elisha. From its position it was easy to
imagine the ride of the Shunammite woman across the plain
glowing under a summer sun which had stricken her son with
sunstroke in the. harvest field. The path from Garmel to the
Prophet s home " over Jordan " lies through Shunem. At
last I understood how natural it would be for this place to be
a halting-place at night for a pedestrian; and how the little

214 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

chamber built by a gracious, hospitable hostess and furnished
by her with a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick
was a welcome resting-place for this man of God as he passed
by. And farther north the rounded top of Mount Tabor
peeked from behind the shoulder of Little Hermon. Beyond,
bare of trees, steep and uninviting rose the Mount of Precipi
tation, so-called because of the tradition that it was to the
edge of this cliff that his infuriated townsmen brought Jesus
to cast him down. Toward the west and to the left we saw
the whole width of the great plain, Nazareth with its white
towers and domes, and then Carmel running its long ridge
for twelve miles down the south of the Esdraelon Plain to the
mountains of Samaria. Cities may be laid in ruins but moun
tains stand fast forever. I had never appreciated the truth
in that statement until this day when at a mere glance at
mountains rising from this plain nothing to call a " city "
anywhere in sight at a mere sweep of mountains, I could
hastily review more than fifteen hundred years of Israel s
history.

The Plain of Esdraelon cuts in two Palestine s central ridge
of mountains, the backbone of the country. Always it has
been a sort of land bridge over which the invading armies had
to march in endless wars between the Euphrates and the Nile.
Throughout history it has been renowned for the many bat
tles fought upon its soil; it has become a classic battleground.
It has been rendered so by virtue of its five entrances upon
an arena peculiarly fitted for fighting. These entrances led to
the empires either of the Euphrates or Nile valleys, to the
continents of Asia or Africa. The Pharaohs of Egypt, the
Hittites, Israelites, Philistines, Assyrians, Syrians, Romans,
Crusaders, Saracens, Turks, and finally in our day the British
have fought their battles here. That portion of the battle
field of Syria which is called the Plain of Megiddo has been
adopted as the setting for the allegorical and final battle of

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mankind, waged between the powers of good and evil, as the
Armageddon of the Book of Revelation. But it has also been
the land bridge for those who did the business of the world
because numberless caravans from Tyre and Sidon to Ca
pernaum, from Gilead to Joppa, from Egypt to Assyria, from
Jerusalem to Damascus passed across Esdraelon.

Famed as battleground, famed as bridge between two con
tinents, it is famous, too, as the richest valley of all Palestine.
The fertile plain is watered by the River Kishon which win
ter floods turn into a torrent, and which overflows all the sur
rounding country. The Vale of Jezreel as the eastern end of
the plain is called has been cultivated since the time of
Abraham and quite possibly, scholars now tell us, long before
his migration into Canaan in 2000 B. c. In subsequent visits,
I have been struck by the large tracts of fertile plain which
have been bought up by Jewish colonists. The landscape is
not dotted with a farmhouse here or a farmhouse there but
with groups of dwellings where Jewish farmers live mostly a
communal life. The Bedouin tents which for centuries have
been scattered across it are now crowded together in an
ever-decreasing number under the shadow of Carmel. Across
Esdraelon by motor car to Haifa I have been struck by this
land, touched by a new era, coming to birth, as Jewish colo
nists are working fervently to establish themselves in what
they are pleased to call " the homeland."

It was while sitting here that I felt vividly again the pres
ence of the prophet Elijah. On the skyline was the hill that
held Naboth s vineyard, coveted by greedy Ahab. And that
ridge of Carmel was a reminder of the contest of fire and
water between the priests of Baal and the Prophet from
Gilead, which resulted in the vindication of Jehovah s omnip
otence.

From Gilboa and this plain, Gideon drove the invading
Midianites toward Jordan. To Gilboa Saul led his army.

2i6 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Then disguised, he left his army and hurried at midnight to
the hills farther north, near Little Hermon, to consult the
witch of Endor only to return before daybreak more heavy in
heart, more thoroughly frightened, and more weary of body
than before. The next day he saw his armies scattered and
his three sons killed. Realizing the future held nothing for
him but torture at the hands of the Philistines, Saul died by
his own hand there on the heights. Gazing at the rugged
ridges, I heard myself repeating David s lament over the
death of Saul and his beloved friend Jonathan.

t

"Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let
there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the
shield of the mighty is vilely cast away." II SAMUEL 1:21.

Mount Tabor was a commanding sight as it rises isolated
from the lower Galilean hills, striking in appearance because
of its domelike form and its thickly wooded slopes. Its sum
mit forms a plateau and it was there Deborah and Barak
rallied their forces before they dashed down the precipitous
sides to overwhelm the forces of Sisera gathered on the plain.
The Crusaders fought here and they left a church of which
today only the ruins remain. Saladin captured Tabor. In
its shadow Napoleon drew up his invading French army
against the Turks. There is an excellent motor road to the
summit, a steep, serpentine road nineteen hairpin curves
which leads to a beautiful new Franciscan church. It is the
view from here which makes a visit to Tabor memorable
the whole range of Palestine, from Judea to Hermon, and
from Gilead to the Mediterranean.

Ill

Past the steep ridge of the Mount of Precipitation we came
into the noisy world of Nazareth, hemmed in by hills on
all sides, " enclosed by mountains like a flower is by leaves/ 9

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 217

with little moist green valleys running into it on both sides
and in front of the town which is spread loosely over a con
siderable area. I should call Nazareth a pretty town, remem
bering it as I saw it that first time. It lay serenely in the sun,
clinging halfway up the hill-slopes as if it had not the courage
to complete the climb. It was a glistening town of white
walls, red roofs, iron balconies, towers and crosses, and gar
dens, encircled by fertile hills green with fresh grass em
broidered with opening spring blossoms.

The holy places of Nazareth are as diverse and numerous
as the sects represented here. There is the Church of the
Annunciation over the alleged site of Mary s house, and the
Church of St. Joseph, built over the supposed site of the
house of the Holy Family. But these are all uncertain me
morials and as usual in the Holy Land are inclosed in chapels
lit by lamps and encircled by ceremonial. These shut-in
shrines at Nazareth have been less significant for me than
what I found in the open, among the streets, and on the sur
rounding hillsides.

I wanted to see three things: the village well, now called
Virgin s Fountain, the hilltop behind the town to which
Jesus must have come often, and a carpenter shop.

The fountain is still here and there is little doubt that from
time immemorial the women of Nazareth have come to it be
cause it is the only well in the town. From sunrise until long
after sunset the maidens and mothers of this Christian Gali
lean town still come with great slim-necked earthen pitchers
or more frequently today with emptied gasoline tins poised
upon their shapely heads to fetch water. Even so must the
mother of Jesus have come daily to this fountain in the
brightness of dawn or the shadows of twilight, perhaps many
a time with a little fellow trudging behind her, or clasping her
hand or the fold of her bright-colored garment, or when the
boy was very young carrying him on her shoulder with his

2i8 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

sturdy little legs wound around her neck as the women carry
their children today. Here at the village rendezvous while
she waited to draw water, Mary heard the village gossip as
many women before and since her day in Nazareth.

No spot is more sacred to the Christian heart than the hill
behind Nazareth. For nearly thirty years Jesus lived within
sight of it. He must have come here often as a boy to lie in
the tall grasses, to fill his hands with lovely wild flowers,
crimson anemones and purple cyclamen, scarlet pimpernel,
golden daisies, such as were all about this April dawn when I
climbed the hill. It was so easy after that to understand
Jesus 3 love for the flowers, the grass, and the birds because it
must have been here that it came home to him first that God
cared for all of them. He must have come often as a youth
at the end of a long day s work in a carpenter shop to rest
while enjoying the coolness of the evening breeze, and to
" find the blessing of wide and tranquil thought " while look
ing upon the far-flung landscape which evoked and kept alive
memories of his people s experience with God.

And what a view ! It is one we can be sure has not altered
greatly since Jesus walked this hill. Anyone with the time
and inclination to walk here will look for long hours with
quickening thoughts of one who spent his childhood and
youth here. Cypress trees stood like pointed pencils against
Christian hospitals and orphanages; round olive trees re
minded me that always oil has been the wealth of Palestine;
and everywhere were hedges of cactus brilliant with red and
yellow blossoms. Northward I saw the snowy mantle of
Hermon from which " the dew . . . cometh down upon the
mountains of Zion." Following eastward the view took in
Sepphoris, now a ruin, but plainly discernible, deserving as
well as any town in Palestine to be called " a city set on a
hill," and the long bulwarks of the mountains of Gilead, and
the Jordan Valley. A cluster of low mountains, huddled to-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 219

gether like frightened sheep between Jordan and the plain,-
were : Tabor, Little Hermon with tiny Nain a speck of white
at its base, and Gilboa. The whole sweep of Esdraelon lay
beneath my eyes. Carmers range was in plain view across
the plain and my eyes travelled southward over it far down
among the brown hills of Samaria, dim in the haze that began
to gather shortly after sun-up. Westward Carmel throws its
green promontory out into the Mediterranean and over it I
saw the sheen of the blue sea and northward again the curved
tawny beach at Acre, I had never in all my travels seen any
thing as breath-takingly beautiful. My eyes swept the pano
rama of beauty so rich in historical suggestions and I thought
never again would I find its parallel. I was startled from my
reveries as I saw a caravan emerge from across the plain.
Glancing about I seemed to see among all this natural beauty
of the Master s world, as if for the first time, white roads
stretching endlessly in all directions. As of old their message
was:

"... One and all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go;
And one and all go night and day
Over the hills and far away! "

It was a familiar sight to Jesus from his hillcrest at Pal
estine s crossroad, Nazareth, to see merchants and pilgrims in
their caravans moving back and forth across the plain; they
emerged northward from the mountains of Samaria or headed
southward toward Jerusalem; they swung over the pass at
Megiddo from the Plain of Sharon, or crept up from the
Jordan Valley; and they came down over the hills from Da
mascus. Jesus must have watched with eager eyes from here
the caravans weaving in and out and dreamt of the lands they
came from and the goals they sought. It was easy now to
understand Jesus inspiration for many of the parables. The

22O Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

" open road " figures in much of his teaching. Someone is
always going somewhere. The prodigal son goes to a far
country; a traveller falls among thieves; friends on a journey
arrive unexpectedly and require hospitality; a nobleman
journeys widely and returns home again.

Slowly I began to retrace my steps to the Austrian Hospice
for breakfast. My glance kept singling out the road over the
hills from Nazareth to the lake, the one Jesus used to follow
to go to Capernaum, which is lost finally from view as it is
swallowed by hills. In a few hours our car would be swing
ing out of Nazareth bound for " his own city," over the same
highway. Deeply stirred this morning of which I am telling
you by a new consciousness of companioning with Jesus, I
found myself repeating:

<c Up the road to Galilee, Master,
It is good to be
Walking as of old with Thee."

Nazareth has a " Main Street," which is broad in that por
tion which lies in the valley, but it narrows as it reaches the
hills where it divides into several streets. These climb in
different directions to more distant heights. Bordering the
main street are the many small shops without doors or win
dows where native artisans ply their primitive trades. A cop
persmith sat near-by his door beating out rough copper plates
and pans; shoemakers and cobblers were busy with sandals;
others sharpening knives, sickles, and plowshares. In some
men were making crude knives, long bladed shears, brass
camel and sheep bells. Men loitered in these streets of Naz
areth as they do throughout the Near East in rickety wooden
booths that serve as coffee houses, drinking coffee and smoking
" hubble-bubble " pipes which they rent from the proprietors.
Modern Nazarenes are dressed much as Jesus must have been

v

Photographed by Harriet-Louise

Patterson

Nazareth has a "Main Street" with many small shops
without doors and windows where native artisans ply their
primitive trades. A coppersmith sits near-by his door beating
out rough copper plates and pans. Modern Nazarenes wear
the "kumyeh" (turban), easy garments, sandals of leather,
and occasionally an Occidental coat is added to the costume.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 221

with a turban covering the long hair, wearing a beard, flowing
easy garments, and sandals of leather or wood on the feet. If
an Occidental coat has been adopted, quite often it is seen
thrown across the shoulders and the sleeves dangle empty.

I wanted very much to see a carpenter shop but I hesi
tated asking lest there be no workshop in Nazareth like the
carpenter Joseph s where he taught Jesus an honest trade. It
was on a side street of the bazaar that I found a shop where
a carpenter was making plows which have not changed their
shape in ages. It was easy for any passer-by to pause and
watch this workman at his task in a small room more like a
dark, rectangular cave. The simple tools used by this pres
ent-day carpenter are quite the same as those used by Joseph
and the boy Jesus when he learned and plied the carpenter s
trade: a hammer, a chisel, a saw, and a plane. He worked
seated some of the time, holding the wood down with his
bared feet when he used the band saw. Much of the work is
the manufacture of implements for use in tilling the soil as it
was in Jesus day: handles for hoes, crude plows, and yokes
for oxen. The methods of making plows and yokes remain as
in the first century. In Arab-owned fields the one-handled
plow is seen scratching a thin line through the rocky soil in
contrast to the modern tractors drawing a dozen plowshares
used by farmers in prosperous Zionist colonies near-by.
Watching the fellah with the goad in one hand and one
hand on the plow, it was easy for me to understand why
Jesus used the singular when he said, " having put his hand
to the plow. 3

Our days in Nazareth were ended. It was time to leave our
haven of peace, this pleasant hospice which had given us the
moment of silence needed by every visitor to Palestine. Out
from a flower-lined driveway of scarlet tulips, purple gladioli,
blue iris, orange crowfoot, past orchards of olive trees, hedges
of cactus, fields of barley and wheat, we sped. The wheels

222 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

of the motor car repeated the words: Up the road to Galilee.
Up the road to Galilee.

IV

When Jesus left Nazareth, the home of his youth, to begin
his public ministry, he chose to center it largely around an
inland lake, which names this whole region Galilee. He was
drawn time and again as if by some irresistible impulse and
attraction to the blue lake, from the first time that he saw it
as he came over the hills from Nazareth until he appeared to
those nearest and dearest to him following the resurrection.
Galilee held the happiest, the most precious hours of his life.
One has only to read the Gospels to realize how large a place
in his heart this region claimed. From its shores as they
mended their nets, Jesus called his first disciples. From a
near-by hill he gave to mankind the Magna Charta of the
Kingdom of Heaven in the Sermon on the Mount. By its
shores he performed many miracles of healing and spoke his
parables. Jesus spent his time along its open roads, out under
its blue sky, amid the sights and sounds of these Galilean high
lands, drawing from the common life about him for the illus
trations and images of his teaching. The Teacher made his
home its principal city, Capernaum, and from there radiated
his evangelistic journeys. He spent many a day here while
people followed him pointing to a reaper gathering the grain
and angered by the tares, or to a sower in a near-by field sow
ing broadcast the seed, or to a net that fishermen were throw
ing into the waters. At night, wearied by the crowds that
thronged him, he retired to the seclusion of its near-by hills
for meditation and prayer which was so vital in the great ex
periences of his life. Some of the landmarks have long since
vanished, but the hills, lights, sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, and
eager hearts are the same here year after year. These are the
things that Jesus looked upon and loved in Galilee.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 223

V

Jesus approached the Sea of Galilee by way of the "Via
Maris." The road wound its way through fertile green val
leys, gently sloping hills, and tumbled rocks into Cana, just as
it does today. It was here that the first miracle of his min
istry occurred the turning of the water into wine at the mar
riage feast to which he, his mother, brothers, and sisters were
invited. Pilgrims stop at Cana now to taste the water flowing
from a spring where tradition says the water was drawn to be
turned into wine nineteen hundred years ago.

Christians come to Cana to be reminded of Jesus and his
mighty works and they go away annoyed by the dirty, almost
naked, sore-eyed, scabby-handed beggars who attack tourists,
offering them postcards and souvenirs beads, earthen jars,
and bits of lace. The little village is completely spoiled
for many Christians by these howling wretches screaming,
" Baksheesh " and pulling at one s clothing. And yet, it was
mobs like this that pestered and crowded Jesus; these were
the ones he wanted to preach to. These were the ones he
fed. It was their blindness and lameness that he took away;
their leprous sores he healed; their anxiety about the morrow
and its need he relieved. Wretched people like these living at
Cana today had been his care. I have met people who felt
contaminated by the mob at Cana and who were relieved
when their motor cars left the little town far behind. I have
felt that in their religious experience they have left behind
them these words of Jesus; perhaps they have never heard
them in their hearts as Jesus meant them to be heard by his
followers.

" When I was hungry, you gave me food, when I was thirsty
you gave me something to drink, when I was a stranger, you in
vited me to your homes, when I had no clothes, you gave me
clothes, when I was sick, you looked after me, when I was in

224 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

prison, you came to see me. I tell you, in so far as you did it to
one of the humblest of these brothers of mine, you did it to
me." MATTHEW 25: 35, 36, 40 (The New Testament, An
American Translation, Goodspeed) .

From Cana the road bent, and it bends now, around and
past the village where a miracle occurred. Then it plunged
and it plunges now into the hills which were once the volcanic
zone of the Jordan Valley. A grand panorama unfolded, just
as it does now to the traveller in Galilee, as the road across the
Plain of Hattin is followed.

On the left of the roadway is an elongated hill, whose shape
resembles a saddle; the rising at each end suggests horns;
hence they give it its name Horns of Hattin. It is more fa
miliarly known as the Mountain of the Beatitudes.

On that far-off day in spring when Jesus chose to go up on
one of these summits and from there speak to an assembled
multitude, the sides of the slopes lay under a blanket of wild
flowers. They covered the slopes this April day growing in
all their beauty and riot of color as when Jesus saw and loved
them. There were purple cyclamen, pheasant s eye, blue iris,
pink flax, red anemones, and countless other yellow, blue,
and pale blue flowers whose names I did not know. Jesus was
conscious of his surroundings, sensitive to the lessons which
they might teach simple folk who followed him from " Gali
lee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond Jordan." In the
Sermon on the Mount, he drew from the " lilies of the field,"
which in spring are nowhere lovelier than in Galilee, the les
son of God s beneficence.

VI

About eight minutes in a motor car from the Horns of Hat-
tin comes the first glimpse of the sea. " One . . . two . . .
three . . . seven, eight," counted Sabri slowly and all at

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 225

once there lying before me was the Lake of Galilee, as blue
and beautiful as my dreams. The country through which we
had been travelling lately was a spring symphony of green and
gold checkerboard, rich in fertility, with fields of grain, grass,
thyme, and flower-carpeted fields stretching out over these
two broad moors. The brown limestone land whose rocks
give the aspect of bands of gold fell to a line of cliffs overlook
ing the sweet, cool, blue lake. A rocky gorge, broken by
dykes of basalt, strewn with lava and pumice stone separated
the moors and it held our road from over the hills of Galilee
to the sea. The whole was a luscious mosaic of green fields,
brown earth, golden rocks, blue water magically reflecting
the heavens, with the white head of Hermon shining in the
sunlight.

Jesus that first time saw a strip of bright blue, as blue as
any Mediterranean sky, perhaps a fleet of sails where now I
saw only one or two faintly ruffling the surface of the placid
water. He saw a woods filled with walnut, olive, sycamore,
and sumac trees where now there were no trees; veritable
bowers of flowers and gardens where this day there were only
marshes except for one or two places along the western shore,
at Tabgha, at Tell Hum, and along the Plain of Gennesaret.
Jesus sighted that first time nine or ten prosperous, populous
cities and towns of consequence. We saw but one of these,
Tiberias, within whose limits there is no record Jesus ever tar
ried and very little likelihood that he ever walked. Beautiful
and exquisite as the first glimpse of this little, pear-shaped
body of water must have been in his day, I felt it was still so
in spite of apparent barrenness and the lack of the physical
presence of the " Stranger of Galilee," as I looked long at it.
It is quite impossible to see it and not feel in spirit the pres
ence of this man who brought peace to its shores. Peace, his
peace, still dwells by its dreamy shores and quiet waters. I
began to think of Jesus then

226 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

" Not as crucified and slain,
Not in agonies of pain,
Not with bleeding hands or feet,
But as in the village street,
In the house or harvest field,
When He walked in Galilee."

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

From this point where the lake is seen first, the road
doubles back and forth down through the hills, steadily down
ward, through some sterile, bare country, through heat until
at the very end it emerges upon palms, greenness, and cool,
blue sea.

Mountains rise all about the Sea of Galilee. On the west
ern shore in April, May, and June they are green mountains;
on the eastern shore they are dreary,, brown precipices of the
desert; on the north there is that magnificent ridge of Hermon
covered always with snow even in the extreme heat of mid
summer. A little inland lake, only twelve or fourteen miles
long and seven across at the broadest point, set in a sub-tropi
cal climate since it lies seven hundred feet below sea level, and
yet her mountains rear their heads in a temperate climate
where even snow is not unknown.

Parts of its shore are covered with white sea shells and these
contrive in the brilliant Syrian sun to give it a sparkling look.
There seems to be no sand to speak of and only a few places
where large basalt rocks are to be found. One can reach
down and gather easily handful after handful of exquisite,
tiny, pointed shells. Arab children run along the motor road
from Tiberias to Tell Hum offering to tourists for a piastre
(five cents) strands of almost perfectly matched shells which
they have gathered from Galilee s shore. Some strands are
white, others have been dyed purple, yellow, pink, and green.

There are two delightful places to stay overnight when one
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Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 227
the site of the ancient Bethsaida, on the very shore of Galilee.
Here jolly Father Tapper, who was in charge of the hostel
and the missionary work among the Arabs, used to wel
come guests. The other is the Italian Hospice run by the
Franciscan nuns on the Mountain of the Beatitudes, overlook
ing the beauty and peace of Galilee and Capernaum, They
are of all the lovely places in the world in which to rest, medi
tate, and feel again the joy of living, the two most charming
and to me the most romantic.

Off the beaten track of tourists, Tabgha is a place of
transcendent beauty. It is set within a grove of banana,
pomegranate, orange, and fig trees. Its seaside path, musical
with the cool sound of running water, is sheltered by huge
eucalyptus trees which form a woods following along the lake
side. Its gardens overflow with palm trees, flowering ge
raniums, and purple bougainvillea which flings itself over the
red-roofed white buildings. Turtles sleep by the edge of
pools, little snakes writhe through the silvery water, unmo
lested birds trill their songs of joy. While revelling in the
glory of this sanctuary, it is possible to dream of the luxuriant
beauty of the western shore as Jesus knew it. In the hospice s
garden Father Tapper s soft voice broke the idyllic spell only
momentarily as he offered a refreshing cup of steaming tea.

Tabgha means " seven springs." Warm springs of water
run into the lake and the fish come here and lie in the warm
water. This is the only place around the shores of Galilee
where men wade in to fish. They may still be seen in the
early morning throwing the hand-net, which is like a para
chute with tiny weights around the circumference. As they
throw, the net opens out, then, as it sinks, the weights fall to
gether at the bottom and enclose the fish in the area covered
by the net. It may have been here that Jesus, standing above
the water on the lakeside, saw from the shore a sudden shoal
of fish and instructed his disciples " to cast your net on the

228 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

right side of the boat and ye shall find." From his vantage
point a sudden shoal of fish was visible to him while not visible
to the fishermen. This account is all the more impressive to
one who has visited Galilee.

I ate fish one noon at lunch. When I inquired what kind it
was, I was answered, " It is St. Peter s fish." Further -ques
tions brought forth the information that this was the fish to
which Jesus referred when, in controversy about the Temple
tax, he said:

c< Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish
that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth,
thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them
for me and thee." MATTHEW 17: 27.

The musht is a curious large-mouthed variety of fish, pecu
liar to Galilee.

Anyone visiting Galilee can watch Arab fishermen catching
musht in the same manner that Peter, Andrew, and John
caught it for the Master with a drag-net. Having caught
the fish, they find a protected spot along the lake, make a fire
of coals, cook it, and serve it on a loaf. To have this experi
ence is for any Christian to be reminded of a joyful morning
meal partaken of by Jesus and his disciples by the shores of
the Galilean Sea immediately following the resurrection.

Late one afternoon during another visit to Galilee some
friends and I took a fishing boat from Tabgha to spend an
hour on the sea. As we left the sliore the sea was calm, more
like a piece of exquisite blue glass. With the shore receding
and to the accompaniment of the creaking oars and the light
splash of water, I read aloud to my companions gospel stories
of Jesus and his mighty works done hereabouts while a native
son pointed out historic locations of these events which were
within our line of vision. In the bosom of the lake, it sud
denly became tumultuous. Our guide broke into the reverie

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 229

of the quiet hour by suggesting that we must return to the
shore lest these choppy waves bring us disaster.

Storms on Galilee are not unknown. Coming without a
word of warning, they are terrifying occurrences for the na
tives, many of whom have perished in its waters. The winds
from the north sweep the inland body of water, stirring it to
its very depths; the waves may break as high as thirty feet.
But as suddenly as these storms arise as suddenly do they
subside, leaving sometimes in their wake an appalling toll of
human life.

As our boat, a heavy, clumsy affair, similar to the type used
by the disciples in the first century, turned in the now turbu
lent sea, we heard a distant shout. Looking in the direction
from whence it had come, we saw two heads bobbing above
the water s surface. Putting back out to see what was wanted
and drawing near to them, one of two Jewish boys shouted
that they were exhausted from their unsuccessful struggles to
regain shore because of the undertow. Would we take them
to safety, lest they perish, they beseechingly inquired. The
request had a strangely reminiscent note of an earlier occa
sion when the disciples sought Jesus on this storm-tossed lake
and said, " Master, carest thou not that we perish? "

" Gladly," we replied, shifting our positions to accommo
date our fellow men.

"La" (No), shouted the Arab boatman. "They are
JEWS ! " And he ordered the boat to shore. We had not
reckoned with Arab- Jewish animosity.

As we turned about, I saw one boy s head disappear in the
shifting, lifting water. His face was void of hope and color as
it sank out of sight.

Expostulations, relayed through the guide, acting as in
terpreter between American and Arab, availed nothing.
Heedlessly, this man superintended the return to shore.

In this moment of extremity, anxious for our fellow men

230 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

who were being left behind, I said to my companions, " Let
us pray."

There was a moment of quiet and calm among us Chris
tians, who sat huddled in a heaving boat in an atmosphere of
mingled physical fear, race and religious hatred. We felt the
sudden lurch as the boatman checked his course in the angry
waves and we finally came alongside the boys, one holding the
other up. Without a word they were helped into our tossing,
heavy boat by the Arabs. One youth was placed upon the
floor utterly spent from his efforts in the treacherous sea.
Somehow it seemed as if this moment was the " silence of eter
nity, interpreted by love. 35

I picked up the Bible, turned to the Gospel of Mark, Chap
ter 4, verses 35-41, and read aloud the record of the stilling of
another tempest, physical, mental, and moral, in the first cen
tury when in a correct understanding of the situation in
volved, the Master is reported to have said, " Peace, be still."
By his own calm and command, by his own assurance that
" all is well with thee," and by speaking aloud to the troubled,
anxious hearts, the disciples 3 fear was calmed and the sea be
came peaceful. Absorbed as we all became in Mark s ac
count of the incident, the re-reading of the gospel story did
the same for all of us.

Upon regaining the bathing-place at Tabgha, the angry
sea had become as calm again as a piece of dark blue glass.
On the lake all was peace. The sun had disappeared be
hind dark purple hills. Night s silences stole round us,
fraught with memories of Christ " walking upon the water."

" Shallom" (Peace), bid the Jews as they scrambled from
the boat. They waded in to shore. We heard their feet
crunch over the beach and they disappeared into misty
shadows.

" Assallam " (Peace), answered the Moslem Arabs with no
seeming hesitancy.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 231

" Good-bye/ echoed four Christian women.

In the space of an evening hour, we had witnessed a tem
pest which was physical, racial,, and religious on Galilee.
Fear, hatred, and intolerance had been dispelled by the
miracle of prayer. I have wondered since: is it any less a
miracle because Christ appears or is manifested in ordinary
events and processes more than once? I remember Christ
Jesus said, " I go away, and come again to you. 33 Somehow
this experience has not detracted from Jesus mighty works
nor belittled his power, but it has been a sign of Immanuel,
that is, " God with us/ ever-present and repeating itself in
every generation.

And let me add as a sort of postscript that during the re
mainder of my stay in the Holy Land that year I never again
had any occasion to observe instances of racial or religious
animosity among its peoples. I travelled freely through the
country, I crossed " over Jordan," I visited the black " tents
of Kedar," I went to the Wailing Wall; it became for me that
year a truly Holy Land.

VII

From one of the high, covered balconies at the Italian
Hospice on the Mountain of the Beatitudes I have watched
sun-up on Galilee. Stealing out from my little white bedroom
onto the veranda, I have waited for that moment when the
first faint shafts of light quiver behind the barren precipices
of Gadara s eastern hills, when the sky suddenly becomes a
cloth of many colors, when pinkish lights burst into a flame of
golden glory, and when the sea which has been lying cool and
grey in the morning light swiftly turns blue and warm.

But if sun-up is an experience of delight, then indeed how
full of mystery is the night on Galilee its sky, its stars, its
moon, its foliage, its placid sea, as though planned to lull tired
bodies and wearied hearts to peaceful sleep. The day has its

232 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

turmoil and strife but night on Galilee has its ebb of silence
and rest.

The shadowy, sheltered Italian Hospice was quite still.
There was no sound anywhere. Even the thin, cool leaves of
the eucalyptus trees were not stirring and the birds were si
lent. The sunlight that filtered between the tree-trunks drew
a curving pattern of light on the flower beds. Where Galilee
wound its zigzag course, the ripples were touched to sparkling
jewels, but the music of the trickling water was swallowed up
in the vast tranquillity, the heat, and the distance. Far down
below red-roofed Capernaum drowsed among her eucalyptus
trees.

Along the road came the evening procession. It moved
against a dreamlike background of the Trans- Jordania moun
tains, slashed with great gorges now filling with purpling
shadows as the sun sank farther behind the western hills,
against a tawny sky, and a lake turning from rose to ame
thyst, then smoky blue, then grey. Their work in ripe wheat
fields ended, these fellaheen strode back now to lighted camp-
fires in an open field where the tents of a Bedouin tribe had
squatted. The children scuffed along among their elders. A
file of camels moved slowly, laden with swaying tools. A
small fellah, lazily leading his flock of sheep, went along
playing a little tune on a reed pipe. One of the German friars
at Capernaum came up across the cleared fields. He was on
his way to conduct vespers for the nuns who live at the
hospice.

A slight breeze sprang up. The night was dropping darkly
over the mountains of Gilead. The breeze was sweeping up
in strong, cool gusts. The road lay deserted. The sunlight
became tarnished, then vanished altogether. The garden be
came a murky chasm as the pale light from the half-open
shutters came out in luminous bands.

Waiting in the garden, I saw night settle down swiftly, as

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 233

it does in all warm places, smothering the sunset and the brief
dusk into warm tropical blackness, coming quietly and peace
fully. Stars pricked out, one by one; lights came on down at
Capernaum and in the distant city of Tiberias; pinpricks
of brightness in the enveloping darkness* Human voices
harsh, hoarse, and guttural rose and fell. Somewhere a
radio broke out into an Arabic love song, drowning the silken
swish of palm fronds and the whispers of tall trees. The
clang of ambling camel and sheep bells grew more distant and
hesitant.

The darkness of trees which stretched their branches over
the fragrant garden seemed to dwarf everything but the white
building that rose behind them. As the evening wore on the
mountains across the lake seemed to. be beginning another
day. There was a faint sheen and then a huge tawny moon
lifted herself above the eastern mountains. Rising higher and
higher she turned a pure gold and sent a golden pathway
across Galilee. It seemed like, a rich fine carpet for royal tread.
Here and there she found a chink in the foliage and laid a
>coin of light on the ground. On the lake was peace. The
zing of insects whirred in the air. The birds grew restless and
began to rustle in the shaggy bushes. in which they had
sought shelter for this night. Suddenly frightened they swept
like phantoms across the garden; eerie cries drifted back on
the breeze. Night had come again to Galilee.

I sat here awed and enchanted by the magic of the night.
I felt so near to the Master that if, in this recurring miracle
of night on Galilee, he had come from out the moonlight and
the misty shadows, it would not have seemed surprising nor
alarming. Looking beyond the moonlit waters to the moun
tains of Gilead, which in the nighttime looks like a terrifying
barrier, I began to think upon that wild, lonely, eerie country
of the Gergesenes and of Jesus visit there one night.

After a busy day he was seeking rest and solitude. He

234 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

left the thickly populated western shore of the lake and sailed
toward a gorge which is due east of Tiberias. On their way a
storm arose which greatly alarmed the disciples, causing them
to appeal to their Master. Jesus rose from the stern of the
boat where he had fallen asleep in sheer weariness and said,
" Peace,, be still." Suddenly both the waters and the disciples 5
fears were hushed. When they landed, night had fallen. The
disciples, calmed somewhat after their terrifying experience
with the tempest on Galilee, followed Jesus up the gorge
through darkness. They heard a scream, the wild clanking of
a chain, and saw a man come leaping through the blackness
to hurl himself at his feet. Jesus met this hideous figure, vir
tually naked, dirty, scarred, and bloody from recent gashes,
with the same calm he had shown scarcely an hour earlier.
But this time he healed a demoniac.

Again the end of this story is full of peace. " They . . .
behold him, that was possessed with devils sitting, clothed and
in his right mind."

Jesus crossed the lake to spend the night in peace but he
spent it instead with a madman named Legion in a place of
tombs where ghosts were believed to dwell and wild beasts
to lurk. The Gergesene restored to sanity wanted to join
Jesus* company. It was but a natural expression of his grati
tude, but Jesus told him to go home and give his friends the
story of what God had done. The man went his way, says
Mark, and went to ten cities, telling them the marvelous
news.

VIII

I walked down from the Italian Hospice across a cleared
wheat field to the lakeside and spent a morning with Bedouin
children. We all sat in a bower of oleander bushes whose
dark green leaves and bright pink blossoms contrasted sharply
with black basalt rock, wisps of yellow straw, and silvery

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 235

water lapping near-by our bare feet. One of the boys piped
on a shepherd s flute while I tapped on some typewriter keys.

The East met the West. For hours in this bower we
charmed one another with our smiles. Later I trudged with
them to their home a black goat-hair tent pitched between
the wheat fields ripe for harvest ia May and a patch of cu
cumber vines. To judge from the size of the pan of cucum
bers within the tent it had been the field of vines punctuated
with yellow blossoms which had been the deciding factor in
the selection of this home-site. As Abraham welcomed his
guests at the tent-door in 2000 B. c. so did the humble Gali
lean father welcome me as he said, "Assallam aleitkum"
(Peace be with thee), and then he passed the common cup of
bitter coffee.

These are simple people who live on Galilee today. One
of the thrills of late afternoon was to turn the dial of our
radio for a program of fine Arabic music and then stop the
motor of our car on the hillsides of Galilee. As the strains of
the rugged,, passionate love songs floated through the air, the
Bedouin would appear from behind rocks, tumble off donkeys,
speed through the fields to crowd about the car. And the
wonder of it all ... the desert music, the Arabic songs they
all love, seeming to come from nowhere. There would be a
momentary look of incredulity, then a smile would spread
over the bronzed faces, and finally there would come the mo
ment when they would all burst into clapping and swaying
with the strains of the Oriental music. The invention of the
West, a Philco radio, we saw capture the hearts of the chil
dren of the East, the children of the desert, the Bedouin.

At home in America, while re-reading the Gospels, I have
remembered this and it has struck me that the Galileans must
have come to Jesus in exactly the same unconventional man
ner when " the report of him went out everywhere into all the
region of Galilee round about." And they gathered round

236 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the Master as incredulous and astonished as these folk, who
were hearing a radio for the first time, when he first told them
" the good news/ 3 healed their sick, reformed their sinners, and
raised their dead. And, " pressing upon him and hearing the
word of God," they accepted the " glad tidings of great joy "
with the same smiling, bronzed faces and eager hearts as these
present-day Galileans who were captivated by the music
picked up out of the air.

IX

Staying either at Tabgha or on the Mount of Beatitudes,
visitors to Galilee are fortunate to be in the vicinity of the
chief events of Jesus ministry. I was impressed here, as I
had not been at home by my study of maps and reading of
the Gospels, by the close proximity of these towns and villages
where he tarried and by how often from either the lakeside
or from some elevation he could survey the scenes of his
labors.

It is only twenty miles from Nazareth to Capernaum. I
have taken a boat at Tabgha and been at Capernaum s de
serted landing-place in less than an hour. I have motored
along the shore from Tabgha, passed the new little Church of
the Loaves and Fishes at Bethsaida, sheltering those rare mo
saics of an early Christian church commemorating where the
feeding of five thousand took place, and on to Capernaum in
less than ten minutes. I have walked down from the Mount
of Beatitudes across the cleared fields, picking my way among
the weeds and a lively crop of thistles, thorns, and briers, and
been at the entrance to the garden at Tell Hum (Caper
naum) within an hour. The distance between these towns
Jesus knew is almost negligible.

It was along the shores of Galilee that Jesus carried on the
larger part of his healing ministry, but it was at Capernaum
that he performed his mightiest works. In a real sense he

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 237

made it " his own city." There is no place in all Palestine
more closely associated with Jesus than Capernaum.

Here he healed the centurion s servant, the nobleman s son,
the paralytic boy who was let down through the roof, Peter s
wife s mother, and the man with the withered hand. An
other time he healed a dumb demoniac, two blind men;
again, a woman with a hemorrhage. Finally, he raised
Jairus 3 daughter from the dead. Here Jesus was the happiest
of his whole life because here he was loved, appreciated, and
thronged as he never had been in Nazareth where he had to
face the hostility of people with whom he had grown up.

Once it was a busy thriving town of fifteen thousand inhab
itants. Tourists from Mesopotamia and Egypt, Bedouin from
the desert, Jews from all the world, the Roman garrison, the
fish markets, the lively and constant traffic between cities on
different sides of the lake, and the synagogue made it the
focus of life and energy along the Sea of Galilee. It was an
opulent, cosmopolitan, noisy city with all the social problems
of a city wealth over poverty, prostitution, distinctions be
tween social classes, arrogant luxury. Capernaum now has
vanished, all except the ruins of the synagogue. Desolate and
deserted, one cannot but remember Jesus words, " And thou,
Capernaum, shalt thou be exalted to heaven? Thou shalt be
cast down to hell."

Today the main object of interest at the identified site of
ancient Capernaum is the ruins of an old synagogue ; possibly
the one, scholars tell us, in which Jesus was accustomed to
teach and preach and where he healed the man with the
withered hand. The Franciscan Fathers are gradually recov
ering the stones from out the earth where they were buried by
an earthquake and reverently restoring them to place. The
edifice must have been imposing in its day, judging from the
splendor of the white carved stones and the sculpture. Carved
on. much of the stonework are not only the familiar Jewish

238 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

emblems like the vine and the six-pointed star of David made
of two intersecting triangles, and the five-pointed star of
Solomon, the olives, and the seven-branched candlestick, but
also pagan and Roman carving, emblems like the eagle.
Today, visitors see four columns upholding a broken archi
trave, a paved court in which some grass grows, a doorway,
and stone steps leading up to it, and the usual chaos of broken
and fallen stones. *

In the Gospel of Luke we are told that a synagogue at
Capernaum was built and presented to the city by the Roman
centurion whose servant Jesus healed. The elders recom
mended Jesus mercy by saying of their benefactor, " He lov-
eth our nation and hath built us a synagogue. 3 * Some believe,
however, that this building dates from the second or third
centuries.

When I have been here in April and May I have entered
the ruins through a beautiful and lovely garden of petunias.
The Franciscans, who so lovingly tend and guard the remains
of " his own city," have left the ruins untouched except to
restore and clean them. There is no garish church to mar the
simplicity and natural beauty v I have felt so poignantly the
presence of the Master as I have wandered among the ruins of
this white temple. It has been easy to believe that these
stones which formed the chair on which the preacher sat to
preach are the actual stones on which Jesus sat; to believe
that the stones in the paved court felt the imprint of his feet;
to believe that the walls heard the soft, sweet music of his
voice as he asked those watching whether he would heal on
the sabbath day that they might accuse him:

" What man shall there be among you, that shall have one
sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay
hold on it, and lift it out?

"How much then is a man better than a sheep? " : MAT
THEW 12: ir, 12.

3*

0-3

*

2S.S

W 1J

S *^ a

8 s

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 239

Sitting among the fallen stones, I ve known that Jesus when
he was here looked across blue waters to the same parched
hills opposite. There are no harsh noises to disturb the
peace. There is only the sweet melody made by the playing
of the wind among trees, distant calls that echo here and
there, the tumble of a sheep bell, the breaking of wave after
wave against the shore, the flutter of a disturbed bird, and the
swelling song of a thousand feathered choristers. Its trees in
spring are green and beautiful. Fragrance fills the air. Lit
tle green lizards lazily lie in the sun and bask. The sky over
head is brilliant blue.

One thinks of Peter, too, in Capernaum. And the other
thing they show visitors here is the alleged site of his house
where, Mark tells us, Jesus often stayed. Here Jesus healed
Peter s wif e s mother. Here the boy was let down through the
roof. Nothing remains of it today.

Sitting down on a near-by bench, I have imagined that
it was built as many Eastern houses are, one story high, prob
ably four sides round a tiny courtyard, with an outside stair
way from the roadway to the flat roof. No doubt a tempo
rary roofing was put across to cover the courtyard and make
another room. The relatives of the paralytic boy removed
this temporary roof and let the young man down on a rope
into the midst of those gathered about Jesus.

It occurred to me during my first visit that many had pre
ceded me in enjoying the hospitality of the fisherman s home,
celebrities like Jesus, James, and John. Somehow I was
struck by the kindliness of Peter as never before a visit here.
I recalled how he had his bachelor-brother, Andrew, live with
them, and opened his home to his mother-in-law, and eagerly
welcomed the Master and all the people who followed him
thronging the street and the doorway. I recalled how he
used to take his wife on his missionary tours. That being the
case, she was no millstone about the neck of this enthusiastic,

240 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

impulsive man; she never mocked his zeal or pointed out his
inconsistencies. Peter entertained frequently and she must
have encouraged him to bring his friends home any time.
Peter loved this wife and he loved his mother-in-law. How
do I know? Because he is the only New Testament writer
who touches with such adornment the subject of marriage and
the duties of husband toward wife and vice versa. He makes
tender and beautiful the position of woman as " the weaker
vessel" to whom honor is due. As for his mother-in-law,
when she was sick, Jesus healed her and then she rose up and
ministered to all of them.

There are many houses in America that hold like groups:
a man and his wife, the wife s folks, and the husband s peo
ple. Many of them are as congenial Christian family groups
as this Jewish-Christian home was in the first century. Some
how Peter seemed such a kindly, warm-hearted, affectionate
family-man when I met him here in Capernaum, when I
stopped by his house across the street from the synagogue.

I should like to share with you modern Capernaum s lake
side as I saw it in the peace of the noonday hour in contrast
to the hustle and business of the busy quayside in Jesus time.

The quay is built of black basalt rock. Some of the huge
stones with marks oft them made by grappling irons and
chains and anchors of ships are relics of the quayside stones of
ancient Capernaum* Matthew had his office on the quay
or possibly along the road that ran along the sea-front. On
this beach or quayside Matthew heard " Follow me." Be
ginning in Galilee the invitation has been heard in every land
and not a day has passed since but that somewhere some
" pilgrim on earth " has thrilled at the sound of it and has an
swered, " I follow."

The foreground is covered with sand and tiny, delicately
pointed sea shells with here and there patches of green sturdily
pushing up tender new shoots. There is a mimosa tree and

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 241

separating the ruins of Capernaum from the quayside are eu
calyptus trees. In the distance toward the south is a lovely
hillside thrusting itself up from a small, horseshoe-shaped bay.
This one forms a perfect amphitheatre where hundreds of
people could sit on the shore and plainly hear anyone who
spoke to them from a boat. Many times from a little ship
floating in this bay or one similar to it, the great Teacher
taught the multitudes on the shore. Seeing this bay at Ca
pernaum explained:

" He began to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered
unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and
sat in the sea; and the multitude was by the sea on the land."

MARK 4:1.

The yellowish-green cast of the hillside in - April comes from
green grass blending with millions of yellow flowers which had
delighted my eyes as I came over the hills from Bethsaida.
The noonday heat blazing down upon Galilee made the sea
lose its brilliance and sparkle and a bluish haze seemed to be
suspended above the water. There wasn t a sail in sight*
Silence reigned supreme. I sat quietly and waited. Then in
the brief sabbath of an hour I read aloud Matthew s record
of the " Parables by the Sea/ Closing the New Testament, I
thought to myself that Jesus believed his message indestructi
ble and history as it unfolds is his vindication because what he
said one day by the seaside to a few is still pondered by the
world.

X

Between Capernaum and Magdala is the Plain of Gen-
nesaret, stretching like a vast green garden for three miles
along Galilee. Renowned through the ages for its fertility,
Josephus praised it in none too glowing terms when. he said:
" Its soil is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can be grown upon
it, walnuts and palms, fig trees and olives. It not only nour-

242 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ishes different sorts of fruits of opposite climes but maintains
a constant supply of them throughout the entire year." Its
fruits were barred from the Jerusalem markets on feast days
lest the pilgrims come to the Holy City to enjoy Gennesaret s
fruits rather than to worship Jehovah. Anyone driving along
the " Way of the Sea " knows immediately when he has
reached this paradise of Galilee because the grass is greener,
the flowers more abundant, the foliage heavier, the palms and
other trees more luxuriant. Gennesaret has " a lovely floral
carpet in summer and a thicket of thorns in winter."

Up from the right-hand side of the roadway which lies
along this plain are slopes of green; southward is Herodian
Tiberias surrounded by hills; while across the blue sea are
the bleak hills of Gadara, marching down to Moab and the
Dead Sea.

Rising behind Magdala are the bare cliffs of Wadi Hamam
or the "Valley o Doves/ honeycombed with caves. Myriads
of doves used to make their homes in these rocks in the
days when Magdala had a unique local industry the sale
of doves as a substitute for a lamb for the Temple sacrifice,
In fact, hundreds still live here, but they are not the only ones
to frequent these cliffs. The raven, eagle, and vulture have
their nests here and can be seen soaring above the valley. The
caves of Wadi Hamam have played their part since prehistoric
times. Far up the narrow ravine closed in by walls of sheer
rock, in one of the large caverns a skull was found which
has been since called the "Galilee Man/ It represents a time
forty thousand years B. c. The skull is now on view in the
Palestine Museum in Jerusalem. In later times inhabitants
took refuge in the caves in time of war; when Herod the Great
was king, outlaws and bandits made them their hiding places
from which to go forth to plunder near-by villages and people;
hermits lived in them; today they are made inaccessible to man
by the strong wire netting stretched across their openings.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 243

Magdala, now called El Mejdel, once a place of some im
portance, is a wretched village of hovels of mud and stone and
black Bedouin tents, but beautiful of situation. It commands
a view over the Plain of Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee, and
as far north as Hermon. Its name is always associated by
Christians with that of Mary Magdalene, who was among the
women ministering unto Jesus of their substance, healed by
him of " seven devils," who followed him to the Cross, and saw
Christ first in the garden after the resurrection.

XI

The things that are beautiful in Galilee are enduring and
indestructible, so that man s foolishness and perversity can
never annihilate them. The things that are beautiful near
the Sea of Galilee are these: the sun and the moon and the
stars, the grainfields and the trees, the lake, the hills, the
simple people eager for sympathy and understanding, gospel
stories, and an acute awareness of the "Man of Galilee."
This land, which neither ignorance nor ecclesiastical greed
can alter in outline, hallowed by sacred memories of him to
whom " all life was beauty," is the true pilgrim s Galilee.
The beauty which Jesus found here invites the Christian and
rewards his stay if, coming here and searching his heart, he
truly sings:

"O Galilee! sweet Galilee!
Where Jesus loved so much to be;
O Galilee! blue Galilee!
Come, sing thy song again to me."

CHAPTER XVI

Travelling along the oldest road in the world to Damascus, I
have a last view of Galilee, glimpses of the Jordan, am stopped
for contraband at Rosh Pinna, and come within sight of the
Mount of Transfiguration (Hermon). I travel the last five miles
remembering Paul s conversion to Christianity. I wander in the
" Street called Straight " and the bazaars, see the scene of Paul s
escape from his enemies, enjoy the garden-court in a princely
Syrian house, poke around an old khan, and linger at the Grand
Mosque, formerly a pagan temple, then a Christian church, and
now a Moslem holy place. I go back to read again an almost
forgotten Greek inscription on a stone lintel.

IT was time for me to leave Galilee for Syria. The road
which I was to travel is probably the oldest in the world,
having been in continuous use ever since the dawn of civiliza
tion. It was the most important highway of five in Palestine
during Jesus lifetime, but long before that it furnished the
main connection between Mesopotamia and Egypt. By the
time Israel settled permanently in the Promised Land there
were already accustomed routes of travel Isaiah says:
" There shall be a highway . . , like as there was for Israel
in the day when he came up out of the land of Egypt."
While in another place he refers to "the highway out of
Egypt to Assyria." It was this old and famous road which I
was to travel

It must have had a name in the early days, but the only
biblical writer who actually calls it by name is this same
Isaiah who, when trying to make his message heard by an un
responsive people, said: " Afflict her by way of the sea, be-

244

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 245

yond Jordan, in Galilee. 55 It was called " Via Maris " or
" Way of the Sea " by the Romans, because it touched and
followed for a few miles along the beautiful Sea of Galilee.

The road began at Joppa where the highway to Egypt en
tered Palestine and ran through the Plain of Sharon through
Antipatris to Pirathon. Here it separated into three branch
roads. The first ran north along the east side of Carmel. The
second ran through a pass northeast of Megiddo and north
ward past Nazareth to Magdala. The third was used when
the Plain of Esdraelon was too wet to cross in winter. It ran
from Pirathon over the Plain of Dothan to Engannim, thence
through the Valley of Jezreel to join near Mount Tabor. The
main road continued north from Magdala-on-the-Sea to Da
mascus to meet the great East road direct to Mesopotamia. It
was by this latter route that I was to proceed to Syria.

Motoring up from the lake into the Mount of Hattin, the
car swung onto this main highway north which is still in use
today and is still known by its ancient name " Way of the
Sea." Beginning at Magdala as it did in the Bible days, it
runs along the Plain of Gennesaret and follows up a gorge to
Chorazin situated some distance back from the Sea. Along
here I looked back for my last view of this lake country with
its rolling hills and deep valleys. My eyes sweeping the circuit
of the lake saw a cobalt-blue, harp-shaped expanse whose
emerald bays and long sweep of -terraced slopes were gay with
spangled wild flowers and shrubs. The sails of several little
ships dotting the lucent water gave a sense of movement and
variety to an otherwise quiet scene. The stark east hill-
country of the Gadarenes was softened into a pink blur by
the heat-haze of noonday. The buildings at Capernaum and
Tiberias on the water s edge gleamed white in the brilliant
sunshine. A few Bedouin tents made black patches in a
meadow of scarlet, yellow, and purple wild flowers.

I turned regretfully away from this scene of bewitching

246 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

beauty to behold as we drove along many glimpses of the
Jordan, lying sparkling in the sunlight like a silver ribbon on
the surface of the dull brown earth to where it enters Galilee
near Bethsaida Julias. It winds its way two hundred miles
from its source in the Anti-Lebanons down through the wa
ters of Merom and Galilee to end finally in the Dead Sea.
Glorious are the views of this turbulent river which drops
from a height of seventeen hundred feet above sea level to
about thirteen hundred feet below sea level and forms a nat
ural gorge. But no less glorious in the springtime are the
wares of beauty on display. Yellow, pink, white, red, and
blue flowers, whole fields of them, which spread into the dis
tance as far as eye can see on the green highlands of northern
Galilee. Always to the north of us, as a guide, there rose
against the blue sky the great white crown of the king of
Syria, Mount Hermon, rising out of the brown plains.

The " Way of the Sea " keeps west of Jordan until it
reaches the Bridge of Jacob s Daughters where- it changes its
course northeastward to cross finally into Syria to end at Da
mascus. We stopped briefly at Rosh Pinna where the Pal
estine customs officials went through their formalities.

I remember that once as I came hurrying down from Syria
anxious to reach the cool hospice on the Mount of Beatitudes
at an early hour in the day being held up unduly long while
the Jewish officials unloaded my car searching for contraband.

It all happened because of an Oriental rug which I declared
upon their questioning. Its weight aroused their suspicions.
Upon weighing the bundled Farhan, all neatly sewn into
burlap, the men, after much head-wagging, gesticulating, and
delay, asked what made the bundle weigh so heavily. I de
clared I didn t know. Snip, snip, and all the sewing was un
done, the rug unrolled, and there lay the cause of its unusual
weight. I had completely forgotten some old camel bells
which I had discovered one night in the dim bazaars of Da-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 247

mascus, and which to save trouble and bundles I had had
wrapped in here. Perhaps this discovery of the cause of the
excess weight saved me a little money because these customs
men at Rosh Pinna insisted that I pay duty to carry my con
traband rug through Palestine, even though I was en route to
a steamer bound for America. I do know that it didn t save
my temper because my exasperation knew no bounds when I
saw this five by seven rug completely unrolled, discovered
there was no cord to re-tie it, and no string nor strong needle
with which to sew it back into its burlap case for easy carry
ing. There it lay, just a heap of rug, on the scales at Rosh
Pinna. After paying four dollars duty the officials lost interest
in my dilemma and retired to their darkened, bare offices for a
smoke. It must have taken me an hour to repack and for
Charlie to secure the luggage again on the rear of the car be
fore we could proceed on our way to Galilee.

From the Customs House the road north goes on to El
Kuneitra, the Syrian Customs Station, which is charmingly
set in a grove of eucalyptus trees. Its chief claim to charm or
a few moments of a traveller s time beyond passport formal
ities is the beautiful vista which it offers of Jordan as it flows
down from Hermon through banks of tangled bush and flow
ering pink and white oleanders. Kuneitra is pleasant as a
stopping-place for lunch. It is cool under the spreading trees,
usually quiet and restful. A gaunt, hungry, homeless dog
haunts the place and with jealous eyes and snapping move
ments indicates he begrudges every morsel of food that does
not find its way into his yawning jaws. One day a wrinkled
peasant woman squatted near-by backed against the largest
tree, her gaily-colored, hand-woven basket beside her. She
looked neither to the right nor left, she asked for nothing, but
we knew she was aware of the white bread, the legs of fried
chicken, and the hard-boiled eggs in our lunch baskets. We
left a half dozen eggs on the rickety lunch table as we moved

248 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

away toward the car. Looking back as we drove off, we no
ticed the eggs had disappeared, probably into her basket,

II

Motoring along, the romance of this old road came back to
haunt me* Over it ancient India sent her products that in
time reached Venice, trains of camels leisurely passed along
it sometimes to be sold in droves, sometimes carrying on their
backs grain from the fertile Hauran. Along it sped the
rumbling chariots from Assyria or Rome when they were
world-dominant powers. I could imagine the constant proces
sion through all the centuries : soldiers with their spear points
glinting in the sun from the great nations whose glory and
power have waned, caravans of merchants and traders carry
ing silks and spices from the East or cedarwood and sandals
from the West, tourists from all the corners of the civilized
world East and West with endless variety in their dress,
manners, race, and language, princes in gay palanquins from
the far-off romantic East, and even some of the immortal fig
ures of the parables of Jesus.

Ill

We came within full sight of that great mountain range of
Anti-Lebanon/ lifting its shoulders against the blue sky and
crowned by the lofty, snow-capped peak of Mount Hermon
whose white dome had been visible to me from every section
of both eastern and western Palestine. So beautiful is it in its
majesty that Hebrew poetry is full of phrases depicting its
charm. From the Sea of Galilee it is seemingly almost within
reach and Jesus must have looked upon it in all its various
aspects in sunshine and moonlight, clear and sharp against
the blue of a winter sky or shimmering through the heat haze
of late summer. During the latter part of his ministry he
brought his disciples to dwell for some time under the very

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 249

shadow of this mountain; to stand by the gushing fountain of
the Jordan that springs from its base; and one night to climb
its slopes to behold the glory of their transfigured Lord.
Near-by sanctuaries in this mountain, where Pan was wor
shipped in a grotto, and where in a gleaming white temple a
fellow-being, Augustus Caesar, was worshipped as God, Jesus
called forth that ringing confession of his Messiahship from
Peter. Exhibiting more than usual spiritual discernment
Peter declared: " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God." Here in a locale where two distasteful systems of re
ligion were carrying on side by side, the forces of nature and
the incarnation of political power, Jesus purposed founding
his Church on that understanding of the Christ which lay be
hind Peter s confession at Caesarea Philippi.

Never after seeing Mount Hermon with its extreme eleva
tion, its snowfields, its miles and miles of desolation, and feel
ing its loneliness is it possible for anyone to doubt that this
is the " high mountain apart " into which Jesus led three of
his disciples and where being transfigured before them they
heard, " This is my Son, my Beloved, listen to him/ 5

" The tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus **
could refer to none other than this mountain. King Og the
giant, who " ruled in Mount Hermon, and in Salecah, and in
all Bashan," could from this natural watch-tower overlook his
vast dominions. I turned from contemplation of this " eter
nal tent of snow " to overlook this fertile Plain of Bashan fad
ing into the great desert on the east.

This is known as the Hauran today. It is the granary of
Syria. From Hermon. to the River Yarmuk a large part of its
rich volcanic soil is tilled for wheat, while the rest is covered
by thick herbage to which the Bedouin swarm with their
flocks and herds. This " land of the giants " has always been
a cattle country as well as a granary. The " strong bulls of
Bashan, 3 its " fat kine," its " rams/ 3 and its " fallings " figure

250 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

largely in the Old Testament narratives. Today there were a
few black tents of the Bedouin already here.

IV

Soon the silvery Pharpar came out to meet me. This nar
row stream reminded me of Naaman, the Syrian general, who
was healed from leprosy by the prophet Elisha to whom his
attention was directed by a Jewish captive maid. He- had
asked the Prophet who urged him to wash in Jordan, " Are
not the Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than
all the waters of Israel? " Scarcely in the wildest flights of
the imagination a river even in the springtime. Pharpar is a
swiftly flowing mountain stream which pierces this barren
desert scorched by a hot sun surrounding Damascus.

V

Some five miles outside the city along the " Way of the
Sea," in view of the orchards of Damascus, the majesty of
Hermon, and the bare ridge of the Anti-Lebanons occurred
the most important event which has ever taken place in Da
mascus and one of the most important in the history of man
kind. It is the conversion of a Jewish rabbi, Saul, who be
came the greatest of Christian missionaries, and who still by
his correspondence treasured by the Church within the New
Testament inspires and directs the thought of Christendom.
The phenomenal occurrence is reported three times in the
Book of the Acts of the Apostles and is several times alluded
to by Paul himself in letters. It occurred hereabouts a few
years after the crucifixion of Jesus and a few weeks after the
martyrdom of Stephen, possibly 34 or 35 A. D. Paul had
come about one hundred and seventy miles among some ex
quisite scenery alive with memories of Naaman the leper, and
back two thousand years to Abraham s old steward Eliezer of
Damascus. For six days he had ridden alone with no one but

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 251

servants to talk with; no doubt they were days and nights in
which he thought of that martyr whose face was " as the face
of an angel." He had proceeded up the road from Jerusalem
after witnessing the death of Stephen, who was the first Chris
tian martyr. He was, according to the Book of the Acts, " still
breathing murderous threats against the Lord s disciples";
but I believe he was troubled with secret misgivings, haunting
doubts: "Could Stephen have been right?" "Didn t the
prophet Isaiah write of a suffering servant, 6 who hath borne
our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted * ? " " Are the rabbis
and my teacher Gamaliel wrong? "

When reaching the hilltop overlooking Damascus, the
crisis came. Suddenly from the heavens flashed a blinding
glory, " brighter than the sun, around me and my fellow-
travellers." And in the midst of the glory he saw the Christ
whom never again did he lose sight of in all his lifetime.
And then he heard a voice speak to him in Hebrew " Saul,
Saul, why do you persecute me? " a voice which never again
in all his lifetime did he cease hearing. " Who are you, sir? "
c; I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." And then there
were no more doubts, nor questionings, then or ever; Saul
gave himself in absolute surrender to the vision of the Christ
on the road to Damascus and all his life reiterated: " Have I
not seen Jesus Christ, our Lord? "

Occupied with this momentous vision which was to
change the course of his whole life, he went on into the city*
He was blind from his experience and they led him by the
hand. Paul s memories in later years of this old city must
have been beautiful indeed because it dawned upon him here
first what faith in Christ meant and it brought a deep peace
and beauty into his life which he later coveted for all men. I
do not think he regretted having missed the scenery. He was
not like Jesus, who was a lover of nature, who spoke of lilies

252 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

how they grow, of fields white for harvest, and of the birds of
the air. Paul was never in the mood for scenery.

He would have missed completely the beauty in the ap
proach to Damascus which looks today like a diamond set in
a dark green of fruitful gardens, in contrast to the barren
desert surrounding this oasis. Gardens and orchards extend
for several miles around the city and these are refreshed by
streams of water from Anti-Lebanon. Once the great com
mercial center of the world and the place from which cara
vans started on their journeys East or West, today it is the
capital of the new independent Republic of Syria. It re
minded me that long ago Isaiah said, fic The head of Syria is
Damascus/* It is a large, flat city of domes lying on an enor
mous plain with sand stretching to the east and khaki-colored
hills and mountains rising to the west. Mosques dot the
landscape; clearly in early morning I have heard the calls of
the muezzins from these slender minarets which stab the sky.
It is shaded by fruit and forest trees the poplar, cypress,
palm, walnut, lemon, orangey apricot, fig tree, and pome
granate, lending a rich variety of color, laden with fruits, and
filling the air with sweet fragrance. In early spring it is a
bower of apricot, blossoms. The Abana River of the Old
Testament, now called the River Barada, rushes along its nar
row bed on the plain and invades the very center of the city.
The sound of fresh water in what otherwise would be a
parched and arid country was sufficient to make Damascus
seem a paradise on earth to the ancients. Seeing the city and
its gardens from Salihiyeh, Mohammed is reported to have
turned away and exclaimed: " Man can have but one para
dise; mine is fixed above."

Saul went directly to the house of Judas in the Street called
Straight and there Ananias, a follower of Jesus, came and
healed him. The house of Ananias and the house of Judas
where the light of Christianity finally dawned on Paul are

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 253

still shown, but a little Mosque, a holy place, covers the lat
ter site. " The street which is called Straight " still bears that
name. It is nearly a quarter of a mile long and like many
streets in Damascus is covered with an arched corrugated iron
roof through whose holes, made by French bullets, the sun
pierces like a shaft from a giant searchlight.

VI

Damascus is essentially an Arab city, despite improvements
inaugurated by the West in buildings, roads, and travel com
forts* The streets with the few exceptions where tramcars run
and dodging motor vehicles add to the general confusion of a
large walking population are narrow, crooked, and form a
labyrinth which makes a guide almost indispensable.

Some travellers are lured by the reasonable prices and ex
cellent quality to explore more than once the numerous
bazaars displaying in little shops precious carpets and fine-
woven prayer rugs, Damask silks y silver-shot textiles, pearl
inlay furniture, copper vessels, and silver- jewelled trinkets.

Instead of these things it is the life of Damascus, odorous
and many-colored, swirling about me in the shadows of the
bazaars that has lured me again and again. I have watched
"fascinated as a camel train loaded with Hauran wheat swung
by; as tall, long-necked camels ridden by swaying Arabs
swathed in red, white, and green padded along; as shepherds
with their flocks moved strangely because they seemed to be
stepping out of the Bible; or as a boy came down the street
balancing a tray of flat loaves on his head. There was always
the empty-eyed blind man feeling his way along the high
dinghy walls; an Arab mother trailing her long gown through
the dusty streets with her little one riding atop her shoulder.
There were Syrians in baggy, long-seated bloomers sitting on
curbs gossiping among themselves as they soaked up sun. A
few stood yawning, some staring, others fingering a Moslem s

254 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

chief toy a string of beads. These listened to sensuous Ara
bic music issuing from a cheap phonograph. I have come
upon dark bundles of rags lying inside doorways or on ledges
and watched them stir and stretch out lean, brown arms.
Venerable men with patriarchal beards, attired in white head
cloths tied with roped camel cords, striped gowns, crude san
dals, moved out from the shadows of these tunnel-like streets.
Bare-legged water-carriers in rags with patched goatskins
shuffled along. Professional letter- writers still sat on sidewalks
near crowded corners not too far from modern street cars.
The itinerant barbers were always busy setting up their ton-
sorial parlors whenever and wherever a customer was willing.
Not the least among these attractions have been the frisky
donkeys who hesitated occasionally as they clattered over the
rough pavements to bray a loud flirtatious greeting.

The lemonade vendor jangled his brass drinking cups and
tempted hot, thirsty customers with reminders that his lemon
ade was the best in the world, ice-cold and packed in the
snows of Lebanon. Stocks of grape leaves were tended by
veiled Moslem women. Flirting donkeys, grunting, grum
bling camels, shrill cries of vendors, pitiful whines of beggars,
bursts of weird Oriental music, tinkling of street-car bells, and
the honks of French motor horns are the strange symphony of"
sounds which has provided music for this Eastern extrava
ganza, which is the same as when " The Arabian Nights " was
first written down. It has been the tide of humanity that
toils and slithers through these alley-like streets, the shrill bab
ble, the barter and bustle, the never-ending pattern of color
which is the commonplace East about its daily business that
has drawn me.

VII

Paul had another experience while he was in the city. He
remained here after the restoration of his sight for some time

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 255

and went to the synagogues and preached " Christ as the son
of God," His right-about-face in attitude somewhat con
founded those who hitherto had known him as a persecutor of
the followers of Jesus. So plans were made by his enemies to
destroy him but discovering the plot his friends one night
helped him to escape from Damascus by means of a basket let
down over the city wall. Most of the old walls have disap
peared and new ones have been built. Considering the
changes which Damascus has undergone, one must rely on
tradition. While the place in the wall where this occurred is
pointed out to visitors and may not be satisfactory in its ex
tremely modernized condition, there can be little doubt about
the general locality.

VIII

Walking tortuous lanes with high, bare, white walls on
each side with an occasional ordinary-looking doorway, no
stranger to Damascus would ever guess that behind such ex
ternal plainness are luxurious residences, sometimes fairy pal
aces; that behind such closed doors are hidden visions of
lovely courtyards where water splashes on marble fountains,
where myrtle and jasmine spread themselves in joyous aban
don, and where oranges and lemons gleam through their
screen of shiny, green leaves. If one would see an elegant,
typical residence of a princely Syrian family, then he should
visit the Azm Palace. It was built in the eighteenth century
by the last governor of Damascus. It has now been turned
into a sort of museum by the French authorities.

The entrance is large enough to admit one person at a time,
It opens into a passage which leads into the principal court of
the house. The first time I stood in the passageway, I looked
through and beyond to an indescribably lovely courtyard,
where fountains splashed under the spreading orange and
lemon trees, where rich greenery of pepper trees was mirrored

256 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

in silvered pools, and where brilliant bougainvillea tumbled
over trellis-work. I stepped through into this superb foun
tain-court, which is surrounded by the Selamlik (men s quar
ters) and the Haremlik (women s and children s quarters).
Of the latter there were three over which in this enormous
Eastern house eunuchs watched. The sun at noon shone
brightly down into this garden-court which is canopied only
by the clear blue sky and turned the nearest pool into a pool
of quicksilver. There was a faint smell of flowers. It seemed
so strangely hushed. It seemed a place for whispering, but
this day only the. rippling of the fountains and the brush of
leaves whispered their longings to the brilliant sky. I hesi
tated, remembering that once upon a time this place had re
sounded with the cries, reproaches, and laughter of concubines
and children. I hesitated for more than a moment as if I
were intruding on a privileged privacy. The feeling stayed
with me. So it was some time .after I stepped across the
marble-paved court before I noticed how elaborately laid
down the pavement was upon which I was walking.

The house is handsome but hardly luxuriously comfortable
from my Western point of view. The chief apartments of this
three-hundred-roomed palace open on to the courtyard.
There are no doors to the rooms, not even to the sleeping
rooms, but open doorways perhaps were closed in their time
by lovely curtains only. These rooms hold beautifully carved
chests and screens, low divans, choice ceramics, rare rugs, and
textiles. But it was the marble-trimmed Turkish baths which
were the revelation to me. Interesting, to put it mildly !

Tucked away in other of Damascus narrow streets are the
old khans in which traders and caravan men once lodged.
Here at last was something in this oldest city of the world in
which there had been little or no change in two thousand
years. They are still lovely buildings with Moorish arches,
fountains in the center, and galleries from which the guest

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 257

chambers are reached; handsome buildings even with dust
settled over everything and lively odors rising everywhere.
Today these fine old buildings are either not used at all or are
used as storehouses by wealthy merchants. It was such an
one I visited. It seemed a khan of incredible age. I had little
doubt of the truth of what Jacob told me here: that if a
farmer who had lived in a village outside Damascus at the
beginning of the first century were to be resurrected and
brought here he would not observe any change in it. Donkeys
and camels were still stalled here as in the beginning of the
Christian era, bags of grain appeared to have been lying here
ever since it was first opened, and very old rugs and worn
burlap hung over bins and galleries. It was from such a place
as this that Joseph led Mary that night because " there was
no room for them in the inn."

Against the wall I saw an old chest from which dangled the
tassels of an antique saddle-bag. I walked over to inspect it
more closely. Looking within I was amazed to see it held a
huddled, sleeping porter.^ Probably after he had crawled in
side to escape attention in this busy warehouse, the tired fel
low had thrown the saddle-bag over himself and it had fallen
over the edge of the chest to hang with an air of almost
studied carelessness. He was oblivious to all the confusion,
hustle, and bustle swirling about him. Certainly no one
seemed to miss him in this crowded place and it didn t seem
likely that they would look for him in this hiding place. I
turned away, leaving him quite contented with his lodging in
the stable of a caravansary. Seeing this, I agreed with Jacob
that a resurrected visitor from the first century would not feel
out of place or puzzled in this khan.

IX

From the moment that its white domes and piercing mina
rets have burst upon me, approaching it either from Galilee

258 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

or Beirut, Damascus has seemed magical and entrancing.
The spell is never broken.

I have threaded my way first through the streets to the
Grand Mosque with its three arresting minarets and heard far
above my head the melancholy, long-drawn, high-pitched
chant of the muezzin as he calls the faithful to devotions:

" Allah akbar! Allah akbar! God is great . . . !
There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet!
Gome to prayer! "

These plaintive notes float over the city at the five hours of
prayer, seem suspended for a moment before they quaver
finally into silence.

The Mosque of the Omayades or the Grand Mosque is a
place to which all visitors come once and to which all lovers
of monuments of beauty come twice and thrice. Originally
here stood the " House of Rimmon," the Sun-god, where
Naaman in his newly-awakened faith in the power of the
God of Israel deposited two mule-loads of earth which he had
brought with him from Palestine. A Roman temple later was
erected on the site already considered sacred. John the Bap
tist s preaching was done in Damascus here where the armies
of King Aretus went to war against Herod. It is therefore
not surprising that the first Christian church in Damascus, a
Byzantine basilica, was dedicated to John the Baptist and
built upon this site. For a time during the seventh century
Christians and Moslems worshipped here together under the
same roof. Then in the eighth century, it was demanded
by the Moslems and this building was transformed into a
mosque by the fifth of the Omayade khalifs. Retaining the
pointed arches and the ground-plan of the three-aisled basil
ica, the whole was enriched with costly mosaics of gold, pre
cious stones and glass, and the floor was paved with marbles
of many colors. It became a show place, a gorgeous edifice,

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 259

one of the most sumptuous of the Eastern mosques, rivalling
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Today it retains its ex
treme simplicity in line and possesses only a sombre grandeur
all because its magnificence was almost wholly destroyed by
fire in 1069, ravaged by Tamerlane in 1400, and again dam
aged by fire in 1893. But I am quite sure that it is its glorious
marble columns and flooring and its few remaining choice mo
saics which bring lovers of beauty again and again to its
portals. They are worth a visit!

The rich mosaics, dating from the eighth century, decorate
now only the entrance and the cloister wall along one side of
the courtyard. Originally they ran around the whole vast en
closure. For centuries they lay buried beneath whitewash
from which only in the twentieth century are they being resur
rected gradually. M. Eustace de Lorey, eminent Syrian
archaeologist, believes that some of these scenes represent
cafes along the Abana River. Seeing them, it isn t hard for
one who has been travelling through Syria to believe that
truly these are episodes from real life executed with an amaz
ing delicacy. The mosaics were constructed mainly of glass
cubes. The art has fallen into decay and been lost. One of
my treasures is a tiny cube of green glass which had loosened
and dropped from the high wall. I picked it up in the court
yard and slipped it into my pocket during my first visit to
Damascus.

The west entrance to the court of the Grand Mosque is
through the Moslem book bazaar where the dwindling tribes
of booksellers, only about a half dozen, hold together. From
the decrepit buildings rises a most impressive architectural
feature. It is the Arch of Triumph. All that remains of it
today are its ruins, mainly a ruined top of a Roman arch,
broken, but still proud, lofty, indomitable; three Corinthian
capitals support a richly carved architrave and a portion of
the battered arch.

260 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Lingering just inside this west gate to the fourth holiest
place for Islam holds a strange fascination for me. Somehow
I have never tired of standing on the mellowed marble floor
which time has seemed to caress and looking out through
double doors mounted in bronze to the ceaseless activity in the
bookseller s bazaar and beyond to the battered fragment of the
Graeco-Roman period, the Triumphal Arch. How close the
past and the present do seem in the Near East ! I have loved
to linger here as veiled Moslem women slipped silently from
the thronged, noisy bazaar-world into the entrance to the
hushed courtyard. If for an instant they lifted their veils to
reveal an olive-tinted cheek, a pair of languid brown eyes, and
a hint of a smile, I have felt that sense of peace and happiness
which makes the whole world kin. I have never felt derision
in my heart as some entering worshipper decorously slipped
from his dusty sandals, leaving them at the gateway safe for
his return. It has always reminded me as it does the faithful
Moslem of this command: " Put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
IVe loved to hear the splashing at the fountain in the marble
courtyard while devotees washed their heads and feet in an
ticipation of prayer within that marble-columned sanctuary,
whose floor is covered with bright-colored Oriental rugs, and
where files of men are seen bowing, kneeling, and stretching
out their arms toward Mecca.

What is the strange fascination which makes a romantic
visitor love to linger in these spaces? Perhaps it is the air of
peace and tranquillity which completely envelops him here.
Somehow the sense of quiet is very real in mosques; there is
always an intense and feeling gravity in their genial atmos
phere. Perhaps it is the very simplicity of Moslem worship.
Perhaps it is the sense of leisure which is so lost in my Occi
dental world. Perhaps the beauty and splendor of extreme
simplicity draw many a modern pilgrim. I only know that I

Photographed by Harriet-Louise H. Patterson

Once a Christian church this building has been converted,
into a Moslem mosque. The Mosque of the Omayades or the
Grand Mosque in Damascus, Syria, is the fourth holiest
place for Islam. Through the opened bronze doors may be
seen the bookseller s bazaar and beyond it a battered frag
ment of the Graeco-Romah period, the Triumphal Arch.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 261

hope to go again in my lifetime to linger in these harmonious
spaces.

On the other side of the court,, not far away, is the resting-
place of Saladin. Over the entrance is an inscription in
Arabic: "O God, accept this soul and open to him the gate
of heaven that last victory for which he hoped/ 5 This was
the man before whom the Crusaders in the twelfth century
had to retreat and leave Syria to Moslems from whom they
had tried vainly to wrest it. Yet today he is remembered as
" Saladin the Merciful. 5 * Moslems recall even now his mercy
to defeated enemies, his chivalrous act of never failing to rec
ognize and acknowledge any act of bravery, even among his
foes.

The cool quiet of the tree-shaded courtyard which holds the
small building sheltering the sarcophagus of this illustrious
man is in contrast to the busy street outside. The high-pitched
voice of a woman, the cry of an infant, the twittering of birds,
the song of a fountain, the brush of leaves touched by a light
breeze are the boundary between the two worlds, the living
and the dead.

X

Before leaving Damascus, I have always returned to the
Grand Mosque. I mentioned that it retains traces of having
been a Christian church. On the great bronze door is a cast
ing of the cup of the Holy Communion, but it is not that
which draws me. I have borrowed a ladder, crawled up on
the roof of one of the buildings constructed against the older
portions of the original edifice, and searched out a stone lintel
carved with leaves and flowers and an inscription in Greek. I
have read:

" Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and thy
dominion endureth throughout all generations."

262 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Unknown to all but a few Moslems worshipping in the
mosque below, forgotten by all but a few Christian visitors
who find it difficult to read this eloquent stone has endured
and waited bravely since 395 A. D.

CHAPTER XVII

Leaving Damascus I drive via the River Barada (Abana) to
Baalbek, City of the Sun. Few ruins at first sight create such im
pressions of beauty, majesty^ and human skill as this accumula
tion of masonry representing four architectural ages. I wander
among enormous blocks piled up by the Romans and through
courts succeeding one another in vastness and stand beside the
six stupendous columns remaining from the Great Temple. I
am awed by the gigantic foundation stones^ perhaps the work of
Phoenician stone-cutters. I have a lovely view from the quad
rangle.

BAALBEK was the first city of massive ruins that I ever
visited. Leaving Damascus, going west via the River
Barada (Abana) to Chtaura, and then north, I came upon it
looming in pagan grandeur on the Plain of the Beka a be
tween the Lebanons and the Anti-Lebanons. It seemed to me
at the time to contain the most imposing, majestic structures
that men had ever raised. First sights make strong impres
sions. Even now Baalbek ranks in my memory with the Pyra
mids, and with the Athenian Acropolis, and with the " Street
of Columns " at Jerash.

Some travellers believe that the Athenian Acropolis cannot
be surpassed for beauty and interest. I wonder if perhaps it
is because it combines a distinct type, so vast a volume of his
tory, so great a pageant of immortal memories for the average
individual? Baalbek is less known to most travellers than
either the Pyramids or the Acropolis at Athens. Perhaps this
accounts for the reason that it holds less thrill and invitation
in prospect. I prophesy for many who will go to Baalbek a
distinct pleasure among these beautiful Hellenic ruins and

263

264 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

when at home again a frequent turning in memory to this very-
ancient Syrian Acropolis mounted on a plain toward the sky,
an impressive silent watchman. Happy the traveller whose lot
it shall be to see Baalbek in her present declining glory!

Perhaps the first view is the moment when six gigantic pil
lars come suddenly into sight. They are perched upon stu
pendous foundations. These are the crowning feature of
Baalbek. Wonder at their size, wonder that they have stood
the ravages of time so long simply fill the spectator and leave
him speechless. One never wearies of looking at these six
columns. At any distance, from any side, or in any light they
are the same majestic, awe-inspiring objects, almost a dream
well-dreamt under a dying sunset.

II

Baalbek is a rambling town, three and a half thousand feet
above the sea, nestling in the green grove which enfolds it
and the ruins. Its few hundred modest houses are patched
out often with marble and granite columns and temple stones.
It seems an appropriately simple environment for the site of
so ancient a religiouis cult. There is a little stream which
twists here and there and everywhere, past millstones and
orchards, and which irrigates the valley. The trudging, silent
peasant folk do not disturb the utter silence here. It is only
at the Hotel Palmyra with the waiting, fawning tradesmen
that the modern world seems near and the ancient far off.
However, no one could nurse an annoyance long in the silent
lanes of Baalbek, or when one stands beneath six towering
columns, or among the vast aggregation of fallen stone tem
ples.

Courts, underground passages, and altars, according to
archaeologists, show successive alterations of Roman, Byzan
tine, Crusader, and Moslem civilizations. The combined
height of that vast wall and the stately columns which appear

Photographed by Harriet-Lotus e H, Patterson

Baalbek looms in pagan grandeur on the Plain of the Beka a
between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain like te a
giant s fairy tale in stone." The first view of the Syrian
Acropolis is the moment when six gigantic pillars remaining
from the peristyle of the stupendous Great Temple come
suddenly into view. At any distance, from any side, or in
any light they are the same majestic objects.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 265

to taper near their tops makes the average visitor to Baalbek
dizzy with their height* The capitals which these bear and
the richly sculptured entablatures that hold them together as
six giant brothers arm-in-arm are so high that the decora
tions richly but boldly carved upon them seem fine and deli
cate. So -massive are the carefully chiselled figures that it is
easy to hide oneself in their curves and convolutions.

Is it hard to believe me when I say that " here size has
found supreme expression " ? If devotion could be measured
by dimensions then the worshippers of Jupiter who built this
temple must have considered themselves and been so consid
ered by their contemporaries as first in piety among the sons of
men. Here are to be found some of the most massive stones
ever hewn by human hands.

The greatest of them number only four. One of the four
still lies in the quarry half a mile or so from the town, just as
it was prepared for removal. The monolith is among the
largest stones ever quarried in any part of the world. It
weighs forty tons. It lies in its bed as if reluctantly dropped
by departing workers. This one remains attached yet to the
native rock. It is the wonder of architects, scholars, and men
from everywhere. Because of its attachment to the rock, it is
called by the Arabs : " stone of the pregnant woman/ Just
think of its size: sixty-eight feet long, seventeen feet wide,
fourteen feet high ! Can you imagine moving a stone like that
out of the mountains and up and down hills for almost a mile
without the aid of steam, electricity, or any kind of machin
ery? That is the type of work that the Romans were able to
do eighteen hundred years ago ! Three of its giant comrades
are in place at the Acropolis and they alone make one layer
of the gigantic wall.

Some question if these cyclopean blocks of stone aren t the
works of Phoenician stone-cutters such as Hiram s men of
Tyre, who are mentioned in the Book of Kings as helping Solo-

266 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

mon s workmen to fashion " great stones " for the foundation
of the Temple at Jerusalem. Finding them already here it
may well be that the Romans used them in constructing this
later pagan temple.

Let me further describe these colossal stones which were
quarried near Baalbek. They say that from each of them
could be built a stone house thirty feet high and sixty feet
square with solid walls a foot thick. Imagine lifting these co
lossal stones onto a stone structure about twenty-three feet
above the ground, They are so well joined that one can
hardly drive a razor blade between any two of them. Some
one has said that this place is " a giant s fairy tale in stone."
It is quite true that no one can describe adequately the vast-
ness, the size, the beauty of these ruins which suffered through
centuries from earthquake, fires, wars, and vandalism.

Ill

Now for a bit about Baalbek s history. It was known in
the days of the Phoenicians; even Solomon s name is coupled
with this ancient place. The Arabs believe that Solomon first
built these cyclopean walls. In ancient days the whole coun
try surrounding Baalbek and Palmyra was given over to Baal-
worship. Strabo, Pliny, and Josephus mention Baalbek under
its Greek name, Heliopolis. During the time of Jesus it was a
great city; and in the second and third centuries Baalbek was
a Roman colony. When Roman civilization was at its height
and its emperors were building great cities in all parts of the
far-flung Empire, in Asia Minor and in northern Africa, tem
ples were put up here in honor of Jupiter which had within
them smaller temples to Venus and Bacchus. The Romans
worshipped Baal, the Sun-god, as one of the greatest deities,
but they had other gods without number. The Great Temple
was dedicated to Jupiter, identified with Baal and the Sun,
but with him were associated Venus and Mercury under

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 267

whose triple protection this ancient city was placed by the
Romans.

Constantine, a late Roman Emperor, favored Christianity.
So he caused to be erected here a Christian basilica. For a
brief time then the great pagan temple was converted into a
Christian church. The Greeks and the Romans had come
and gone when the Arab occupation began in the Middle
Ages. Baalbek finally fell under Moslem control in 636 A. D.
Under them this Acropolis was changed into a fortified strong
hold. Pagan shrine, Christian church, Moslem fortress . . .
shattered shells of all these still mingle on the present site.

IV

The Acropolis of Baalbek consists of two temples near to
gether. One is vast and high, the Great Temple, but of it
only six columns of the peristyle remain. The other is smaller
and lower, known as the Temple of Bacchus. The pillars sur
rounding the Temple of Bacchus still support the ceiling.
Here one finds busts of Venus, Irene, Minerva, Mars, Diana,
Victory, Bacchus, and Ceres, still wonderfully preserved. The
carvings on the doorway consist of beautiful conventional de
signs: garlands of flowers, sheaves of wheat, bacchantes, and
dryads. It is marvelous that these should have borne the pas
sage of time and the ravages of men so long. Parts of the
pillars, friezes, capitals, and walls of the greater temple have
fallen into the hollow between the two. It makes a magnifi
cent but cluttered boulevard. All this is here for visitors to
wander through humbly and to reverently observe what su
perhuman tasks have been undertaken by men to lift them
selves to the divine.

I have picked my way amid a profusion of gigantic shafts,
stupendous pediments, vast cornices, mammoth friezes that
baffle imagination. It seems as if these structures were beyond
human effort. Only by superhuman effort can imagination

268 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

struggle with the problem of how men must have worked
years to cut these stones, planned to make each one fit to its
neighbor, carved these figures, and then how a dauntless army
of workers must have mounted dizzying scaffolds and swung
them into place. So colossal are these ruins that the mind
gives up the task of solving riddles of how these structures
came to be. Standing on the Acropolis, I have wondered with
what emotions the ancients viewed this spectacle when they
rested finally from all their labors and surveyed the vastest col
umned structure Rome ever erected.

From end to end it was more than a thousand feet long. It
consisted of a stately staircase entrance which led into the
Propylaea now gone, a hexagonal vestibule or court having a
number of alcoves with fan-shaped roofs supported by red
granite columns and its center open to the sky, a Great Court
which is the largest of all ancient courts of sacrifice in exist
ence, and a staircase which led to the enclosed temple which
we know as the Great Temple. Each section was more mag
nificent than the other. Think what it must have looked like
as the worshipper mounted the stairway, walked slowly
through the forecourt to Jupiter s shrine; as he passed from
wonder to wonder think how he must have been bowed in
awe before the majesty of a deity who could inspire such a
monument !

The Great Court, sixty-five yards wide, built high above
the plain, was the largest section of the edifice. Its Altar of
Sacrifice was in the center. It was lined about with alcoves
and shrines containing statues of deities. Today with the pa
tient work of archaeologists, remains of its mosaic floors can
be seen, but all else is a glorious ruin. Towering above this
Court of Sacrifice from its massive foundations, raised above
this level and reached by a flight of steps, was the crowning
shrine to Jupiter or the Temple of the Sun. It is truthful and
not a gross exaggeration to say that this is the most august,

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 269

compelling home that man has ever raised to his God two
hundred and eighty feet long by one hundred fifty feet wide.

Originally surrounded by fifty-four enormous columns, each
consisting of three carefully carved cylinders, one placed upon
another and carefully dowelled together with copper, only six
remain today. In the Middle Ages Arabs blasted the bases to
extract what copper they could. The stone giants stood shoul
der to shoulder about the greatest of the Roman deities. They
proclaimed the glory of the Roman Empire as far as eye could
see them. This vast temple was Rome s emblem; only Rome
could have built it.

The temple was situated in no metropolis, it adorned no
city, it -added no lustre to an imperial center, it stood not
where the caravans of nations brought their wares. It was in
a remote province, beside a remote spring, where armies en
camped only briefly occasionally and where merchants seldom
spent more than a night. It was off the beaten track of man
just as it is today. Consequently it has been overlooked and
often underestimated among, the ancient treasures of our
world.

" Only Rome had the power and the might and the self-
assurance to build such a temple/ 3 says a writer. These ruins
testify to an almost 5 superhuman task immensity of size
blended with perfect proportion, the whole clothed in ele
gance and splendor of carving and design.

The first time I stood awed and enthralled amid these ruins.
I shall again. Each time as I have stood on the Acropolis I
have stopped to think on these things. This was the very last
of the great pagan temples. The ages were moving along
when this temple was completed. Babylon,. Egypt, Phoenicia,
and Rome culminated in Baalbek. Here sacrifices were of
fered to gods who could not hear, but the time was not far
distant when humanity was coming to the realization that
temples are in human hearts and not confined to stone.

270 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

V

I want to end on this note, something that I want you to
remember to look for if you should ever visit this Acropolis
which rivals Athens in its glory. There is a very lovely view
from the quadrangle as you look through the ruins toward the
west with the six columns of the peristyle of the Great Temple
in the foreground. I promise you that this will be something
to treasure in your heart long after your bargains in the
bazaars of Damascus have been lost or forgotten. Look west
ward through those stately sentinels toward the green plain
to the snow-crowned summits of the Lebanons in the distance.
A deep, deep blue sky, an indescribable transparency of the
air, the brilliant orange tints of these ruins in the sunlight will
combine with the gleaming snow in the distance beyond a
feathery green to form a picture to be kept among the choic
est treasures of memory.

CHAPTER XVIII

/ sail the Palestine Riviera between sunrise and sunset.
Anchored off Jaffa (Joppa) I look over onto the Promised
Land. I sail on to Tel Aviv, coast along to Caesarea where Paul
lived two years; and come ashore at Haifa. Sunset from Mount
Carmel with memories of David and Elijah.

ONCE when I was returning to the Holy Land after an
absence of two years, the desire to see the Palestine
coast from the Mediterranean prompted me to vary the usual
itinerary. Instead of landing at Alexandria and proceeding to
Judea over the old land route or debarking at Jaffa s port and
motoring up to Jerusalem, I planned to sail the Palestine
Riviera between sunrise and sunset. I knew Palestine from
any land approach because on an earlier visit I had spent
days, even weeks, exploring it, but this would be my first op*
portunity to see it from the " Great Sea " or the " Hinder
Sea."

Our steamer approached Jaffa on a May morning early
enough to enjoy the most splendid sunrise. The evening be
fore in the Captain s quarters that gentleman had recom
mended it, saying, " Jaffa at sunrise is worth getting up for
early! 33

There were only two of us passengers up in time, myself
and a Jew who was seeing the Promised Land for the first
time. When we came out on deck nothing but grey sea was
in sight. I stood beside him at the rail searching out a sight of
land.

The sky was still dark but clear. As we stood together
watching for the first movements of dawn, we saw the sky

271

272 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

gradually turn a light blue with long streaks of yellow and
pink. Land was still far off, but I called his attention to two
lines of hazy grey rising up, it seemed, out of the water
which rippled in wavelets caught by the light which by now
was climbing into the east. The first line was the sandy
beach that edges the rich Plain of Sharon and the second was
the wall of smoky grey which marks the central Judean ridge
or the highlands of Palestine, outlined and illuminated now by
the rising sun. It was exactly 5: 45 A. M. As we sailed
nearer, these lines increased in size until the first turned to
khaki sand from which a city standing on a bluff washed by
the sea, a city built on rocks with its closely-built, white-
walled houses coming down to the cliff edge, came into full
view. Coming nearer still we could see the shipping in the
harbor and above and behind Jaffa make out minarets and
steeples in one of the world s oldest towns.

For some distance south of Jaffa we saw sand and grass and
then to the south as far as we could see, for miles and miles,
were drifting sands pointing down to Gaza on the Philistine
coast. To the north, almost like a continuation of Jaffa,. I
pointed out to Him another city extraordinary among the cities
of the world, a completely Jewish metropolis, Tel Aviv.
Caravans of camels, which we picked out with field glasses,
padded along its sandy beach or through shallow water carry
ing in wooden panniers " Sif-Sif," seashore sand for building
purposes. They added a splash of color to an almost colorless
sand. They were the only sign of life at Tel Aviv at this early
morning hour.

I pointed back of the crowded streets of the seaport to the
far-famed orange groves of Jaffa and the gently rolling Plain
of Sharon where every spring still bloom the ce rose of Sharon 9 *
(Narcissus tazetta) and the " lilies of the field " (Anemone
coronaria), and blue iris, and daisies, filling the air with
their fragrance. I tried to tell him of this transformed para-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 273

disc of green and gold, as I had seen it, and as he would see
it this very morning going by motor car up to the Holy City;
of a land lush with trees, sweet with the scent of orange blos
soms and narcissus, and golden with oranges, lemons, and
grapefruits now Palestine s chief export; of trees standing in
never-ending groves as far as eye can see; of how at picking
time pretty Arab girls in fantastic-colored gowns flash
in and out among the trees, but in Jewish-owned orchards
Jewish maidens wear shorts. Off at the eastern horizon I
pointed out the dim foothills of Judea, the Shephelah, the be
ginning of that great little country which is so varied in its
scenery, so strange in its language, so heterogeneous in its
population, so contradictory in its religious and spiritual
aspects. The sun now outlined and illuminated that persistent
range of blue hills, a mountain wall holding Shechem, Shiloh,
Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron in its bosom. But of
these five cities only the sign of one appeared on the horizon
this morning to locate it. Toward the north rise two bold,
round hills to break the skyline. These are Ebal and Gerizim
and between them in the valley I knew lies the ancient village
of Shechem.

How much of what I pointed out to my Jewish friend he
saw, how much of what I said he heard, I do not know. My
companion breathed deeply, sighed, and then was strangely
silent as he gazed long over at the Promised Land from the
deck of the ocean liner. His burning eyes epitomized for me
all Israel s frustrated hopes since 586 B. c. for a land of peace
for the Jews of the world.

Our ship was by now riding at anchor in the harbor of
Jaffa, the port for the Holy City, forty-one miles away.
There is really not any harbor and large ocean-going vessels
have to stand off the coast in the rock-strewn roadsteads. A
breakwater has been built recently giving some protection to
small vessels. Passengers bound for there have to go ashore

274 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

in small boats called tenders which sometimes roll perilously
as they thread their way carefully among the dangerous reefs
of jagged, cruel rock. This bay at Jaffa is almost always
rough; sometimes impossible for landing. I now had some
idea of the port Joppa during the time when Jonah sought a
ship to take him to Tarshish (Spain) on his flight " from the
presence of the Lord/ He had no difficulty locating a ship
at Joppa, but a storm arose making the harbor with its reef of
rocks parallel to the shore an extremely hazardous place. I
could understand the superstitious sailors act, who, becoming
fearful, finally in desperation cast Jonah overboard during the
storm to be swallowed by a " great fish."

The small craft were already making their way out to
where we lay surrounded in the open sea by warships like
giant grey birds poised for flight. In one of the small boats
drawing near to us, sculled by skilled Arab boatmen, I rec
ognized a strange-looking, gangling figure clad in a checkered
race-track suit with a red necktie and tarboosh, who was
standing up searching out a face among the passengers now
assembled at the rail.

" Hello, hello ! How are you, Mustapha Houpta? " I
called down over the side as I recognized this man I had met
several years before in Jerusalem.

" Miss Patterson? Letter, letter from your dragoman," he
called back. He waved a square white envelope in the air for
me to see.

" Quais," I shouted. " I ve good news for you, too, Mus
tapha Houpta, some passengers who want to go to the Holy
City today!"

My Jewish friend and I went below then to greet the peo
ple from ashore coming aboard. Mustapha treated me as a
special kind of friend and handed me my letter from my
dragoman who was to meet me in Beirut the next morning.
That read, Mustapha and I sat down to bargain a little on

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 275

what these people must pay for a day s tour to Jerusalem,
Bethlehem, and Haifa.

"You will take them to the Temple Area, the Wailing
Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and to have a
good lunch in Jerusalem? at a good hotel, mind you! You
promise me to hustle them to Bethlehem before you start on
the north road through Samaria to Haifa? "

"Inshallah" (Please God), "I take good care of your
friends," swore Mustapha.

"All right . . . ten pounds altogether for a good motor
car, guidance, fees for sight-seeing, and a very good lunch.
I ll tell them."

I went away and left him sitting in a corner of the recep
tion room. I came through several times again and each
time he rose hopefully from his secluded seat.

" Are they ready? Is the price all right? " he d ask if I
came near his corner.

I thought it would be just as well to let Mustapha cool his
heels for a time because I had learnt on previous excursions
into the Near East a little of the art of bargaining* At last I
brought forth my five tourists. In bidding them good-bye,
again I reminded Mustapha of his bargain and them of what
they might expect to see during a day s tour of the Holy Land.
Since I was not going ashore, I waved them off as I saw them
set out across a mile or so of blue water for the shore where
goods, armies, peasants, tourists, and pilgrims have landed
for hundreds of years.

II

Seeing Jaffa from the boat brought memories of hours
when I tarried there, having come down from the Holy City
to visit it. Jerusalem to Jaffa makes an interesting little
journey either by motor or train. I remembered from my
last visit that besides the story of Jonah there are other au-

276 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

thenticated facts which make Jaffa interesting and with these
I occupied myself while the ship lay anchored in the harbor.

At one time it was owned by the Phoenicians; previous to
that by the Philistines, and earlier for almost one thousand
years under Egyptian suzerainty. But only once in the history
of Israel s occupation of the land did it belong to them and
that was during the time of the Maccabees.

Biblical references to Joppa would lead one to believe that
once it was a thriving busy seaport, even though in the Old
Testament there is no specific mention of an actual port of
Joppa, only to " the sea of Joppa." Its exports were wheat,
olive oil, balm from Gilead, Oriental wares, slaves, and out
laws. Far exceeding its exports were its imports: beautiful
fabrics such as cloth of scarlet and purple, gold, silver, iron,
tin, lead, and brass. When Solomon built the Temple in
Jerusalem the timber made from the " cedar trees out of
Lebanon " used in its construction was landed here. The logs
were dragged down the mountains by Hiram s workmen,
thrown into the sea at Tyre or Sidon, made into rafts, and
floated to Joppa, and carried up to Jerusalem by camels and
men. Again, later during the lifetime of Ezra " cedar trees
from Lebanon " were brought here via the sea.

Peter visited Joppa and during his stay lodged with Simon
the tanner. While on the roof of his house, waiting for his
dinner, the Apostle had a remarkable vision which was to ex
ercise a mighty influence upon his own preaching and upon
Christian missions,

The location of Simon s house has been changed from time
to time by the authorities who moved it the last time nearer
to the Customs House so that it would be more accessible to
tourists. The present house is a rocky structure with stone
steps outside which lead to a roof and second story. When I
climbed to the roof-top, I had had about the same view as
Peter. In front of me was the blue Mediterranean stretching

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 277

west. North I saw the curving shore of sand and green slopes
reaching toward lovely Athlit and Mount CarmeL On some
such roof as this one Peter had that wonderful dream in which
he beheld all the beasts of the earth let down from heaven that
he might eat them. He refused, saying, " I have never eaten
of anything that is common or unclearu" And then came a
voice, " What God hath cleansed, that call not thou com

These words led to preaching the gospel to the Gentiles as
well as to the Jews, bringing about the conversion of Cornelius
whom Peter travelled twenty-three miles up the coast to
Caesarea to visit, and later to preaching the " good news " to
all the world.

Within a few miles of Joppa, on a hill overlooking the sea,
and the city, lived Dorcas, the organizer of the first Women s
Missionary Society. She was famed for the garments she
made for the poor and at her funeral the people gathered
round to show specimens of her handiwork. The Apostle was
sojourning near-by at Lydda and, hurrying over from there,
Peter raised her from the dead.

One of the main caravan roads in Bible days between Egypt
and Phoenicia came through Joppa where the regular Egyp
tian highway entered Palestine. It ran through the Plain of
Sharon to Gaesarea and continuing north rounded the eastern
end of CarmeL Then it followed the Bay of Acre, went on
past Tyre and Sidon, and ended at Beirut. It was and still is
one hundred and sixty miles of seaboard loveliness.

This route is never silent, for phantom figures pass in end
less procession. A caravan from long before Abraham s time
comes down slowly from CarmeL The hosts of Thotmes III
march from Joppa carrying Egypt s dominance as far east as
the Euphrates. The Assyrians, Sargon, Sennacherib, and
Tiglath-Pileser (Pul), pass this way. There is an almost end
less caravan of merchant princes, couriers between empires,

278 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

fugitives, and slaves. While even now modern motor cars
swing out of Jaffa into Tel Aviv and north along a compara
tively good road lined by one after another of well-cultivated,
well-cared-for Jewish colonies. This wide road along the
coast to Haifa, was in constant use by trucks and busses dur
ing the war. The road runs along pleasantly through fruit
orchards which laden the spring air with an intoxicating,
sweet fragrance. Swarms of bees know the preciousness of
the nectar of orange blossoms and convert it into the famous
" Orange Blossom Honey " which is on every table catering to
visitors in the Holy Land.

For miles and miles along the wider part of the Plain of
Sharon fruit orchards include apple and peach trees. There
are extensive vineyards around one of the oldest Jewish settle
ments. The country gradually becomes more rugged as the
plain narrows and the mountains edge their way to the sea.
Beyond Caesarea, Tantura, Athlit which was a Crusader
stronghold, to the rocky base of Garmel are melon patches,
fields of grain, gardens of tomatoes and beans, and some shade
trees. All the while the motorist has glimpses beyond orange-
tinted sand of the deep blue Mediterranean, of the sea lashing
itself to foam in many places along this inhospitable coast-line,
of white-flecked waves.

Ill

Later that morning we sailed from Jaffa and stopped for an
hour at Tel Aviv, the Jewish port, before sailing north.

It was a hot day; the air was very quiet. It was a good
day to stretch out comfortably in a deck chair and enjoy a
panorama of loveliness, of fruitfulness and peace, as for hours
it slowly spread itself out before me. From my chair I could
see right over onto the land of Palestine.

There was no break in the long line of foam where land
and sea met; all along this coast was disturbance where blue

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 279

sea met a fine gold fringe of sand. Back of the golden band
I could see the Maritime Plain varying in width from eight to
thirty miles. It was a chocolate brown land clothed with grass
and orchards and millions of flowers, broken by gullies that
led up to high cliffs. The whole was flanked by majestic
mountains, the Lebanons, the wooded Carmel range, and the
barer Judean ridge.

We sailed past the remains of Caesarea where Herod built
such a magnificent Roman city and constructed a very won
derful artificial harbor by building a huge mole, a vast cres
cent of stupendous stones. He transformed a wretched coast
village into a splendid city which became the headquarters of
the Roman Government in Palestine. The only visible fea
ture of present-day Caesarea is the medieval Citadel which
stands upon the base of the broad natural reef south of the
harbor; here I watched the sea break into foam against the
rocks-
According to New Testament narrative, Paul visited this
bit of Gentile soil when he came by ship to Syria from
Ephesus. When he was removed from Jerusalem after his ar
rest, he languished in a dungeon at Caesarea for two years.
It must have been a weary time of waiting even though Philip
and his friends here could visit him, and Timothy and Luke
and others came to stay near him.

What did he do during all that time? Since we have no
record of letters written by him to friends and churches dur
ing those two years, maybe he reminisced to Luke who was
keeping a diary of his travels \yith Paul, some day to be com
pleted as the Acts of the Apostles.

While sketching Paul s contacts with Felix, Festus, and
Herod Agrippa II, Luke gives four glimpses of Paul during
the time that he was in prison.

Five days after his arrival he was brought into the court
room of the Castle before Felix on the judgment seat. Ana-

280 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

nias the High Priest was among Paul s accusers, the Pharisees
and Sadducees. With them was Tertullus, a Jewish lawyer
and orator, who was to conduct the prosecution of the Apostle.
Tertullus opened the case with a eulogy of the judge and
then proceeded to prove that Paul stirred up factions among
all Jews throughout the world and had tried to profane the
Temple. Whatever Paul might have to say for himself, there
had been riots in many places where he had been and the
Roman Government did not like riots any time or any place.

But Felix wanted to hear what Paul had to say. The
prisoner arose and gaining the attention of the court replied
with a statement of his innocence and of his beliefs: in
" everything that is taught in the Law or written in the
prophets, and the same hope in God that they themselves
hold, that there is to be a resurrection of the upright and the
wicked."

Felix decided to defer his decision; he had a legal right to
do this. It was the easiest way to act. Or was it that he felt
the honesty of this man standing before him pleading his case?
At any rate, Felix ordered " the officer to keep Paul in cus
tody, but to allow him some freedom, and not to prevent his
friends from visiting him," So Paul went back to his dungeon
in the prison.

Seeking distraction during a dull evening, hoping also that
Paul might give him a little money to release him, Paul was
again summoned before Felix and his young and beautiful
bride Drusilla, a Jewess. Felix asked him to tell concerning
the faith of Jesus Christ for which Paul was in prison. Cer
tainly not curiosity about this new " Way 3 * prompted the re
quest because the Governor was already informed on this
religion and Drusilla must have heard already about Jesus of
Nazareth because she was a daughter of King Herod, who
persecuted the Church and killed James. Her morals were no
worse than her contemporaries 3 at Court* She was now at

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 281

Caesarea because Felix had seduced her from her husband
and married her. Neither was a respectable person from
Paul s point of view; perhaps that accounts for his remarks
that evening to these two.

Before his audience, Paul reasoned for uprightness,
self-control, and the coming judgment. What Drusilla felt
we do not know. But stirrings of conscience bothered Felix,
told him of bitter things he would rather forget lust, greed,
treachery, blood, murdered men, and dishonored women in
his past life things he would be called upon to answer for on
the Judgment Day if what Paul said were true. Not yet ready
to repent, Felix shouted : " You may go I will find time later
to send for you ! "

Some other day ! A more convenient time ! How many like
Felix wait for another day to be upright, to practise self-
control and to seek God, put off the Day of the Lord. A few
months later, Felix went in disgrace to Rome, and years later
Drusilla and her son by Felix perished in the eruption of Vesu
vius.

When Festus arrived in Palestine from Rome and visited
Jerusalem, the local authorities vigorously demanded that
Paul should be brought back to Jerusalem. They intended to
seize Paul and kill him along the way. Palestine is eminently
suited for an ambush. Festus suggested that reliable persons
should come to Caesarea and make any charges which they
had against Paul. And so after two years of waiting Paul
came up for trial again before this new governor Festus in the
Judgment Hall of the Castle.

The Jews came, but the proceedings were inconclusive.
Festus asked Paul whether he was willing to be tried in Jeru
salem. Paul refused. Although the trial would be before the
Governor, Jerusalem involved danger and an atmosphere of
prejudice. Grown weary of delays, despairing of justice by
Festus who might be tempted to sacrifice him to Jewish senti-

282 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

rnent in the interests of self and peace, Paul accordingly ap
pealed to Caesar. He demanded as his rights, the proud priv
ilege of every Roman citizen, that his case should be heard by
the Emperor s own tribunal. At Rome he would have a
chance at a fair trial; in Jerusalem the risk of assassination
would be too great; and, in any case, we know he eagerly de
sired to go to Rome.

So the great case was ended for the present; his appeal
to Caesar had deprived Festus of competence to hear the case*
The Jews returned to Jerusalem out-manoeuvred. I wonder
if Paul spent much time in the following days thinking just
how differently from what he had planned was to be his wit
ness for the Lord in Rome?

While waiting for his removal to Rome, Paul was again
summoned to the Castle. Herod Agrippa II, who had some
personal authority in connection with the Temple, came with
his sister Berenice to pay his respects to the Governor. Festus
spoke of Paul to Agrippa, who was not disinterested in this
prisoner. Agrippa was a Jew, the last of the Herods, and the
destiny o his house had been indissolubly linked with this
Jesus whom Paul preached. His great-grandfather Herod the
Great had slaughtered the children at Bethlehem in an effort
to destroy the newly-born " King of the Jews " ; his uncle
Herod Antipas was the man who sent John the Baptist to
death and Jesus to Pilate; his father Herod Agrippa I slew
James, one of the Twelve, and persecuted the Church in Jeru
salem. Festus in permitting Agrippa to hear Paul hoped to
learn from him a little more of what was at stake in order that
he might give a fuller account to the Emperor.

Courteously, Paul addressed the King, simply recited the
facts of his life, solemnly narrated his oft-told story of his con
version and the transforming power of the Christ in his per
sonal life, and fervently declared his mission.

In the midst of his impassioned, eloquent speech of defense.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 283

Festus, impatient of the foolish talk about a crucified Jew
risen from the dead, interrupted, "You are raving, Paul!
Your great learning is driving you mad! "

" I am not raving, your Excellency Festus," said Paul. ce I
am telling the sober truth. The king knows about this, and I
can speak to him with freedom. I do not believe that he
missed any of this, for it did not happen in a corner ! King
Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do ! "

" You are in a hurry to persuade me and make a Christian
of me ! " Agrippa said to Paul.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, Paul had come to know hap
piness, peace, and hope in his own life. In all sincerity and
from the depths of a loving heart, he made this touching
reply: " In a hurry or not, I would to God that not only you,
but all who hear me today, might be what I am except for
these chains/ 3

After that reply one understands how these men, Festus
and Agrippa, felt as they left the room; and why Agrippa,
profoundly moved, said, " He might have been set at liberty
if he had not appealed to the Emperor."

So Paul went back to his prison to prepare for his voyage to
Rome; and Festus went back to his desk to prepare his report
for the Emperor, the favorable tenor of which must have had
a very great deal to do with Paul s acquittal in his first trial
before Nero.

The hot afternoon sun beat down upon Caesarea, silent
now except for the boom of the Mediterranean pounding
against her ancient pillars and remains of sea wall, deserted
except for a few monks living at the Greek monastery and a
tiny community of swarthy natives living here in flat-roofed
dwellings. Sailing by this once-noble city, planned and
built by Herod the Great, and occupied many hundreds of
years later by the Crusaders, I opened my copy of The New
Testament., An American Translation, by Dr. Edgar Good-

284 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

speed and fell to reading from chapters twenty-four to twenty-
six in the Book of the Acts of those far-off days when Caesa-
rea, which extended along the Mediterranean for more than a
mile, stood in all her pagan glory upon that now desolate
shore.

IV

Following along the coast, I drank deep of the loveliness of
the Palestine Riviera in spring. All at once I was attracted
by the headland of Carmel, green and beautiful, jutting out
into the sea, with a clump of buildings at its top a rectangle,
a dome, a tower, and a cross. Suddenly we rounded the
promontory, and as the ship came in toward Haifa, I got a
view of a picturesque, busy harbor and of a city of square
white balconied buildings with red-tile roofs hemmed in on
the south by Carmel but rising undaunted on that steep, green
mountainside and gleaming in the glow of the sun in the west
ern sky. Haifa has blue water and yellow sand on her door
step and behind her at her back door is this splendid, long-
backed hill stretching to the southeast for twelve miles the
hill that always has been called Mount CarmeL

The vessel tied up within the long breakwater that sheltered
other large steamers loading- and unloading cargoes. At the
bottom of the gangplank was the new concrete dock, piled
high with boxes, crates, and barrels^ and ashuffle with men,
some in red tarbooshes* Tourist contractors, local guides, and
chauffeurs, and a few ragged porters, the usual complement,
were there to greet the cruise-ship. These were the ridicu
lously small figures I had seen watching us from shore as we
made our way into port.

After seeing the new activity along the Palestine coast at
the ports of Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and now at Haifa, I realized
Isaiah s prophecy was being fulfilled at last: " Thy gates also
shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 285
night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth of the

nations."

For a few minutes hustle and activity prevailed as baggage
was unloaded. Then formalities over, a pass from port au
thorities to spend a few hours ashore during the ship s call
tucked away in my handbag, I set out to explore the city of
white buildings, the homes of Moslems, Catholics, and Jews,
which lay beyond the dock.

Haifa is neither Christian nor Moslem. It is thoroughly
Jewish. Everything is Jewish: factories for cement, olive oil,
and soap, even the flour mills. The business district of shops,
office buildings, and hotels is all modern and Jewish. And
up the hill slope are more Jewish living quarters with cool
comfortable houses and apartments, good schools, homes for
orphans and aged, and an amphitheatre for concerts.

This thriving, boom town held no more fascination for me
and evoked no more memories than it had some two years
earlier when I visited it. But the mountain which has always
been called Carmel, standing like a piece of old-time, and the
ghosts of biblical men who have made the place immortal and
haunt her slopes once again strongly drew me.

V

" The excellency of Carmel " was used by Solomon as a fig
ure for beauty and Isaiah used the same phrase to indicate the
lavish blessings and gifts of the Lord. The Psalmist must
have had Carmel in mind when he sang, " Thou waterest the
ridges thereof . . . thou makest it soft with showers." It is
the first of Palestine s hills to get moisture and rain, which ac
counts for its year-round verdure.

The mountain is richly wooded with dwarf oaks, pines,
carobs, pomegranates, some olive and fruit trees, thickets of
acacia, scented myrtles, and almond trees which are visions of
pink glory in February, and bright with blossoming shrubs*

2 86 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Sage, rosemary, lavender, wild thyme, and a profusion of
other fragrant herbs perfume the air. Wild flowers cover it
like a carpet. Among the many varieties are scarlet, blue,
and white anemones, purple cyclamen, hyacinths, daisies, blue
and scarlet pimpernel, purple bougainvillea. While rambler
roses and honeysuckle fling themselves along walls and over
trellises and pour forth their sweetness into a scent-laden world.
Its lovely groves are bird-haunted. The silvery cadences of
larks, twittering of sparrows, and cooing of doves join with
hosts of other birds in filling the air with song. For hundreds
of years it has been considered as a sacred place, as "the
mount of God," possibly because of the favorableness of its
situation, its luxuriant vegetation, its abundant fertility.

For ^centuries its caves and thick undergrowth have hidden
hunted men like Elijah and Elisha, acted as places of retreat
for holy men, prophets, and philosophers. Christian hermits
at one time occupied natural caverns on its western side.
From these hermits of Mount Garmel sprang the monastic
order of the Carmelites in 1 156 A. D., which was confirmed by
Pope Honorius III in 1224. Under the protection of the Cru
saders, a monastery was built on the northwest summit, but its
history has been one of attack, plunder, and massacre. With
undaunted courage the Carmelite order have reoccupied the
site when permitted and rebuilt the monastery. The present
buildings date from 1882. The roof of one is surmounted by
a lighthouse which attracts attention from land or sea. Sail
ors watch for the signal from the Stella Maris (Star of the
Sea) lighthouse as earlier in history men watched for Athena
Nike or as today they watch for Notre Dame at Marseilles,
France*

All the way up the steep motor road I had views of the
Mediterranean to my right, then to my left, then straight
ahead of me. Halfway up we passed the new Jewish settle
ment surrounded by masses of rich green and calling itself

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 287

"The Beauty of Canne!" (Hadar Hacarmel). But I kept
watching for a group of grey, angular buildings standing out
against the sky, for the most beautifully situated monastery in
the Holy Land, which is perched high above the Bay of Haifa
on the summit of Carmel.

On the way up, I was trying to remember what had hap
pened here. David once came up this same bill with robbery
and murder in his heart. He had fled here from the wrath
of his father-in-law, King Saul. He met the servants of the
shepherd Nabal, who took his request "for provisions to their
master. Nabal refused it. Later he met shrewd, practical,
and beautiful Abigail when she saw to it that David s anger at
Nabal s churlishness was appeased with a gift brought by her
self of two hundred loaves, bottles of wine, five sheep, flour,
raisins, and figs. Upon NabaFs sudden demise some ten days
after his wife had apprised him of the delicacy of the situa
tion in which he had precipitated himself and his fortunes,
David married Abigail.

The miracle of Elijah in which Jehovah consumed the
sacrifice upon the altar and thereby vindicated the omnipo
tence of Israel s God before four hundred and fifty prophets
of Baal in the presence of King Ahab, the children of Israel,
and four hundred prophets of the groves, has invested this
mount with interest for Jew, Christian, and Moslem. On the
summit stood the altar of Jehovah which Jezebel had cast
down. From morning till noon, and from noon till the time
of the evening sacrifice, the cries of " O Baal, hear us," rang
out and echoed in vain. When the sun was sinking in the
west, Elijah s sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven.
The last act of the tragedy occurred not on Garmel but on
the plain below when Elijah brought the defeated prophets
down the steep hillside to the torrent of the River Kishon and
slew them there.

Elijah returned to the " high place " on the mountain, but

288 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

he ordered his servant to go up still higher and look out
toward the sea. He went up to the top and looked over the
Mediterranean, but he saw no cloud. Elijah said, " Go
again/ seven times. After the seventh time his servant re
turned and said, " Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of
the sea, like a man s hand."

To this day it is a sure sign of coming rain. And soon the
heavens were " black with clouds and wind, and there was a
great rain." King Ahab rode across the Plain of Esdraelon
straight to Jezreel; and Elijah "girded up his loins, and ran
before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel."

According to the Bible Elisha dwelt on Carmel in a cave.
I remembered that the Prophet was here when the Shunam-
mite woman came to summon him and tell him of the death
of her son from sunstroke. He left his retreat to return with
her and his servant to Shunem where he raised the woman s
boy from the dead.

The car drew up in the yard before the Convent of Elijah
and its adjacent guest-house for travellers. I walked past the
priests gardens filled with passion flowers and into the ornate
church dedicated to Beatissima Virgo Maria. Ascending one
flight of stairs and looking directly toward the high altar, I
saw an enthroned figure of the Virgin and the Child with two
angels at the base. Overdressed and perhaps gaudy is this
statue but the Virgin s look is so gentle and the Child on her
knee is so sweet and appealing that the longer I looked, the
less was I aware of those elements. I visited the monks li
brary, the refectory, and the grotto beneath the high altar
where, tradition claims, Elijah lived. Lamps light the dank
cave and illuminate an interesting wood-carving of the
Prophet. Here by celibacy, masses, and vowed to silence, the
Carmelites with white mantles over brown habits tend the
miracle-working statue of Mary and the Babe and do honor
to the prophet Elias.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 289

I came out into the monastery grounds as the sun was set
ting. I wandered over to the terrace. Stretching before me
on all sides was another Holy Land panorama of unforget
table loveliness. On the whole vault of the sunset-kissed sky
there was not a cloud the size of a man s hand. I looked over
the broad expanse of water to the west, turning now from a
lovely blue slowly into a burnished bronze. I saw a variety of
ships congregated there; my own vessel which was to bear me
away that night to Beirut was among them. The old and new
town of Haifa with docks, warehouses, Jewish shops, modern
residences, and business houses belonging to Jews and also the
crooked streets and flat-roofed hovels of the Arab workers 5
quarters was at my feet. Smoke curled from some of the
chimneys. The street lamps began to wink on, one by one.
The convent is so high that the strident cries of Haifa never
invade its solitude. Only the echoes of church bells drift this
far.

From the northwest crest, I could see the whole stretch of
the Syrian and Palestine coasts from the shores of Sidon and
the lighthouse of Tyre down past the ruins of Athlit, today a
mute reminder of the days of chivalry, to Caesarea. Across
the bay, I saw a colony of silver turrets in the midst of palm
trees. Oil storage tanks. Near there the pipe line of the Iraq
Petroleum Company brings its flow of liquid gold across
six hundred and eighteen miles of desert and valley from
Mesopotamia and feeds a fleet of tankers crowding the har
bor. StiR farther along, beyond the bay, north to where the
smooth golden sand with its fringe of palm trees pointing
toward the sea sweeps in a dazzling arc was Acre. Straight
in front of me loomed the snow-capped head of Hermon
bathed in the sunset light. Back of Acre s violet-shadowed
beach I saw where the Kishon winds through orchards and
wheat fields a green cloud darkened now into sombre hues;
turning to the other side and looking farther inland toward

290 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Esdraelon, mounts Gilboa and Little Hermon. The dusk had
filled these hallowed hills with blue. Shadows lay now upon
fields. There was dew upon grass and flower. The soft winds
from the sea blew cool and sweet with odors of orange blos
soms and honeysuckle over the headland of Carmel, green
the year round with carobs, oaks, and pine trees. God, it
seemed, had laid a sweet calm for this brief hour over Carmel,
over the stage upon which Elijah once played an immortal
role,

In the swiftly coming night, I stood thinking. " The
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth
his handiwork/ The Psalmist had seen the sky as I was see
ing it now.

The sun dropped down a burning ball behind the Mediter
ranean. Out from under the western horizon I saw the sun
send up one last shaft of fire, setting the heavens ablaze with
splendor and then fading, leave at last a luminous sky where a
moon would soon appear. And the glorious dome that roofs
all Palestine gradually became studded with lights.

Day had moved on, I was ready now to go down from
Mount Carmel. Down and around we rolled as the road
curved abruptly into the town. Once I looked back through
the car s rear window at the solitary light keeping vigil on the
terrace near the friars gardens; ahead I saw many lights
Haifa. The color of the buildings glowed through the dark
ness. Along the streets and the flowered, tree-lined paths we
passed a few people hurrying home to family gatherings.
Someone laughed in the night. A late truck lumbered by on
the macadam road laden with boxes. We came onto the
water-front. I saw the big ship which had brought me in
today blazing with lights. Long before I reached the gang
plank I met smartly-attired passengers and heard their excited
chatter. They were still milling everywhere about the dock.

Although not long until sailing hour, cargo from a dock

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 291

piled up with a clutter of boxes, crates, and barrels was being
swung into open hatches or carried into the hold on the backs
of shabby Arab longshoremen. A few officers in uniform pa
trolled the terminal.

As I came up the gangplank, I noticed that behind our ves
sel at the dock lay a troop transport. French Colonials bound
for Syria. Later as I sat huddled in a deck chair sharing a
bag of juicy, ripe loquats and experiences with a friend who
had spent the day seeing the Holy Land with Mustapha
Houpta, I heard a bugle then, long blasts of a whistle from
a ship impatient to be off. The Algerian band struck up stir
ring martial music, and out from the pier glided a large grey
ship. The next time I heard that crack military band I was
at a tea-party in Damascus 3 Public Garden where the mem
bers of the Parliament of Syria were entertaining the Parlia
ment of Lebanon,

It was close to midnight when our ship s winches ceased
their creaking and screeching. Three long, shrill blasts from
the S. S. Excambion s whistle brought us passengers to the
rail. I watched the gangplank poised in mid-air. I heard
voices on the bridge. Then we slowly slid out of Haifa Bay in
the wake of the troop ship toward Beirut.

Out at sea the stars so wonderful that night ended suddenly
against blackness. A huge silver moon had risen above the
Mediterranean. I watched out for the lighthouse in the mon
astery grounds on Mount Carmel, useful now to an ever-
increasing line of ships that seek Haifa s new harbor. Again
and again I saw it sweep across the sea with its beam. I
thought, as I left the deck to go to bed early to be ready for
debarking next morning, Stella Maris, which is to say, Star of
the Sea, is indeed the right name for that saintly haven.

CHAPTER XIX

/ approach Beirut from overland and by sea and find the city
equally fascinating. I set out north along the coast road for Dog
River to inspect the inscriptions carved on the face of the cliff by
conquerors who, at one time or another, have fought their way
through this historic pass, beginning with Raamses II to General
Giraud of France. I follow the Phoenician coast south to Tyre
and Sidon.

IN looking back over my two arrivals in Beirut, it is a ques
tion which was the more exciting. The year I followed the
Palestine Riviera, I sailed into the well-protected Bay of St.
George, round which rises the lovely white city of Beirut, early
in the morning when brilliant sunshine lights up the whole
sea front. When I saw it the first time, I arrived in the capital
of the Lebanese Republic in the late afternoon after a thrill
ing seventy mile drive up and down the Anti-Lebanon and
the Lebanon mountains along the macadam French mili
tary road from Damascus. Both offer remarkable vistas of
beauty.

By either approach, I was struck by the rare contrast of
sun and snow here. By sea the sun highlights the snow-
covered ridge of the Lebanon range which changes into lovely
shades of deep rose, purple, and brown as it slopes down to
the city of white houses, blue shutters, red-tile roofs, green
gardens, splashes of purple bougainvillea y and a deep blue
bay. Overland, mounting from the Plain of the Beka a with
its kaleidoscope of greens, golds, and purples to the slopes of
the cool Lebanons, I had brief views of glistening snow patches
spot-lighted by the brilliant sun, and, mounting higher to the
summit, I crossed snowfields still spread out blinding white

292

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 293

in April sunshine. My eyes grew tired of the dazzling spec
tacle.

From the sea I looked upon a bustling scene because Beirut
is the largest, busiest port of the Syrian coast. A babel of
tongues fell upon my ears. Many small craft with fantasti
cally dressed occupants danced upon the waves, surrounding
our vessel which was anchored out in the bay where legend
says St. George slew the dragon. Scores of jabbering porters
wearing the red fez and baggy Turkish trousers scampered
up and down the swaying, swinging ladder in search of busi
ness. They shouted their deep gutturals in my ears as if excess
of sound would render their tongues more intelligible. Over
my head cranes swung out, over, and dropped cargo and
trunks into the unsteady, untrustworthy small boats swarming
in the water. Sounds of building drifted out to me from the
shore.

But on the other hand, going to Beirut, leaving behind the
minarets and far-famed gardens of Damascus and following
the river road which offers peculiarly beautiful views, I saw
the foaming Barada rushing through a stony channel, leap
ing over rocks to become a snow-white sheet of water, and
then being hidden again by the luxuriant growth of shrub
bery. With turns in the road sometimes I saw a shadow of a
bridge, or overhanging trees and crowding bushes at the wa
ter s edge and near-by Moslems in coffee houses who sat with
nargilehs smoking and dreaming to the murmur of water and
birds singing in rich foliage. I looked ahead toward the ridge
of the Anti-Lebanons. And that conquered, I saw and
climbed the pink Lebanons sparkling with patches of snow,
and searched out on the slopes some lonely, solemn cedars.
They are the dignified last survivors of the trees which fur
nished " cedar trees without number " to David for his pal
ace and the same which Hiram of Tyre sent from Lebanon by
way of Mediterranean Joppa to Jerusalem to become pillars,

294 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

roofs, and doors in the great Temple of Solomon. For three
thousand years the groves of Lebanon have been despoiled
until the upper ranges are quite denuded. Finally from the
military road, I had a panorama of the outstretched capital
city of Beirut with the sea pounding in against the eastern
barrier.

Beirut appears a large town. Like most Eastern cities it is a
mixture of camels and cars, Syrians, Turks, and Armenians,
veiled women, and Europeans, Cook s and American Express
travel offices, excellent modernistic hotels like Hotel St.
George, and movie houses. Despite " suks " and minarets

much of its life and traffic today are European due largely to
its having been a French colonial center.

If" Paul went by sea all the way to Tarsus, then he passed
in sight of Beirut and saw it rising from the water s edge to
the ridge of the cape as I have when I followed the Riviera.
If he went by land in following the coast road, he passed
through Beirut as I did when on my way north from here to
Dog River.

II

Beirut is the ancient Berytus of the Greeks and Romans. It
may even be older than that and have been founded by the
Phoenicians. The first historical mention is by Strabo in 140
B, a when it was destroyed. The Romans rebuilt it and
colonized it afterwards. The elder Agrippa favored it and
adorned it with splendid theatres and an amphitheatre where
games and spectacles of every kind including gladiatorial
shows could be enjoyed. In the middle of the third century a
celebrated Roman law school was founded here. And from
then until it was destroyed by earthquake in 551 A. D., it was a
seat of learning.

Once again Beirut is important in education. It has many
fine schools with Christian aims. Conspicuous is the Ameri-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 295

can University which draws the youth from forty-five coun
tries. Her graduates are important factors in the new life in
the Near East. This one school has a student body of fifteen
hundred, a faculty of two hundred and eighty teachers, and
an endowment of almost five million dollars. Eastern govern
ments like Iraq, Sudan, Trans- Jordan send at their own ex
pense students to the Departments of Health, Education,
Science, and Arts to train for public service. A renaissance
has been sweeping over the Near East since World War I.

Ill

Early one morning I set out in an automobile from Beirut
for Dog River. We followed the windings of the bay north
ward, along what was once the Phoenician coast, up along a
highway that is one of the oldest in the world. The beautiful
macadam road was lined with eucalyptus trees which gave
coolness and shade. It was a lovely ride past substantial stone
houses and green gardens, through miles and miles of wide
belts of banana trees, tobacco and sugar-cane plantations, fig,
olive, orange, apricot, and mulberry orchards* The abun
dance of the latter made me realize that Lebanon is one vast
mulberry orchard. Remarking upon it, I was told that raw
silk used to be one of her chief exports. I saw many two-
wheeled carts, many herds of cows, baggy Syrian trousers, the
fez, and veiled Moslem women in black. Before we left
Beirut, we stopped in the " Suk * and bought fresh strawber
ries, ripe cherries, and some oranges. Never have I eaten
sweeter, more delicious berries than those grown in Lebanon.
After ten miles of driving we reached Dog River, Nahr el
Kelb, or Licus Flumen as it was called by the Romans.

Why it is called Dog River puzzles many a visitor who
comes here. One picturesque story has it that during the age
of fables a monster wolf or dog which was chained by a
demon at the river mouth could be heard barking and sav-

296 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

agely growling from here as far off as Cyprus when whipped
into a fury by violent storms that swept the coast.

Before climbing the road up the gorge to see the carved in
scriptions, the calling cards left by conquerors using this pass
from Raamses II to General Giraud of France in 1920, 1
stopped to watch a pastoral scene. Anyone who approaches
pastoral scenes in Palestine or Syria with imagination and fa
miliarity with the Bible can easily see enacted verses from
Scripture.

A shepherd this day had brought his flock to rest under the
large bridge connecting both sides of the gorge. Fertile Leba
non is the Land of the Shepherds and raising sheep here is
profitable. In winter they graze farther up among the hills;
during spring and summer the sheep graze close to the sea.
We had met this morning many groups of shepherds leading
flocks. But here the sheep lay quietly in the shade under the
bridge on what very early in the year is part of the river bed;
not three feet away Dog River flowed swiftly into the sea.
Near-by stood the shepherd and his dog roamed on the fringes
of the flock. For the first time I understood the full meaning
of the Psalmist when he cried:

" I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord,
only makest me dwell In safety." PSALM 4: 8.

Dog River enters the Mediterranean between rugged, steep,
and lofty precipices; the scenery is romantic and impressive.
The mountains extend out to the sea so that north of this
point is only a narrow rocky passage along the shore.

I began the short, stiff climb up the road of the gorge
through a pass which has been used from time immemorial
by the aggressors from East and West as the in-gate and out-
gate to and from Damascus. It is paved with treacherous,
jagged rocks that kept turning under my feet. I felt as if I
were treading in the steps of all those conquerors who have at

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 297

one time or another fought their way along -this military
highway.

I came to a remarkable series of conquerors* inscriptions
cut into the solid rock of the cliff. I counted some twelve or
more rock-cut inscriptions and figures on tablets on the cliff
face but some say there are altogether twenty of them. As I
remember them from climbing up the ancient road, beginning
at the bridge, they follow one another in this order. There
is a French inscription to the expedition of 1860 under Na
poleon III, which is imposed on an Egyptian cartouche dedi
cated to the god Ptah. Then comes a British inscription
relating to Lord Allenby s conquest in 1918. Next is an As
syrian one with the figure of a king .with his right hand raised.
It is followed by two more tablets, one the defaced figure per
haps of Shalmaneser III, who invaded the West four times
and campaigned against Egypt, and the other figure is an
unidentified Assyrian. Further along are a Latin and a Greek
inscription.

Higher still is a defaced figure of Tiglath-Pileser (Pul) who
once swept over Syria, northern Israel, Edom, and Moab in a
deluge of death and reduced Judah and Jerusalem to vas
salage. One has only to read First Chronicles, Second Kings,
and the Book of Isaiah to realize how great a menace the As
syrians were to the Hebrews. But, in addition to biblical ac
counts, Tiglath-Pileser himself left some interesting, vigorous,
full descriptions of his destruction of Damascus. There is an
Egyptian frieze of Raamses II sacrificing to Ra, the Sun-god.
Beyond is a figure of Sennacherib, the " Wolf on the Fold,"
who was forced to return to Nineveh either because of plague
or rebellion, leaving Jerusalem unharmed in 701 B. c. at the
time that the prophet Isaiah was comforting his terror-stricken
people and when Hezekiah s conduit was completed.

This same tablet has a low relief of Esarhaddon with some
clear-cut cuneiform writing across the body. He is the mon-

298 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

arch who succeeded Sennacherib in Assyria. He is men
tioned but twice in the Old Testament. Esarhaddon con
quered Sidon and, remembering that, it recalled Isaiah s la
ment over Tyre and Sidon in Isaiah, Chapter 23. This
same man succeeded in an enterprise which had baffled both
Sargon and Sennacherib when he led his army into Egypt and
reduced that country to an Assyrian province. It is likely
that he used this pass then*

Next is a figure of Raamses II and this time in adoration
of Ammon, the god of Thebes. He is the Pharaoh who many
scholars, accepting the late date for the Exodus, agree was
the Pharaoh of the Oppression. Near this there is another
Assyrian inscription referring to the exploits of Esarhaddon,
who is represented on the rock. An Arabic inscription near
the bridge refers to Selim, the Ottoman Sultan, who con
quered Syria early in the sixteenth century.

Dog River is a marvelous place to take time to remember
the monarchs who walk across the Bible s printed page as it
unfolds a record of the Hebrews as they came in contact with
various world powers. Sadly, I thought how these lords of
the ancient world have disappeared and the wilderness and
successive dynasties have swallowed up all their work. There
is nothing left of their glory except a few inscriptions here and
there and the recovered wrecks of a few of their buildings and
some of them are but heaps of fragments. But here at Dog
River the great warriors from the past to the present are re
membered briefly.

IV

" How would you like to go to Tyre and Sidon with us in
the morning? " some friends asked me at dinner in Beirut. I
welcomed this opportunity not only to see more of the Syrian
Riviera but to tour this Phoenician coast because of its associ
ation with Jesus* healing ministry among the Gentiles.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 299

It was about nine o clock when we left the city and headed
south, not knowing what adventures lay before us. For the
next few hours we were to travel over good roads and bad,
over stretches of road still in the making, simply beds of
crushed rock, and when there was no road at all along the
hard yellow sand of the Mediterranean shore.

We passed by countless yawning black caves conspicuous on
the soft white limestone cliffs of the Lebanon range. Some of
these have been used as dwellings by prehistoric man. They
are large, dry, roomy affairs, capable of housing comfortably
many people. Some have been shelters and hiding places for
fugitives like David, who fled to one from Saul s jealous
wrath, or like Lot, who dwelt in one in great fear with his two
daughters. Some have been used as tombs, and the rock-
hewn vaults from Graeco-Roman times have long since been
ransacked for any treasures they might contain.

Along the way we saw two Syrian women, heavily veiled,
sitting in the road wildly gesticulating and screaming. They
had been struck by a passing motor car whose driver had fled
the scene. Badly scared, slightly shaken, but no injuries be
yond hurt feelings, they finally got up and walked off. Along
a particularly bad stretch we watched native women walking
barefoot on jagged rock and carrying baskets of crushed stone
on their heads to be used in the construction of this new road
between Beirut and Haifa. We watched in amazement these
women doing such hard work. They were aided by men
whose only jobs seemed to be to lift the heavy baskets to the
women s heads or tumble the stones out again into the new
roadbed.

After an hour or so we reached the green gardens on the
outskirts of modern Saida, the descendant of ancient Sidon.
Once the oldest and most important Phoenician town, known
since 2800 B. c., the fate predicted by Jeremiah has come to
pass and today it is reduced to a minor place of some twelve

300 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

thousand inhabitants. We drove through the long main street
of shops, stopped to buy some fruit, but we came away with
the impression that business is slow in modern Sidon, has de
serted it for the more thriving market of Beirut.

We wandered along the sea front. Gone are the north and
south harbors filled with ships from all parts of the world.
In their place this day lay moored a few fishing smacks. Hun
dreds of nets were spread out like sheets to dry in the sunshine.
The simple fishermen in Sidon are not navigators after the
manner of those famous mariners who sailed completely
around Africa in 600 B. a., who sailed the Western ocean,
penetrated in their ships as far as the Baltic in quest of tin and
steel, and brought gold and copper from Ophir. It was hard
for me to realize that its merchants and also those of Tyre had
ever been princes and navigators who were responsible for the
safe transference of Persian fleets to Greece and earlier
manned the Egyptian fleets in the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea, and provided Solomon with a navy.

The reef in the harbor was plainly visible. Legend says
this is the dragon that was about to devour Andromeda when
Perseus appeared and allowed it to see the head of Medusa,
whereupon it was turned to stone, and there it lies today with
its head toward Sidon. It doesn t require much imagination
to see the shape. Also in the harbor with the bridge by which
it once was joined to the land is the crumbling sea castle of
the Crusaders.

There had been no storm lately along this shore and so we
were not able to gather from the beach any murex shells from
which the famous purple dye was made. However, in the
quaint bazaar we did see burlap awnings dyed in the tradi
tional Phoenician purple.

We stopped to watch two men in Turkish style, baggy-
at-the-seat pants. They were sawing lumber into planks.
"Gopher wood for boats?" we asked among ourselves, re-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 301

membering that Sidonian wood-cutters at King Solomon s re
quest hewed for him cedars from Lebanon*

Once Sidon which gave gods to the Phoenicians and
through them to Greece and Italy was a center of adulterous
religious practices, but the city of Jezebel, daughter of Eth-
baal, King of the Sidonians, is fallen and the altars of Baal
have not smoked in hundreds of years.

V

Down the road to Tyre, we passed by reputed Zarephath of
Bible days where Elijah sojourned with the hospitable widow
whose meal in her barrel " wasted not " and where he repaid
her hospitality by restoring her son. Somewhere hereabouts
Joshua s men chased their enemies, " hocked their horses and
burnt their chariots."

Looking directly ahead into the face of the deep blue sea
whose white waves broke onto the yellow sandy beach and to
low-lying sand dunes rising toward richly green orchards and
hills, we came farther into " the coast of Tyre and Sidon."
Once Jesus walked this coast and hallowed it for us and for
all time when somewhere here he healed the daughter of the
Syro-Phoenician woman. * Here in his Lord s steps came Paul
on his way from Ephesus to martyrdom at Rome. After tar
rying seven days, he knelt on the beach in prayer with a little
group of sorrowing Christians from the young church at Tyre,
They knew they would never see his face again and they had
come to say a last good-bye.

The sea grew striped with color. The purplish streaks in
the surf were reminders of how near we were to Tyre. The
thing we most wanted to see was the remains of the great
mole or bridge of stones which Alexander the Great made
centuries before the Christian era and by means of which he
was finally able to conquer the island-city.

Ancient Tyre was built partly on the mainland and partly

3O2 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

on an island in the sea three quarters of a mile from the
shore. Withdrawing to their rocky haven the Tyrians suc
cessfully defied Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years. But Alex
ander by one of the most famous engineering feats in history
succeeded in building a causeway of stones and cement from
the mainland to the isle. After seven months of siege, Tyre
fell. As the price of her resistance, Alexander slew eight
thousand of her inhabitants, crucified two thousand more
upon the shore, and sold thirty thousand into slavery. In
more peaceful days the bridge became a broad, rocky road
and on either side men built houses and shops much as I have
seen shops on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It was so
when Jesus withdrew into these parts and later when Paul
saw it from his ship as he sailed into the harbor. The sea-
road still exists but the washing of the sands has made it solid
land and Tyre is no longer an island but a peninsula.

If Sidon is a sad sight to anyone acquainted with her his
tory, how much more so is Tyre. Beyond the moles and
harbor the ruins of Tyre above water are few indeed. The
sea has claimed the splendid palaces built by her merchants
who ruled the sea trade of their time. I watched where the
Mediterranean waves broke with unceasing regularity over an
aggregation of giant grey and red granite pillars brought from
Egypt and washed carved masonry which adorned this once
proud capital city of Phoenicia. Many columns have been
carried away by villagers to patch their hovels; surely the sea
around Tyre has been a quarry for towns from Beirut to Acre.

The city has literally fallen in the sea and the sea front of
the modern fishing town is actually a place for the making
and drying of nets today! One becomes silent with astonish
ment at such a fulfillment of prophecy as Tyre presents.

From here the road south climbs high above the sea, over
the " Ladder of Tyre," and finds its winding way into Haifa
sprawling at the foot of Carmel. It follows the trail beaten

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by Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, a thousand years and more
before the Romans and Crusaders passed this way. This is no
silent road. For today modern motor cars, even if antiquated,
whizz along through the streets of Tyre and Sidon and replace
to a large extent the picturesque camel caravan of the Ca-
naanites.

A bus labelled " Beirut-Haifa " thundered by filled with
turbaned Arabs going to the Syrian seaport. It reminded us
we were due in Beirut at one o clock for luncheon. Follow
ing in the train of the modern motor caravan, we turned our
backs on Tyre languishing beside the sea it once ruled.

CHAPTER XX

The approach to Greece has always been by water and so I
still find it as I debark for a day here. It is a short motor trip
from sun-baked Piraeus to "violet-wreathed" Athens. I am
touched by the city s modern comforts and thrill to the splendor
of her ancient monuments: the Acropolis^ Temple of Theseum,
Theatre of Dionysus, the Tower of Winds, and the Areopagus.
<e Miracles of grace in stone ** from the Golden Age lure me first
to the Acropolis. I At on Mars Hill where Paul preached and
wonder what is still in Athens that he looked upon when he came
as a tourist. Sailing from Piraeus at sunset, I enjoy a charming
last view of the Acropolis towering above the city and of hills
softly turning purple.

FROM the glamour of Alexandria with its admixture of
East and West to the dusty, sun-baked port of ancient and
modern Athens, Piraeus, is a voyage between two worlds. Yet
two nights and a day at sea are sufficient to achieve it. Our
" Export 9 * steamer came into the Roman breakwater lei
surely, early, not long after daybreak.

Very disappointing was the morning haze which veiled the
Athenian hills, the gleaming columns of the Parthenon, the
very things I had risen early to enjoy while crossing Phaleron
Bay and entering the great sea walls of Hadrian. Happy was
the experience of one familiar face upon the wharf. Gabriel,
like his noble forerunner, bore good news, cheering smiles, and
a promise that the haze would by and by yield to the Grecian
sun and reveal the dazzling purity of the Acropolis.

Our progress had been slow through the Mediterranean
medley of craft of every type, size, and age. There were
fishermen who might have supplied the dainties for the

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criminating tables of Pericles and Alcibiades; there were non
descript craft of half the shipyards of Europe. Athens is
linked with all the isles of Greece from Patmos to Candia.
There were far-flung ocean liners like ours, from many lands;
there was a kaleidoscope of small craft. This makes up the
daily spectacle of Piraeus, gateway to modern Athens. Com
ing alongside the wharf there was presented yet another spec
tacle, a Near Eastern picture, a turmoil of clamorous activ
ity, and even the " souvenir sellers " were there.

II

I had come to Greece for the first time to spend a day, to
see her temples, her ancient theatres, to look upon her two
mountains Lycabettus and Hymettus haunt of the bees
and the Muses. If I had stayed longer, I might have learned
then that every Greek is obsessed with modern politics; as it
was my guide was chiefly interested in gaining sympathizers
for the Elgin marbles, which are resting in the British Mu
seum. I might have learned of her industries such as the
manufacture of cigarettes from Greciarx grown tobacco; as it
was I visited the Near East Foundation and purchased hand-
woven linen, pieces of bright pottery, and small dolls dressed
like " evzones." I might have learned of the excellent wines
and the delicious native foods; as it was I never got further
than the thousand and one delights on the hors d oeuvres cart
at the Grand Bretagne Hotel at noon. I might have become
familiar with the rich variety of her life; as it was I made the
acquaintance of a peculiar, overwhelming abundance of
Athens 3 animal life, the fleas, whose stinging remarks re
minded me that this fair city has a great deal more than
human life teeming in its streets.

The modern comforts of Athens touched all of us from the
cruise-ship and made us aware of them: good hotels, excel
lently prepared foods well-served; taxis to whirl us quickly

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where we wanted to go, airplanes whirred overhead from
African and Asiatic routes, and an excellent motor road from
Piraeus to Athens.

But side by side with this Westernized comfort and the
thrills of ancient splendors, I did have glimpses of unspoiled
native life. It revealed to me that most Athenians must dwell
on housetops! I saw an old woman in her embroidered
jacket and her billowing petticoats; a peasant in a pleated
skirt, skullcap, and his shoes adorned with red pom-poms. I
vaguely heard the clatter of bargaining, which, after Egypt
and Palestine, is a trifle dimmed. I heard the " squak " of
ducks. I saw proprietors of coffee houses in checkered aprons
presiding over tiny uncovered sidewalk tables, but a few were
placed under pepper trees or occasionally beneath an awning.
I saw donkey-drivers walking through the clean streets selling
blossoms which were heaped in panniers upon the donkeys
backs. Spring was in Greece and Spring was reckless with her
blossoms !

Ill

It is impossible to describe Athens in a few paragraphs or in
a few pages; to see Athens in a day and get much of anything
from the experience was another impossibility according to
my friends who had spent long periods of time there. I was
attempting the impossible, prepared by history courses in
school, by reading, and being possessed of an open mind to
seek out its beauties and ready to be impressed. I shall never
discourage anyone about the benefits of a mere day in Athens,
knowing what that experience meant to me.

The sight of ancient Athens sleeping in all its ruined splen
dor is one of the most moving sights in the world. Athens
with her amazing Acropolis was even more beautiful than
my expectations heightened it. The beautiful pillared Tem
ple of Theseum in the valley was lovely and delightful with

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its arresting view of the Parthenon on her " high place " clear
cut against the azure sky. The fallen Temple of Zeus pro
vided the proper atmosphere for beginning my day of sight
seeing. The Theatre of Dionysus, center of dramatic art
where the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aris
tophanes were performed, was thrilling. If only to sit where
dignitaries and priests once sat in marble chairs appropriately
inscribed or to occupy the double throne once occupied by
two of the city s benefactors, or to relax a moment in one of
the remaining seats running up to the very foot of the cliff
where once thirty thousand spectators saw a drama of
Aeschylus, rejoiced over the defeat of the Persians, or grieved
with Antigone or for Alcestis, or were excited afresh by
Aristophanes, was to thrill to " the play s the thing." The
Tower of Winds stands far below the Acropolis. This oc
tagonal building whose eight walls are turned to the eight
points of the compass bearing reliefs representing the winds
and where on top once stood a huge Triton worked by a
pivot indicating where the winds lay was once the weather
bureau of ancient Athens. And the Agora, being replaced to
its place of importance, reminded me of the bazaar worlds of
Jerash, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Cairo, and supplied what
human element seemed lacking among all these relics from the
past. But the Areopagus, seat of justice, on Mars Hill, poign
ant with the memory of the apostle Paul, was a surprise. I
found it a quieting place on a very busy day as the soft breezes
from the sea played upon me while sitting upon the little
rough rock in the sun.

Most travellers, and I was no exception, go immediately to
the rock, the Acropolis, the center of art and history, to gaze
in admiration and wonder and to review the past written in
the dazzling purity of white stone. This is the altar rock of
the city. During the administration of Pericles, 449-429
B. c., the Acropolis which formerlv had been the abode of

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her kings, then a fortress, was turned into a sanctuary for the
goddess Athena. It was adorned with beautiful buildings
which have never been excelled by any others in perfection of
artistic finish and point of perfection* The homes of the kings
were transferred from here to Mars Hill.

The Acropolis is really the mother of Athens. Once the
city was there, then it clung to the south, now it stretches out
to the north, east, and west and is protected no longer by the
" queen of hills." During the Age of Pericles it became the
home of all the guardian deities of Greece, all of them settled
on this hill.

This is the place above all others in Athens which draws
travellers with a lure of beauty. I came to the altar rock
and mounted the steps of the Propylaea. The ancients were
so proud of it that a comedian of the period said of them:
" The Athenians are always praising four things, their myrtle
berries, their honey, the Propylaea, and their figs." As I
passed beyond it, I saw rising before me on rough rock the
Parthenon outlined against the blue sky* As I stood in its
presence I was conscious that the ascent of the steep steps
between the columns of the Propylaea had been a prepara
tion for this moment when I should see that glorious ruin, sit
ting among ruined marble temples, ruined stairways, and
broken columns, but an actuality of beauty. I was very glad
that I could not come suddenly upon the Parthenon but that
I had to ascend to it.

The temples on the Acropolis looked very different cen
turies ago when they were as their creators left them. Instead
of worn Pentelic marble, weathered by years, yellowed by
time, they shone then brilliantly with color and gold since
they were all painted and gilded* Still the Parthenon in
ruins yet remains the crown of the hill. Here I found the
works of Phidias and the glory of his temple for Athena, the
most famous Doric temple, despoiled to be sure but still

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startlingly beautiful, still impressive in its decadent glory.
Earthquakes and wars and plunder have laid low parts of the
structure, but still it gleams majestically in the sunlight and in
the moonlight.

Within the now empty Parthenon stood the forty-foot
statue of Athena, helmeted, standing with her left hand touch
ing her shield and in her right hand a figure of the Winged
Victory, a great wooden statue of the goddess, but not one
inch of wood was visible. The face and hands were covered
originally with plates of ivory; the eyes were precious stones;
tresses of gold hair fell from below the gold helmet; forty tal
ents of gold plates covered the statue, ordered made remov
able by Pericles and executed by Phidias.

Near-by is the Temple of Erechtheus, which is in contrast
to the austere Parthenon. This is the great Ionic shrine, dedi
cated to Athena Polias, guardian of the city. It is not a large
temple but a graceful one and its colonnade of the Caryatides
is one of the fairest things in Athens. Fourteen chaste and
beautiful columns of this building are still standing.

The Acropolis retains its old landscape, situated upon a
plain with the same undisturbed hills of Lycabettus and
Hymettus, as it was in Paul s day; while at its base on every
side lies the still fair city of Athens with its smokeless white
houses. Far away over the hills to the northeast beyond
Pentelicon, where the marble stones of the Parthenon were
quarried, lies Marathon with its mounds of .buried heroes
who

" Breasted, beat barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on,
Did the deed, and saved the world."

Little Lycabettus stands up bold and diffident. Sapphire seas
gleam around the shores. A sprinkling of islands still tempt
landsmen to be seamen.

Descending from the Acropolis, I saw the rock of the

3io Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Areopagus on Mars Hill on the top of which Paul preached
to the Athenians. He must have ascended the slight hill by
the same rude steps cut in its rocky sides as I did; he must
have stood upon the same commanding crag where I stood
when he told his listeners: " Men of Athens, I see that you
are in every way unusually reverential to the gods. For in
passing about and contemplating your sacred objects I came
upon an altar on which was inscribed, * To an Unknown
God. " As he spoke he could easily have glanced toward the
Acropolis not far distant, crowded with marble temples, dom
inated by the colossal bronze statue of Athena, whose spear
tip was visible to seamen as far as Sunium.

Sitting on Mars Hill beneath an open sky, in plain sight of
the Acropolis with the Parthenon, and looking beyond to
mounts Hymettus and Lycabettus, all things which Paul saw,
it wasn t hard to imagine Paul wandering lonely through the
lovely city, wondering at its glorious sights, its stately build
ings, its splendid altars, its multiplicity of statues of gods. To
cultured tourists Athens of that day was a dream of beauty
just as it is in its decadent glory today. It needs only the
merest stretch of the imagination to have chapter seventeen
of the Book of the Acts come alive here.

As I sat that afternoon on Mars Hill and read chapter sev
enteen I tried to imagine the councillors of the Areopagus as
sembled to hear the Apostle to the Gentiles as he pled for the
worship of the one true, eternal, righteous God and for His
Son, Jesus Christ. The thought came to me that in my own
time as well as in the Athens of the first century there are
many who seem to get along very well without Him except in
vague, occasional moments. In my own time as well as in the
Athens of the first century there are many people who have
substituted for true worship other gods, idols of success,
wealth, beauty, social position, intellectuality, " things carved
out by man s art and thought." False gods with their special

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celebrations and festivals offering a succession of great occa
sions for pilgrims to their shrines stirred Paul to speak in
Athens of the first century; then men set up their idols, graven
images of stone on the Acropolis; today men set them up in
their hearts.

Just what did Paul see here in the year 50 A* D.? The city
had fallen from its ancient splendor, Marathon and Ther
mopylae were remote incidents to him even if he knew about
them. I don t suppose he had ever read Homer, Thucydides,
or even Herodotus. At least some of us have that much in
common with the Apostle because few of us know these au
thors works today. As he walked beside the Long Walls dat
ing from classical time and saw the Acropolis rising from the
plain, did he hear words which someone had repeated to him,
maybe it was Peter, when he had been at the Church Council
meeting in Jerusalem: " Go ye into all the world, and preach
the gospel to every creature " ? I like to think that Peter
told Paul of what Jesus had said presaging a world- wide mis
sion for the gospel and of his vision at Joppa which had in
fluenced his preaching at the time that Jewish leaders were
trying to lay burdens upon those accepting the faith. I like to
think that thereafter when Paul entered a new city to preach
the gospel that those words were ringing in his ears.

When Paul entered Athens he came as a tourist, too. I had
never until that moment on Mars Hill thought of the Apostle
wandering about the city s streets as might any casual tourist
from Rome, Alexandria, London, or New York and then
later dwelling as casual tourists do on the one thing that im
presses them most among a foreign people. What impressed
the tourist Paul in the first century was the multiplicity of
altars and especially that one altar to " An Unknown God."
It had impressed other travellers, among them Apollonius,
whose biography had been written by Philostratus. He
wrote : " Altars are set up in honor even of unknown gods. *

312 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Altars such as these were a commonplace in the ancient
world, Paul s beginning of his speech had just the right local
touch. Everyone within reach of his voice knew to what he
referred; they even knew the origin of that altar on the
Acropolis. His hearers were familiar with the story of the
plague which visited Athens in the sixth century before Christ
and how, after sacrifices had been made to every known god
and still the plague continued, the services of a Cretan
prophet were requested. He drove a flock of black and white
sheep to the Areopagus and allowed them to stray where they
liked only waiting until they rested of their own free will.
Then and there the sheep were sacrificed to the god, of whom
until then the Athenians had been oblivious. According to
legend the plague ceased upon the sacrifice to this unknown
god who had been placated. Then it became the custom ever
after in Athens and even elsewhere in the pagan world to
erect altars to unknown gods in order not to overlook any
who might become angry because of non-recognition. Archae
ologists have unearthed stone altars, not at Athens but at
Pergamum and on the Palatine Hill near Rome, bearing the
inscription: " To the Unknown Gods," or a similar dedica
tion.

After such an arresting beginning, Paul began to build up
his arguments:

" What you are worshipping in ignorance that I am making
known unto you.

" The God who made the world and all the things that are in
it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in tem
ples made by hands, nor is he served by human hands, as if he
needed anything. For he gives to all life and breath and all
things. And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on
all the face of the earth, having marked out the appointed times
and the boundaries of their abodes, that they might seek for God,
if they could feel after him and find him, though, indeed, he is
not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and

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are; as some of your own poets have said, e For we are also his
offspring.* Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to
think that deity is like gold or silver or stone, a thing carved by
man s art and thought. The times of ignorance God over
looked, but now he commands all men everywhere to change,
since he has set a day in which he will soon judge the world in
justice by the man whom he has appointed, and of whom he has
given evidence to all men by raising him from the dead."

BOOK OF THE ACTS 17: 23-31*
(The Riverside New Testament)

Apparently his speech was a failure because the Greeks would
listen no more after he proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus
and the coming day of judgment. He converted two persons
only, Dionysius and Damaris. Tradition says nothing what
soever about Damaris, but of the other, Dionysius, it records
that he became the first Bishop of Athens, went to Rome and
stayed with Paul until his martyrdom, then went to preach the
gospel in France, and finally suffered martyrdom on the V"H
of martyrs, Montmartre, in Paris under the extreme persecu
tions of the Emperor Domitian. Tradition affirms that is how
St. Dionysius or St. Denis, as he is sometimes called, became
the patron saint of France.

IV

As I sat upon Mars Hill, there came a strong urge to know
just what is now in Athens that Paul actually saw. I am sure
that he saw the Acropolis with its splendid Propylaea and the
gleaming Parthenon. He was never to know that that sanc
tuary for a pagan god upon which he could easily have gazed
as he talked of the " Unknown God " would become in time
a Christian church, devoted to the worship of the one God
and His Son, Jesus Chris^ of whose resurrection the Athenians
were not willing to hear that day he spoke. He saw the Tem
ple of Erechtheus and the Temple of Athena Nike, the
" Wingless Victory," a perfect and fascinating little Ionic

314 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

structure. He saw Asklepieion whose ruins are still cut in the
side of the Acropolis. He saw the lovely Theatre of Dio
nysus. He saw the Theseum, the most perfectly preserved
Greek temple in the world. Surely, he saw the Tower of
Winds, perhaps he even stopped to observe the current
weather report. He must have been attracted to the circular
Monument of Lysikrates. Interesting to the Bible student is
the fact that Athens contains more buildings that Paul must
have seen than any site in Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, or
Macedonia.

V

Down a glorious motor road with pleasant cottages and
bungalows I sped back to the boat, scheduled to sail promptly
at five o clock, cargo or no cargo ! I had spent the day, only
a day in Greece; I was the merest tourist. But I carried away
a lovely, unique memory of " miracles of grace in stone " and
a firm resolve to come back again the next year.

The boat was setting forth westward for the Bay of Naples.
We were out in Phaleron Bay, everyone was at the rail wait
ing and watching as probably those Athenians waited and
watched so long ago for one more glimpse of the Acropolis.
As Gabriel had prophesied earlier that day, the haze lifted
and there upon her sacred haven, outlined against a clear
blue sky, was Athens monument, the Parthenon. I carried
away as my particular treasure memories of this temple tower
ing above the city, of a silver sea, and of hills under a sunset
sky turning softly purple.

CHAPTER XXI

Describes my voyage from the Bay of Phaleron to the Bay of
Naples, I travel to the resurrected Pompeii at the foot of
Mount Vesuvius to look for traces of the gospel there, go on to
exquisite Amalfi and think of Andrew, and drive to Sorrento over
a fine road offering ever-changing views of indescribable scenery.

THAT night I sailed around the "mulberry leaf 55 as the
Grecian peninsula was called by the ancients. Enveloped
in woolly steamer rugs I lay in my chair on the boat deck, re
laxing after the exigencies of the day at Athens, recalling
many things which at the time had not seemed important,
watching a luminous sky where earlier a moon had appeared,
and gazing far off to sea where the stars ended suddenly in
blackness. All at once I was startled from my reveries by a
sudden change in the wind which until then had been blowing
light and cool over my face. Now it seemed ruthless and
chilling as it swept over me. There was a sudden lurch of
the steamer as it began to roll in waters that were running
swiftly now. " It s good-bye to Greece, 53 someone called out.
I remembered having read somewhere that sailors in Paul s
day feared these waters south of the Grecian peninsula. It
hadn t made much of an impression upon me then as I read.
Now I began trying to recall what it had been. It began to
come back the more I felt that stinging, biting wind against
my face, the more I struggled to keep the woolen robe about
me, the more I felt the uneasiness of the large liner. It con
cerned ancient Corinth and the Isthmus of Corinth, four miles
of clay which linked the Peloponnesus to Attica. As early as
the fifth century B. a, the commerce from the Orient to the

315

316 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

West across here made Corinth a flourishing city and the Gulf
of Corinth became an important focus of traffic. As late as
Paul s day Corinth was still a great metropolis because of its
strategic position at the isthmus and because of that it af
forded many commercial opportunities to Jews who had been
banished from Rome by Claudius. The utility of the isthmus
was long recognized. Before the present canal was con
structed, ships sailing between the two seas, Aegean and
Ionium (Adriatic), were forced to make a detour of two
hundred miles around the Morea with its dangerous and
feared Cape Malea. It was customary even in the fifth cen
tury B. c. for ships 3 cargoes to be transferred from East to
West by means of this Isthmus of Corinth rather than sail
with their cargoes of raw materials, foodstuffs, Grecian metal-
work, woven goods, and pottery around the peninsula which
was usually stormy, swept as it was, and still is, by treacher
ous winds. Cargoes in boats too heavy to be moved across
on a roller-like structure were transferred into smaller craft,
taken across the four miles, and reloaded at the opposite end
into trustworthy sea-going vessels. In either case the treacher
ous sea at Cape Malea which we were now experiencing was
avoided. The results were a saving in delays in schedules due
to storms, a speeding up of deliveries, and a guarding against
disasters.

" It is getting too rough and windy to be comfortable.
Let s go below/ 3 someone urged.

No wonder this stretch of waterway was avoided by an
cient sailors, I thought. The reason for the Corinthian Canal
was obvious now; the reasons for Corinth becoming such a
metropolis, one of the most flourishing of Greek trading cities,
was obvious, too. The reason for Paul s trepidation in preach
ing to Corinthians was understandable. There he had a cos
mopolitan population drawn by commercial opportunities, an
aristocracy of wealth not birth nor background, given to vice.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 317

corruption, wickedness. Yet at Corinth Paul " determined to
know nothing . . . save Jesus Christ, and him crucified/ and
laying aside his futile philosophical preaching such as he had
attempted at Athens, won many converts. Among them were
grafters, drunkards, prostitutes, as well as people of decent
life like Priscilla and Aquila,

I was rather glad that I hadn t gone directly to my cabin
after dinner; perhaps then I should have missed this glimpse
into the world of Paul s day.

u Don t forget Stromboli. We pass the obscure island
which would be lost in the sea if it weren t for its sensational
pyrotechnic display tomorrow, sometime around midnight.
It s an unforgettable show when the crater erupts and streams
of fire roll down the mountainside into the sea at night.
Many a ship has charted its course through the Straits of
Messina by its light," I heard the voice explaining to newcom
ers into this Mediterranean world.

" And it s Naples the following morning for sunrise. You
must not miss the world s most beautiful harbor," I heard the
voice continue.

I sighed as I remembered that those who see it for the first
time, even though familiar with it from pictures, are little pre
pared for the exceptional beauty of its bays, its many tiny
islands of which Capri and Ischia are sphinxes crouching on
the water, guarding against the unknown dangers of the deep;
of a sapphire sky matched by the famous blue of the sea, of
green slopes, lovely villas, white rocks, and of that stately
sentinel Vesuvius which even now holds up a smoking torch.

II

Italy was in sight. We were slowly making our way into
the port of Naples. I had been up more than an hour, hoping
for glimpses of Capri s rugged precipices which alternate with
green gardens ablaze with flowers and her luxurious hotels

318 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

and villas which contrast with the simple dwellings of her
fisherfolk, straining for glimpses of this coast which always in
spring is a continuous succession of magnificent scenery and
a gay profusion of flowers. There was Vesuvius in the dis
tance. Of aU this Paul did not see the smoke of Vesuvius as
his boat sailed across the Gulf to Puteoli. His ship passed
Naples, passed harmless Mount Vesuvius whose slopes were
thickly covered with vines and in its shadow Pompeii and
Herculaneum were laughing away the last twenty years of
their lives. But for the clouds of grey smoke which domi
nated the scene and reminded me of the catastrophe twelve
years after Paul s martyrdom, it might have been the year 59
when he saw from the deck of the Castor and Pollux this land
putting on its mantle of green and spring flowers.

It must have been as truly beautiful in 59 A. D. as it was

this morning.

Not even the ominous presence of grey battleships in its wa
ters, magnificent in grace of line, sinister in their suggestions of
potential destructiveness, could spoil the morning s beauty for

me.

Strangely, I have never been disappointed in my arrivals in
the Bay of Naples, which holds within its curving arms a
thriving city. I ve thought how well the Greeks named the
city when they called it Parthenope, meaning a siren. From
Homer s time to ours this enchanting region has captivated
the hearts o men. For me its fascination has been these:
a sea like a variegated marble pavement, sunny skies, haunt
ing Neapolitan songs, antiquated streets over twenty-four
hundred years old, Christian churches built over pagan
temples, wonderful museums housing magnificent treasures,
but best of all a gay, light-hearted people who are extremely
temperamental and quick-witted but not lazy any more.
The lofty background for this was Mount Vesuvius with its
silent plumes of smoke clearly cut on the horizon.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 319

III

By day Vesuvius 3 ceaseless waves of smoke, at night its
torch of fire proclaim it as a champion of destruction. The
excavation of its two victims, Herculaneum and Pompeii, re
veals remnants of one of the most memorable and tragic con
vulsions of the earth s surface, the eruption of the mighty
volcano in 79 A. D.

In February of 63 A. D. an earthquake destroyed a large
portion of Pompeii, which was a fashionable resort for pleas
ure-loving Roman nobles. They owned villas here which they
used as winter residences. Its industrial and year-round
population was employed in wine-making. After the fearful
shaking, which was their first warning that all was not well in
the region of Vesuvius, Pompeians, satisfied that calamity was
past, tried to rebuild the city in Roman architecture, modified
somewhat by Greek influences. Of the hundreds of Pom
peians who fled then ijiany returned to live. Paul was at tlm
time in Rome and probably engaged in writing parts of the
letter which we know as First Timothy when the earthquake
broke the little city of twenty-five thousand people into pieces.

In 79 A. D., only twelve years after the martyrdom of Paul at
Rome, this mountain usually covered with fertile fields and
vineyards began to smoke, erupted, and covered the whole re
gion with a fine, fiery, red-hot rain of pumice stones and fine
brown dust. Pompeii was not buried in a flow of lava. Ex
cavation has shown that instead it was covered with enormous
masses of volcanic pumice stones, cinders (dust from the
pumice stone) . . . literally drowned in dust and ashes!
This was settled by the rain which followed the catastrophe
and by the heavy weight which became in time a hard, stony
blanket, a blanket about twenty-five feet in depth.

On the fatal afternoon of August 23rd, the amphitheatre
was filled with spectators who were watching a gladiatorial

320 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

show. Probably upon the first warnings the audience fled
into the open country and many of them were saved. The
perfect deluge of destruction came at exactly two o clock in
the morning as the hourglass found at Pompeii testifies. Ter
rible sounds came from the depths of the mountain. Its
mighty fury was spent first on Herculaneum. There must
have been many persons in Pompeii who believed until late in
the evening that this city would escape. However, with the
ample warning issued by Vesuvius, men rushed from the
Forum, from the Amphitheatre, women snatched their chil
dren and ran for their lives; the greater portion of the inhab
itants fled the city. But some were sick, some were lame,
some blind. Some stayed to help. Some rushed back in the
dreadful darkness that prevailed to conduct others to safety.
Two thousand perished, suffocated by the sulphurous fumes,
unable to get farther through the ram of red-hot ashes.
Everything within the houses is as it was when the catastrophe
occurred, just as the inhabitants rushed off and left it: the
bread in the oven baking, meat and fowl partially cooked and
left by a fleeing cook, a dining table set for dinner. Although
many fled none had been prepared for the emergency that
Pompeii might be literally wiped out between two o clock in
the afternoon and two o clock in the morning. The volcanic
matter that buried the city and suffocated the people who
did not heed the early warnings and who were overcome in
the very act of escape preserved the very forms in death of the
escaping men and women. Their bodies were practically
moulded into the mixture of ashes and cinders which later
combined to form plaster casts to preserve their attitudes and
costumes. The petrified remains in the little Museum at
Pompeii are pathetic, a dog biting itself in agony, a man in
death throes. How many have wished, seeing these things,
that in the excavations at Pompeii some early New Testament
manuscript, say a copy of one of Paul s letters or a Gospel,

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would be discovered. So far excavators have not found a
single reference to Paul, to Peter, to the gospel, or Christian
ity here nor among the valuable papyri found at Hercula-
neum.

Does this mean that neither of these fashionable centers
was affected by the gospel? In 59 A. D. when Pompeii was at
the peak of its glory, Paul sailed past Naples Bay, saw Vesu
vius harmless, green-covered with vineyards, saw Pompeii and
Herculaneum nestling at its base, and sailed on to Puteoli, the
last lap in his journey to Rome to appeal to Nero. After
teaching, strengthening the Christian brethren in their faith
and establishing the Church, Paul suffered martyrdom at
Rome along with Peter, It was 67 A. D.

Vespasian was declared emperor in 69 A. D. The next year
his son Titus captured and destroyed Jerusalem amid frightful
massacres of pious and fanatical Jews. The beautiful Tem
ple, which had been erected by Herod, was utterly destroyed.
Today on the Forum at Rome stands one colossal monument
containing a pictorial record of the Holy City s complete de
struction. The Arch of Titus commemorates pictorially the
siege in the Near East which was a complete victory for the
Romans, Titus Vespasius, hero and conqueror, was probably
the Roman ruler when the tragedy of Pompeii occurred. Had
no Pompeian heard " the good news " from the lips of Peter,
or Paul, or one of their disciples in all that time, or from some
of the Jewish-Christians fleeing Jerusalem? Tradition says
that Felix s wife Drusilla and her son Felix perished in the
eruption of Vesuvius. She might have told, if it had occurred
to her, of the time at Caesarea when the prisoner Paul ap
peared before her as a youthful bride and her husband as
Procurator of Judea, and of how Paul in telling them con
cerning the faith of Jesus Christ reasoned with them about
uprightness, self-control, and the coming judgment.

But if no one saved in a metal box any copies of New

322 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Testament books older than any known to us or treasured any
word about this startling new movement and its leaders,
nonetheless Pompeii and Herculaneum are wonderful ex
periences for a Christian. Their houses and streets give one
the feeling of the world of Peter and Paul, and an idea of an
cient domestic life and the development of the private house
in the Italy known to the early Christians. They would have
been " at home " in any of these houses in Pompeii.

They were not constructed of marble or stone but of bricks.
Every house seems to have had an airy spacious court, an
cc atrium/ 3 which was surrounded on all four sides by por
ticoes. In the center of this large court was a marble basin,
known as the " impluvium," used as a receptacle for collect
ing rain water which fell off the penthouse roof which sloped
toward the middle court. From this wide courtyard the ad
joining living rooms received their only light and air. Guests
were entertained in living rooms under the porticoes or in the
early Pompeian houses at the far end facing the entrance in
what was the family meeting-place, like our drawing room.
Of all the houses excavated and reconstructed perhaps the
House of the Vetii is the most famous. This may be admired
in all its original aspects. It is certainly one of the most beau
tiful houses of the latest period of Pompeii. Interesting be
cause its beautiful frescoes have been left in their original
places and the lovely gardens restored. In its garden laid out
in landscape style its fountain is unique. A tiny spray of
water comes from the bills of two exquisitely formed little
ducks held in the arms of tiny boys. Of interest to many is
the villa s commodius kitchen with its bronze utensils still col
lected around the fireplace.

The dwellings of the wealthy residents of Pompeii were ex
tremely beautiful, some excelling in the wealth of their mural
decoration or their gardens. It is rather difficult to imagine
anything more beautiful and durable in mural decoration

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than that which embellished their walls. They were of
stucco, hard and smooth as marble, tastefully colored. Upon
these tinted surfaces were painted charming frescoes which
have outlasted in many cases more than eighteen centuries of
burial. Some illustrate Greek mythology, a few are land
scapes portraying the scenery of the Naples coast.

Great care is being taken by archaeologists to preserve the
upper stories of houses with their pillared openings and bal
conies. Those villas whose upper portions were made chiefly
of wood were set on fire and consumed by the live ashes
showered on the city. These demolished portions are being
reconstructed to their original aspect. A definite idea of an
cient architecture and house-planning in the first century can
be gathered by even the initiate.

The chief buildings to be seen here from the time of Paul
are : the Amphitheatre which seated twenty thousand persons
and which was filled on the fateful day, the Forum which was
the center of public life in any Roman city, and the Temple of
Jupiter which was the place of worship for the Capitoline di
vinities, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. There is the Temple of
Apollo which was built as far back as the Samnite period
(325-295 B. c.). This is surrounded by a portico of forty-
eight columns between which statues of the gods were placed.
This rises in the center of the sacred enclosure on the west of
the Forum. The solemn and imposing dark mass of Vesu
vius, its crater enveloped in vapor, dominates the scene. Too,
there is the Temple of Isis whose worship imported from
Egypt was common in Pompeii of the first century. A num
ber of skeletons were found within the private sanctuary of
this shrine. Some unhappy people dared to invade the sanc
tity of the hallowed area hoping that Isis would spread a
mantle of protection over them and here, praying, they
stifled in the atmosphere and died.

From the Temple of Isis, the Strada Stabiana leads to the

324 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Via delFAbbondanza, meaning the " Street of Abundance/ 5
This newly discovered street led through an unknown com
mercial quarter of the city. Now rows of taverns, shops, fac
tories, and homes are coming to light. The wall paintings
with that incomparable " Pompeian red " are as fresh and
colorful here as the day in which they were laid on. There are
some important buildings on this street, such as the Stabian
Baths and the College for the Youth; the latter being where
the juveniles learned to handle arms and engage in sports.

Perhaps what is of primary interest along here to the aver
age visitor is the reconstruction of everyday domestic life in
79 A. D. This Roman city, recovered from its ashes, reveals
the life and reality of nearly two thousand years ago. Jerash
(Gerasa) in Trans- Jordan, seldom visited by tourists, is an
other city of a somewhat later date whose ruins reveal a
Roman city-plan. But the fate which befell it while cata
strophic to its fame and glory at the time was not the tragic
fate of Pompeii. Along here are the oil-presses which supplied
a very necessary article of diet. One can visit the bakeshop
with its brick oven in which excavators found carbonized
loaves of bread. The wine shops can be seen still retaining
their frames for the wine jars and bearing still the marks of
name, quality, and year of vintage. They give an idea of the
industry of those remote times.

On some buildings are found advertisements for all sorts
of things. Americans are apt to think that we are the only
ones who deface landscapes and buildings with " ads." The
Pompeians used this device effectively and by its use even
urged the election of certain men to public office. As young
sters often do in some sections of American cities today, one
bygone day some Roman youngster scratched his Greek al
phabet upon the side of a Pompeian house where it can be
still seen. There are even advertisements for local theatrical
amusements and attractions, all of which reveals to us that

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 325

Pompeians were a pleasure-loving people, perhaps of a type of
entertainment which might not appeal to us today.

The ancient stepping-stones are here, the very ones by
which Roman ladies crossed from one side of the narrow
streets to the other in going from shop to shop. At the water
trough on Via dell Abbondanza, where many Pompeians
must have quenched their thirst and that of their horses with
the silvery stream of pure water flowing from a pipe, visitors
to Pompeii stop to taste the still flowing fresh water. The
outside plumbing system in use in the first century never fails
to be a source of wonderment.

There are to be seen in these cluttered narrow streets the
deep ruts made by the chariot wheels. A sense of the past
haunted me with the spirits of the pleasure-loving Pompeians.
Standing on the elevated sidewalk, outside a shop, the unseen
but real citizens of Pompeii actually come alive. Once again
there are dashing, pleasure-bent, gay young Lotharios speed
ing by, thrilling some young Roman matrons and causing
consternation among other less admiring and adventurous in
dividuals who narrowly escape the heavy chariot wheels and
thundering hoofs.

It is at the amusement center, which I have mentioned
briefly, with the Great Theatre, capable of seating five thou
sand devotees of the tragedy, or at the Odeon, capable of seat
ing fifteen hundred fans of the comic mimes, that the civic-
minded but gay Pompeians come to life again.

The first time I visited the Great Theatre as a member of
a large touring party. In the group was a garrulous profes
sor from one of America s large institutions of learning, a stu
dent of the Greek and Elizabethan dramas, who wanted to
display for us less educated travellers his Knowledge. He
almost broke the spell of Pompeii. Some places need silence
in approach and this Great Theatre is such a place.

There is a deeply worn doorsill into which every visitor

326 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

may place his feet today, just as every pilgrim may place his
feet into two grooves worn by pairs of feet through passing
centuries at the entrance to the Church of the Nativity in
Bethlehem. It weaves a magic spell and time stands still
again. As I stepped upon the doorsill of the theatre, it gave
me a feeling of oneness with all latecomers at a Roman trag
edy in the early centuries.

There is a long, narrow stage and behind it is the colon
naded open square where the spectators took shelter or en
gaged in " between the acts " conversation. In its heydey,
the theatre presented a gay appearance with its marble deco
rations. In the " cavea " sat the audience ready for the play.
The five tiers of seats were occupied by the chairs of the no
bility; the second twenty tiers accommodated the middle
classes who brought their own soft cushions; while the third
section held the ordinary people. High above all sat the
women, separated from the men. Each woman was allotted
just one foot and three and a half inches of space. This was an
open air tragic theatre on pleasant days; but on days when
the sun shone too strongly for comfort, it boasted an awning.

The garrulous professor was silenced by the official guide.
His low, soft, carrying voice allowed us to hear his facts but
at the same time to muse in the balmy air of a typical Italian
day underneath such a sky as must have canopied the Pom-
peians as they sat in these tiers of seats. Shadowy figures in
togas slipped quietly into the empty spaces around us. A
light wind swept across the theatre, bringing with it echoes of
whispers to mingle with ours. We seemed to be waiting for
the play to continue. Was it a tragedy of Seneca s which we
had interrupted? Alas, the play -at Pompeii was ended by
the rising of the Columbian professor, who called to his sisters
whom he was giving a European holiday.

Pompeii reveals the Roman city of the world of Paul. Too,
it teaches that human nature and everyday life have not

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 327

greatly changed in nineteen hundred years. It is not hard as
one walks up and down the silenced streets, still paved with
their original polygonal Vesuvian flagstones, to believe that
all the population has just gone off for a holiday and will re
turn at any moment.

I sailed out of Naples Bay once at nighttime . . . into a
blue darkness that was pierced with stars. I looked up at the
loom of Vesuvius and saw the long ascending line of lights
which marked the funicular railway on the mountainside. My
dreams were of another city than Naples, of a city that was
smothered in a few hours almost two thousand years ago and
whose resurrection today is little short of a miracle.

IV

From dreamy Pompeii the road toward Amalfi is one of
the finest in the world. It winds through an enchanting
scenery of green valleys, past vine-clad terraces on high hills,
and into pretty towns of clustered white houses with red roofs.
In spring beside it countless orange and lemon trees hang
golden globes against a clear blue sky. Sometimes the road
runs along the sea; sometimes almost upon a shelf of sheer
rock below which the sparkling blue Mediterranean spreads
itself like a filigree of silver foam. On through colorful vil
lages which are riots of flowers and greenery, bathed in sun
shine; villages like Salerno, Maiori, Minori, and tiny Ravello
whose beauty and peace inspired Wagner for the scenery in
the magic garden of Klingsor. Below high bluffs upon which
appear the forms of ruined castles. The smooth road runs
down to the blue sea at Amalfi; it arrives finally after emerg
ing from a tunnel at Amalfi s famous hostel, the Hotel Cap-
puccini, a rambling, white building situated on the wild,
rocky, but verdant cliffs above the peaceful harbor, where
mountain meets sea.

The frowning cliffs, forming a striking background, rise per-

328 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

pendicularly behind the village, almost sheer from the road
way. On dizzying heights are hundreds of small dwellings
which are perched picturesquely tier upon tier almost as if a
hurricane had blown them there. High on the side of the
mountain, reached only by a tiny lift or by a winding, tiring
staircase, is what was once the quiet convent of the Capuchins.
The convent with its dreamy cloisters, arcades, and terraced
walks has been converted into a hostel offering rest and re
freshment after a morning s drive.

Gazing down the Salernian coast from an arcade at the
convent, the peace broken only by the hum of bees, it seems
incredible that only eight hundred years ago Amalfi was a
commercial city which vied with Genoa and Pisa, made laws
to govern the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to the Golden
Horn, and owned colonies in Africa and Asia. Many of the
villagers today in what once was the oldest maritime republic
are engaged in fishing. Their nets are spread upon the shore
when not in use and their boats pulled up near-by out of the
water. If they are not fishermen, they are engaged in the
profitable manufacture of spaghetti and macaroni. Like the
dripping nets that, too, once used to be hung out on racks be-
side the motor road to dry but this picturesque, if not sanitary
custom, has been discontinued since the years of Fascist! rule
in Italy.

From the broad windows, from the arcades, I had glimpses
of blue skies, white clouds, dizzy green heights, and winding
roads playing peek-a-boo on mountain slopes. It was no
surprise to discover that there are many inviting walks and
motor, donkey, or boat excursions for the curious. I particu
larly remember one short walk through its clean, narrow,
sometimes arched, steep streets which ended in a wide-open,
paved square before the beautiful Cathedral of St. Andrew. I
was quite unprepared for the beauty of the Cathedral fagade,
or the pull of those dozens of steps leading to its entrance.

Photograph b;i Enit

The Cathedral dedicated to St Andrew at Amalfu The
brightly colored glaze tiles covering the ancient campanile
and the more recent cathedral harmonize with the scenery.
The city of the once famous Amalfi merchants rises tier upon
tier below "wild and rocky cliffs upon which appear the
forms of ruined castles*

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 329

Earlier beside Galilee, seeing fishing boats setting out in the
early morning I had dreamed of quiet Andrew, the first to fol
low Jesus; now I began to muse again as I stood before the
church which is reputed to hold the relics of the Apostle,
whose body translated in 1208 from Istanbul lies in the crypt
of AmalfTs Cathedral. I had visited the lake beside which
he was born and where he spent the early years of his life until
his call by the Teacher; I had travelled up and down the same
roads where he had walked beside Jesus and listened mean
time to his wisdom; now I had come to his final resting-place
I could not order remembrance out of my mind. It seemed
so very right to remember him here.

Most people neglect Andrew or else know him as the rela
tive of a greater man, Simon Peter. He could have made too
much of that relationship but he never did. He never did any
famous things like jumping into the sea, or cutting off ears, or
converting three thousand people in one day by a brilliant
sermon. It was his brother who could do such things. I
would say that skillful introductions were his chief claim to
greatness. During his career he made three distinctive intro
ductions.

I began to think of his moral courage. He dared to speak
to his brother, a bigger man in the world s eyes than himself,
and to say with assurance and conviction: " We have found
the Messias." He dared to announce his religious convictions
to his own brother, whose home he shared. He had no hes
itancy about discussing religious subjects with his relative nor
had he any idea that someone outside the family would have
more influence with his brother than a member of the home
circle. It is to Andrew s eternal glory that he shared his news
and discovery first with Peter and confined his missionary ef
forts to his immediate family. His moral courage made him
successful.

The second introduction took place on the green hills of

330 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

Galilee. Multitudes had been listening spellbound to the
Teacher. .Evening had fallen and the question of feeding this
crowd arose. Two hundred pennyworth of bread was not suf
ficient to provide for this vast company. Again, Andrew came
forward in his beautiful role of an " introducer." He said,
" There is a lad here, who hath five barley loaves and two
fishes, but what is this among so many? **

There was some incredulity, but some hope in Andrew s
question. Perhaps Jesus could see some possibility in these
scanty provisions.

" Bring them hither to me/ 9 answered Jesus.

Again I began thinking as I had on the day when I stood
at the site of the feeding of the five thousand in Palestine of
how Andrew s face must have lighted with joy as he thrust
that lad forward to meet the Master. Another introduction,
skillfully handled; it provided the vehicle for another miracle,
the feeding of the multitude.

But this was at the end. At the very close of Jesus 3 earthly
career,- almost within the shadow of the Cross, some Greeks
came to Philip and asked to meet the Galilean. Philip didn t
know what to do and he appealed to Andrew. No hesitancy
this time because Andrew was sure that the Master would like
to meet them.

All this man, whose bones now lie in the crypt at the Ca
thedral, asked of life were opportunities to present strangers to
Jesus Christ. He had no cravings for prominence among the
Twelve, yet today his name is immortal. Descending the steps
of the Cathedral, I seemed to hear Andrew saying :

"Give me the lowest place: or if for me
That lowest place too high, make one more low
Where I may sit and see
My God and love Thee so."

ROSSETTI.

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V

Situated peacefully betwixt green pines and blue sea, Sor
rento is only a short drive from Amalfi. It is always the same
along the sea-route toward Naples. There are grim, neg
lected pirates 3 caves and peaceful little harbors. The motor
car has crowded gaily painted carts and festive-looking be-
ribboned donkeys to the very edge of the highway. Down a
steep hill and with a final flourish and rush the car has come
to a sudden stop in the square at Sorrento. The question for
me has always been the same: What to do now I am here?
Yawning shops with their heaps of embroidered linen, gay
striped silk scarves, and tarsia boxes, and beckoning shop
keepers who stand on sidewalks compete for favor with hotels
whose pleasantly situated balconies out over the Mediter
ranean offer soul-satisfying views of ragged coastline and pre
cious moments of relaxation at tea-tables.

CHAPTER XXII

I follow in Paul s steps along the Via Appia from Puteoli to
Rome. I look up the Apostle s fc hired house" locate Frisco s
house on the Aventine Hill 3 and go to the Mamertine Prison, I
relive the last days of Peter and Paul in the Eternal City, de
scend into the catacombs, and return to their churches built over
their tombs. 1 visit places in Rome associated with the apostles
and their disciples. My journeys end beneath the wooden cross
in the Colosseum.

I DEBARKED at Naples and when the business of customs
and passport was over, I was on my way to follow in the
steps of Paul. My steamer did not go to Pozzuoli (Puteoli) ,
which is a few miles west of Naples. Travellers bound for
there to relive Paul s last journey along the Appian Way to
Rome must hire a car. It is only a short drive.

The day bef ore, I had taken my New Testament and turned
to the last chapter of the Book of the Acts always a favorite
of mine and read again Luke s account of the historic inci
dent in Christianity s chain which occurred in this locale in
the first century. Influenced by my reading and the train of
thoughts it had called up, I was carried back into the world
with which the Apostle to the Gentiles was familiar. Thus,
having turned back the pages of time, it was not hard to be
lieve that he was accompanying me over the same road by
which he had travelled earlier. And this sense of companion
ing with Paul made me acutely aware of things which he saw
and which remain in our day to remind us of him.

Puteoli was founded by the Greeks but later captured by
the Romans. In the first century it was the most important
commercial city of the vast Empire. Its harbor was the focus

332

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 333

of traffic with Egypt and the East. Spices and perfumes from
the Nile, copper and gold from Tarshish, slaves, weapons, and
other commodities in popular demand landed here. There
were lovely villas on the bay then, but they were homes of
proflicacy and lust. Paul must have had pointed out to him
the luxurious home of the Emperor Tiberius. Perhaps some
one whispered that this was the region where Nero, the em
peror to whom Paul had appealed for hearing, had committed
an unnatural crime by attempting to drown his own mother.
Had he read the "Aeneid" and did Paul recognize the
scenery of which the poet sang?

The present harbor at Pozzuoli is a reflection of that har
bor which was called Puteoli in the first century into which
Alexandrian grain ships cast their anchors. Certain portions
of it date from Roman times; six feet below the water are the
massive rings to which the Roman galleys were tied. Travel
lers in search of Paul still come here to see these famous harbor
ruins. Still ships come through the narrow mouth to unload
their cargoes on the very quay where long ago the Apostle,
who wrote, " I must see Rome," came ashore.

Into such a fine harbor the sailors, men, women, and chil
dren, were cheering the entrance of the first Alexandrian grain
ship of the season. It was the Castor and Pollux. She sailed
in proudly with her topsails set, which was only the privilege
of Alexandrian grain ships since all others were required to
lower the topsails when they approached this ancient port.
It was true that she was carrying the bread of life for Italy,
but truer in a deeper sense the Bread of Life for the world, be
cause Paul and his companions were passengers on this ship.
They had been picked up at Malta where three months earlier
they had been shipwrecked.

There were Christians waiting to meet him as he came
ashore for the first time in Italy. There must have been
already a Christian community here. These devoted individ-

334 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

uals invited him to tarry with them seven days. In the mean
time, they sent word to Rome, " Paul has arrived " and, no
doubt, full directions as to when he would leave Puteoli and
when the brethren might expect him along the " Queen of
Roads." Scholars believe now that the church in Italy was
well-organized by 59 A. D. Probably Peter s presence in Rome
is the only explanation for it. Christians were standing on the
quay, scanning the faces of all who came ashore, eager to
grasp him by the hand who had written to them: " I long to
see you." They longed to see him, too.

After seven days he took the crossroad from Puteoli, which
was called the Via Compana, to Capua where it joins the
Appian Way. The travellers then set out for Rome along the
most crowded, most famous of the world s highways, but by
no means a new road in Paul s day. The Via Appia had been
built by Appius Claudius in 300 B. c. They came to Formiae
where Julius the centurion must have rested his charges
briefly. Modern Formia, a regular station-stop on the Naples-
Rome railway, is the same as ancient Formiae.

Proceeding on to Terracina they now had the choice of
continuing along the highway which is laid taut as a string
for sixty-five miles or of taking a mule-drawn barge along the
canal which traversed the Pontine marshes. Lately under
Fascist regime this swampland has been reclaimed for the first
time and is producing good crops, food for Italians. We do
not know which of these alternatives they chose, whether they
journeyed along the highway or tried the barges on the canal,
because the Book of the Acts is silent here. We are told that
they finally arrived at Appii Forum, wjiich was situated at
the north end of the canal. Here they found a motley popu
lation of mule drivers, tavern keepers, and drunken bargemen,
Here, forty-six miles from Rome, Paul met the first of the
Christian brethren come out from the city to meet him and
escort him to the Capital.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 335

Some he must have known personally; others only from
hearsay. It was pleasant to meet them all. Can t you imagine
the scene? Think how glad you would have been to meet
with friends had you been in his place! I like to think that
among these faces were two very dear ones Priscilla s and
Aquila s. How their faces must have lighted with joy when
they saw their old friend and counsellor of Corinthian and
Ephesian days again! How these three must have laughed
aloud in sheer delight at reunion !

Marching beside him as if he were a conqueror and not a
captive, the children of the early Church told him news of
the community at Rome. His tiredness must have vanished,
his chains grown lighter as he listened. Other travellers must
have marked the one travel-worn, stained figure as he marched
sturdily along surrounded by a happy throng. I wonder if
any called out curiously, " Who is the man? " If so, surely
Julius who respected his prisoner answered, "He is Paul,
citizen of Tarsus in Cilicia, who has appealed to Caesar/ 3

It was like an earlier occasion in the year 57 B. c. when
Cicero, the Roman orator, returned along this very road from
banishment. His friends, like Paul s, came out to meet him
and they gave him such an enthusiastic and warm demonstra
tion of affection as even Paul was experiencing from his
friends scarcely one hundred years later.

They drew nearer to the city of Rome. At the place called
" Three Taverns," ten miles farther along the Via Appia, an
other band of Christians was standing ready to greet him. I
like to think that this group were the older people and the
children and the young mothers, who could not walk forty-six
miles to Appii Forum. When Paul saw them, he was moved
by this unlooked-for kindness and expression of their love and
" he thanked God and took courage,"

Instead of entering Rome as a defeated missionary of the
gospel, a defeated Roman captive in chains, he was to enter

336 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the Eternal City as a conqueror of human fears. No wonder
with such a Christian welcome awaiting him after all the years
of struggles and peril that Paul felt this meeting on the Appian
Way was his reward.

Paul and his companions made their way toward the city.
As they walked among the wonderful array of tombs of great
men who had reigned and died, which lined either side of the
Appian Way for miles, they were moving also along the fash
ionable boulevard for the Romans. Patrician families built
their sepulchral monuments beside their gayest thoroughfare.
No burials were permitted within Roman cities. The idea of
death -did not seem to lessen the mad search for pleasure
among these people. Tombs, circuses, and villas of the
wealthy were found side by side along the " Queen of Roads."
These structures were of various forms, some round, some
square, some pyramidal; built of brick, stone, and blocks of
peperino; decorated with slabs of marble and filled within
with art treasures.

Among numberless monuments of splendor which bordered
the Appian Way for twenty miles outside Rome itself in the
first century was the tomb of Cecilia Metella. She was the
wife of Publicus Crassus the great triumvir and conqueror of
Spartacus. Her monument was imposing in Paul s day; it is
still the best preserved and handsomest of all those along the
classic highway. Most of the tombs are now but heaps of
ruins all that is left of a once proud civilization, but an
almost forgotten era with the average person. Hawthorne
wrote of these Romans and their creations: "Ambitious of
everlasting remembrance as they were, the slumberers might
as well have gone quietly to rest each under his little green
hillock in a graveyard, without a headstone to mark the spot."

They might give the impression of desolation if Nature had
not mantled and clothed many of them as well as the Roman
Campagna with flowers and vines and soft green grass, so that

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 337

the ruins behind protecting walls are relieved somewhat of
their grimness and the countryside of its barrenness. " Um
brella trees " in endless procession lead the way into or out of
Rome.

The most interesting places along the Appian Way are the
catacombs where the Christian Church spent its childhood
after apostolic times. These underground cemeteries bear the
names of early saints: St. Calixtus, St. Domitilla, and St. Se
bastian, It was with relief that I found them not dismal nor
depressing places. Quite the contrary they interested me be
cause of their revelation of the customs, life, and religion of a
remote but important period in Christianity. To a discerning
Christian, they bear evidence of the early brethren; their
hopes, their prayers, their sublime faith are all reflected here.
But perhaps far greater than all these is the Easter message of
gladness and eternal hope which fairly breathes through these
underground burial places. The catacombs are not so much
concerned with death as " finis " as with resurrection and
eternal life. I was impressed as I saw inscriptions on the
walls like these in Greek or Latin: "Peace/ "in peace and
in Christ," "may God give thee life."

Pliny records that he recalled hearing singing coming from
out the earth, from out of the catacombs on the Appian Way.
Which songs did Pliny hear: Elisabeth s song, Mary s " Mag
nificat," Simeon s " Nunc Dimittis," or the cradle hymn sung
at the Nativity? These were the paeans of praise which first
century Christians sang with joyous voices. He caught the
joyousness of voice of those who sang these first Christian
hymns and perhaps he felt the gladness and singleness of heart
of those who praised their Lord.

From the shoulder of the Alban Hills Paul got his first sight
of Rome. He had seen many fine cities Jerusalem, Antioch,
Corinth, and Athens but none like this, so glorious and
beautiful. His friends must have stopped long enough to

338 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

point out the Capitol, the palace, temples, arches, and the
vast Circus Maximus. Modern Rome is splendid but it can
not be compared with the magnificent Rome of the Caesars as
Paul saw it. So strong, so massive was the Rome of Nero that
many parts have defied the changes of time and the ravages of
men and war.

Weary, they approached the Porta Capena whose green
stones dripped perpetually with water from a leaking aque
duct which ran above it. They made their way into the city.
Through the crowds they passed, pressed upon by market
wagons and carriages. They went immediately to the bar
racks located on the Caelian Hill just inside the city wall.
Therefore, that first night in Rome Paul did not pass within
the heart of the great city. Thus began two long years of im
prisonment for the Apostle.

It would seem as if Julius had spoken well to the authori
ties in behalf of Paul, because instead of languishing in a
dungeon, he was allowed to live in a house of his own choosing
on the site of the present sixteenth-century reconstruction by
Borgognone of San Paolino alia Regola, which was called
* c Schola Pauli." Here he could also live as he pleased. That
Paul s house was here in the Via degli Strengari, a poor lane
of the Rione Regola, one can read in a document of the
archives of the Hospital of S. Spirito of 1245. Living here
quietly in furnished lodgings with his guards continually at his
side, Paul "received all that came in unto him, preaching
the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern
the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding
him."

We know no more of the Apostle, beyond tradition, because
at this point Luke s diary suddenly fails. Paul had reached
Rome; he knew the gospel would go wherever the power of
Rome was felt in the ancient world. His purpose to see Rome
was accomplished.

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 339

I came to Porta San Sebastiano, one of the gates in the
Aurelian Wall through which present-day travellers along the
Appian Way enter Rome. I stepped out of the automobile
into the road. A little white sign with neat black letters and
an arrow pointing south caught my eye and reminded me:
Via Appia Antica.

I looked toward Puteoli and reflected on the events that
marked this military road apart from all others. It was along
it that the Christian brethren welcomed Paul with joy; where
the Apostle marked another milestone in his Christian experi
ence when he thanked God and took courage. Years later in
its vicinity the early community sang those songs of cheer
which were the Church s first hymns. Bordering it and
spreading for miles in every direction are the catacombs which
were the cradle of Christianity in post-apostolic times and
where in them is hidden every symbol of our present Church.

I thought to myself: Via Appia, or Via Appia Antica, or
" Queen of Roads," call it what you will, but, in truth, it is
the Road of Christians.

. n

Paul s " hired house " in the Via degli Strengari, pointed
out today as where he took up his abode under military super
vision, must have been a busy place. His days were occupied
with visitors and writing letters to congregations since even
now " the care of all the churches " still lay on Paul. Soon
after his arrival he invited some of the chief Jews to meet him
but that was an unsatisfactory interview. The Roman Chris
tians were his most frequent visitors.

Luke, the beloved physician, was with him, and Aristarchus,
both of whom had travelled with Paul from Caesarea.
Tychicus, his old companion in travel, who was to be bearer
of a letter, Colossians, to the churches of Asia, arrived. Young
Timothy, his " beloved son in the faith," dearest and closest

340 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

of them all, associated with Paul even in the writing of his let
ters, was there, too. John Mark had made his peace with the
Apostle and was with him. Mark had been the cause of the
unhappy separation between Paul and Barnabas because he
had deserted them on the first missionary journey. Now in
Rome, he was helping Paul and it is interesting to see how
much the Apostle cared for him. When he visited Paul, did
he ever tell him during these Roman days about the Upper
Room in his mother Mary s house in Jerusalem where Jesus
ate the Last Supper with his disciples and where the Church
used to meet in the days of its beginnings? Did he ever bring
his manuscript of the Gospel of Mark over to the house in Via
degli Strengari and read Peter s memoirs of Jesus which he
was at last committing to writing so they would not perish at
Peter s death? Many a time Mark had translated the aged
Galilean s story of Jesus ministry to Roman audiences be
cause Peter spoke only Aramaic. How eagerly Paul must
have listened !

Visitors often came from far-off congregations bringing
Paul affectionate messages, sometimes comforts for his prison
life. And by them Paul sometimes sent back greetings and
sometimes important letters.

One day his old friend Epaphroditus arrived from Philippi.
All the old friends, Lydia and the rest, sent their love and also
a present. Paul was touched because he loved the people in
the church at Philippi better than any other. Then Epaphro
ditus fell sick in Rome. During his convalescence, Paul wrote
a letter to the Philippians which his friend should take with
him when he was well enough to return. It is the most beau
tiful, tender, and joyous of all his letters, the one which re
vealed to the Philippians and to weary, despondent Christians
all over the world since the happiness which religion gives in
the midst of troubles. From a man, who in a moment of de
jection wrote: " I long to depart and be with Christ, for that

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 341

is far, far better, and yet your needs make it necessary for me
to stay here/ 3 came a message in which the predominant tone
is one of hope and joy. Telling of the inner gladness welling
up in his own heart, he wrote :

" I rejoice in the Lord." " Fulfill ye my joy."

" Rejoice in the Lord alway : and again I say, Rejoice."

PHILIPPIANS i: 18; 2: 2; 4: 4.

Among the many visitors at the " hired house " came a
runaway slave, named Onesimus, one day. He had run away
from his Christian master Philemon of Colossae. He was" a
hunted criminal. If caught, he could be branded and even
killed. How did he happen to come to Paul? Perhaps he re
membered Paul as a visitor in the old days at his master s
house because Philemon and his wife Apphia were Paul s con
verts, close friends of the kind that Paul felt he could offer
himself for a visit without an invitation.

Paul s heart warmed to the slave and there grew up a close
friendship between the two. Onesimus became a Christian.
Paul would have kept the young man but his sense of morality
would not permit such action. Onesimus must go back to his
master and his master be persuaded to forgive him was the
decision.

So he sent Onesimus back with a note, the Letter to
Philemon, the only letter about a purely personal matter
which has survived. Fortunately, Philemon kept the im
promptu note in which he is asked to receive Onesimus, now
his brother in Christ, as he would receive Paul himself, and if
Onesimus is in Philemon s debt for something he may have
stolen, Paul will undertake to be personally responsible.
Thus having prepared the way for reconciliation between the
slave and his master, Paul then asked Philemon to prepare to
entertain the writer himself as he hoped to be released soon to
revisit Asia. Maybe afterwards Philemon gave this personal

342 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

letter to the Colossian church to preserve with PauPs other
letters.

But before Onesimus started for Colossae there had arrived
in Rome another Colossian, a worker in the neighboring
churches of Laodicea and Hierapolis. His name was Epa-
phras. Difficulties had arisen in this church community all
on account of a travelling preacher who had come preaching
a Christianity all mixed up with notions about the worship of
angels, the necessity of asceticism, and other errors.

Paul could not visit Colossae and instruct the Christians in
person, but he could dictate a letter to Timothy and send it
to them by one of his helpers who was also to conduct Onesi
mus back to Philemon. So the two men left Rome Tychi-
cus to present the Letter to the Colossians to that church in
Asia Minor, and Onesimus to face his master whom he had
wronged.

It is fascinating to imagine the comings and goings of the
many people at the " hired house " of Paul s. No place car
ries such a heavy weight of memories.

Ill

When Paul came to Rome, Prisca and Aquila had already
removed themselves from Ephesus where he had left them en
gaged in Christian work and he found them now here to
gether with " the church that was in their house." I have
always been interested in Priscilla as she is sometimes called;
first, probably because of Paul s habit of mentioning her name
before that of her husband s when he sent them greetings. It
was such a departure from Oriental custom that somehow it
has given me the idea that Paul had unusual regard for this
wife s ability as a teacher and co-pastor in the infant Church.
Then later in making a study of " career " women in the Bible,
I came to feel that I knew this woman very well, that she was
indeed my friend. It was no wonder then that upon settling

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 343

myself comfortably for a stay in Rome I set out one afternoon
for the Aventine Hill to locate the original site of the house be
longing to this Christian couple.

The church which covers the site is not spectacular, is not
of itself sufficient to draw the average tourist to its doors; but
to those who would be reminded of a very dear, human couple
and of the contribution in example which the remarkable
Prisca left for the present-day wife, home-maker, and business
woman it holds a great attraction. After visiting the Church
of St. Prisca, I came out and lingered in the little piazza di
rectly in front of it. The church had been dark and chilly
and the warmth of the bright sunshine in this green space in
vited me to tarry for a while.

Earlier that day at lunch we had been discussing: Can a
woman continue in business and still maintain a happy home?
This afternoon had seemed an excellent time to visit the home-
site of a woman who succeeded in doing so ! Partner to her
husband in a business which was carried on within the home^
she had begun to work to supplement the family income when
they moved to Corinth after Claudius banished Jews from
Rome. It was at Corinth that Paul met the couple, converted
them to Christianity, and then lived and worked with them at
tent-making for a time.

This New Testament woman was daily occupied in manual
labor but she did not let it keep her from devoting herself to
religious work any more than Paul allowed himself to be kept
from " preaching the good news " because he had to earn a
livelihood. No business duties crowded out Priscilla s active
participation in the church life of believers. In perhaps the
busiest period of her life she undertook the religious education
of a young man called Apollos. That her religious instruction
was not hampered by her preoccupation with other matters
is proven by the fact that in time great successes came to
Apollos, who at one period almost rivalled Paul in popular

344 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

favor. The Bible records that Apollos " taught accurately the
things concerning Jesus." These are tributes to his teacher
Priscilla.

But my friends had insisted as I told them all this : " If she*
was a business woman and church worker was she also a good
home-maker? " I felt this busy Roman matron of more than
ordinary ability had been a prudent wife such as the Book of
Proverbs hails as " from Jehovah/ 3

From her story as it is revealed in the New Testament, I
have felt the religious atmosphere of the home she made was
satisfactory to Paul and conducive to his successful evangelis
tic efforts. Somehow it has seemed to me a home in which all
the members were trying to imitate the Christ. When I have
read the phrase: " the church that is in their house/ 3 it has
fascinated me, revealing that Priscilla, a mere wife, was re
ligious priestess in her own home and maintained a household
distinguished for its religious fervor and example. To the
end she remained an alert member in the colony of believers.
Prisca and Aquila are always mentioned together in the Bible;
a husband and a wife, together in business, together in the
church, together in the home not even a business career for
the woman could separate them. It seemed to me sitting in
the piazza before the site of Prisca s house in Rome that she
had found something that many of us women have not found.
She took the Christ into her life, into every avenue of her
human endeavor; surrendering herself to the Christ, she found
a perfect balance in her everyday affairs and all things pos
sible because of her belief.

IV

Tradition supports the view that Paul was released and set
out on further missionary activity in the West, as far as the
Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). During that time he is sup
posed to have written a letter to Timothy in Ephesus and one

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 345

to Titus in Crete, the substance of which we have preserved in
the books of First Timothy and Titus. In 64 A. D., following
the Fire, he was arrested and brought back to Rome to await
trial not in a " hired house " this time but in prison. While
as a hated Christian confined to the Mamertine Prison, he
wrote a second letter to his beloved Timothy.

It was a lonely Rome this time. His friends Aquila and
Priscilla had fled to Ephesus. Demas, a Gentile Christian,
whose faith could not stand the strain of sharing the Apostle s
afflictions, forsook him. Men from Asia Minor when they
came to Rome no longer called upon him. " They have all
turned away from me," he wrote. Only Onesiphorus from
Ephesus inquired for him, found him, and " was not
ashamed," but he died before Paul s time came. Only Luke
remained with him. Nothing is heard of his preaching nor
enjoying visits with friends. Shut within prison walls he had
no prospect but death. " The time has come for my depar
ture," but looking back over the years from the time on the
road to Damascus until now he could say: "I have had a
part in the great contest, I have run my race, I have preserved
the faith."

Lonely, there was only one person, one friend above all
others, that he wanted near him. The childless old man who
loved Timothy as a son wrote : " Timothy, I long day and
night to see you. My life is already being poured out. Do
your best to come to me soon before winter."

Whether he ever got the cloak and the parchments, whether
Timothy ever reached Rome in time, we do not know. The
end was very close.

Church tradition that Peter and Paul were confined in the
tragic, notorious Mamertine Prison near the Arch of Severus
for nine months and were released to be led to death in 67
A. D. is not unlikely. Peter was martyred in Nero s Circus
while Paul, because he was a Roman citizen, >vas led outside

346 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

the walls to be beheaded by the sword. The road along which
he was taken was the Via Ostiensis, the road to the busy port
of Ostia. Beside the Gate of St. Paul by which this road en
ters Rome today, stands the Pyramid of Caius Cestius. It was
standing here when Paul was led to his death. It was the
last monument of Rome on which he set eyes as he passed to
his execution on the Via Ostia.

Taken from his dungeon, he was led out along this road
which in his day was lined with tombs. They came to a place
called Aquae Silviae at " the third milestone. 3 Here Paul
was ordered to prepare for death. Tradition says that as his
head struck the earth it bounced three times and at every
meeting with the earth gushed forth a spring of sweet water.
The place where Paul was beheaded became known as Tre
Fontane or Three Fountains.

The Abbey of Three Fountains stands today on the site of
his execution, a group of three churches close together in a
garden, approached by a grove of eucalyptus trees. No other
site has ever challenged the accuracy of this tradition. There
are signs all about, cautioning " Silentio." There is no need
for them. Abbey of Three Fountains is one of the quietest
places in Rome. In the little Church of St. Paul are three
altars. Beneath each is one of the springs. The day I came
here, I could hear water bubbling and gurgling beneath the
marble. The Salvian springs were, of course, in existence
long before the Apostle s death.

Dying on the same day, the bodies of the two apostles were
lovingly guarded by members of the Roman church. For a
time after frustrating attempts to steal them, the bodies oc
cupied a niche in the tomb in the " House of Hermes " now
thirty feet down in the earth under the Church of St. Se
bastian on the Via Appia. If one has time to visit only one of
the catacombs, then St. Sebastian s is by far the most interest
ing, being the most historical and the only one which the me-

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 347

dieval pilgrims visited. Til tell you of my visit here but the
experience is about the same in any one of the catacombs
outside the city that you visit.

We descended a flight of steps leading into a pit of dark
ness. We walked through long, cold corridors, smelling of
wet, dead air, whose pitch-blackness was partially relieved by
the very dim electric lights long distances apart. We ad
vanced in single file, passing meanwhile the bones of many of
the saints within the church at Rome lying in dust, and we
came at the end of the tunnel to a cavern* We looked down
into a building which Peter and Paul may have visited and
known, and to which their bodies were removed for safety
before their churches were built.

This house belonged to M. Clodius Hermes, saluted by
Paul in Romans, Chapter 16, verse 14. Recent excavations
revealed an inscription which related that Hermes at the age
of seventy-five years emancipated all his slaves, possibly as a
result of his conversion from paganism to Christianity. The
house was built in 40 A. D. and its ornamentation was first
pagan and then Christian, which is said to indicate its occu
pant s sudden, change of religion.

When Constantine gave peace to Christianity, proclaiming
it a state religion, Paul s headless body was lying in a Roman
tomb on the Via Ostia. Enclosing the Apostle s body in a
metal case and placing upon it a gold cross, as he had upon
the body of Peter, he then built a church above the grave.
This was the first church of St. Paul s-without-the-Wall. The
building was enlarged and rebuilt in the years which followed.
In 1823 the historic magnificent basilica was destroyed by fire
all except the tomb itself. The present St. Paul s stands on
the ancient Via Ostiensis, about two miles from Rome, con
structed in the design of the ancient basilica. " This church
has the peace of great dignity, the majesty of perfect propor
tions and its ancestors are the palaces of the Caesars and the

348 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

law-courts of the Empire/ writes Morton in " In the Steps
of St. Paul."

V

It is an impressive moment for a visitor to the Eternal City
when he comes for the first time to the parapet on the sum
mit of the Pincian Hill and sees spread before him an unob
structed view of the western part of the city.

The slope down from the parapet once held the gardens of
Lucullus. At its foot is the Piazza del Popolo, a beautiful,
great square admired both for its size and its symmetry.
From its center rises one of the eleven obelisks brought from
Egypt to Rome as memorials of her conquest of the land of
the Pharaohs in 30 B. c. and erected first at Rome in the
Circus Maximus. Far ahead in the distance the long, low
Janiculum Hill looms to the left of the outline of the great
Michelangelo dome of St. Peter s and the spreading papal
gardens and the palaces which form its background. This is
a view which has inspired many a poet with its loveliness.

I cannot describe St. Peter s. I was awed and thrilled by
its splendor when first I stepped into the church. I gazed on
the " Pieta " of Michelangelo with wonder as the artist s con
ception of the sorrow of the Virgin and her certainty of resur
rection dawned slowly upon me. I admired the richness of its
marbles and the succession of its monuments and works of art
which alone are sufficient to form the envied glory of this city.
I was amazed by its stateliness and the immensity of the
building which assumed grander proportions as I returned
again and again to be lost in contemplation of its size. But
no words of mine can adequately describe my emotions nor
the thoughts awakened when in the presence of so many mar
vels I attended Pontifical High Mass here on an Easter Sun
day morning.

I had come shortly before from Galilee where the first

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 349

proclamation of the Kingdom and the beginnings of the Chris
tian religion were made and from where the gospel of Christ
has radiated to all the world.

I crossed vast Piazza San Pietro, remembering that this
was the historical site of Nero s Circus where many Chris
tians, accused and convicted of having burnt Rome, suffered
martyrdom, and where Peter was crucified. I mounted the
broad steps and entered the stupendous Basilica of St. Peter
which rears its mighty dome above the bones of a Galilean
fisherman.

He had been among the Twelve at Caesarea Philippi and
in a moment of extreme exaltation and spiritual discernment
there perceived the Christ, the true Messiah. In the dim light
of dawn, when after his three denials the Master looked upon
Peter, he had understood finally who the Christ was. Weep
ing bitterly, he was purged of elements of weakness which had
at times prevented this Simon from always being Peter, the
rock. Courage took the place of fear and upon Peter Christ
could safely build his Church. After Jesus ascension, he be
came the unquestioned leader of the early disciple group and
the first messenger through whom the Christian religion was
proclaimed in Jerusalem. Then followed those dark days
when the new faith in the Christ aroused hatred and when the
Caesars, opponents of Christianity, burned, crucified, and
persecuted its followers. But the Christian religion withstood
the Roman scourges, emerged triumphant from its years in
the catacombs, and the transforming power of the Christ be
came the hope of the world, and the Cross the central symbol
of history. Not far from where the Galilean interpreter of
Christ with his Kingdom of Love and his Cross was crucified,
and over his tomb stands St. Peter s, a monument that Rome
and the world was finally won to Christ s Way of Life. A
witness that Peter walked to the spiritual .conquest of the
world, taking with him a message that he heard preached in a

350 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

far-off province of the Roman Empire by an unknown rabbi
and vindicated Christ Jesus proclamation:

" Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church;
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." MAT
THEW 16: 18.

VI

It is impossible to identify with certainty the many sacred
sites associated with Paul, Peter, or their disciples in Rome.
They saw the buildings which became the churches o"f St.
Pudenziana, St. Clement, and St. Prisca, and their disciples
saw as well the tombs of the two apostles, and the Catacomb
of St. Sebastian as well as St. Calixtus. All these places
which can be seen today have been handed down from first-
century Christians through all the disasters and adventures of
the early Church. Visitors must remember that the great fire
of 64 A. D. and the many attacks on the city in subsequent
centuries obliterated many landmarks familiar to them. Yet
withal Rome has maintained unbroken contact with the apos
tolic age. Happily, there are to be found here today, thanks
to the unceasing activity of the archaeologists, some first cen
tury remains of the New Testament Rome which are of in
terest to Bible students, some buildings even which echoed to
the voices of Peter and Paul. There is here a satisfying and
undeniable continuity with the Rome of the early Church and
it is that which makes every Christian pilgrim echo Paul s
words : " I must see Rome " and every Christian pilgrimage
end here.

The wide expanse of the Forum is littered with ancient re
mains, perhaps more here than anywhere else : three columns
of the original Temple of Castor and Pollux, traces of the
Basilica Julia, the Capitol, the Rostra where all Rome s ora
tors spoke, the Senate House or Curia, and the Sacra Via.
Two dozen of the stately columns which once lined the most

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 351

celebrated streetof ancient Rome adorn the nave of St, Paul s-
without-the-Wall.

Up the slope of the Sacred Way the stately Arch of Titus
though not erected during the time of Peter and Paul was a
familiar spectacle to the early Church. This relic of imperial
Rome commemorates the downfall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D, in
an elaborate relief of Roman soldiers carrying aloft in tri
umphal procession the golden seven-branched candlestick, the
golden table of shew-bread, and the silver trumpets which had
been looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. The Arch of
Titus is a testimony to Jesus prophecy that " thine enemies
shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and
keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the
ground. 3 Jesus words are a literal description of the methods
used by the Roman armies during the most terrible siege in
history.

Many temples which testify to us the tremendous forces of
superstition surrounding the Christian movement in Rome
can still be identified: the Temple of Jupiter Stator, of Jupiter
Capitolinus, Temple of Vesta and the house of the Vestal
Virgins. Traces of the Temple of Cybele, of Isis, and of the
Temple of Serapis testify to foreign deities imported from
Egypt and the Orient as rivals with Christianity for the al
legiance of first-century Rome. There is the Pantheon with
its marvelously preserved fagade and colonnaded portico dis
playing an inscription which Paul must have read many times
if he had the freedom of the city during his first imprison
ment, as some suggest. The inscription reads:

" Marcus Agrippa son of Lucius, built this temple in his third
consulship (27 A. D.)."

This is the best known, best preserved ancient monument of
Rome. It has never ceased to be venerated since its trans
formation into a Christian church. Its name, Pantheon,

352 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

meaning a temple of " all the gods/ 3 points to the toleration
that marked the imperial policy when all forms of worship
were permitted, providing only that all worshippers acknowl
edged the divinity of the emperors and paid them divine
honors living or dead.

VII

The Colosseum, which is correctly called the Flavian amphi
theatre, was not built when Peter and Paul were living in
Rome. The massive structure which was of such astounding
proportions that even in ruins it is impressive was not com
pleted until 8 1 A. D., some fourteen years after the deaths of
the two apostles. For all that Rome s majestic ruin speaks
eloquently just the same to Christians because they remember
that the martyrs of the early Church met here

"... the tyrant s brandished steel,
The lion s gory mane."

The ruins of the Colosseum attract its quota of thoughtful
pilgrims who ponder on these things: the immense toil that
raised this barbaric structure which is nineteen hundred feet
in circumference, two hundred and seventy-three feet long,
one hundred and twenty feet wide, and honeycombed under
neath with dens for wild animals and rooms for gladiators;
what type of civilization it was that reared this pile of stone to
satisfy the thirst of eighty thousand spectators for amusement,
blood, and slaughter, dull to cruelty and pain; how brave the
men and women were who were the martyrs of the Church
and gave their lives for the glory of the Christ " butchered to
make a Roman holiday."

Byron in " Childe Harold " calls it " that long explored
but still exhaustless mine of contemplation/ A truly
fit description of the mountain-like building of bold design,

t

1*1

ill

M 1 r*

s

u 5

ill

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 353

the solidity of whose construction is not effaced by time.
Time cannot efface the grandeur of conception, the majesty,
the beauty behind such a monument; only man does that with
man s inhumanity to man.

Visitors must see the Colosseum at different hou rs of the
day or night to learn its power to impress, to know its varying
moods. Under a blaze of noonday sun its unyielding form
looms stark and bare and cruel; it seems a very house of
desolation, of grief. At the close of the day, at twilight, its
arches grow less harsh, the underground dens and rooms less
grim, and the empty seats less yawningly vacant. While
under the gentler light of the moon and stars the Colosseum is
shrouded in mystery and then imagination is substituted for
sight.

I came here late one evening and walked down the slope
into the Colosseum. I saw several other visitors tiptoeing
about the arena, gazing into shadows, whispering to one an
other. As I walked across the place, I paused before the cross
which commemorates those who suffered martyrdom here
and then went on to sit down among the empty seats.

The great full moon like a great pearl, set in the deep azure
of the Italian skies, had a transforming influence. Light and
dark were sharply defined. The walls of silver were bordered
by chasms of darkness. The moonbeams shone through the
arches like torches to f all across seats which were peopled with
the shadowy forms of Emperor, lictors, Vestal Virgins, Roman
citizens, and on across that broad arena where out of darkness,
from very vaults of gloom, emerged gladiators and martyrs.
Light breezes blew through these broken arches and in a
moment of time arid thought were changed to voices which
became the shouts and cries of a vast audience, the sighs,
moans, and groans of a host of vanquished. Sitting here in
the moonlight with the ghostly figures of the Christian mar-
tyrs led by venerable St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, crowd-

354 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

ing me and hearing the mere whispers of their voices stilling
the more strident cries of frenzied mobs, I brought out the
Bible. I read from the Book of Hebrews, Chapter 10, verses
32-36:

" You must remember . . . when after you had received the
light you had to go through a great struggle with persecution,
sometimes being exposed as a public spectacle to insults and
violence, . . . actually showing yourselves ready to share the lot
of those in that condition. For you showed sympathy with those
who were in prison, and you put up with it cheerfully when your
property was taken from you, for you knew that you had in
yourselves a greater possession that was lasting. You must not lose
your courage, for it will be ... rewarded, but you will need
endurance if you are to carry out God s will and receive the bless
ing he has promised " (The New Testament, An American Trans
lation, Goodspeed) .

This was written to these shadowy figures who in the moon
light crowded round me, to these who shed their blood in this
arena under Domitian and Trajan, to these who never lived to
see the day when Rome was captured by that gospel for which
they gave their human lives.

Later, saints within the church at Rome, cherishing the
memory of two great Christian leaders Peter and Paul who
had suffered martyrdom and of these many who had perished
in the Colosseum for professing to be " Christians " remem
bered " how they ended their lives " and urged others to
" imitate their faith." Remembering both the martyrs 3 deaths
and their sublime faith which in the end led them to victorious
Living, the Christian leaders in Rome dared to counsel other
persecuted Christians in Asia Minor thus:*

" Throw all your anxiety upon him, for he cares for you. ; Be
calm and watchful. Your opponent the devil is prowling about
like a roaring lion, wanting to devour you. Resist him and be
strong in the faith, for you know that your brotherhood all over

Around the Mediterranean With My Bible 355

the world is having the same experience of suffering. And God,
the giver of all mercy, who through your union with Christ has
called you to his eternal glory, after you have suffered a little
while will himself make you perfect, steadfast, and strong."
I PETER 5: 710 (The New Testament, An American Transla
tion, Goodspeed) .

For almost four hundred years the martyrs of the Church
met here, beginning with St. Ignatius who tradition says was
the little child whom Jesus set in the midst of his disciples and
ending with St. Telemachus who, dying, implored the mob:
" In the name of Christ, forbear/ They loved and suffered
enough to finally change the mind of Rome. Never again
after St. Telemachus implored them in the name of Christ
to cease did gladiatorial fights take place in the Colosseum.
Perfect love wins its victory in what to the world looks like its
defeat. The power of the Cross !

I came down and stood again beneath the huge wooden
cross which Premier Mussolini had restored in this place where
thousands perished rather than deny the Christ and his King
dom of Love. With a light I made out the Latin inscription :

" In the spirit of this Cross lie the hopes of all the world."

I was happy to have ended my journeyings at Rome. In
the meantime, I had tarried in Gethsemane where Jesus
prayed: " O, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass
away from me " ; I had seen the Upper Room in Jerusalem
where he " took the cup, and gave thanks " ; I had visited Cal
vary where upon the Cross he cried with a loud voice: " Fa
ther, forgive them/ and where the shadow of God s kingdom
of Love fell upon the earth; and at last my journeyings were
complete at the Colosseum where the followers of Christ Jesus
answered his question " Are ye able to drink of this cup? "
with " We are able/ 9

356 Around the Mediterranean With My Bible

It came to me that the Cross is not a fact of nineteen hun
dred years ago, but a symbol of the spirit of sacrifice that
must possess all who would loyally follow right and truth to
the end. As of old, truth s central sign is a symbol of a spirit
to be lived daily, the eternal symbol of an instrument of power
able to make men change their way of looking at life, win
ning a response from within the heart of every man, woman,
and child.

My travels had not been in vain if I returned from them
with these words graven on my heart: " In the spirit of the
Cross . . ."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to the following publishers for permission

to quote from copyright material.

The Bible: A New Translation. By James Moffatt. Copy
righted by Harper and Brothers, 1935.

The Bible: An American Translation. By Smith and Good-
speed. Copyrighted by the University of Chicago Press.

The Holy Bible. American Standard Version. Copyrighted
by the International Council of Religious Education.

Into the Woods My Master Went, By Sindney Lanier. Copy
righted by Charles Scribner s Sons.

357

INDEX

Abana River, 175, 252, 259, 263, 293.
Abdullah, King, 179, 191, 195.
Abraham, 41, 42, 46, 49, 54, 55, 7&,
86, 131, 133-4, 136-9, i4i, 172,
181, 202, 204, 235.
Absalom, 79, 112, 131, 184.
Acre, 219, 289, 302.
Acropolis. See Athens.
Aegean islands, 24, 37, 305.
Africa, 17.

Ahab, King, 206-8, 287-8.
Ain Karem, 77.
Aix, 30.
Alexandria, Egypt, 38, 46-8, 271, 304.

Isle of Pharos, 47.

Septuagint version, 48.
Alexander the Great, 301-2.
AUenby Bridge, 166, 178.
Amalfi, Italy, 327-30.

Cappuccini Convent, 327-8.

Cathedral of St. Andrew, 328-30.
Amman (Philadelphia, Rabbath
Ammon), 112, 183, 191-6.

Amphitheatre, 182, 194.

Citadel, 195.

Hotel Philadelphia, 192, 193-4.

streets of, 191-2.
Amos, 199, 208.
Andrew, 31, 239, 329-30.
Anti-Lebanons, the, 169, 246, 248-9,

250, 263, 291, 293.
Appii Forum, 334.
Aquila, 317, 342, 344-
Arabs, the, 44, 51, 79, "5> Il6 > I2 7,
144, 160, 170, 172, 183, 191, 204,
221, 226-7, 265, 266, 267, 269, 303.
Aries, France, 29-30.
Aristarchus, 37, 339.
Ashdod, 42.
Ashkelon, 42.

Assyria, 45, 248.

Assyrians, the,. 79, 108-10, 202, 207,
. 214, 277, 297-8, 303.
Athens, 45, 304, 305-14, 3 I 5, 3*7-
Acropolis, 7, 263, 304, 306, 307-9,

310, 311, 312, 313, 314.
Agora, the, 187, 307.
Areopagus, Mars Hill, 307, 308,

309-14.
Parthenon, 304, 306, 308-9, 310,

3i3, 3i4.

Prophylea, 308, 313.

Temple of Athena Ntki, 313.

Temple of Erechtheus, 309, 313.

Temple of Jupiter, 307.

Temple of Theseum, 306, 314.

Theatre of Dionysus, 307, 314.

Tower of Winds, 307, 314.
Athlit, 277, 278, 289.
Augustus Caesar, 145, 208, 249.

Baal, priests of, 215, 287.

worship of, 104, 207-8, 266, 301.
Baalbek, 263-70.

Acropolis, 264-66, 267-70.

Great Temple, 266, 267-9, 2 7*

Temple of Bacchus, 266, 267.

village of, 264.
Babylonians, the, 79, 86.
Banias, 169.
Barada. See Abana.
Bashan, 249.

Bay of Naples, 314, 3*7-8, 327, 333.
Bay of Phaleron, 35, 304, 314.
Bay of St. George, 292-3.
Bedouin, the, 75-6, 78, 89, 104, 128,
161, 164, 178, 180-3, 215, 232,
234-6, 249.
Beeroth, 198.
Beirut, 258, 274, 289, 292-5, 302.

359

3 6

Index

Beka a, Plain of, 263, 292.

Benjamin, tribe of, 127.

Bethabara, 175.

Bethany, 117, n8, iS 8 "^ *

Bethlehem, Palestine, 75, 77, 94, 128,

140-57, 169, 273.
bus ride to, 156-7.
cave of Nativity, 149, i5"5 2 -
Church of Nativity, i46~5 2 , 3 2 6.
dress of Arab women, i45~7-
road to, 18, 94, i4, * 28 , *4Q-3,

*55, 156-7.

Shepherds Field, 142-3* i5 2 ~4-

stars above, i54~5-

streets of, I43~5> r 47-

Well of Magi, 141-2, 150, 155.
Bethsaida, 227, 236, 241, 330.

Church of Loaves and Fishes, 236.
Bethsaida Julias, 246.
Bethshean, 170.
Bridge of Jacob s Daughters, 246.

Caesarea, 27, 37, *9 8 , 20<5 > 277, 2 78>

279-84, 289, 321-
Caesarea Philippi, 249, 349-
Caiaphas, 93, 95, 106, 122.
Cairo, Egypt, 33, 46, 48-72, 37-

Ben Ezra Synagogue, 53.

Citadel, 72.

Continental-Savoy Hotel, 67-8.

Heliopolis, 69-71.

Holy Family in Egypt, 69, 70-1.

Mataria, 70-1.

Mena House, 55.

Moses in Egypt, 49, 5, 5*-3, 54,
57, 59-6, 68-70-

mosques of, 61-3, 72.

Museum, 57-9*

"Musky," the, 33, 64-7.

Nile River, 49~53, 7*, 7 2 , 171-2-

Pyramids of Gizeh, 40, 45, 54, 55~7>
60, 72, 263.

road to, 48-50.

Roda, Island of, 52.

Shepheard s Hotel, 67-8.

Sphinx, the, 55, 56, 60.

streets of, 60-1, 64-6, 67-8, 72,

Temple of Sphinx, 55, 56.
Calvary. See Jerusalem.

Cana, 210, 223-4.

Canaan, 41, 43, 4<5, 49, *37, I 7i J 7 2 ,

199, 204, 215.
Canaanites, the, 4*~ 2 , 5 8 I 33-
Cape Malea, 316.
Capernaum (Tell Hum), 210, 220, 222,

225, 227, 232, 233, 236-41, 245*
Jesus at, 222, 236-41.
lakeside at, 240-1.
Peter s house, 239-40.
synagogue, 237-9, 240.
Capri, 317.

Carmelites, the, 286, 289.
Castle by the Pools, 129-30.
Castor and Pollux, 47, 3 l8 , 333-
Cedars of Lebanon, 25, 276, 293, 301.
Chorazin, 245.
Christians, 30, 38, 48, 83-5, 301, 3 2 i,

333-5, 339, 34 2 , 347, 35 2 ~5-
Church, early, 23, 26, 334, 335, 337,

339, 342-4, 350-1, 352.
Cleopatra, 51, 178-
Cnossus, 40.
Colossae, 341, 342.
Constantine, 119, i5r, 267.
Corinth, 315-7, 343-
Isthmus of, 315-7-
Crete (Caphtor), 6, 22, 37~45, 5*, 345-

Fair Havens, 37-8.
Cretans, the, 40-45-
Cross: Calvary, 355; Rome, 355~6-
Crusaders, the, 79, 82, 90, 135, 214,
216, 261, 283, 286, 300, 303.

Damascus, Syria, 6, 33, 75, 131, i5 x
198, 219, 245, 250-61, 291, 292,

293, 37-

Arch of Triumph, 259, 260.
Azm Palace, 255-6.
bazaars, 253-4.
house of Judas, 252.
khan, 151, 256-7.
Mosque of Omayades, Grand

Mosque, 257-6r.
Paul s conversion, 250-3.
Street called Straight, 33, 151, 188,

2 5 2 253.

tomb of Saladin, 261.
Wall of, 255.

Index

361

David, King, 43, 7&, 79, 86, 127-9,
I3 1 * 195-6, 197, 216, 287.

Dead Sea (Salt Sea), 118, 142, 161,
168, 169, 170, 171, 176, 178, 242,

245-

Decapolis, 162, 188.
Diana of Ephesus, 28.
Dionysus, 313.
Dog River, 294, 295-8.
Dome of Rock. See Jerusalem.
Domitian, 313, 354-
Dothan, 211.
Drusilla, 280-1, 321.

Egypt, 22, 40, 41, 46-72, 131* l66 >

204, 302, 306, 348.
caravan route to and from, 46, 75-6,

130, 277.

Egyptians, the, 45, 54-5, 57-8, 79, 33-
Ekron, 42,

Elijah, 173-4, 207, 215, 286, 287-8,301.
Elisha, 173-5* *99, 207, 213-4, 250,

286.

El Kantara, 73-4.
El Kuneitra, 247-8.
En Rogel, 106.
Ephesus, 301, 342, 344, 345-
Esdrealon, Plain of, 75, 212, 213-6,

219, 288.

Evil Counsel, Hill of, 104, 106.
Ezion-geber, 25.

Fair Havens. See Crete.

Fellah, Fellaheen, the, 49, 54* 106,

221, 232.

Felix, 279-81, 321.

Festus, 279, 281-3.

Field of Blood, 106.

Flowers, fruits, plants, and ^rees, 33,
49, 54, 75, 76-8, 81, 82, 87, 94, 98,
104, 107, 113-4, H9, 120-5, 127,
129, 130-1, 136, 142, 143, 145,
158-9, 161, 162, 168, 170, 178-80,
184, 185, 192, 197, 199, 200, 204,

205, 206, 211, 213, 217, 2l8, 221,
224, 225, 227, 232-3, 234-5, 236,
238, 239, 240-1, 241-2, 245-6,

247, 249, 251-2, 255-6, 272-3,

278, 279, 285-6, 288, 289-90, 291,

292, 293-4, 295, 305, 306, 327,
331, 336-7, 346.

Formiae, 334.

France, 21, 28-36, 313.

Franciscans, the, 122, 237, 238.

Gadara, 231, 233-4, 242, 245.
Galileans, the, 234-6.
Galilee, province of, 70, 200, 210-11,
212-243, 246, 329, 348-9-

fishermen, Arab, 227-8.

hills of, 182, 213-4, 222, 235, 329-30.

road from, to Syria, 244-6, 247-53.

road to, from Nazareth, 220, 222,
223-6.

Sea of, 77, 170, 210, 222, 223, 224-

43, 245-

Gath, 42, 43, 77-
Gaza, 40, 42, 43, 75, *3, 272.
Gehenna. See Hinnom.
Gennesaret, Plain of, 225, 241-3, 245.
Gerasa. See Jerash.
Gh6r, Valley of, 75, 172.
Gibeah, 198.
Gibraltar, 17-8, 20, 344.
Gideon, 215.

Gihon, 108-9, no, 111-2.
Gilead, 166, 173, 179-86, 276.

Mountains of, 162, 178, 183, 184,

186, 218, 232, 233.
Goshen, 46, 73.

Great Britain, 20, 21, 71, 79* 84, 214.
Greece, 22, 304-14, 315.

Habiru, the, 41, 59-

Hadrian, 95.

Haifa, 215, 284-91, 303.

Convent, 288-90, 291.

Mount Carmel, 25, 75, 213, 214, 215,
219, 245, 277, 279, 284, 285-90.

Stella Maris Lighthouse, 286, 291.
Hatshepsut, Queen, 52, 57, 166.
Hebron, 126-39, 273.

glass-makers, 135.

Haram el Khalil, 133-4-

Machpelah, cave of, 133.

oak at Mamre, 136-8.

potter of, 134-5-

road to, 126-33.

362

Index

Hebrews, the, 23-6, 41-4, 59, 6 9> IO 4,
105, 106, 128, 163-6, 167, 204, 298.

Herculaneum, Italy, 318, 319, 320,
321, 322.

Hercules, Pillars of. See Gibraltar.

Herod Agrippa H, 279, 282-3.

Herod Antipas, 282.

Herod the Great, 70, 94-5, 122, 208,
209, 242, 279, 280, 282, 283.

Hezekiah, King, 108-10.

Hinnom Valley, 79, 98, 104-6.

Hiram, King, 116, 266.

Hittites, the, 303.

Holy Land, 22-3, 58.

Horns of Hattin. See Mt. Beatitudes.

Hosea, 27, 208.

Isaac, 134, 141-

Isaiah, 78, 92, 109-11, 192, 205, 244-5,

284, 285, 297, 298.
Italy, 21, 22, 38, 47> 3*7-$ 6 -
Italian Hospice, Galilee, 227, 231-4.

Jabbok River, 184-6.

Jacob, 69, 76, 134, 14*1 184-6, 199,

202, 2O4.

Jacob Nusaibeh, Doorkeeper at
Church of Holy Sepulchre, 84,
126, 129, 177, 178, 182-3, 257.

Jacob s Well, 200-2.

Jaffa, Port of (Joppa), 24, 94, 129, 245,

271-8, 284.
Dorcas, 277.
Simon s house, 276-7.

Jenin, 212.

Jerash, Trans-Jordan, 186-91, 307,

324-

Street of Columns, 188-9, 190, 263.
Temple of Artemis, 189.
Triumphal Arch, 187.
Jeremiah, 78, 92, 105, 299.
Jericho, ancient, 41, 75, 158, 162,

163-6, 170, 173, 178,
modern, 112, 162, 169, 171, 178.
road to, 161-2, 177-8.
Jerusalem, 7, 30, 33, 58, 77, 78-125,
126, 129, 158, 169, 176, 187, 195,
196, 197, 198, 202, 273, 276, 307,
340. 349-

Antonia, Tower of, 86, 122.
Armenian Quarter, 94-8.
Christian Street, 82, 98.
Church of Holy Sepulchre (Calvary) ,

80, 82, 83-5, 98-9, 112, 126,
Citadel, the, 94, 104.
Coenaculum (Last Supper), 93, 94-7,

340, 355-

Convent of Sisters of Zion, 100-2.

Damascus Gate, 79-80, 112, 116,
158, 197.

David Street, 80, 81, 87, 98, 187.

Dome of the Chain, 89.

Dome of the Rock, 33, 80, 86-9, 122,
123, 124, 197, 258.

Ecce Homo Arch, 100.

Golden Gate, 123.

Gordon s Calvary, 112, 113-4-

Herod s Gate, 197.

Jaffa Gate, 67, 80, 94, 116, 126.

Jaffa Road, 94.

Mosque el Aksa, 90, 124.

Mount Moriah, 80, 141, 202.

Mount Zion, 80, 93-98, 104.

Pool of Bethesda, 98-100.

Praetorium, 86, 101-2, 122; (Judge
ment Hall, 99, 101-2; "Gab-
batha," 101-2).

St. Stephen s Gate, 99.

Solomon s Quarries, 114-6, 197.

Solomon s Stables, 90.

streets of, 80-2, 94, 98-9.

Temple, the, 115-6, 122.

Temple area, the (Haram), 80, 86-
90, 91, 116, 321.

Via Dolorosa, 85-6, 98-100.

Wailing Wall, 80, 82, 90-2, 133.

Wall of, 79-80, 103-116, 169, 197.
Jesus, 20, 23, 25-6, 32, 36, 53, 76, 78,
83-5, 88-9, 93 95-8, 99-100,
100-2, 105, 113-4, 117-8, 119-20,
122-5, 130, 143, 149, i5*-4, 159,
162, 172, 175-6, 187, 188, 189-90,

199, 200-2, 203, 210, 212, 214,
217, 218-20, 221, 222, 223-4,
225-6, 227-8, 230-1, 233-4, 236-
41, 243, 248, 249, 298, 301, 311,

3 2 9, 330, 340, 349, 351-
Jews, Orthodox, 91-2, 133.

Index

363

Jezebel, 206-7.
Jezreel, 212, 213.

Plain of, 215, 245.
Jochebed, 52.
John the Baptist, 89, 172, 175-6, 178,

258.

Jonathan, 43, 216.
Jordan, Plain of, 162.

River, 41, 75, 118, 142, 163, 166-9,

170-5, 176, 177, 178, 195, 246, 247.

Valley of, 118, 162, 169-70, 218, 219

224.

Joseph, Tomb of, 205.
Joshua, 41, 59, 163-7, 178, 198, 199,

202, 301.

Judah, tribe of, 128.
Judea, land of, 78, 216, 271, 273.
Mountains of, 77-8, 127, 173, 272,

273, 279.

Wilderness of, 90, 161, 169-71, 173,
176, 177, 195.

ELidron, the brook, in, 124, 158, 169.
Valley of, 79, 90, 98, 106-7, 111-2,

117, 124, 197.
Kishon River, 169, 215, 287, 289.

Lazarus, 31-2, 159.

Lebanon, 22, 279, 292-8.

Lebanons, the, 263, 279, 291, 292,

293-4, 299.

Luke, 27, 37, 39, 279, 339, 345.
Lydda (Lud), 76-7, 277,

Magdala, 241, 2^2-3, 245.

Majorca, 28.

Malta, Island of, 37, 39, 47* 333-

Mamre, Plain of, 130, 136.

Marathon, 309, 311.

"Mare Nostrum," Our Sea, 21-2, 24,

Mark, John, 48, 93, 340.

Marseilles, France, 21, 28-36, 286,

" bouillabaise," 34.

Chateau d lf, 35.

Church of Notre Dame de la Garde,
28, 34-6.

Church of St. Victor, 31-2.

La Major, Cathedral de, 31.

Palais de Longchamps, 32.

streets of, 30-34.
" Vieux Porte," the, 30-1, 34.
Martha, 32, 159.

Martyrs, Christian, 301, 345-6, 35^5-
Mary Magdalene, 243.
Mary, mother of Jesus, 89, 95, 141,

145, 150, 217-8, 257.
Meccan pilgrims, 132-3, 138-9.
Mediterranean Sea, 5, 17, 18-27, 28,

34, 37-40, 206, 219, 271, 276, 278,

284, 296, 300, 301, 302, 327, 331,
Megiddo, 212, 214, 219, 245.
Micah, 104, 209.
Minorca, 128.
Minos, King, 40.
Mizpah, 198.
Moab, Mountains of, 118, 142, 162,

173, 242.
Moses. See also Cairo. 118,131,166,

167, 173, 174.
Moslems, the, 60, 62, 84, 85, 88, 95,

96, 126, 133, 135, 139, 230, 258,

260, 261, 262.
Mount of Beatitudes, 222, 224, 227,

231, 236, 245, 246.
Mount CarmeL See Haifa.
Mount Ebal, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205,

273-
Mount Gerizim, 200, 201-2, 203, 204,

273-

Mount Gilboa, 213, 215-6, 219, 290.
Mount Hermon, 25, 75, 162, 166, 218,

225, 226, 246, 248-9, 250, 289.
Little Hermon, 213, 214, 216, 219,

290.

Mount Hymettus, 305, 309, 310.
Mount Lycabettus, 305, 309, 310.
Mount Moriah. See Jerusalem.
Mount Nebo, 1 18.
Mount of Offense, 98, 107.
Mount of Olives, 75, 90, 97-8, 112,

117-25, 158, 169, 197.
Chapel of Ascension, 119.
Church of Mary Magdalene, 1 19-20.
Church of Pater Noster, 119-20.
Gethsemane, Garden of, 71, 95, 98,

112, 117, 122-5, 355.

Russian Tower, 118.
View from, 118, 122-3.

364

Index

Mount of Precipitation. See Naza
reth.
Mount Tabor, 25, 75, 214, 216, 219,

245-
Mount of Temptation (Quarantania),

176.

Mount Zion. See Jerusalem.
Mount Vesuvius. See Pompeii.

Naaman, 175, 250, 258.
Nablus, 202, 203, 205.
Nablus Road, 197.
Nain, 53, 219.

Naples, 317-8, 327, 33i, 332.
Nazareth, 25, 75, 80, 167, 210, 214,
216-22, 236, 245.

Austrian Hospice, 220, 221.

Carpenter Shop, 217, 221*

Church of the Annunciation, 217.

Church of St. Joseph, 217.

Hilltop, the, 217, 218-220.

Mount of Precipitation, 214, 216.

streets of, 220-1.

Virgin s Fountain., 217-8.

Nebi Samwtl, 198.
Nero, 283, 321.
Nile River. See Cairo.
Nob, 198, 200.

Og, King, 249.
Ornri, King, 206, 209.
Onesimus, 341-2.
Ophel, in.
Ortus, 129.

Palestine, land of, 22, 41, 44, 59, 70,
74-178, 191, 197-246, 271-91,
296, 306.

Palestine Museum, 112, 206, 242.

Palestine Riviera, 271, 277-8, 274,
292.

Parables, Jesus , 161, 203, 219-20, 241,
248.

Paul, the apostle, 6, 23, 26-7, 37-40,
47, 80, 121, 198, 250-3, 254-5,
279-84, 294, 301, 307, 309~i3,
3I3-I4, 3i6-i7, 3i8, 319, 321,
333-47, 35^-2.

Peleset tribe, the, 41.
Peter, the apostle, 48, 93, 94, 98, 239-
40, 249, 276-7, 311, 321, 329, 334,

340, 345-7, 349-50.
Pharpar River, 250.
Philip, the evangelist, 130.
Philippi, 121, 340.
Philistia, 43, 76.
Philistines, the, 24, 41-44, 75, 128-9,

214, 216, 276.

Philadelphia. See Amman.
Phoceans, the, 28-9.
Phoenicia, 22, 51, 206, 277, 295, 298-

303-
Phoenicians, the, 21, 24, 25, 45, 115-6,

135, 276, 294.

Pilate, Pontius, 100-2, 129.
Piraeus, 304, 305.
Pompeii, 188, 190, 318, 319-27.

Forum, the, 320, 323.

Great Theatre, the, 323, 325-6.

houses of, 322-3.

Mount Vesuvius, 317, 318, 319-21,

323, 327*

Temple of Apollo, 323.

Via delPAbbondanza, 324-5.
Priscilla, 317, 342-4, 345-
Provence, 29-30.

Puteoli, Italy, 318, 321, 332-4, 339-
Pyramids. See Cairo.

Quail, the, 59-60.

Rabbath Ammon. See Amman.
Rachel, Tomb of, 141.
Ramah, 198.

Rephaim, Plain of, 127-8.
Roda, Island of. See Cairo.
Rome, 6, 27, 33, 45, 152, 283, 312, 313,
3i9, 321, 332, 334, 338-56.

Abbey of Three Fountains, 346.

Aventine Hill, 343.

Arch of Titus, 321, 351.

Caelian Hill, 338.

Catacombs, the, 337, 339, 34<5-7>
350.

Church of St. Clement, 350.

Church of St. Marie Maggiore, 152.

Church of St. Paul s-without-the
Walls, 347-8, 351,

Index

365

Church of St. Peter s, 348-50.
Church of St. Prisca, 342-4, 350.
Church of St. Pudenziana, 350.
Church of St. Sebastian, 346.
Circus Maximus, the, 338, 348.
Colosseum, the, 352-6.
Forum, the, 321, 350-1.
"Hired house" of Paul s, 338, 339-

42.

House of Hermes, 346-7.
Janiculum Hill, 348.
Mamertine Prison, 345.
Nero s Circus, 345, 349.
Palatine Hill, 312.
Pantheon, the, 351-2.
Paul at, 319, 321, 339-47, 350-2.
Paul s journey to, 332-9.
Peter at, 321, 334, 340, 345~7, 349~

5o-

Piazza del Popolo, 69, 348.
Piazza San Pietro, 349.
Pincian Hill, 348.
Porta Capena, 338.
Porta San Sebastiano, 339.
Pyramid of G. Cestius, 346.
Sacra Via, 351.
Via Appia, 332, 334-9-
Via Ostia, 346, 347, 348.
Roman Empire, 22, 26, 269, 279, 332,

Romans, the, 79, 112, 131, 214, 265,
266, 294, 295, 303, 321, 332, 336.
Rosh Pinna, 246-7.
Ruth, 142.

"Sakiyeh," the, 50, 54-
Saladin, 72, 216, 261.
Samaria, 197, 202, 208, 211-2.

city of, 205-9.

hill of, 205, 209.

Mountains of, 200, 214, 219.

road to, 197-200.

Street of Columns, 208-9.

woman of, 201-2, 203.
Samaritans, the, 202-3, 205,
Samson, 43, 75-
Samuel, 198, 199, 200.
Sarah, 55, I33~4, *37-9-
Saul, King, 43, 198, 215-6.

Sennacherib, 108, 297.

Sepphoris, 218.

Sharon, Plain of (Maritime Plain), 78,

219, 245, 272, 277-8, 279.
Shechem, 59, 131, 200, 201, 203, 204,

205, 273.
Sheep and shepherd in Holy Land, 77,

94, 104, 116, 127, 136, 142-3,

152-4, 161, 296.
Shiloh, 199-200, 273.
Shunem, 213-4.
Sidon, 25, 37, 45, 75, 276, 289, 298,

299-31, 302.
Siloam, Pool of, 10711.
Tunnel of, 109-11.
village of, 98, 103, 107, 108.
Sinai, 74, 204.

Desert of, 75.
Sodom, apples of, 178.
Solomon, King, 25, 78, 86, 107, in,

115, 116, 129, 193, 266, 276, 285,

300.

Solomon s Pools, 90, 129.
Solomon s Temple, 86, 88, 115-6, 123,

180, 265, 276, 294.
Sorrento, Italy, 331.
Spain, 21, 27, 28.
St. Ignatius, 355.
St. Telemachus, 355.
Storms on Galilee, 39, 228-31, 234.
Straits of Messina, 317.
Stromboli, 317.
Suez Canal, 22, 73.
Sychar, 200, 201.
Syria, 22, 27, 168, 214, 245? 247-70,

291, 296, 298.
Syrians, the, 214, 294.

Tabgha, 225; 226-30, 236.

Tarshish, 25.

Tel Aviv. 272, 278, 284.

Tel el Amarna, 41, 58-9.

Tell Hum. See Capernaum.

Terracina, 334.

Thotmes HI, 41, 166, 277.

Tiberias, city of, 210, 225, 226, 242,

245-

Timothy, 39, 279, 339, 342, 34*:, 345-
Titus, 39, 78, Q5> 105, 321, 344-

366

Index

Tophet, 104.

Trans-Jordan, 166, 168, 177, 178-96.

Tychicus, 339.

Tyre, 25, 45, 75, 276, 289, 298, 301-2,

33-
Tyropean, Valley of, 80, 107-11.

Via Appia. See Rome.

Via Maris, Way of the Sea, 223, 242,

244-53-
Virgin s statue, 28, 34-6, 286, 288,

348.

Wadi el Arish, 59.
Wadi Hamman, 242.
Wadi Jabbok, 185.
Wadi Nimrim, 179.
Wadi Zerka, 184.
Well of Magi, 141.

Yarmuk River, 168, 249.

Zarephath, 301.

Zionism, 44, 91-2, 160, 215, 221.

100541