SKETCHES OF BIBLE SCENES.
Bethesda.
This place was rendered very interesting to all Christians, by the miracle performed there by our Saviour, which is recorded in the fifth chapter of St. John. Multitudes of pilgrims and travellers have from age to age, flocked to Jerusalem eager to see the place where Jesus bid the impotent man, “rise, take up his bed and walk.”
The pool of Bethesda is described as a pool by the sheep market, which is called Bethesda, having five porches; the word Bethesda meaning the place where victims for sacrifice were purified; and it is believed that the sheep for sacrifice were washed in Bethesda before being led away to the temple; and as sacrifices were very frequently offered, it is natural to suppose that both the sheep market and the pool were near the temple. Another explanation is that it signifies the “House of Mercy,” from the healing quality of its waters.
Within the present walls of Jerusalem are two fountains; the lower one, into which the waters of the upper one flow, through a passage cut in the rock, is the celebrated pool or fountain of Siloam. There has always existed a tradition that the waters of Siloam flowed irregularly; but Dr. Robinson, who first visited it, says “that as he was standing on the lower step near the water, with one foot on a loose stone lying near it, all at once he perceived the water coming into his shoe, and, supposing the stone had rolled, he withdrew his foot to the step, which, however, was now also covered with water. In less than five minutes the water bubbled up from under the lower step, and in five minutes it had risen nearly a foot in the basin, and it could be heard gurgling off through the interior passage. In ten minutes it ceased to flow, and the water was again reduced to its former level.
“Meanwhile, a woman came to wash at the fountain. She frequented the place every day, and said that the water flowed at irregular intervals, sometimes being quite dry, the men and flocks dependent upon it suffering from thirst, when, all at once, the water would boil up from under the steps, and flow in a copious stream. The ignorant people say that a dragon lies within the fountain; when he awakes, he stops the water; when he sleeps, it flows.”
In the scriptural account, we are told that “an angel went down, at a certain season, into the pool, and troubled the waters,” and then, whosoever first stepped in was made whole. Does not this “troubling of the waters,” look like the irregular flow of the fountain just described?
Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the metropolis of the province of Judea, and one of the most remarkable cities in the world. Manetho, an Egyptian historian, says it was founded by the shepherds who once invaded Egypt in great numbers; but who these shepherds were, is still a mystery. The first we know of it, however, with any good degree of certainty, is in the time of Melchizedeck, who lived in the days of Abraham. It was then called Salem. Josephus says it was the capital of Melchizedeck’s kingdom.
After this, it became the metropolis of the people called Jebusites. Its name, at that time, was Jebus. When the Israelites, under Joshua, attempted to take the city, they found the Jebusites too strong for them, and could only take that part of it which was divided between the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. David, however, completely conquered it, and made it the capital of his own kingdom. This is one reason why Jerusalem is sometimes called the “City of David.”
Under David and his son Solomon, Jerusalem rose to a very high degree of splendor. It is in thirty-one degrees fifty minutes north latitude, and thirty-five degrees twenty minutes east longitude; being about twenty-five miles west of the river Jordan, forty-two east of the Mediterranean Sea, one hundred and two south of Damascus, and one hundred and fifty north of the eastern branch of the Red Sea. It was built on four hills: Zion, Acra, Moriah, and Bezetha; but Moriah, on the east, and Zion, on the south-west, are the principal. It was surrounded by a strong wall, forty or fifty feet high. The general form of the city is at present nearly a heptagon, or figure with seven sides.
The glory of the city Jerusalem was its temple. The pattern of building the temple was given by David to his son Solomon; David himself not being permitted by God to erect it. He, however, made great preparations for it. He and his princes made vast contributions for the purpose; amounting, it is said, to more than one thousand millions of pounds sterling. Solomon, who was the man selected by divine appointment, employed one hundred eighty-four thousand men—a number equal to all the grown men who are able to labor in the whole state of Massachusetts—about seven years in completing this mighty work. When completed, the temple occupied, within its walls, about thirty-one acres of ground; and was unquestionably one of the most costly edifices of its size, that the world ever saw. To it, every male Jew was required to go twice a year to perform worship.
View of Jerusalem.
But the glory of this costly edifice lasted only thirty-four years; for, during the reign of Rohoboam, the son and successor of Solomon, Shishak, king of Egypt, seized and pillaged it, and carried away its treasures. Indeed, the city of Jerusalem was several times taken, during those early periods, and sometimes it was burnt; but it was as often rebuilt.
About six hundred and two years before Christ, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Egypt, invaded Palestine, and threatened the destruction of the city and temple; but was prevented from effecting his object by the submission of Jehoiakim, the king. Efforts being made, soon after, however, to throw off the yoke, Nebuchadnezzar again appeared with his army before the city, and, after a siege of fifteen or sixteen months, took it, and laid both the temple and the whole city in ashes. This was B. C. 590.
About B. C. 530, by permission of Cyrus, Jerusalem began to be rebuilt under Nehemiah, and repeopled; but the walls were not completed till B. C. 456. The temple was also rebuilt, by Zerubbabel; but this last temple was never so splendid as the former.
The city itself was again destroyed, many years afterward, by Ptolemy. It met with a similar fate still later, from Antiochus Epiphanes, who slew forty thousand of the people, and made slaves of as many more. It was rebuilt by Judas Maccabeus, and in the time of our Savior was somewhat flourishing. But about A. D. 70, after a dreadful siege of two years, by the Romans, during which the inhabitants suffered so much from famine as to eat, in some instances, the dead bodies of their friends, the city was taken, and, according to the prediction of our Savior, nearly forty years before, it was made a heap of ruins. The temple was completely destroyed, so that not one stone lay upon another; and the ground where it had stood, was ploughed up. Even the name of the city was changed.
Adrian, another Roman emperor, undertook afterwards to rebuild the city, but his plan only partially succeeded. In the mean time, he banished all the Jews, forbidding their return. Constantine the Great, enlarged the city, and restored its ancient name.
Since that time the fate of Jerusalem has been various and singular. In 614, the Persians captured it; and in the capture, ninety thousand Christians were slain. In 637 it was seized by the Saracens, who held it till 1079, when the Seljukian Turks got possession of it. After the Crusades, the Ottoman Turks became its masters; and these own it at the present day.
We have already represented Jerusalem as standing upon several eminences, and surrounded by a wall, forty or fifty feet high. Towers rose at various places on these walls, some of them to the height of one hundred, or one hundred twenty feet. The length of the wall, or circumference of the city, about the time of Christ, must have been, according to the best accounts, about four miles and a half. It was very thickly populated; containing, as some suppose, nearly three million inhabitants. This may be too high an estimate; but the population was certainly very large. One evidence of its great population is the fact, that there were in it, at this time, nearly five hundred Jewish synagogues. At present, Jerusalem contains five synagogues, eleven mosques, and twenty monasteries.
But Jerusalem is very far from being now what it once was. Instead of containing millions of inhabitants, as some suppose it formerly did, it scarcely contains twenty thousand. Of these, perhaps ten thousand are Mohammedans, six thousand are Jews, two thousand are Greeks, one thousand five hundred Catholics, and five hundred Armenians. Instead of being four and a half miles in circumference, the city scarcely measures two miles and two thirds. The following spirited account of Jerusalem, as it now is, is from the “Modern Traveller.”
When seen from the valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An embattled wall, fortified with towers, and a Gothic castle, compasses the city all round, excluding, however, a part of Mount Zion, which it formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the city, the houses stand very close; but in the eastern part, along (towards) the brook Kidron, you perceive vacant spaces.
The houses of Jerusalem are heavy, square masses, very low, without chimneys or windows. They have flat terraces or domes on the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches, the minarets of the mosques, and the summits of a few cypresses, break the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these stone buildings, in the midst of a stony country, you are ready to inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetery in the midst of a desert.
Enter the city; and you will find nothing there to make amends for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow, unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of the ground, and you walk among clouds of dust, or loose stones. Canvas stretched from house to house, increases the gloom. Bazars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but wretchedness to view; and even these are frequently shut from apprehension of the passage of a cadi.
Not a creature is to be seen in the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of his labor, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the rapacious soldier.
Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering some animal, suspended by the legs, from a wall in ruins. From his haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would suppose that he had been cutting the throat of a fellow-creature, rather than killing a lamb.
The only noise heard from time to time in the city, is the galloping of the steed of the desert: it is the Janissary, who brings the head of the Bedouin, or who returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.
Here reside (that is, among the ruins of Jerusalem) communities of Christian monks, whom nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ; neither plunder, nor personal ill-treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they chant their hymns around the holy sepulchre.
Driven by the cudgel and the sabre, women, children, flocks, and herds, seek refuge in the cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from pursuing his prey, and overthrowing such feeble ramparts? It is the charity of the monks; they deprive themselves of the last resources of life, to ransom their supplicants.
Cast your eyes between the temple and Mount Zion. Behold another petty tribe, (the Jews,) cut off from the rest of the inhabitants of this city! These people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure every kind of insult, without demanding justice; they sink beneath repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present it to the cimeter. On the death of any member of this proscribed community, his companion goes at night, and inters him, by stealth, in the shadow of Solomon’s temple.
Enter the abodes of these people. You will find them, amidst the most abject wretchedness, instructing their children to read a (to them) mysterious book, which they in their turn will teach to their offspring. What they did five thousand years ago, this people still continue to do. Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their faces towards Zion.
To see the Jews scattered over the whole world, according to the word of God, must, doubtless, excite surprise. But to be struck with astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem; you must behold these rightful masters of Judea, living as slaves and strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them.
We will only mention, in conclusion of this article, that the most ancient as well as most splendid edifice in the whole modern city of Jerusalem, is the mosque of Omar. It stands on Mount Moriah, precisely—it is supposed—where once stood the temple of Solomon. It is one thousand four hundred eighty-nine feet—more than a quarter of a mile!—long, and nine hundred ninety-five feet broad. It was built A. D. 636, and has, therefore, stood exactly one thousand two hundred years. It is, indeed, rather a collection of mosques, than a single one. The whole is included in two grand divisions; the Sakhara, in the centre, and the Akhsa, on the south side.
Valley of Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat is a narrow valley or glen, which runs from north to south, between the city of Jerusalem or Mount Moriah, on which it stands, on the one side, and Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, on the other. The brook Kidron, or Cedron, runs through this valley; on which account it was sometimes called the valley of Kidron. It had also several other names, among which were “the Vale of Shevah,” the “King’s Dale,” &c.
This glen received its more common name from the fact, that Jehoshaphat, one of the kings of Judah, erected a most magnificent tomb in it. It abounds with monuments, ancient and modern, and appears to have served as a burying-place to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for many ages. The Jews think so highly of being buried there, that it is said they resort thither to die, from all parts of the world; and, for such a privilege, sometimes pay to the merciless Turks, who own the soil, almost its weight in gold.
There are three monuments pointed out here, which are of particular interest; those of Absalom, Zechariah, and Jehoshaphat. A traveller thus describes them.
“The first mentioned is a square mass of rock, hewn down into form, and separated from the quarry out of which it was cut, by a passage of twelve or fifteen feet on three of its sides; the fourth or western front being open towards the valley, and to Mount Moriah; the foot of which is only a few yards distant. This huge stone is eight paces in length on each side, and about twenty high in the front and ten feet high at the back; the hill on which it stands having a steep ascent. It has four semi-columns cut out of the same rock, on each of its faces, with a pilaster at each angle, all of a mixed Ionic order, and ornamented in bad taste.
“In the immediate vicinity is the tomb of Jehoshaphat, a cavern which is more commonly called the Grotto of the Disciples, from an idea that the disciples of our Savior went frequently thither to be taught by their Master. The front of this excavation has two Doric pillars, of small size, but of just proportions. In the interior are three chambers, all of them rude and irregular in their form, in one of which were several grave-stones, removed, we may suppose, from the open ground, for greater security.
“Opposite to this is the reputed tomb of Absalom, resembling nearly, in the size, form, and description of its square base, that of Zechariah. This is surmounted by a sharp conical dome, having large mouldings running round its base, and on the summit something like an imitation of flame.”
Here is also shown what is called the tomb of the Virgin Mary, and the pit where the Jews say the sacred fire was hid during the Babylonian captivity; together with many more objects which arrest the attention of the traveller; and which, though they give no certain information, serve greatly to interest him.
Joppa, or Jaffa.
This is one of the most ancient seaports in the world. It is situated on a fine plain, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, forty-five miles west of Jerusalem. It is believed to have existed before the deluge; to be the city where Noah built his ark; whence Jonah embarked from Tarshish, where he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale. It was the port used by Solomon to receive timber from Tyre for the building of the temple. It is now much reduced in importance, being only a small Turkish town on the shores of the Mediterranean, built on a little eminence projecting into the sea, and containing a population of from ten to fifteen thousand Turks, Arabs, Jews, and Christians. It has a fine climate, and a fine country around it, and the orange gardens are the finest on the shores of the Mediterranean. Although it is the seaport of Jerusalem, its harbor has always been bad, and the vessels that anchor there are often wrecked in the storms.
The modern city has nothing in its history to interest the traveller. He must stand on the shore, and fill the little harbor with the Tarshish; or, imagine Noah entering the ark with his family, by whom the earth was to be repeopled; or wander through the narrow streets to seek for the house of Tabitha, whom Peter raised from the dead, or that of Simon, the tanner, where Peter tarried many days.
Mount Carmel.
Mount Carmel is a tall promontory forming the termination of a range of hills, in the northern part of Palestine, and towards the sea. It is fifteen hundred feet high, and is famous for its caverns, which are said to be more than a thousand in number. Most of them are in the western part of it. Here also was the cave of the prophet Elijah. Both Elijah and Elisha used to resort to this mountain, and here it was that the former opposed the prophet of Baal with such success. Here it was, too, that this prophet went up, when he told his servant to look forth toward the sea yet seven times, and the seventh time he saw a cloud coming from the sea “like a man’s hand”—when the prophet knew the promised rain was at hand, and girded up his loins and ran before Ahab’s chariot even to the gates of Jezreel. (See 1 Kings xviii. 4-46.)