The Syrian Christ

by Abraham Mitrie Rihbany

To me this sounds "very natural." Ephron meant simply to be courteous. It is an Oriental custom to avoid a business transaction whenever a question of hospitality is involved, although it is not expected that the gift would be received as offered. The language on such occasions is purely complimentary. An Oriental offers to give you anything you may admire of his personal possessions, but as a rule you are not expected to accept the offer. Ephron did not really mean that he would give his field to Abraham without money and without price, but he would have Abraham know that he was ready to befriend him in his sorrow, and not to deal with him simply as a customer. The patriarch acknowledged the kindness by bowing himself down before the Hittites, but would not accept the field as a gift. Thereupon Ephron quoted the price of the field to the father of Israel in a truly characteristic Syrian fashion, by saying (verse 15), "My lord, hearken unto me: a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead." The gentle hint accomplished its purpose, "and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the children of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant."

In speaking of the haste in which the Israelites were compelled to leave Egypt, the writer of the Book of Exodus says,[[3]] "And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders." In the thirty-first verse it is said that Pharaoh "called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people." As a rule the Syrian housewife kneads the dough in the evening in order that it may "leaven" during the night and be ready for baking early the next morning. The saying, "And the people took their dough before it was leavened," is meant to show that they departed before the early morning hours. Apparently the Israelites had wooden kneading-troughs such as at present the Arabs in the interior of Syria still use. The Syrians use earthen basins.[[4]] What is called kneading-trough in the Bible resembles a large chopping-bowl, but is heavier and not so perfectly round as the chopping-bowl which is commonly used in the American home. In this basin the bread is also kept after it is baked. In the thirty-ninth verse it is said, "And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual." The "cakes" are known to the East as melleh; this is the word the Arabic Bible uses. The melleh is a round cake or loaf about fifteen inches in diameter and about three inches thick. It is baked, unleavened, on the redhef; that is, hot pebbles. The fire is built over an especially prepared bed of small stones; when these are thoroughly heated, the melleh is placed upon them and covered with the live coals until it is baked. The shepherds in the mountains of Syria bake the melleh very often and think there is no bread like it in delicious flavor and sustaining quality.

It was such a "cake" which Elijah fed upon on his way to "Horeb the mount of God." In the nineteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings, the fourth verse, we are told that Elijah "sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers." It is of no small significance that the legend states that the Lord answered Elijah's prayer in terms of food. The prophet was both tired and hungry, so when he "lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head." We have no record that Elijah after he had eaten of the redhef cake, which was provided, no doubt, by the shepherds in that region for the nasik (hermit), ever longed for death.

In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, the eleventh verse, begins the story of Gideon, the "mighty man of valour," who delivered Israel out of the hands of the Midianites. "And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the wine-press, to hide it from the Midianites."

It is a prevailing belief in the East that spirits and angelic visitors appear especially under trees and by streams of water. Huge oaks are often found in burying-grounds and in front of houses of worship. "Rag trees" also may be seen in many localities in Syria. A rag tree (shajeret-omm-shrateet) is a supposedly sacred or "possessed" tree, generally an oak, on whose branches the people hang shreds of the garments of afflicted dear ones for the purpose of securing healing power for them. When the angel visited him, Gideon, we are told, was threshing wheat by the wine-press. The more correct rendering of the Revised Version and of the Arabic is, "Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine-press." As I have already stated,[[5]] the grapes are squeezed by being trodden in a large stone-flagged enclosure, which is about the size of an ordinary room. As the harvest time comes early in the summer, long before the wine-making season, Gideon could use the clean floor of this enclosure to beat out wheat, with a fair chance of escaping being discovered by his oppressors, the Midianites. He was not "threshing." He was beating with a club the sheaves he had smuggled, before threshing time came when the Midianites exacted their heavy toll from oppressed Israel. Threshing is done with the threshing-board (nourej), which is called in the Bible the "threshing instrument." The nourej resembles a stone-drag. It consists of two heavy pine planks joined together, and is about three feet wide, and six feet long. On its under side are cut rows of square holes into which sharp stones are driven. It is these sharp stones which Isaiah, refers to when he says, "Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff."[[6]] The sheaves are scattered on the threshing-floor about a foot deep; the thresher attaches the threshing-board to the yoke and sits on it, with his goad in his hand. As the oxen which "tread the corn" drag the heavy board round and round, the sharp stones cut the sheaves. In three days the "threshing" is ready to be sifted. The finely cut sheaves are thrown up into a heap and tossed up in the air with large wooden pitchforks. The breeze blows the chaff and straw away, leaving the heap of the golden grain in the center of the threshing-floor to gladden the eyes of the grateful tiller of the soil. To this "purging" of the threshing-floor—that is, the freeing of the wheat from the chaff and straw—Luke alludes in the third chapter, the seventeenth verse, where he says, referring to the Christ, "Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable." The reference to the burning of the chaff is meant to show its comparative worthlessness. I am not aware that the Syrian farmer always takes the trouble to burn the chaff, which is not easy to gather after the wind has carried it away from the threshing-floor and scattered it over acres of ground. The coarser part of it, which falls near the floor, is gathered and saved to be used in making the clay mortar with which the houses are plastered, and also sun-dried brick. We always went to the threshing-floor and secured a few bagfuls of chaff which we used in the annual plastering of the floor of our house.

Among the chief joys of my boyhood days were those hours when I was permitted to sit on the threshing-board and goad the oxen which carried me round and round over the glistening, fragrant sheaves. I often bribed the owner to grant me the precious privilege; and even now I should in all probability prefer threshing after this manner to an automobile ride.

In the seventh chapter of the Book of Judges we have a description of the simple process by which Gideon's army, with which he attacked the Midianites, was selected. The very honest record states that out of thirty-two thousand men whom Gideon had first mobilized only three hundred stood the final test. That test was very simple. In the fifth verse it is said, "So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water." The three hundred constituted Gideon's army.

Bowing down upon the knees while drinking from a stream or a bubbling spring (fowwar) is the prevailing custom in Syria. This kind of drinking is called ghebb; that is, the sucking in of the water with the lips. But to strong and wary men this is disdainful. Such a prostration betokens lassitude; besides it is not always safe for one to be so recklessly off his guard while traveling, and to render himself an easy prey to lurking robbers. Therefore the men of strength and valor (shijaan) upon approaching the water assume a squatting position, lift the water with the hand to the mouth and lap it quickly with the tongue. This manner of drinking indicates strength, nimbleness, and alertness.

One of the most reprehensible Syrian habits is the mocking of those afflicted with diseases, or any sort of physical defects. I have no doubt that the afflicted of Palestine flocked to Jesus to be healed by him as much for the purpose of escaping the shame of the affliction as of securing bodily comfort. "There comes the one-eyed man ['awar]"; "there goes the limping man [afkah]"; "the half dumb [maybe one who stutters] is trying to discourse"; "the hunch-back is trying to class himself with real men"; "the diseased head [akkra'] is approaching, give way." These and other stigmatizations are very extensively current in the East. In the story of Elisha[[7]] it is said, "And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children ["young lads," Revised Version] out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them."

What those children really said to Elisha was, "Go up thou akkra'." The akkra' is one who is afflicted with a disease of the scalp, a malady not uncommon among the poor people of Syria. Complete baldness of the head is spoken of also as qara'. It was this perhaps which the ill-mannered children noticed in the itinerant prophet. His cursing of the lads "in the name of the Lord" was no less an Eastern characteristic than their mocking of him.