The literature of Palestine exploration begins, therefore, with the establishment of Christianity. Before that date we have very little outside the Bible except in the works of Josephus, whose descriptions, though at times unreliable as regards measurement, are invaluable as the accounts of an eye-witness of the state of the country before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. We have scattered notes in the Talmud, in Pliny, in Ptolemy,[1] in Strabo, and in other classic works, which have been collected by the care of Reland and of later writers; but it was only when the Holy Land became a land of pilgrimage for Christians that itineraries and detailed accounts of its towns and holy places began to be penned.
The Bordeaux pilgrim[2] actually visited Jerusalem while Constantine’s basilica was being built over the supposed site of the Holy Sepulchre, and in Palestine his brief record of stations and distances is expanded into notes on the places which he found most revered by Syrian Christians. In the same reign, Eusebius, the historian of the Church, constructed an Onomasticon, which answered roughly to the modern geographical gazetteer. His aim—and that of Jerome, who rather later rendered this work from Greek into Latin, adding notes of his own—was to identify as far as possible the places mentioned in the Old and New Testaments with places existing in the country as known to themselves. This work is both scholarly and honest in intention, but the traditions on which Eusebius and Jerome relied have not in all cases proved to be reconcilable with the Biblical requirements as studied by modern science. The Onomasticon is, however, of great importance as regards the topography of Palestine in the fourth century, and has often led to the recovery of yet more ancient sites, which might otherwise have been lost. Jerome had an intimate personal knowledge, not only of the country round Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where he lived so long, but also of the whole of Western Palestine. Places east of Jordan are noticed in the Onomasticon, but that region was less perfectly known to the Christian co-authors of this work. In the fourth century the Roman roads were marked by milestones, and thus the distances given by Eusebius and Jerome are actual, and not computed distances. Measurement on the Survey map, which shows these milestones whereever they remain by the roadside, proves that for the most part the Onomasticon distances are very correct, and the sites of places so described can, as a rule, be recovered with little difficulty.
The Peutinger Tables, representing the Roman map of Palestine about 393 A.D., give us also the distances along these roads; but the knowledge of the map-maker as to the region east of Jordan was most imperfect, and the map, which presents no latitudes or longitudes, is much distorted. To the same century belongs Jerome’s elegant letter on the travels of his pious friend Paula, which is, however, but a slight sketch, more remarkable for its eloquence and fanciful illustration of Scripture than for topographical description.[3]
A short tract—very valuable, however, to the student of Jerusalem topography—was penned by Eucherius in the fifth century; and in the sixth we have the account by Theodorus (or Theodosius) of the Holy Land in the days of Justinian.[4] The eulogistic record by Procopius of the buildings of Justinian also gives accounts and references to the names of his monasteries and churches in Palestine, which are of considerable use.[5] In the same reign also (about 530 A.D.) Antoninus Martyr[6] set forth from Piacenza, and journeyed to Constantinople, Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine. He even crossed the Jordan and went through the Sinaitic desert to Egypt. Like the Bordeaux pilgrim, Antoninus was a firm believer in the apocryphal Gospels, which already began to be held in high estimation. The former pilgrim repeats stories from the Gospel of the Hebrews; the latter, in addition, refers to the Gospel of the Infancy; but, in spite of the superstitious tone of the narrative of Antoninus, his itinerary is valuable, because it covers the whole region west of Jordan, and contains notes of contemporary custom and belief which are of great antiquarian interest.
The conquest of Palestine by Omar did not by any means lead to the closing of the country to Christians. One of the best known and most detailed accounts of the Holy Land written up to that time was taken down from the lips of the French Bishop Arculphus[7] by Adamnan, Bishop of Iona, about 680 A.D., in the monastery of Hy. It appears that Arculph was in Palestine during the reign of Mu’awîyeh, the first independent Khalif of Syria ruling in Damascus, and the same policy of toleration and peace which was inaugurated by this ruler enabled St. Willibald in 722 A.D.[8] to journey through the whole length of the land. These writers are concerned chiefly in description of the holy places, which increased in number and in celebrity from century to century. Arculphus constantly interrupts his narrative with pious legends, much resembling those of the modern Roman Catholic guide-books to Palestine, though some of the sites which were correctly identified by these early Christian pilgrims were transferred by the Latin priests of the twelfth century to impossible localities, where they are still in some cases shown to Latins, while the older tradition survives among the Greek Christians. We often encounter an interesting note in these pilgrim diaries, such as Arculphus’ description of the pine-wood north of Hebron, now represented by but a few scattered trees. St. Willibald seems to have been regarded as a harmless hermit, who, when once the object of his journey was understood, was allowed by the “Commander of the Faithful” to travel in peace throughout the land.
In the reign of Charlemagne good political relations existed between that monarch and the Khalif of Baghdad, Harûn er Rashîd. The keys of Jerusalem were presented to the Western monarch, who founded a hospice for the Latins in that city. About half a century later, at the time when Baghdad was at the height of its glory as a centre of literature and civilisation, Bernard, called the Wise,[9] with two other monks, one Italian, the other Spanish, visited the Holy Land from Egypt, and they were able to obtain permits which were respected by the local governors.