Palestine

by C. R. Conder

The great geological problem of Palestine had long been solved when we entered the country. It was interesting to trace the smaller faults in the Jordan Valley, and to discover volcanic outbreaks on Carmel which were previously unknown; but the fact that the Dead Sea and the valley were formed by a mighty fault 200 miles long, leaving the sandstone of the lower beds bare on the east side, and producing violent dips in the limestone on the west, had already been explained. Professor Hull has since given scientific accounts of the formations south of the Dead Sea, but Canon Tristram described the sea-beaches in the valley in 1876, before I mentioned the existence of a very remarkable example north of Jericho.

What chiefly interests us from a general point of view is the relation which geology bears to the question of the ancient fertility of the country. Porous strata must have been porous in all historical periods, and impervious strata impervious. The last convulsions had long given place to the slow processes of denudation on the Palestine hills before man existed, and though the Jordan Valley was formed after the chalk age, the great lakes had dried up, leaving only the Sea of Galilee, Merom, and the Dead Sea in existence when history opened.

It seems clear, then, that the well-watered parts of Palestine now existing are those which were so when the Old Testament was penned; that where wells and cisterns are now used, they were then also in use; that what is now trackless and waterless desert was so in the time of David. The snow of Hermon is mentioned in the Bible as well as the saltness of the Bitter Sea. Palestine is still a land of corn, wine, and oil, as of yore, and sheep are still fed in the same pastoral regions, the same vineyards are still famous, the corn of its plains still yields an hundredfold. I am unable to see that in any respect, either in climate or in natural productions, can the land have changed, excepting always that a decrease in population has led to decreased cultivation, and that goats and peasants have often wrought havoc among the trees. Palestine can hardly have been more healthy in Bible times than it now is. Plagues, famines, fever, and leprosy are mentioned in the history of the Hebrews, and in the New Testament we find the poor stricken with eyesore, fever, and palsy quite as much as they now are. There are still “former and latter rains,” and the rose of Sharon has not withered: the purple iris is still royally robed: the imagery of the Song of Songs is still easy to apply. Except in the disappearance of the lion and the wild bull—which are also represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs, yet no longer found in Assyria—there is no change in the fauna: the deer, the antelope, the fox, the wolf, the hyena, and the jackal, the ostrich, and the crocodile still survive in the wilder parts of the land, with the great boars which delight in the marshes; the leopard lurks in the jungles and the coney in the rocks; the wild goat leaps on the precipices, and the wild ass in the distant eastern deserts is not unknown.

Considering how complete was the examination of the fauna by Canon Tristram, it was certainly an unexpected stroke of good fortune to discover an unknown quadruped in Palestine; but the bones of the Yahmur deer, which we sent home from Carmel, were pronounced to belong to the same species with the English roebuck; and we thus recover in existence one of the species mentioned in the Pentateuch, and which furnished venison to King Solomon’s table.

The seasons, not less than the fauna and flora of Palestine, are unchanged. Indeed, the names of the old Aramaic months, as now translated by aid of Assyrian, show us this uniformity, while the spoils taken by Thothmes III. (as already noted) carry back the agricultural prosperity of the country to a time earlier than the Exodus. The spring brings grass and flowers; the corn ripens even in April in the Jordan Valley, and in May on the hills; the olive harvest and the vintage follow in the early autumn, when the threshing-floors are full of grain, over which the old threshing-sledge of Hebrew times is still driven. With the first rains the ploughing begins, and with January comes the snow, with ice and hail. In one year, at Jerusalem, we had seven falls of snow. The top of Mount Salmon was white for days, recalling the words of the psalm; and the occasional occurrence of a sudden storm in harvest-time also agrees with a passage in the Books of Samuel. There is no exaggeration in the statement that Palestine is unchanged, and the best comment on the physical incidents mentioned in the Bible is found in the meteorological observations of Palestine explorers.

The geographical results of the Survey are, of course, among its most important scientific claims. The best previous maps depended on a few observations of latitude and longitude, and on the calculation of distances by time. Many of these distances were better known in the fourth century than they were in 1872; for the Romans placed milestones along their great routes, which will be found marked on the Survey maps; and these were known to Eusebius, to Jerome, and to other travellers, and are mentioned in the Onomasticon. On the maps sent out for my use I not only found many omissions, but large villages were placed on the wrong sides of valleys, and the courses of many important watercourses were wrongly laid down. The level of the Sea of Galilee was uncertain within three hundred feet, the fords of Jordan were unknown, and the affluents of Jordan had not been traced. The number of important ruins was, of course, large in districts hardly approached by former travellers, and even on the hills near the Sharon plain villagers told me that I was the first Frank they had ever seen, which was no doubt true, as they rarely travel more than ten miles from home.

Ancient geography has equally benefited by the work. The names of the old towns and villages mentioned in the Bible remain for the most part almost unchanged. I believe that I was able to add to future maps about 150 of these old sites west of the river and some thirty east of Jordan. Among these may be reckoned some places of great importance for the understanding of the Bible, such as Bethabara, Bezek, Debir, Etam, Gilgal, Jeshanah, Kadesh, Kirjath-jearim, Luz, Megiddo, Nephtoah, Rakkon, Sorek, the Valley of Zephathah, the important border-towns of Dabbasheth and Ataroth Adar, with Bamoth Baal, Peor, and Nehaliel, Minnith, Luhith, and other places beyond Jordan. These discoveries have already found their place on the Bible Society’s maps published in 1887; and by such recovery of ancient sites it became possible to lay down the boundaries of the tribes, and of the later divisions of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, with an amount of certitude before unattainable. Very considerable changes have thus been made on the new Bible maps, which will be seen when they are compared with the old; and the acceptation of these results in standard works shows that the arguments by which they were enforced were clear enough to overcome the most conservative geographers. The fact that each name was carefully recorded in Arabic letters made it possible to compare with the Hebrew in a scientific and scholarly manner. The wild shots which have been made by those who compare the English of the Bible with the English of the Palestine maps might serve to discredit such comparisons; but when the Hebrew and the Arabic are shown to contain the same radicals, the same gutturals, and often the same meanings, we have a truly reliable comparison. The scholar knows that Hazor and Hadirah are the same words, and he at once sees the fallacy of comparing Jiphtah-el with Jefât. In the one case the words are identical in lettering and in meaning; in the other, the actual Arabic of Jiphthah-el is Fath Allah—a name which still survives in the Jordan Valley.

There are still points disputed in Palestine geography, which is for the most part due to the meagre information which we possess. Some of these questions of opinion may remain always unsettled, but we have now recovered more than three-quarters of the Bible names, and are thus able to say with confidence that the Bible topography is a genuine and actual topography, the work of Hebrews familiar with the country, and free from contradictions such as are presented, for instance, in the Book of Tobit by a writer ignorant of the places of which he speaks.

It is not only the Bible geography which has thus been explained. The topography of Josephus, of the Talmud, of the Byzantine pilgrim writers, of the Crusading chronicles, are equally illustrated by our maps. The Memoirs, which give a detailed account of every hill range, stream, spring, village, town, ruin, and large building in Palestine, also contain notes of every statement as to topography which I was able to gather from Jewish, Samaritan, Greek, Latin, and Norman French notices of Palestine. Not only Josephus and the Bible, but Pliny, Strabo, the Rabbinical writers, the Samaritan chroniclers, the Onomasticon, the early Christian pilgrims, the Crusading and Arab chronicles, have been put under contribution, and we can now prepare not only a map of Canaanite Syria as known to the Egyptians or one of the Twelve Tribes or of the Roman provinces, but a Byzantine map of fifth-century bishoprics, or a yet fuller map of the Crusading kingdom, with its Norman and Normanised Arab names, some of the former even of which are now preserved.

The Memoirs to which I refer fill three quarto volumes, full of plans and pictures, special surveys of important places, and detailed accounts. A volume on Jerusalem and another on special subjects are added, and the set includes, in other volumes, Dr. Hull’s geological account, Canon Tristram’s natural history, and Professor Palmer’s editing of the name lists. Yet another volume of natural history is promised from the observations of Mr. Chichester Hart, and the volume of my Moabite Survey has just appeared, making the ninth. It must not be forgotten that the Survey was no mere compass sketch. It is based on a triangulation with three carefully measured bases. All important mountain tops are laid down within a circle having a diameter of ten yards. All important heights are determined within five feet. The levels of the Sea of Galilee and of the Dead Sea are known within a few inches. The hill features are represented not by conventionalised lines, but by actual tracing of every spur and by actual survey of every top. Whatever disputes may arise as to the meaning of an Arabic or Hebrew word, or as to the identification of some obscure site, there can be no dispute as to the geographical position or the elevation of any spot shown on the Palestine Survey, for the principles of the work are the same on which our original Ordnance Survey in England was carried out; and although the appliances at our command would of course not allow of the same minute accuracy of instrumental measurement, still, on the scale of one inch to a mile such minutiæ are invisible to the eye.