Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

There are three curious places on Ebal; one of which is a rude stone building, enclosing a space of fifty feet square, with walls twenty feet thick, in which are chambers. The Samaritans call it part of a ruined village, but its use and origin are a mystery. It resembles most the curious monuments near Hizmeh, called the “Tombs of the Sons of Israel.” The second place is the little cave and ruined chapel of Sitt Eslamîyeh, “the Lady of Islam,” who has given her name to the mountain. It is perched on the side of a precipice, and is held sacred by the Moslems, who have a tradition that the bones of the Saint were carried hither through the air from Damascus. The third place is a site the importance of which has not been previously recognised. It is a little Moslem Mukâm, said once to have been a church, called ’Amâd ed Dîn, the “Monument of the Faith.” The name thus preserved has no connection with Samaritan tradition, but it is undisputed that the sacred places of the peasantry often represent spots famous in Bible history. It is therefore perhaps possible that the site thus reverenced is none other than that of the monumental altar of twelve stones from Jordan, which Joshua erected, according to the Biblical account, on Ebal, and not on Gerizim as the Samaritans believe, charging the Jews with having altered the names (Deut. xxvii. 4). The hill-top on which this monument stands is called Râs el Kâdy, “Hill of the Judge.” It was here that the Crusaders placed Dan, the site of Jeroboam’s Calf Temple, and the present name may perhaps be connected with this theory, Dan (“the Judge”) being translated into the Arabic Kâdy (“Judge”), just as it has been at the true Dan, now Tell el Kâdy, at the source of Jordan. The idea that Dan was to be sought on Ebal originated, no doubt, in the acceptance by the Crusaders of the Samaritan site of Bethel on Gerizim, at the foot of which mountain, according to the mediæval writers, the golden calves were made. This view cannot, however, be supported from the Bible narrative.

In the account given of the reading of the Law, we find that the Israelites stood half “over against” Gerizim, half over against Ebal, and that an altar of whole stones was built “in Mount Ebal,” where also a copy of the law was written by Joshua (Josh. viii. 30, 33). Later on we find reference to a great stone under an oak by “the holy place of Jehovah” (Josh. xxiv. 26), and the same place is probably intended by “the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem” (Judges ix. 6); it is even conjectured that the “oak which was by Shechem,” where Jacob hid the strange gods (Gen. xxxv. 4), was the same place. The pillar of the oak must not be confused with the altar on Ebal, and we have next to discuss the question of the probable position of this sacred oak.

It has been pointed out by Canon Williams and other writers that a natural amphitheatre exists, between Ebal and Gerizim, in the sloping sides of two recesses opposite each other, formed by a tributary valley from each hill; there is space for the assembly of a vast multitude, and the voice of a speaker in the valley could probably have been heard by the entire congregation, though such a requirement is not necessarily involved in the description of the reading of the law. It is striking to find here at the foot of Gerizim a place called the “Pillar,” but it cannot represent the altar on Ebal, and if it be the great stone by the oak, where Joshua made a covenant with Israel, it has no direct connection with the reading of the law. The Mosque of the Pillar (el ’Amûd) is a little shrine similar to many in the country, with small whitewashed domes and a wall surrounding a little garden. The gate is on the north, and cool pitchers of water here await the thirsty pilgrim; within is a paved court shaded by an aged tree, shrubs and palms are visible through the doorway, and the small building stands in the midst with whitewashed walls and wooden door. The modern Samaritans seem to regard this as the true site of Joshua’s stone by the oak (Josh. xxiv. 26).

It is not, however, at this mosque that the Samaritan chronicles and the early Christian pilgrims seem to agree in placing the site of the oak. Jerome and Eusebius speak of a place called Balanus or Balata, the Samaritan or Aramaic equivalent of Elon an “oak,” and the same place is noticed in the Samaritan chronicles under the Arabic titles of Balâta and Shejr el Kheir (the “tree of grace”). The site is thus carried about half a mile east, to the village of Balâta (equivalent to Ballut, an “oak”), close to Jacob’s Well.

The sites which next attract attention are situate at the point where the Vale of Shechem opens into the Plain of the Mŭkhnah or “camp.” Here close together we find Jacob’s Well and Joseph’s Tomb, and in connection with them our attention turns naturally to the Sychar of St. John’s Gospel.

The tradition of Jacob’s Well is one in which Jews, Samaritans, Moslems, and Christians alike agree. Its credibility is thus much increased, for there are only three other sites as to the position of which such unanimity exists, namely the site of the Temple at Jerusalem and those of Joseph’s and Eleazar’s tombs. In addition to this argument there are other reasons which lead to the belief that the tradition is trustworthy; the proximity of Joseph’s Tomb, and of Sychar, and finally the fact of a well existing at all in a place abounding with streams, one of which is within one hundred yards’ distance. No other important well is found near, and the utility of such a work can only be explained on the assumption that it was necessary for the Patriarch to have water within his own land, surrounded as he was by strangers who may naturally be supposed to have guarded jealously their rights to the springs. By digging the well Jacob avoided those quarrels from which his father had suffered in the Philistine country, pursuing a policy of peace which appears generally to have distinguished his actions.

The well then, as being one of the few undoubted sites made sacred by the feet of Christ, is a spot of greater interest than any near Shechem. Its neighbourhood is not marked by any very prominent monument, and indeed it would be quite possible to pass by it without knowing of its existence. Just east of the gardens of Balâta, a dusty mound by the road half covers the stumps of three granite columns. After a few moments’ search a hole is found south-west of them, and by this the visitor descends through the roof of a little vault, apparently modern, as shown in the illustration. The vault stretches twenty feet east and west, and is ten feet broad, the hole in the pointed arch of the roof being in the north-east corner. The floor is covered with fallen stones which block the mouth of the well; through these we let down the tape and found the depth to be seventy-five feet. The diameter is seven feet six inches, the whole depth cut through alluvial soil and soft rock receiving water by infiltration through the sides. There appears to be occasionally as much as two fathoms of water, but in summer the well is dry. The little vault is built on to a second, running at right angles northwards from the west end, but the communication is now walled up. In this second vault there are said to be remains of a tesselated pavement, and the bases of the three columns above mentioned rest on this floor, the shafts sticking out through the roof—a sufficient proof that the vault is modern.

The view from the well is good: on the south the rugged slopes of Gerizim; on the west the olives in the Vale of Shechem, with Ebal rising behind, and the little hamlet of Balâta with its fig gardens, the whitewashed walls and dome of Joseph’s Tomb, the mud huts of Sychar: on the north-east the neighbourhood of Shalem whence Jacob first came; and on the east the broad brown Plain of the Mŭkhnah, named perhaps (for the word is of Hebrew origin) from the great encampment of Israel at the time of the first conquest.

A Christian church was built before 383 A.D. round Jacob’s Well, but did not exist apparently in 333 A.D., when the Bordeaux Pilgrim visited the spot. Bishop Arculph, in 700 A.D., gives a plan which shows the building as cruciform, with the well in the middle; and St. Willibald (722 A.D.) mentions it as standing in his day. It was probably founded by Constantine and destroyed in the invasion of Omar, for in Crusading times it had disappeared. To this church the pavement and pillars seem to have belonged. As late as 1555 A.D. a little altar stood in the vault on which yearly mass was offered, but this practice is now discontinued.

About six hundred yards north of the well is the traditional Tomb of Joseph, venerated by the members of every religious community in Palestine. The building stands east of the road from Balâta to ’Askar, at the end of a row of fine fig trees. The enclosure is square and roofless, the walls whitewashed and in good repair, for, as an inscription on the south wall in English informs the visitor, it was rebuilt by Consul Rogers, the friend of the Samaritans, in 1868; it is about twenty-five feet square, and on the north is another building of equal size, but older and partly ruinous, surmounted by a little dome. The tomb itself resembles most of the Moslem cenotaphs—a long narrow block with an arched or vaulted roof having a pointed cross section. It is rudely plastered, and some seven feet long and three feet high. It is placed askew, and nearest to the west wall of the court. A stone bench is built into the east wall, on which three Jews were seated at the time of our second visit, book in hand, swinging backwards and forwards as they crooned out a nasal chant—a prayer no doubt appropriate to the place.