[43] Zuallardo, “Dev. Viag.” (1586 A. D.), gives a drawing of the whole course of the Via Dolorosa.
[44] Schick, Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly, April 1896, p. 122, July 1896; T. Tobler, “Topogr.,” i. p. 445.
[45] “Mem. Survey West Pal.,” Jerusalem vol., 1883, p. 419; Josephus, “Wars,” V. xii. 2.
CHAPTER II
BEFORE DAVID
The mysterious figure of Melchizedek King of Salem haunted the memory of Hebrew writers in later times.[46] The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “Now consider how great this man was unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.” Salem appears to have been Jerusalem, according to the Psalm[47] in which we read, “In Salem is His dwelling, and His abode in Zion”; and the “King’s Dale” is placed by Josephus near the city, where perhaps it is again noticed later.[48] The Samaritans, who grouped so many sacred sites round Gerizim, seem to have believed that Salem was the Shalem afterwards visited by Jacob, east of Shechem—the Salim of the Fourth Gospel, now the village of Sâlim, which is mentioned in the Paschal Chronicle; while in the fourth century, according to Jerome, “The palace of Melchisedec was there shown, its magnificence witnessed by the size of ruins of ancient workmanship.”[49] We may, however, accept the Hebrew belief that Salem (“safety”) is the same as Uru-salimu (“the city of safety”), which we now know to have been the Amorite name for their royal city.
Melchizedek appears and disappears suddenly, without any explanation as to his race or lineage. Josephus believed him to have been a Canaanite, and fixes his date as founder of Jerusalem about 2058 B. C. The chronology of the Hebrew text of Genesis would, however, make it about a century earlier, in the “days of Amraphel king of Shinar,” whom Sir Henry Rawlinson identified with ’Ammurabi, the famous sixth King of Babylon, who has been shown to have acceded in 2139 B. C.,[50] and who was thus the contemporary of Abraham. It would seem that this priest-king of Jerusalem was the suzerain of the petty kings of the cities in the Jordan Valley; but Abraham’s tithes are said to have been offered to Jehovah as the “most high God,” and not to Melchizedek as his over-lord. Jerusalem thus appears, even in the earliest notice, to have been a sacred city,[51] and we are no longer surprised—in reading the account in Genesis—at the civilisation of Abraham’s age, since we know that Canaan then shared, in some measure at least, the culture of the two ancient empires of Babylon and of Egypt, which disputed its possession.
The original population of the city is said to have been both Amorite and Hittite,[52] nor is there any reason to doubt that an outlying tribe of the latter race, coming south from Syria, may have then occupied the mountains of Salem and Hebron, though early in the sixteenth century B. C. they were driven out of Palestine by Thothmes III. It is now very generally agreed that the Amorites were a Semitic race, and the existing tablets written in and after the fifteenth century by Amorites are in a Semitic language like that of the Babylonians. Hittite letters, on the other hand, show quite as clearly that this race of pigtailed warriors was Mongoloid, and closely akin to the Akkadians of Babylonia, whose speech was very similar to pure Turkish.[53]
EARLY NAMES
The antiquity of Jerusalem seems to be indicated by the fact that certain names connected with the city cannot be explained as ordinary Hebrew words. Jebus, Zion, Hinnom, and Topheth are terms not traced to any Hebrew roots, and they have always puzzled scholars as much as the name Jerusalem itself did until it was shown to be of Amorite origin. Even the meaning of Moriah—the name of the Temple hill—is doubtfully explained as “vision of Jehovah,” for the Greek translators understood it to mean “the high.”[54] It is, however, connected[55] both with Abraham’s vision of Jehovah, and also perhaps with that of David when the “Angel of the Presence” sheathed his sword on the Temple hill. Jebus (Yebûs) is perhaps Hittite for “strong abode,” equivalent to the Amorite Uru-Salimu, or “safe city.”[56] Zion has been supposed to mean a “fortress,” but the derivation is forced; as a Hittite word it would rather seem to signify a “palace” or “temple.”[57] For Hinnom and Topheth no Hebrew explanations have been found possible, yet both may perhaps be rendered as of Canaanite origin: the former would signify “prince” (En-num), and the latter “flat” or “low” (tuptu), applying to the lowest part of the valley junction on the south-east side of the city.[58] The “King’s Vale” may have been the “deep valley of Molech,” or it may have been equivalent to the older Hinnom (or Ben-Hinnom), “the valley of the prince” or of the “prince’s son.” It is remarkable that its modern name (Wâdy Rabâbeh) appears to mean the “valley of lordship.”
Whatever be thought as to the meaning of these ancient and obscure words, we know that a Hittite still lived in Jerusalem in David’s time, and his name Uriah has no probable meaning in Hebrew. In Hittite it was no doubt Ur-ia, “the worshipper of Ya,” while the Jebusite King Araunah—whose name is so variously spelt—was probably known as Ur-ena, “the worshipper of Baal.”[59] Thus the geographical and personal names alike seem to indicate the early presence of both Amorites and Hittites in Jerusalem.