The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

Nazareth lies in a nest in the mountains. It is in a little amphitheatre of hills with a rough and ragged arena. The houses extend up the sides of the hills and there is hardly a level spot in the whole town. It has altogether less than twelve thousand inhabitants of whom about half are Mohammedans. The rest of the population is made up of Greek Catholics, Latins, and about two hundred Syrians of the Protestant faith. The town is full of churches and convents, and there are some great monasteries and hospices where pilgrims may stop over night.

The homes of the people are rectangular structures, which look more like great stone boxes than houses. They are usually of one story, with a door and two windows, and most of them have flat roofs, which in the summer nights are used as resting and sleeping places. A number of the buildings are in gardens. Some have cactus hedges about them and others are shaded by cypress trees. There are many olive orchards, and figs grow here as luxuriantly as they did when Christ was a boy.

The buildings of Nazareth are ugly, but as a whole the city and its surroundings are beautiful. I doubt whether there is more beautiful scenery to be found in England or Scotland, or even in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, for which God has done much. There are many fine views. One can stand in the city or near it and look out over the plain of Esdraelon, and by climbing the hills he can see Mount Carmel, where Elijah hid the prophets and later on slew the false prophets of Baal. It is only a few hours’ ride from Nazareth over the hill to the Sea of Galilee, where the Nazarene boys even now sometimes go fishing.

I shall not soon forget a bird’s-eye view I had of the town last night. The moon was at its full, and its great round silver disk changed the night into day. Its rays mellowed the yellow limestone of the houses and transformed them to ivory. They softened the glare of the white, rocky roads, and made a fairyland of the mountains and valleys. From the top of the hills I could see the plain of Esdraelon, which in its fertility vies with the Nile Valley; and away off at the west lay the mighty Mediterranean, which stretches on for two thousand miles to Gibraltar and the Atlantic.

Nazareth by moonlight is wonderfully peaceful. At sunset all business stops, and within an hour or so afterward everyone is in bed. There are few places that seem so far from the strife of the world. Business is swallowed up in the beauties of nature. The scenery is that of old Greece, and the stars shine gloriously out of skies which are perfectly clear.

The sunsets are surpassingly beautiful. The other night the golden beams of the sinking sun seemed to form a halo over this the home of our Saviour. There were many white clouds in the sky, which changed, first to rose and then to gold, the colour growing stronger and stronger, until the whole west was one blaze of fire and molten copper.

Coming down into the town, after watching one of these sunsets, I met many Nazarene children. As I stopped a few minutes, the little ones gathered around me, and it was not hard to imagine similar groups playing in these streets nineteen hundred years ago with the boy Jesus. The little Nazarenes wore gowns of brown, red, or yellow. Most of them were in their bare feet; the boys had caps of red felt, while the girls wore handkerchiefs or shawls tied around their heads. All were running and dancing and laughing and playing. Some of the girls were quite pretty. I remember a rosy-cheeked baby carried by a roguish, bright-eyed maid of eighteen. I admired the baby and chucked it under the chin, telling the girl I would like to take it home with me to America. She promptly said I could have it and thrust it out toward me. My face fell and I ran.

There is no doubt that this is the Nazareth of Jesus, and that the hills and valleys about here were hallowed by His footsteps. It was here that the Angel Gabriel appeared unto Mary when she was engaged but not yet married to Joseph and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus, and it was here that she came with Joseph after the flight into Egypt. She waited only until King Herod was dead, and then came to Nazareth, the child Jesus being still an infant in arms. It was from Nazareth that Jesus went to the Jordan to be baptized by John, and it was here that after He had begun His work our Lord came and preached in the synagogue. Whereupon the Nazarenes cried out:

Is not this Joseph’s son?... And ... they ... were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city and led Him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built that they might cast Him down headlong. But He passing through the midst of them went His way.

The Roman Catholics now own what is said to be the site of the shop where Joseph worked as a carpenter. The place is in the Mohammedan quarter, not far from a bazaar where the Moslem merchants sit cross-legged and sell to the Christians. When I visited it I met Father Kersting, who came here to superintend excavations on the site of an old church built by the Crusaders.