ROADS AND AGRICULTURE
Roads: Early paths. Roman roads. Agriculture: Granaries. Hoes and plows. Sickles. Threshing. Winnowing. Grinding. Mortars. Fruits. Vineyards and wine-vats. Olive-presses. The agricultural calendar. Domestic animals. Bees. Birds. Hens.
1. Roads.—From the time cities were established in Palestine there was more or less communication between them. Probably in a small way commerce was carried on among some of them, but no effort was made to construct roads, in the modern sense of the term, until the Roman period.
(1) Early Paths.—Before that time all traveling was done on foot or on the backs of donkeys and camels, and for such travel a simple foot-path, made by continuous use, was all that was considered necessary. The roads constructed by the Romans have long since fallen into a state of utter disrepair, so that, with the exception of two or three roads that have been built in recent years, the simple, rough foot-paths that have existed from time immemorial still suffice for Palestinian travel. These paths are often exceedingly rough. They were never surveyed and never repaired. They were simply devoted to public use by immemorial custom. If a landowner wished to raise grain in a field through which one of these paths ran, he plowed up to the very edge of the narrow path and put in his seed. There were neither fences nor ditches to separate the road from the field. Fields traversed by such roads are still very common in Palestine. It was along such a road that Jesus and the disciples were traveling when they plucked the ears of wheat on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:1; Mark 2:23; Luke 6:1). It was such a road to which Jesus alluded in the Parable of the Sower: “Some seed fell by the wayside” (Matt. 13:4; Mark 4:4; Luke 8:5). A rough path is shown in [Fig. 67].
(2) Roman Roads.—After Palestine passed under the sway of Rome in 63 B. C. a system of roads was built to connect the most important places. We have no definite information about these from a source earlier than the Onomasticon of Eusebius,[158] which was compiled before 340 A. D., but in all probability those on the west of the Jordan were constructed before the time of Christ. There were three main roads in this part of Palestine.[159] One ran down the sea-coast. Starting at Sidon, it passed southward through Tyre, Sarepta (Zarephath, 1 Kings 17:10; Luke 4:26), Ptolemais (Accho), Dor, Cæsarea, Joppa, Lydda, Azotus (Ashdod), and Askelon to Gaza. A branch road ran eastward from Tyre over the hills of Galilee through Kedesh in Naphtali (Josh. 12:22; 20:7; Judges 4:6), to Cæsarea Philippi (Matt. 16:13; Mark 8:27), which was near the ancient Dan (Judges 18:29).
From Cæsarea, on the sea-coast south of Dor, another branch road ran southeastward through the valley of Aijalon up to the site of Gibeah of Saul (1 Sam. 10:26; 11:4, etc.), where it joined the road along the central ridge of the country; (see [Fig. 68]).
Starting from Damascus another road ran southward to Hyppos, one of the cities of the Decapolis, which lay southeast of the Sea of Galilee,[160] crossed the Jordan on a bridge below the Sea of Galilee (shown in [Fig. 289]), passed through Scythopolis, the Beth-shean of the Old Testament (Josh. 17:11; 1 Sam. 31:10), through Sychar (John 4:5), then southward along the central ridge of the country, through Bethel and Ramah to Jerusalem. South of Jerusalem it was continued to Bethlehem and Hebron. Four miles north of Jerusalem it was joined by the road from Cæsarea, so that travelers from the coast and from the north entered Jerusalem over the same road. One can in many places still trace the lines of Roman paving-stones which mark their courses. Thus the juncture of the two roads just mentioned is still visible, and one may stand on the hillside and feel sure that he is looking at the very way over which Paul was taken to Cæsarea by the Roman soldiers the night after his arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 23:23, 24).
From Scythopolis (Beth-shean) another road ran southward through the Jordan valley to Jericho. This was probably continued to Jerusalem. From Sebaste (Samaria) another road ran northwestward through Dothan (Gen. 37:17; 2 Kings 6:13), to Taanach, Megiddo, and the coast.
After Trajan overthrew the kingdom of the Nabathæans, in 106 A. D., he built a road on the east of the Jordan, southward from Damascus to the Red Sea. The Roman government kept these roads in good order. They marked the distances by milestones, some of which have survived to modern times; (Figs. [69], [71]).
2. Agriculture was the chief occupation of the inhabitants of Palestine. The cities were throughout its history simply the walled residences of farmers. Such trade as developed at different periods was always subordinate to agricultural pursuits. We cannot expect exploration to furnish us with a complete view of ancient Palestinian agriculture, but such glimpses as it does afford us are most illuminating.