7. The Topographical Survey of Western Palestine.
Before we can properly understand the history of any country we must have before us an accurate map, showing its physical features of mountain, plain, and river, and the relative positions of its cities and important places. This is true in an unusual degree in the case of Palestine, a country peculiar in its physical contrasts, and for more than a thousand years the home of a peculiar people. The sacred books of other religions—consisting greatly of rhapsodies, prayers, and devotions—might have been written as well in one country as another; but the Bible contains the history of a particular people, occupying a definite district of country, fighting their battles, making their journeys, and singing psalms oft suggested by their surroundings. It is absolutely necessary for the student of Hebrew history to make himself acquainted with Palestine geography and topography. “The history assumes everywhere a knowledge of the country, and the writer never stops to explain where the scene of every episode occurs, except to name it as a spot already known.” Yet, until lately, no accurate map of the country could be obtained—because no scientific survey had been carried out. Bible towns and villages had disappeared, and their sites were not known. The visitor to Palestine, consulting Murray’s “Handbook” as his best guide, found long columns of “places mentioned in Scripture, but not yet identified”—Admah, Adullun, Debir, Edrei, Gallim, &c., &c. In going up from Jaffa to Jerusalem he was shown a brook, and told that David there selected the five smooth stones before his combat with Goliath; but the brook was in the wrong locality. Down by the Jordan he found the grave of Moses on the wrong side of the river. In Galilee he was perplexed how to decide between two rival sites for Cana, especially as the water-pots connected with the marriage feast were to be seen at both places. General uncertainty attended his footsteps throughout.
The people who did most to bring about this confusion in regard to the sacred sites were the Crusaders. Knights and priests of the twelfth century, arriving in Palestine, were strangers in the country, and although enthusiastic they were ignorant and illiterate. They used to land at Athlit, and journey thence to Nazareth or to Jerusalem, fixing as many places en route as they could. Athlit itself they regarded as the ancient Tyre! Meon, the home of Nabal, they fixed close by, because Mount Carmel was not far off, and Abigail came from Carmel. They did not recognise that the Carmel of Abigail and Nabal was a city in the south of Judah. Knowing that Capernaum was a fishing town, they placed it on the Mediterranean coast and identified it with a fortress of their day, now the village called Kefr Lam. These three places, which were shown to the religious devotee as soon as he landed, are in reality many days’ journey apart. Caipha (Haifa) was shown as a place where Simon Peter used to fish. Shiloh was south of Bethel, and was in fact the mountain now called Nebi Samwil. Sychar and Shechem were one and the same place. “The Quarantania or Kuruntul mountain” (says Conder) “has, from the twelfth century down, been shown as the place where our Lord retired for the forty days of fasting in the desert. Near to it the Crusaders also looked for the ‘exceeding high mountain’ whence the Tempter showed our Lord ‘all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them’ (Matt. iv. 8). Saewulf tells us that the site of this mountain was 3 miles from Jericho. Fetellus places it north of that town and 2 miles from Quarantania. The measurements bring us to the remarkable cone called the Raven’s Nest. The story is wonderfully descriptive of the simplicity of men’s minds in the twelfth century, for the summit of the ‘exceeding high mountain,’ whence all the kingdoms of the world were to have been seen, is actually lower than the surface of the Mediterranean, and it is surrounded on every side by mountains more than double its height.”
Tradition having been shown to be untrustworthy, when unsupported by other evidence, a general uncertainty prevailed with regard to Scripture places. No traveller could believe what his guide or guide book told him, and no student could have confidence in his map. The labour of investigation was beyond the power of private individuals; and no Government and no Society had ever sent out an organized expedition. But now happily this reproach is removed. The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund were able to send out Major Conder, R.E., and Colonel Kitchener, R.E., and these officers, with their little party, spent seven years in carrying out a triangulation survey of the entire country west of the river Jordan. As a result of their labours, followed up by much patient work at home, we are now presented with a magnificent map of Western Palestine, on the scale of one inch to the mile, as beautifully and accurately executed as the ordnance map of England, with every road and ruin marked, and every conspicuous object filled in; with the hills and mountains correctly delineated and shaded, with the rivers and brooks all running in the right directions; with every vineyard, every spring of water, and almost every clump of trees set down in its place, and with thousands of names that never appeared on a Palestine map before. Moreover, while there are six hundred and twenty-two Scripture names of places west of the Jordan, and out of these three hundred and sixty were missing, the surveyors have succeeded in finding one hundred and seventy-two of these. A reduced map, on the scale of three-eighths of an inch to the mile, has been prepared, and contains the Old Testament names and New Testament names conspicuously marked, while other forms of the map show the watershed and physical features of the country, or give the divisions of the land and the Arabic names of places in use to-day.
There could be no better aid in studying the Scriptures than to have such maps by our side; for whether we read of the marching and counter-marching of armies; of the positions taken up before a battle; of the direction taken by the retreating foe; the sites selected for places of worship; the journeys of prophets of the Old Testament, or of Jesus and his disciples in the New, so much depends upon the relative positions of places, and their distances one from another, that we necessarily lose a part of the meaning, and miss a portion of the enjoyment unless we have a correct map by our side.
The best modern map of the Holy Land, previous to that prepared by the Palestine Exploration Fund, was the work of Van de Velde, a careful and scientific traveller and scholar. Van de Velde not only took observations himself, but laid down on his map all the observations made by previous travellers. Yet, when at the annual meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1886, a portion of Van de Velde’s map was shown on an enlarged scale, side by side with the same portion of the Society’s map, similarly enlarged, the contrast was striking. The first, with its hills roughly sketched in, its valleys laid down roughly, and its inhabited places, villages, or ruins, gave all that was known of this piece of country before the Survey. It was on such a map as this, the best at the time, because the most faithful, that the geographical student had to work. There was little use, from a geographical point of view, in consulting previous books of travel, because Van de Velde had gleaned from them all their geographical facts. Yet hardly any single place was laid down correctly; none of the hill shading was accurate; the course of the rivers and valleys was not to be depended upon; the depression of the Lake of Galilee was variously stated; distances were estimated by the rough reckoning of time taken from place to place; and the number of names was only about eighteen hundred, whereas the large map of the Palestine Exploration Society contains ten thousand.[16]
PHYSICAL MAP of PALESTINE
[Authorities and Sources:—“Tent Work in Palestine.” Major Conder, R. E. “Twenty-one Years’ Work in the Holy Land.” P. E. Fund. “Quarterly Statements of the P. E. Fund.”]