Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

The strain upon the Europeans had been too much for health. Excitement, fatigue, pain, and anxiety, added to malarious poison imbibed in the swamps, brought on a severe attack of fever. For twenty-four hours Major Conder was not expected to recover. Lieutenant Kitchener also soon succumbed, and the rest followed. They lay in their beds in the Carmel convent, and Sergeant Armstrong nursed them. Truly, as Conder remarks, the Survey of Palestine was no holiday work.

The Committee who organized the Survey and the officers who carried it out deserve our gratitude, for they have conferred a lasting benefit upon Palestine travellers and upon all students of the Bible. We have now a map by which a traveller can find his way. Dr Robinson and other explorers of that day used to describe the position of a place by saying it was two hours east from the last, and then one and a quarter hours north-west; but we now have exact distances. We have a map which helps us to understand Bible narratives of personal journeys or the march of armies. We can now see which route must have been followed; we can pursue step by step the Scripture events. We are certain now that the Bible could not have been written in any other country under heaven.

Before the Survey the Sea of Galilee was variously computed as being from 300 feet to 600 feet below the Mediterranean: it is now fixed at 682. The courses of the affluents of the Jordan are found to be entirely different from those previously shown. Only four fords of the Jordan were known and marked on the maps, whereas we now have more than forty. Villages have had to be transferred from one side to the other of the great boundary valleys. Scores and scores of Scripture sites, wrongly placed or altogether lost, have been found and fixed. And the finding of the sites has enabled the surveyors to trace accurately the boundaries of tribes and provinces. How was it possible to understand the Bible history unless we knew the situation of towns, the boundaries of tribes, the fords and passes and valleys which were open to foreign invaders? How could we understand it unless we knew the routes of wayfarers and the way of commerce? These things have now at last been ascertained, and with accuracy. When the base line which was measured on the Jaffa plain was checked by a line measured on the plain of Esdraelon, it was found to be perfectly satisfactory; and the closing line when calculated in 1876 at Southampton had a margin of only 20 feet, which is an invisible distance on the one inch scale. It may be claimed for the Survey that the new discoveries are almost as numerous as all those of former travellers put together; and nothing so great has been done for the right understanding of the Old and New Testaments since the translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue.

[Authorities and Sources (Western Palestine):—“Survey Memoirs of Palestine Exploration Fund.” “Tent Work in Palestine.” By Major Conder. “Palestine in its Physical Aspects.” Rev. Canon Tristram. “Sinai and Palestine.” By Dean Stanley. “Twenty-One Years’ Work in the Holy Land.” Published by the P. E. Fund. “Memoir on the Geology.” Dr Ed. Hull. “Mount Seir.” Dr Ed. Hull. “Introduction to the Survey.” Trelawney Saunders. “Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible.” “Rob Roy on the Jordan.” John Macgregor.]

11. The East of Jordan.

It would be well if the topographical survey could be extended so as to cover all the ground occupied by the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. It is true indeed that the East of Jordan is less intimately bound up with the Scripture narrative than the West, yet still there are ninety-six places east of Jordan mentioned in the Bible—Dr Selah Merrill estimates that there are two hundred and forty—and it would be an advantage to have them all identified. On the east side, also, the country is much more thickly strewn with ruins than on the west; and although the so-called “giant cities” of Bashan may not deserve that name, yet is the region full of Roman towns, of Nabathean and Arab texts scrawled on the rocks, of Greek temples and Greek inscriptions, and of dolmen groups yet older.

In the absence of detailed trigonometrical survey of the whole region, the map published by the Palestine Exploration Society in 1890 is the best that could be compiled from all sources. The sources available were—Van de Velde’s map as a general basis; the route maps of later travellers; the work of the American Palestine Exploration Society as reported in their “Statements;” Major Conder’s survey of 500 square miles in the land of Moab in 1881 and 1882; and lastly, surveys made by Herr Schumacher in the Hauran and the Janlan.

Bashan: the territory of the half tribe of Manasseh. As an illustration of the abundance of the ancient remains east of Jordan, Dr Selah Merrill, the archæologist of the American Exploring Expedition, says that every one who has visited Kanawat is amazed at the number and variety of the ruined buildings, castles, temples, churches, convents, theatre, bath, palaces, reservoirs, underground apartments or vaults, costly tombs, and still others which have never been fully examined. Dr J. L. Porter found here what he calls a colossal head of Astarte, sadly broken ... with the crescent moon (which gave to this goddess the name Karnaim or two-horned) still on her brow. Mr Tyrwhitt Drake secured a stone at this place which was thought to be part of an altar, upon two opposite sides of which were the features of Baal and Astarte, boldly cut in high relief upon the closest basalt, with foliage, showing the artistic hand.

One’s first impression is that all the antiquities are of Roman times and date only from the early centuries of the Christian era. This is indicated not only by the style of architecture but by the considerable number of inscriptions, which form an almost continuous chain from the first century to the fourth. They belong to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Aurelius Verus, Commodus, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, &c.

These Roman cities became converted to the religion of Christ, and then not only were the sanctuaries of paganism transformed into Christian sanctuaries, but new churches were erected adapted to the new worship; houses, palaces, and tombs were built; even entire cities were founded. At length all these Christian cities were abandoned at the same time—probably at the epoch of the Mohammedan invasion—and since then they have not been touched. Except that earthquakes have thrown to the ground many of the walls and columns, they lack only beams and planks, or they would be perfect edifices, which soon might be made habitable again.