CHAPTER IV.
GOSPEL HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF PALESTINE EXPLORATION.
1. Christ in the Provinces.
In New Testament times Palestine was a Roman province, and its divisions were no longer tribal. East of Jordan were the districts of Perea Batanæa, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Paneas, and Gaulonitis. In this chapter, however, we have to do chiefly with Western Palestine. On this side the central position was held by Samaria, with Galilee north of it, Judea south, and in the extreme south Idumea.
The Samaritans were not pure Hebrews in blood, and not purely Jewish in their worship. When the ten tribes of Israel had been crushed, and their principal families carried into captivity, the Assyrian conquerors brought men from Cuthah, Sepharvaim, and other places in the far east, and set them down in Samaria. Of various nationalities themselves, these people intermarried with the poorer Jews who had been left behind, and so their descendants were of mixed blood. Naturally also, there was at first some admixture of religious beliefs and practices, and some confusion of dialects (2 Kings, xvii.).
But eventually the various elements of the population coalesced, and the Samaritans settled down as a people, speaking a language allied to that of the Jews, and accepting the Books of Moses as their guide. But they rejected all the later books excepting Joshua, and claimed that Mount Gerizim was the place where it had always been intended that the Temple of Jehovah should be built. In the days of Ezra and Nehemiah the co-operation of the Samaritans in rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple had been refused, and at no later period would the Jews consent to have friendly dealings with the Samaritans.
Nehemiah had seen the evils resulting from mixed marriages, and the contaminating influence of foreign merchants in Jerusalem. In later days, when Greek literature and Greek manners were spreading over Syria, the more zealous of the Jews contended earnestly against the corrupting innovations. The day when the Seventy Elders translated the Law into Greek for king Ptolemy was pronounced accursed—a day of evil, as when Israel made for itself a golden calf. The patriotic struggle of the Maccabees was all intended to get rid of foreign influence, and keep God’s chosen people separate. The Pharisees were a party who by their very name claimed to be “separated,” and made it their object to resist the slightest departure from the requirements of the Jewish Law. Their ideas and tenets came to be generally accepted by the Jews of Judea; and hence in the days of Christ Jerusalem was a centre of exclusiveness, bigotry, and ceremonialism.
The Jews of Galilee, cut off from their brethren of the south by the interposition of Samaria, could seldom visit the Temple at Jerusalem; they saw little of the sacrifice of bulls and goats, and learned to worship in synagogues in a plainer way. They were in contact with the northern nations, made alliance with Phœnicia, and did business with men of many nationalities in the fishing towns of the Lake of Tiberias. It is possible that through their intercourse with foreigners, a part of their district was called “Galilee of the Gentiles;” and they seem to have become so different in their dialect or pronunciation that when a man from Galilee opened his mouth in Jerusalem, his speech betrayed him. The Galileans derived at least one advantage from their intercourse with foreigners; it made them less exclusive, and prepared them in a degree for a religion which should be addressed to Jew and Gentile alike. Jesus Christ, when he began his ministry, did not address crowds in Jerusalem, nor seek disciples from among the Scribes and Pharisees, but came into the towns of Galilee, and called fishermen from their humble occupation.
The prophecy in Micah led the Jews to look to Bethlehem Ephrathah as the destined birth-place of the Messiah; and it was made an objection to the claims of Jesus of Nazareth that his home was in Galilee.
Bethlehem is a long white town on a ridge, with terraced olive groves, at a distance of 6 miles from Jerusalem. Here, enclosed within the walls of the Greek convent, is the venerable Church of the Nativity, now parcelled out among the Greek, Latin, and Armenian monks, who house together from necessity in different quarters of the convent. The church, built by Helena, the mother of Constantine, is one of the oldest in the world; and the cave beneath it under the choir is the traditional Cave of the Nativity. It is mentioned by Justin Martyr in the second century; and Origen, in the fourth, says that “there is shown at Bethlehem the cave where He was born, and the manger in the cave.” It is the only sacred place, as far as I know (says Conder), which is mentioned before the establishment of Christianity by Constantine; yet it is remarkable that Jerome found it no longer in possession of the Christians. “Bethlehem,” he says, “is now overshadowed by the grove of Tammuz, who is Adonis; and in the cave where Christ wailed as a babe the paramour of Venus now is mourned.”
Mr Bartlett, in his “Walks about Jerusalem,” deems the identification of the spot at variance with probability, since, although it may occasionally happen that caverns are used as stables in Palestine, this one is deeper underground than would be convenient for such a purpose. When we consider, in addition, the tendency of the monks to fix the scene of remarkable Scriptural events in grottoes, perhaps from the impressiveness of such spots, the presumption against the site appears almost conclusive.