Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

Palestine exploration was hardly likely to throw any light on this question, which is to be elucidated rather by a study of the causes which led to a confusion between the traditions relating to Christ and the legends told of Tammuz.

The people of Bethlehem are better fed, better dressed, better off in most respects than the people of other small towns in Palestine. The women are remarkable for their beauty, and they wear a peculiar kind of head-dress, adorned with rows of silver coins. It is believed that at the time of the Crusades a good deal of intermarriage took place between Europeans and the women of Bethlehem. The population now is chiefly Christian.

If we attempt to follow Joseph and Mary, returning from Egypt and taking at first the road for Bethlehem, but changing their course when they hear that Archelaus reigns, and withdrawing into the parts of Galilee (Matt. ii. 23), we may suppose that they make their way to the river Jordan, cross by the ford near Jericho, journey on the eastern side and so avoid Samaria, and then, re-crossing by the ford near Bethshan, make their way to Nazareth.

Nazareth, the town in which Jesus was brought up, is also without any Jewish inhabitants at the present day; the population is about six thousand, of whom one-third are Moslem, while two-thirds are Christians of the Latin, Greek, and other churches. Unfortunately they bear an evil character for their turbulence.

In Nazareth we are shown what purports to be the workshop of Joseph the carpenter, but we know that this is a modern appropriation, a Latin chapel, built only in 1859. We are asked to look at the Mensa Christi, a block of rock, rudely oval, 10 feet across and 3 feet high, in a church built in 1861, but we have no confidence that Jesus and his disciples used it as a table. Making a stronger claim is the house in which the Holy Family lived, or what remains of it, for the legend says that the upper storey or the outer room was carried away by angels through the air, and after lengthy travels was set down on the wooded hill-top of Loretto in Italy. It is a rock-cut grotto under the high altar of the Latin church. A wall of separation makes two chambers of it, the outer being called the Grotto of the Annunciation, and the inner the Grotto of St Joseph. The shaft of a red granite pillar hanging through the roof is believed to be miraculously suspended over the very place where the angel Gabriel stood to deliver his message. From the inner chamber—that of St Joseph—a narrow passage, with seventeen steps, leads up obliquely to the inmost part of the cave, a chamber of irregular shape, traditionally supposed to be the Virgin’s kitchen.

Escaping from these places we inquire for that synagogue in which Jesus received instruction when a youth, and “stood up to read” on a memorable occasion after he had become a public teacher. But there are no Jews in Nazareth, and so there is no need of a synagogue now. The Greek Catholics, indeed, tell us that their chapel, in the main street, occupies the very site of the synagogue; but we find no remains of synagogue architecture. It occurs to us that there is one site, at all events, the features of which could hardly be destroyed or altered, namely, the “brow of the hill on which the city stood,” and from which the Nazarenes intended to precipitate the great Teacher after that scene in the Synagogue. But when we have been guided to the “brow,” although we see before us a fearful descent of about 1000 feet—which old Maundeville calls “the Leap of the Lord”—we observe that it is 2 miles from the town; and we cannot understand how it can be the brow of the hill on which the city stood.

In this general uncertainty of things are our explorers able to do anything for us? Yes, some little, for they are men who use their eyes, and they point out that high up above the present town are numerous old cisterns and tombs. The cisterns would certainly be in close proximity to the dwellings of the people, the ancient Nazareth must therefore have stood higher on the slope; and so the “brow of the hill” was probably one of the cliffs now above the town.

Conder also points out that the Virgin’s Fountain of Nazareth—also called the Fountain of the Annunciation—should be one of the most surely identified places. There is but one spring in the town, and Mary must necessarily have drawn water from it like other women. The Greeks have built their church at the place, and declare it to be the scene of the Annunciation. Their church is dedicated to St Gabriel, and even the Latins admit that it stands on the site where the angel first became visible. “As in the eighth century, so now, the spring is under the floor of the church, which is itself half subterranean. The water is led to the left of the high altar, past a well-mouth, by which it is drawn up for pilgrims, and so by a channel to the masonry fountain, where it comes out through metal spouts under an arched recess broad enough for fifteen women to stand side by side. A pool is formed below at the trough, and here the constant succession of the Nazareth women may be seen all day filling their great earthenware jars, standing ankle-deep in water, their pink or green-striped baggy trousers tucked between their knees; their heads are covered, if Moslems with the moon-shaped tire, if Christians with a gay handkerchief or the hair plaited in long tails. A negress in blue here and there mingles with the crowd, which is chattering, screaming, gossiping, and sometimes fighting.

“The people of the town are remarkable for the gay colouring of their dresses, and the Christian women for their beauty. Many a charming bit of colour, many a shapely figure set off by picturesque costume, many a dark eye and ruddy cheek have I seen in the streets or by the spring. This beauty is peculiar to the Christians of Bethlehem and Nazareth.”