Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

After these things it occurred, as Christ and his disciples “were on the way to Jerusalem, that he was passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee” (Luke xvii. 11). Some critics have cited this text as a proof that St Luke was ignorant of the country about which he wrote. Seeing that Galilee is north of Samaria, they think that a journey from north to south should rather be described as a passing through the midst of Galilee and Samaria. Moreover, they point out that, according to Matt. xix. 1 and Mark x. 1, Jesus did not pass through Samaria at all, but crossed the Jordan, and travelled by the eastern route. Notwithstanding the neatness of this indictment, it is easy to show that St Luke’s statement may be perfectly correct. Jesus intended to go up to Jerusalem to the feast, and as he did not share the Jewish prejudice against the Samaritans, he contemplated going through Samaria. He sent some of the disciples before him to prepare his way, and they entered into a Samaritan village; but they could not succeed in obtaining accommodation, because the object of the Master was to go through to Jerusalem (Luke ix. 52). The chronic feeling of enmity between Samaritans and Jews was naturally stirred into greater heat by the sight of pilgrims going up to the festival; for then the question was revived whether men ought to worship at Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim. Being refused a passage through Samaria, and yet still intent upon going up to Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would turn eastward, and journey along the border, which led straight to the Bethabara ford of the Jordan. Travelling thus, with Samaria on his right hand and Galilee on his left, it is surely not incorrect to say that he was passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee; or, as we have it in the margin of the Revised Version, he passed between. It seems to have been at one of the border villages that he was met by ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan (Luke xvii. 12); and where would he be more likely to find Jewish and Samaritan lepers in one group than on the border line of the two provinces? He is following this line eastward, and accordingly, when Matthew and Mark say that he crossed the Jordan and came into the borders of Judea, by the eastern route, it is in perfect accordance with the statement in Luke. In further confirmation, we read in Luke xviii. 35, as well as in the other Evangelists, that the route taken brought Jesus through Jericho. To approach Jerusalem from Jericho was a matter of course with the pilgrims from Galilee who had travelled by the eastern route.

The Jericho road was the scene of the parable of the Good Samaritan. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” The actual descent would be about 3000 feet; and every expression of that kind in the Scriptures, as of “going down” or “going up,” is always true to the features of the ground. The man “fell among thieves.” So likely a district is it, that in the days of the Crusaders nine knights banded themselves together to defend pilgrims going down this dangerous pass: and hence arose the Order of Knights Templars. “There came by a priest and a Levite.” Jericho was a sacerdotal city, and priests and Levites were continually passing and repassing between Jericho and Jerusalem. In going down the Jericho road the traveller has often a wide prospect on either side; but it is, for all that, a mountain pass, with no way of escape if one were attacked; and the Bedawin, whose black tents may be seen in the distance, are the very fellows to attack the traveller now, if they dared.

The road up from Jericho brings us past Bethany—a village now of about forty small dwellings—and over the Mount of Olives, to Jerusalem.

[Authorities and Sources:—“Tent Work in Palestine.” Major Conder. “The Sea of Galilee.” Sir Charles Wilson. (In vol., “Recovery of Jerusalem.”) “East of Jordan.” Dr Selah Merrill. “Survey Memoirs.” Vol. of Special Papers. “Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” “Galilee in the time of Christ.” Dr Selah Merrill. “Twenty-One Years’ Work in the Holy Land.” P. E. Fund.]

2. Christ in the Capital.

The Jerusalem of Christ’s day was the city as it existed in the days of Herod the Great. East and west it was no wider than at present; southward it covered the high south-western hill and a good part of the slope of Ophel; northward the third wall was not yet built, but there were suburban buildings outside the second. The Temple area had been so enlarged by Herod as to include all, or nearly all, the present Noble Sanctuary; and there were approaches from the west, one of which led over Robinson’s Arch. A main street from the Valley Gate led eastward to the Temple, passing over Wilson’s Arch. Another main street, running north and south, passed under Wilson’s Arch and Robinson’s Arch, and led to a gate in the south wall. In the north-western part of the High Town was Herod’s palace, with the three strong towers near the Valley Gate which defended it. The Tower of Antonia occupied the site of the present Turkish barracks, north-west of the Temple; and when Pontius Pilate was governor he occupied it. Westward of the city the Birket Mamilla existed as a reservoir of water, and supplied the palace and towers: but the Birket es Sultan, or so-called Lower Pool of Gihon, had not been made. The Pool of Siloam was well known, and of course the spring-head which supplied it. The traditional Pool of Bethesda did not exist, but the true Bethesda—now buried under ruins—exhibited its five porches, and was in favour as a healing fountain. For the rest we may say that although all the valleys were deeper than they are now, the streets and bazaars probably followed in most instances the lines which they still preserve, and were just as narrow as they are at present.

In the High Town, called in Josephus’ day the Upper Market Place, there would be an open space somewhere, actually used for a market; and here, we may conjecture, Jesus would sometimes teach. The very circumstances of the spot would suggest the parable of the Labourers, some of whom stood idle till the eleventh hour. Christ also taught in the ample spaces of the Temple courts (John vii. 14); and in the last days of his ministry, at any rate, used to retire from the city before the gates were closed at sunset (Luke xxi. 37). Whether he ever lodged within the city we cannot tell, but that he had no home there and no friend in whose house he was sure of a welcome, may perhaps be inferred from the fact that a guest-chamber had to be engaged when he desired to eat the Passover (Mark xiv. 12).

The Pool of Bethesda.—It is not doubted that when Christ told the blind man to “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam,” he was sending him to the very pool which still bears that name. About the Pool of Bethesda, “by the sheep gate” (John v.), there has not been the same assurance and unanimity. The traditional pool occupies what was once a valley north of the Temple; but as the valley itself was there when Titus sought to attack the Temple from the north, we judge the pool to be a later construction. The two arches at the western end of it, with their staircases now buried in rubbish, are not the same as “five porches.” Again, several writers have supposed that the so-called Virgin’s Fountain might be the true Bethesda, because it is an intermittent spring, and because the modern Jews believe the water of this pool to be a sure cure for rheumatic complaints. They often go in numbers, men and women together, and stand in their clothes in the pool, waiting for the water to rise. But the Virgin’s Fountain is too far away from the Sheep-gate to be the pool which the Evangelist refers to.

It was pointed out some years ago by M. Clermont Ganneau that the Pool of Bethesda should be sought near the Church of St Anne, where an old tradition has placed the house of the mother of Mary, calling it Beit hanna, “House of Anne.” This expression is exactly identical with Bethesda, both expressions signifying House of Mercy, or Compassion.[42] This anticipation has been verified; for in the year 1888 the ancient pool of Bethesda was found a short distance north-west of the present Church of St Anne. Certain works carried on by the Algerian monks laid bare a large tank or cistern cut in the rock, to a depth of 30 feet, and Herr Schick recognised this as the Pool of Bethesda. It is 55 feet long from east to west, and measures 12½ feet in breadth. A flight of twenty-four steps leads down into the pool from the eastern scarp of rock. Herr Schick, who at once saw the great interest of this discovery, soon found a sister-pool, lying end to end, 60 feet long, and of the same breadth as the first. The first pool was arched in by five arches, while five corresponding porches ran along the side of the pool. At a later period a church was built over the pool by the Crusaders, and they seem to have been so far impressed by the fact of five arches below, that they shaped their crypt into five arches in imitation. They left an opening for getting down to the water; and further, as the crowning proof that they regarded the pool as Bethesda, they painted on the wall of the crypt a fresco representing the angel troubling the water of the pool.

All this appears to agree very well with what Eusebius says in his “Onomasticon,” concerning a pool which he calls Bezatha—“a pool at Jerusalem, which is the Piscina Probatica, and had formerly five porches, and now is pointed out at the twin pools there, of which one is filled by the rains of the year, but the other exhibits its water tinged in an extraordinary manner with red, retaining a trace, they say, of the victims that were formerly cleansed in it.” Here we have a sheep pool, in which the sacrificial victims used to be washed, and close by it (so that they constituted twin pools) a second, which must have been intermittent, the very character attributed to those waters which, at a certain season, were troubled.[43] Eusebius gives no clue to the situation of the twin pools, but the Bordeaux pilgrim, who visited Jerusalem in A.D. 333, after speaking of two great pools at the side of the Temple, one on either hand as he entered Jerusalem from the east side (apparently at St Stephen’s Gate), refers to the twin pools as being more within the city. They “have five porches” (he says), “and are called Bethsaida. Here the sick of many years were wont to be healed. But these pools have water which, when agitated, is of a kind of red colour.”