Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

The translation is:—“No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the Temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue.”

M. Clermont Ganneau remarks that the episode in the Acts of the Apostles (xxi. 26, et seq.) throws great light on this precious inscription and receives light from it. Paul, after purification, presents himself in the Temple; the people immediately rise against him, because certain Jews of Asia believed that Paul had introduced a Gentile—Trophimus of Ephesus—and had thus polluted the sacred place. They are about to put him to death when the Tribune commanding at Fort Antonia intervenes and rescues him. The people demand of the Tribune the execution of the culprit, i.e., the application of the law.

This inscription, and probably this very stone, was almost certainly seen and read by Christ; and it would be likely to impress him painfully with the exclusive spirit of the Jews. It certainly could not meet with the approval of the Teacher who preached to Samaritans at Jacob’s Well, and laboured more in the half-Gentile town of Capernaum than in Nazareth, defending his course by quoting the example of Elijah who went to Sarepta a city of Zidon. Christ declared himself the Light of all the World, and the Shepherd who had other sheep not of the Jewish fold. It was the work of Christ, before it became the work of Paul, to break down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. There can hardly be a question, then, that the sight of this inscription would intensify his desire to see this Temple destroyed and the Jewish ritual abolished, that he might rear upon its ruins a spiritual temple for all nations.

At the beginning of the week of his passion, Jesus Christ came up the steep ascent from Jericho, the road bringing him at last to Bethany. One night he halted in the village, as of old; the village and the desert were then all alive, as they still are once every year at the Greek Easter, with the crowd of Paschal pilgrims moving to and fro between Bethany and Jerusalem. In the morning he set forth on his journey. Three pathways lead, and probably always led, from Bethany to Jerusalem; one, a long circuit over the northern shoulder of Mount Olivet, down the valley which parts it from Scopus; another, a steep foot-path over the summit; the third, the natural continuation of the road by which mounted travellers always approach the city from Jericho, over the southern shoulder, between the summit which contains the Tombs of the Prophets and that called the Mount of Offence. “There can be no doubt” (says Dean Stanley) “that this last is the road of the entry of Christ, not only because, as just stated, it is, and must always have been, the usual approach for horsemen and for large caravans, such as then were concerned, but also because this is the only one of the three approaches which meets the requirements of the narrative which follows.

“Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, and as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palm rose on the south-eastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the Feast of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards Bethany, with shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there on the previous night, and who came testifying to the great event at the sepulchre of Lazarus. The road soon loses sight of Bethany.... Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge, where first begins ‘the descent of the Mount of Olives towards Jerusalem.’ At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the city.... It was at this precise point that the shout of triumph burst forth from the multitude, Hosanna to the Son of David!... Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view.... Immediately below is the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side—its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road, this rocky ledge, was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and ‘He, when he beheld the city, wept over it.’ Nowhere else on the Mount of Olives is there a view like this.”[46]

On one of those last days the Great Teacher, leaving the city a little before sunset, sat on one of the rocky banks of Olivet, over against the Temple. The mountain rises 150 feet above the level of the city; the city has the appearance of being tilted up on its western side, so that from the mountain you can look down into its streets. The Temple courts would be in the foreground, with Solomon’s Porch on the eastern side. Perhaps the 80 feet of rubbish which now rests against the wall had not yet half accumulated; and in that case the stones which Solomon laid down would be still visible—blocks 20 cubits long by 6 cubits thick, and extending a length of 400 cubits. The disciples had been calling their Master’s attention to the goodly stones and buildings of the Temple, as they came along, and he had declared that they would one day be thrown down; and now, sitting on Olivet he prophesies the end of the age.

From the Mount of Olives it was but a short way to Bethany, to spend the night. A wild mountain-hamlet, perched on its broken plateau of rocks, Bethany is screened by a ridge from the view of the top of Olivet. The modern name of the village—El-Azarieh—connects it with Lazarus, whose traditional house and grave are still exhibited, as well as the traditional house of Simon the leper. The welcome which awaited Christ in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus must have been very grateful after the day’s teaching and turmoil in the noisy city.

It is hopeless to try and identify in Jerusalem the house or the street in which the disciples made ready the Passover for their Master. The Garden of Gethsemane, which was visited afterwards, may probably have been at or near the place which is now pointed out on the slope of Olivet.

When Christ was brought before Pilate it would be at the Tower of Antonia, north-west of the Temple, on the site now occupied by the Turkish barracks.

Outside the barracks, on the north side, is the street now called the Via Dolorosa, because tradition says that Christ passed along it in going from the Judgment Hall to the place of crucifixion, marked now by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.