It is one of the ironies of fate that the lake which saw the greater part of the ministry of Jesus, should take its modern name from a city built by Herod Antipas, and called after one of the most infamous of the Roman Emperors,—"the Sea of Tiberias."
Our road to this city of decadence leads gradually
downward, through a broad, sinking moorland, covered with weeds and wild flowers—rich, monotonous, desolate. The broidery of pink flax and yellow chrysanthemums and white marguerites still follows us; but now the wider stretches of thistles and burdocks and daturas and cockleburs and water-plantains seem to be more important. The landscape saddens around us, under the deepening haze of the desert-wind, the sombre Sherkîyeh. There are no golden sunbeams, no cool cloud-shadows, only a gray and melancholy illumination growing ever fainter and more nebulous as the day declines, and the outlines of the hills fade away from the dim, silent, forsaken plain through which we move.
We are crossing the battlefield where the soldiers of Napoleon, under the brave Junot, fought desperately against the overwhelming forces of the Turks. Yonder, away to the left, in the mysterious haze, the double "Horns of Hattin" rise like a shadowy exhalation.
That is said to be the mountain where Jesus gathered the multitude around Him and spoke His new beatitudes on the meek, the merciful, the
peacemakers, the pure in heart. It is certainly the place where the hosts of the Crusaders met the army of Saladin, in the fierce heat of a July day, seven hundred years ago, and while the burning grass and weeds and brush flamed around them, were cut to pieces and trampled and utterly consumed. There the new Kingdom of Jerusalem,—the last that was won with the sword,—went down in ruin around the relics of "the true cross," which its soldiers carried as their talisman; and Guy de Lusignan, their King, was captured. The noble prisoners were invited by Saladin to his tent, and he offered them sherbets, cooled with snow from Hermon, to slake their feverish thirst. When they were refreshed, the conqueror ordered them to be led out and put to the sword,—just yonder at the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes.
From terrace to terrace of the falling moor we roll along the winding road through the brumous twilight, until we come within sight of the black, ruined walls, the gloomy towers, the huddled houses of the worn-out city of Tiberias. She is like an ancient beggar sitting on a rocky cape beside the lake and
bathing her feet in the invisible water. The gathering dusk lends a sullen and forlorn aspect to the place. Behind us rise the shattered volcanic crags and cliffs of basalt; before us glimmer pallid and ghostly touches of light from the hidden waves; a few lamps twinkle here and there in the dormant town.
This was the city which Herod Antipas built for the capital of his Province of Galilee. He laid its foundations in an ancient graveyard, and stretched its walls three miles along the lake, adorning it with a palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the high-road. It was the strongest fortress and probably the richest town of Galilee in Christ's day, but so far as we know He never entered it.
After the fall of Jerusalem, strangely enough, the Jews made it their favourite city, the seat of their