PROLOGUE.
The Land and the Book are inseparable. Like prophecy and history they complement each other. They are the reciprocal witnesses of the same great truth. They stand or fall together. Our chief interest in Palestine is the confirmation of scriptural allusions to its topography, the scene of personal and national history. The sacred writers make incidental references to towns and cities, to valleys and mountains, to lakes and rivers, to battlefields and other scenes of important events, around which will forever cluster the most hallowed associations of our religious faith. They make these allusions with an accuracy of statement which to-day is in proof of the sincerity of their purpose and the truthfulness of their record. There is a sublime naturalness in their narration which is monumental evidence of the facts which they have transmitted to mankind. These frequent off-hand references clearly indicate that the sacred writers resided in Bible Lands, that they witnessed the events they recorded, and were familiar with the times, places, and persons of which they wrote.
Unbelievers realize the force of this argument and have sought, but in vain, to charge the inspired penmen with inaccuracy, and thus throw distrust upon their history; but they have found to their consternation, both by personal observation and the testimony of travelers, that the Bible is the most reliable handbook of Palestine extant.
During one of my visits to Jerusalem I chanced to meet a venerable English barrister who had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to write a book against the Bible founded on the supposed discrepancies between the Land and the Book;and I subsequently met him at Beyroot, after his fruitless journey from “Dan to Beersheba.” While at Mosul, opposite ancient Nineveh, I met George Smith, sent forth by a London journalist to explore the Assyrian ruins, and who, as archæologist and philologist, ranks with Layard and Rassam. He went out an unbeliever, but such is the agreement between the record of the ruins and the record of the Book, that Mr. Smith returned to London a believer, and lectured before the Society of Biblical Archæology on the marvelous synchronisms of the Assyrian tablets and the sacred historians.
From Dan to Beersheba was written to verify these references. It has the advantage of having been written on the scene of the recorded event, in notes taken for future elaboration of all that had transpired thereon, whether in sacred or profane history. It was my custom, from which I seldom deviated, to read on the spot every reference in the Bible to each locality I visited, and to record my observations and impressions while my mind was aglow with the recollections of the hallowed associations of the place and impressed with the extraordinary agreement between the inspired narration and the present aspect of the scene where the grand events had transpired; so that the traveler of to-day, with this book in hand, will have his memory refreshed and his mind inspired by a picture of what once occurred on the accredited historic site.
Through all the turbulent centuries since Christ ascended, Palestine has been a “changeless land,” whose social customs, mechanic arts, commercial and manufactural methods have suffered little from contact with Western civilization, and it should be the ambition of Christendom to preserve it intact to the last generation of mankind. Providence calls us to preserve this monumental land. The changeful influence ofthe mighty West is seen to-day on lower Egypt, on Asia Minor, on Grecia and Rome in Europe, but Palestine abides the same forever; as Christ and his apostles left it we now see it, and so should it be seen by all future ages. Impelled by sectarian zeal or for political purposes, the nations of Europe have sought supremacy there, and the Promised Land is the larger factor in the Eastern Question, but neither France, nor Russia, nor England should take possession, but rather a syndicate, representing all nations and all creeds, should hold it in fee simple by purchase from the Sultan subject to such rights of property as may vest in the present inhabitants.
It is a land of buried cities which await the coming of the spade. Names are to be verified, places are to be identified, dates are to be reconciled. The whole land should be open to research. Modern Jerusalem should be removed. The Jerusalem of Solomon and of Christ is from two to three hundred feet buried beneath the present city. That religious metropolis of the world has suffered twenty-seven sieges, and eleven cities have been built upon the ancient site. Each conqueror leveled the débris and thereon reared his new capital. Vital questions await the spade of the explorer. Much has been accomplished within the last twenty years, and more awaits the efforts of the future.
The whole of western Palestine has been surveyed, and the biblical gains have been immense. Not less than six hundred and twenty-two names west of the Jordan are given by the sacred writers. Of these we had knowledge of two hundred and sixty-two, and by the survey one hundred and seventy-two were discovered and added to our list, leaving one hundred and eighty-eight to be uncovered by the archæologist. Some of these are insignificant, but others are of intense interest, such as Mamre, Gethsemane, and Arimathea, around which cluster most hallowed memories. The surveyorshave determined the boundaries of the tribes, the march of armies, the routes of pilgrims, merchants, and kings. Beautiful Tirzah, royal residence of Jeroboam, has been identified, with its enchanting landscape—“Beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem”—and in the rocks are to be seen the tombs of the kings of Israel. The famous battlefield of Sisera and Deborah has been traced, the relative positions of the contending hosts by the waters of Megiddo, the path of the flight of Sisera, when “the river Kishon swept them away, that river of battles, the river Kishon,” the site of the black tent of Heber the Kenite, where the generous Jael gave the royal fugitive Leban a delicious preparation of curdled milk, and then, when he infringed upon oriental etiquette and insulted her womanhood by forcing himself into the women’s apartments, the avengeful Jael drove the iron tent-peg into the offender’s brain.
The “Brook Cherith,” from which Elijah drank, and the “Valley of Achor,” where Achan was stoned, have been identified, and the site of Bethabara, dear to all Christians, has been recovered. The native name Abârah, a passage or ferry, now marks one of the fords of the Jordan, just above where the Jalûd debouches into the sacred river, and means the same as Bethabara—a “ferry.” This disarms the critics of the fourth gospel, inasmuch as Cana of Galilee is but twenty-two miles from Abârah, a day’s journey, while from the traditional site of our Lord’s baptism the distance is eighty miles. Forty fords of the Jordan have been identified; hundreds of ancient names have been recovered; the site of Gilgal has been determined; the tombs of Joshua and of Nun, and the tombs of Eleazar and Phinehas, successors of Aaron in the priesthood, have been rescued from oblivion, and are to be seen in Mount Ephraim, south of Shechem, all of which appear of great antiquity.
In the first chapter of this book I gave what seemed to me at the time the wonderful correspondence between the prophetical descriptions of the twelve tribeships and the present aspects and conditions of those twelve sections, as to climate, physical features, soil, cultivation, and natural products, and the recent surveys more than confirm this correspondence. It is now apparent that the boundaries of the tribal possessions were rivers, ravines, ridges, and the watershed lines of the country, and, above all, the fertility of the soil was in accordance with the density of population, and this density is now indicated by the larger number of ancient ruins.