So far as Christian rites are concerned, it may, then, be taken as a fact that the interest which attaches to Jerusalem has but a very slender relation to them. The great natural features, of course, must always remain. Bethlehem, Bethany, and the Mount of Olives are as they ever were, but there are two Gardens of Gethsemane, one claimed by the Latins and one by the Greeks. When we descend to more minute details they are either purely mythical or at best only matters of vague conjecture. One of the best illustrations of the purely mythical is Christ's footprint on the rock from which he ascended into heaven, which is a good deal smaller than that of Buddha, which I have also seen on the top of Adam's Peak in Ceylon, or of Jethro, which the Druses showed me in the Neby Schaib.
Among those open to conjecture, the position of Calvary and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea are points upon which research may still throw light. Every indication goes to show that Golgotha, or Calvary, was a knoll outside the Damascus gate, exactly in the opposite direction to that affixed by Christian tradition, and which would do away with the Via Dolorosa as a sacred thoroughfare, the street shown as that along which Christ bore his cross on his way to execution. It is only probable that Calvary was the ordinary execution ground of Jerusalem, which is called in the Talmud “the House of Stoning” about A.D. 150, and which current tradition among the Jews identifies with this knoll, a tradition borne out by the account of it contained in the Mishnah, or text of the Talmud, which describes a cliff over which the condemned was thrown by the first witness. If he was not killed by the fall, the second witness cast a stone on him, and the crowd on the cliff or beneath it completed his execution. It was outside the gate, at some distance from the Judgment Hall. The knoll in question is just outside the gate, with a cliff about fifty feet high. Moreover, we are informed that sometimes “they sunk a beam in the ground, and a crossbeam extended from it, and they bound his hands, one over the other, and hung him up.” (Sanhedrim vi. 4.) Thus the House of Stoning was a recognized place of crucifixion. It is curious that an early Christian tradition pointed to this site as the place of stoning of Stephen, the proto-martyr. The vicinity has apparently always been considered unlucky. An Arab writer in the Middle Ages pronounces a barren tract adjoining accursed and haunted, so that the traveller should not pass it at night.
The Valley of Judgment (or Jehosaphat), which the Arab calls the Valley of Hell, passes not far east of the knoll, the Arab name of which is Heirimayeh, probably from a cave in the knoll called Jeremiah's grotto. The idea that this was in fact the Place of the Skull was warmly adopted by the late heroic defender of Khartoum, General Gordon, who spent the year before he went on his fatal mission to the Soudan in investigating points bearing on these subjects as tending to uphold theories which he held in regard to them, and which he explained to me at great length. Before leaving England he sent some notes on these to the Palestine Exploration Fund, and in their last quarterly statement these are published. They are full of pathetic interest now. In regard to the Place of the Skull, General Gordon says that “the mention of the Place of the Skull in each of the four Gospels is a call to attention. Whenever a mention of any particular is made frequently we may rely there is something in it. If the skull is mentioned four times, one naturally looks for the body, and if you take Warren's or other contours, with the earth or rubbish removed, showing the natural state of the land, you cannot help seeing that there is a body, that the conduit (discovered by Shick) is the œsophagus, that the quarries are the chest, and if you are venturesome you will carry out the analogy further. You find in the verse in the Psalms, ‘Zion on the sides of the North,’ the word ‘pleura,’ the same as they ‘pierced his pleuron, and there came forth blood and water.’ God took a pleuron from the side of Adam and made woman. Now the Church of Christ is made up of or came from his pleura. The stones of the Temple came from the quarries, or chest of the figure, and so on. So that fixed the figure of the body to the skull.”
This theory led to Gordon's forming a singular and mystical conception of the emblematic character of the city as typifying in actual configuration the New Jerusalem, the divine bride.
The most interesting fact, however, in connection with this knoll is the recent discovery upon it of a tomb, which has excited considerable interest as being, from its position, more likely to be the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which never man had been laid before Christ, than any hitherto known. From the knowledge we have now acquired of rock-cut tombs in Palestine we are able to judge from its appearance and construction its probable date, and these all go to prove that it belongs to the later Jewish period, or that which terminated with the destruction of Jerusalem. The appearance of this tomb so near the old place of execution, and so far from the other tombs in the old cemeteries of the city, is very remarkable. A careful plan of the site and tomb has been made by Lieutenant Mantell, R. E., and sent to England, where the subject has lately afforded matter for discussion. The reason why the tomb was not found by the early Christians in their search for it at the time of Constantine is easy to be accounted for by the fact that, about ten years after the crucifixion, the “Women's Towers” were built by Agrippa upon the rock over the tomb, and it must have been hidden beneath or within the new building. Under these circumstances the sepulchre could no longer be visited, and in course of time its existence was forgotten, until the Empress Helena destroyed the temple to Venus which the Romans had built on the present site of the Holy Sepulchre Church, and “beyond all hope” (as Eusebius words it), discovered the rock-cut Jewish tomb, which the faithful accepted as the tomb of Christ.
A peculiar interest does nevertheless attach to these extremely ancient tombs in the Holy Sepulchre Church, one of which is now appropriated to Nicodemus, the nature of which I will discuss in my next letter. It is extremely probable that either Constantine or Helena heard that tombs of a high sanctity stood beneath the Venus temple, and they thought they could not do better than take the most sacred tomb to which tradition of any sort attached, and call it the holy sepulchre. Modern iconoclasticism and love of truth have, however, proved too strong for fourteen hundred years of unfounded tradition. If the churches had only taken half as much trouble to preserve the moral truths which are to be found in the teachings of Christ, as they have to preserve a cave in which he was never buried, the world would have been so much the better instead of so much the worse for their exertions.
[TRADITIONAL SITES AT JERUSALEM—Continued.]
Haifa, August 3.—The discoveries which have been made in Jerusalem during the last few years, and the conclusions at which those who have most deeply studied the subject have arrived in consequence, render it extremely desirable that a new or revised description of the Holy City should be inserted in the tourists' hand-books for Syria and Palestine. Travellers should be warned against dragomans who waste their time taking them to see Christian sites which have no relation to the facts they are supposed to commemorate, and possess no interest of any kind beyond the philosophical one that they illustrate the extraordinary credulity and superstitions which exist among the professors of Christianity in the nineteenth century, and which are certainly not exceeded, even if they are paralleled, by those of any heathen religion.
A Jerusalem hand-book, to be of any interest, should deal with the conclusions resulting from the excavations and researches of Sir Charles Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, Captain Condor, M. Clermont Ganneau, and others, during the last twenty years, and leave the traditions of the Latin and Greek churches almost out of the question altogether. Their researches have settled nearly all the topographical questions connected with ancient Jerusalem, which had previously been the subject of so much controversy and error, the doubts and difficulties connected with them arising from the fact that the city had been more or less destroyed and built over so many times that the original foundations of its walls and Temple could only be determined by extensive and laborious excavations; and in the course of these many collateral discoveries were made.
We learn from the publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund that these excavations were carried on under difficulties of every kind, in face of the opposition of the local government and in spite of continued fevers and lack of funds. The mines were driven to extraordinary depths; one at the southeast angle of the Haram being eighty feet deep, and another, near the northeast angle, being one hundred and twenty feet beneath the surface, where it reaches the solid rock. In consequence of the great depths, the scarcity of the mining frames, and the treacherous character of the débris through which the shafts and galleries were driven, the work was one of unusual danger and difficulty, requiring much courage and determination. Sir Charles Warren and the non-commissioned officers of his staff worked constantly with their lives in their hands, and often undertook operations from which the native workmen recoiled. The prudence and discipline of the party, however, secured valuable discoveries without an accident; and it is generally acknowledged that the results are of an importance which fully repays the labor and difficulty of the operations.