Pococke assures us that it is one of the finest hills he ever beheld, being a rich soil that produces excellent herbage, and most beautifully adorned with groves and clumps of trees. The height he calculates to be about two miles, making allowance for the winding ascent; but he adds, that others have imagined the same path to be not less than four miles. Hasselquist conjectures that it is a league to the top, the whole of which may be accomplished without dismounting,—a statement amply confirmed by the experience of Van Egmont and Heyman. These travellers relate that "this mountain, though somewhat rugged and difficult, we ascended on horseback, making several circuits round it, which took up about three-quarters of an hour. It is one of the highest in the whole country, being thirty stadia, or about four English miles. And it is the most beautiful we ever saw with regard to verdure, being everywhere decorated with small oak-trees, and the ground universally enamelled with a variety of plants and flowers. There are great number of red partridges, and some wild boars; and we were so fortunate as to see the Arabs hunting them. We left, but not without reluctance, this delightful place, and found at the bottom of it a mean village, called Deboura, or Tabour,—a name said to be derived from the celebrated Deborah mentioned in the book of Judges."
But this mountain derives the largest share of its celebrity from the opinion entertained among Christians since the days of Jerome, that it was the scene of a memorable event in the history of our Lord. On the eastern part of the hill are the remains of a strong castle; and within the precincts of it is the grotto in which are three altars in memory of the three tabernacles that St. Peter proposed to build, and where the Latin friars always perform mass on the anniversary of the Transfiguration. It is said there was a magnificent church built here by Helena, which was a cathedral when this town was made a bishop's see. On the side of the hill they show a church in a grot, were they say Christ charged his disciples not to tell what things they had seen till he should be glorified.
It is very doubtful, however, whether this tradition be well founded, or whether it has not, as Mr. Maundrell and other writers suspect, originated in the misinterpretation of a very common Greek phrase. Our Saviour is said to have taken with him Peter, James, and John, and brought them into a high mountain "apart;" from which it has been rather hastily inferred that the description must apply to Tabor, the only insulated and solitary hill in the neighbourhood. We may remark, with the traveller just named, that the conclusion may possibly be true, but that the argument used to prove it seems incompetent; because the term "apart" most likely relates to the withdrawing and retirement of the persons here spoken of, and not to the situation of the mountain. In fact, it means nothing more than that our Lord and his three disciples betook themselves to a private place for the purpose of devotion.
The view from Mount Tabor is extolled by every traveller. "It is impossible," says Maundrell, "for man's eyes to behold a higher gratification of this nature." On the north-west you discern in the distance the noble expanse of the Mediterranean, while all around you see the spacious and beautiful plains of Esdraëlon and Galilee. Turning a little southward, you have in view the high mountains of Gilboa, so fatal to Saul and his sons. Due east you discover the Sea of Tiberias, distant about one day's journey. A few points to the north appears the Mount of Beatitudes, the place where Christ delivered his sermon to his disciples and the multitude. Not far from this little hill is the city of Saphet, or Szaffad, standing upon elevated and very conspicuous ground. Still farther, in the same direction, is seen a lofty peak covered with snow, a part of the chain of Anti-Libanus. To the south-west is Carmel, and in the south the hills of Samaria.[150]
The plain around, the most fertile part of the Land of Canaan, being one vast meadow covered with the richest pasture, is the inheritance where the tribe of Issachar "rejoiced in their tents." Here it was that Barak, descending with his ten thousand men from Tabor, discomfited Sisera and all his chariots. In the same neighbourhood Josiah, king of Judah, fought in disguise against Necho, king of Egypt, and fell by the arrows of his antagonist, deeply lamented. The great mourning in Jerusalem, foretold by Zechariah, is said to be as the lamentations in the Plain of Esdraëlon, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the Valley of Megiddon. Vespasian reviewed his army in the same great plain. It has been a chosen place for encampments in every contest carried on in this country, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians, down to the disastrous invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte. Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, and Antichristian Frenchmen,—warriors out of every nation under heaven,—have pitched their tents upon the Plain of Esdraëlon, and have beheld their various banners wet with the dews of Tabor and of Hermon. And shall we not add that here too is to be fought the great battle of Armageddon, so well known to all interpreters of prophecy, which is expected to change the aspect of the eastern world? When the French invaded Syria in 1799, General Kleber was attacked near a village called Fouleh, in the Great Plain, by an army of 25,000 Turks. At the head of twelve or fifteen hundred men, whom he formed into a square, he continued fighting from sunrise till midday, when he had expended all his ammunition. Bonaparte, at length, informed of his perilous situation, advanced to his support with six hundred soldiers; at the sight of whom the enemy, after having lost several thousands in killed and wounded, commenced a hurried retreat, in the course of which many of them were drowned in the River Daboury, at that time, like another Kishon, overflowing its banks. In a word, the champaign country which stretches north-west from Tabor has been the theatre of real or of mimic warfare in all ages. "We had the pleasure," says Doubdan, "to view from the top of that mountain Arabs encamped by thousands; tents and pavilions of all colours, green, red, and yellow; with so great a number of horses and camels, that it seemed like a vast army, or a city besieged."[151]
But we now proceed towards Nazareth, the modern Naszera or Nassera, a journey of about two hours from the foot of the mountain which we have just examined. It seems, says one writer, as if fifteen mountains met to form an enclosure for this delightful spot; they rise round it like the edge of a shell to guard it from intrusion. It is a rich and beautiful field in the midst of barren hills. The church stands in a cave supposed to be the place where the Blessed Virgin received the joyful message of the angel, recorded in the first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. It resembles the figure of a cross. That part of it which stands for the tree of the cross is fourteen paces long and six broad, and runs directly into the grot, having no other arch over it at top but that of the natural rock. The transverse part is nine paces in length and four in width, and is built athwart the mouth of the cave. Just at the section of these divisions are erected two granite pillars, two feet in diameter, and about three feet distant from each other. They are supposed by the faithful to stand on the very places where the angel and the Blessed Virgin respectively stood at the time of the Annunciation.[152]
When Dr. Clarke visited this sanctuary, the friars pointed out the kitchen and the fireplace of the Virgin Mary; and as all consecrated places in the Holy Land contain some supposed miracle for exhibition, the monks, he informs us, have taken care not to be altogether deficient in supernatural rarities. Accordingly, the first things they show to strangers who descend into the cave are two stone pillars in the front of it; one of which, separated from its base, is said to sustain its capital and a part of its shaft miraculously in the air. The fact is, that the capital and a piece of the shaft of a pillar of gray granite have been fastened to the roof of the grotto; and "so clumsily is the rest of the hocus pocus contrived, that what is shown for the lower fragment of the same pillar resting upon the earth is not of the same substance, but of Cipolino marble."[153]
A variety of stories are circulated about the fracture of this miraculous pillar. The more ancient travellers were told that it was broken by a pasha in search of hidden treasure, who was struck with blindness for his impiety; at present it is said that it separated into two parts, in the manner in which it still appears, when the angel announced to Mary the glad tidings with which he was commissioned. Maundrell was not less observant than the author just quoted, although he does not so openly expose the deception. "It touches the roof above, and is probably hanged upon that; unless you had rather take the friars' account of it, namely, that it is supported by a miracle."
Pococke has proved that the tradition concerning the dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus Christ existed at a very early period; because the church built over it is mentioned by writers of the seventh century. Nor is there in the circumstance that their abode was fixed in a grotto or natural cave, any thing repugnant to the notions usually entertained either of the ancient customs of the country or of the class of society to which Joseph and his espoused wife belonged. But when we are called upon to surrender our belief to the legends invented by men whose ignorance is the best apology we can urge for their superstition, a certain degree of disgust and indignation is perfectly justifiable.
In such a case we are disposed to question the good effects ascribed by some authors to the pious zeal of the Empress Helena, who, although she did not in fact erect one-half of the buildings ascribed to her munificence, most undoubtedly laboured, by her architectural designs, to obliterate every trace of those simple scenes which might have been regarded with reasonable veneration in all ages of the church. Dr. Clarke, in a fit of spleen with which we cannot altogether refuse to sympathize, remarks, that had the Sea of Tiberias been capable of annihilation by her means, it would have been dried up, paved, covered with churches and altars, or converted into monasteries and markets of indulgences, until every feature of the original had disappeared; and all this by way of rendering it more particularly holy.[154]