“As far back as the middle of the second century—that is to say, within less than 120 years of our Lord’s death, and within thirty or forty years after that of the last of the apostles, the beloved St. John—Justin Martyr, himself a man of Nablus, speaks of the Savior’s birth as having taken place ‘in a certain cave very close to the village;’ and this particular cave, now honored as the scene of the Savior’s birth, was already so venerated in the days of Hadrian that, to desecrate it, he caused a grove sacred to Adonis to be planted over it, so that the Syrian god might be worshipped on the very spot—a form of idolatry peculiarly abhorrent to the pure morals of Christianity. Origen, in the opening of the third century, speaks of this cave as recognised even by the heathen as the birthplace of their Lord. And to this spot came St. Jerome, making his home for thirty years in a cave close by, that he might be near the birthplace of his Master; Hadrian’s grove had been destroyed sixteen years before his birth, to make room for the very church now standing. There is no reason therefore so far as I can see, to doubt that in this cave, so hallowed by immemorial veneration, the Great Event associated with it actually took place.
“Nor is there any ground for hesitation because it is a cave that is regarded as the sacred spot. Nothing is more common in a Palestine village, built on a hill, than to use as adjuncts of the houses, the caves with which all the lime-stone rocks of the country abound; making them the store-room, perhaps, or the work-shop, or the stable, and building the dwellings before them so as to join the two. Canon Tristram speaks of a farm-house he visited, north of Acre, which was a granary and stable below and a dwelling-place above; and many stables in the neighborhood of Bethlehem are still recesses cut in the rock, or mere natural caves. In Egypt, I have often seen houses where goats, sheep, cattle, or an ass, were in one part, and the human beings in the other. Had the piety of the monks left the alleged site of the Nativity in its original state, there would have been no presumption against it from its being a cave.”
We go only two miles, after leaving Bethlehem for Hebron, before coming to the justly celebrated Pools of Solomon. These are three immense reservoirs, situated in a narrow ravine called Wady Urtas. This wady passes Bethlehem, and finally empties its waters into the Sea of Death. The first and smallest of the three pools is situated at the head of the valley. It is 380 feet long, 235 feet wide, and 25 feet deep.
The second reservoir is about one hundred and fifty feet down the valley from the first, and the third the same distance below the second. Perpendicularly, the second is twenty feet lower than the first, and the third twenty feet lower than the second. All three of these pools are walled and paved with rock, and cemented. There are broad stone steps leading down into each pool. The three pools combined would equal a lake six and one half acres broad, and thirty-eight feet deep.
POOLS OF SOLOMON.
These pools are supplied with water from a perennial fountain that bursts forth from the side of a hill about two hundred yards northwest of the upper pool. From this copious fountain, the water is carried to the pools by means of an aqueduct, the same aqueduct, by the way, that carries water to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The most successful and scientific engineers of the nineteenth century could suggest but little improvement in these Pools and Aqueducts of Solomon, which were constructed between three and four thousand years ago.
The road from Jerusalem to Hebron leads directly by these pools. Having satisfied our thirst, and that of our beasts, let us press on toward Hebron, which is eighteen miles south of us.