SECTION II

the scene of Christ's life, the promised land

It was not till His crucifixion that Jesus was released from the obligation by which, as the most loyal Israelite, He felt His personal ministry confined to His own people (Joh 10:16; Joh 12:32; Mat 15:24), though that spiritual fulness and inward freedom with which He lived within the prescribed limits of Israel, made His life a ministry supremely adapted to the wants of the whole world (Mat 13:31; Joh 12:23-24). Hence the great, the essential, and therefore the eternal King of the whole human race, completed His course and His work within the narrow boundaries of the promised land, the Israelite Canaan.

As the nation of Israel may, according to the compass of its powers and deficiencies, its light and dark sides, be regarded as a concentrated representation of the human race, so may the promised land be designated a symbolical miniature of the whole earth. It represents the essential peculiarities of the earth in the smallest space, and within the smallest frame; hence it has become the beloved, the ‘precious’ land, the land that speaks to man’s heart, the land by which man has learnt to appreciate the beauty of the whole earth. Hence, also, is it that the Jew, in his exile, finds that the whole earth is his home; while, at the same time, he never feels himself at home anywhere. A grave in the much-longed-for promised land is the object of his utmost desire.

Canaan unites within itself a rich variety of most significant contrasts, by the blending of which is formed that unity, the chosen land, which was destined to be the place of education for the chosen people. As little as Israel, with its theocratic and divine blessings, was destined to isolate itself, with respect to other nations, by a bitter and pharisaic pietism, so little was Canaan shut up from the world. It lay midway between the most polished nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe; landwards, it was either bounded or traversed by the most famous caravan roads; seawards, it was in the neighbourhood of the most frequented sea-passages, and the most noted navigators. Surrounded by numerous nations, in the neighbourhood of the world-blessing Phœœnicians, of the world-conquering Assyrians, and of the world-frequented Egyptians; exposed to being involved in all the great catastrophes of the heathen world; the land could not but experience every pulsation of the world’s life, nor could its people fail to retain the feeling of the effort in which its destination for the world, the consciousness that its theocratic blessing was destined for the world, was to ripen. Its very position would continually give Israel occasion to appreciate and maintain the power of its faith contrasted with the secular power of Babylon—the light of its Monotheism contrasted with the learning of Egypt—its quiet, happy, festal life contrasted with the splendour of Phœœnicia, nay, its own inward worth, its own reality carried to appearance, contrasted with the plastic ‘appearance carried to reality’ of the Grecian world.¹ But as Canaan lay, on the one hand, in the neighbourhood of all the powers of the world, so was it, on the other hand, isolated by the peculiarities of its position; and fulfilled thereby its destination to become a retreat for Israel’s youthful consciousness, which could only attain its maturity of monotheistic development through the sharp thorns and goads which its attitude of variance towards other nations produced. That measure of divinely ordained, temporary, universal pietism, protected by which Israelitish knowledge of God was to come to maturity, found its corresponding limit in the geographical enclosure of the land: the Lebanon, the Syrian wilderness, the desert boundaries towards Egypt, the neighbourhood of the ever-jealous Philistines,—all these limits were a help to the weakness of a people ever alternating between the extremes of a boundless wooing and an equal hatred of the world, while its duty was both to preserve the noble seed of the world’s true freedom, and to cherish the most ardent love for the world.² Even the very conformation of the earth on which lay the sacred localities, seemed to share in the destiny of the country. It was such that the country could everywhere be easily fortified. Jerusalem is almost a natural fortification; the coast is protected by noble heights, Gerizim and Tabor seem raised like citadels; even in the lesser features and details in the formation of this glorious land, adaptability to purposes of fortification, and fitness to become the abode of a sacred spirit of kindliness, is everywhere manifested.³ From Lebanon downwards towards Egypt the chalk formation is continued in a series of hills and mountains, which offer rude clefts and mountain fastnesses for the retreat of an oppressed people⁴ (Jdg 6:2), and especially for persecuted prophets (1Ki 18:4) and royal fugitives (1 Sam. 22), among which the caves upon Carmel, particularly that attributed to Elijah, as well as David’s cave at Adullam, are specially celebrated. Besides this series of white rocks, a vein of black basalt runs through the eastern borders of the country, and indicates the subterranean fire which formed the region, and probably played its part in the earlier theocratic and miraculous history of the people.⁵ From north to south, and from east to west, the greatest variety is met with in the conformation of the country. From the tract of coast in the west we ascend to the hill country, with its terrace-like formations, divided into two parts by the deep valley of the Jordan, the eastern hills being bounded by the great desert. From north to south chains of hills run through the country on either side of the Jordan, as if they would bury it in more sacred and silent solitude,⁶ and crown the solitary inheritance of ‘the silent one’ with heights and peaks, between whose openings are obtained, in some parts, views of the sea, but generally of the distant country. How rich is this country in glorious and charming prospects from hill to hill-southwards from the hills of Naphtali to the hills of Ephraim, and from these to the hills of Judah, but especially between the heights of the eastern and western sides of Jordan! There are regions which address the human spirit, so to speak, in the major tone, e.g., extensive plains of mountain scenery. Others speak in a minor key to the mind. Germany is rich in minor tones. Canaan, however, seems to have a great variety of transitions from one to the other, and yet to possess a strongly marked unity of character. In its eastern highlands it exhibits the Asiatic characteristic of monotonous vastness; in its western formation of hills and valleys are seen touches of its affinity to Europe;⁷ towards the south are reflected Egypt and Africa, in the glaring contrasts it presents of both paradisaic and terrible scenes; towards the north the mountainous district of Lebanon forms the boundary of the land. The white peak of Hermon, seen far through the country, represents the regions of eternal winter; while in the low-lying tracts of the valley of Jordan the palm, the pride of tropical regions, revels in the hot climate of Arabia. How extensive is the scale of climatal contrasts in this land!⁸ And what a happy medium exists in those warm boundaries of the temperate zone, in which it is easiest to man to maintain the due proportion between labour and rest, in which, in the pleasant contrast of their alternation, both light and darkness could be called gifts of God, and looked upon as welcome blessings!⁹ With the pleasant occupations of rural life between seed-time and harvest, was intermixed the romantic feature of nomade life, and the anchorite’s freedom from care for supplies was experienced within the sphere of pastoral life; while the domestic comforts of Western life were here met with, on the very boundaries of the desert, and of the torrid zone. The Israelite could often pass both night and day in the open air, but not without experiencing the excitement which man always feels in the romantic wildernesses of the earth. He was surrounded by the kindly sights and sounds of nature;¹⁰ but the sublime was everywhere the predominating element. His country was rich in enjoyments, but exposed to the vicissitudes of great natural catastrophes. The sharp contrast between oasis and desert, between the soil of the aromatic and variegated palm, and the naked, burning, sandy rock of Arabia, is found here; e.g., in the contrasts between the frightful rocky wilderness of Quarantania and the blooming gardens of Jericho,¹¹ and especially between the fertile borders of the Lake of Galilee and the desert shores of the Dead Sea.¹² These contrasts point to the delicate and spiritual nature of the country, to its delicate suspension on the line between the blessing and the curse (Deu 11:28). Canaan was from the first a country infinitely susceptible of changes of condition, like the people, with which it was to form a sanctuary for God. It lies midway between those great natural extremes, in which the earth seems almost to overpower man, as, e.g., in the heat and luxuriance of the East Indies, and in the frozen deserts of Greenland. Regions of this kind have either a paralyzing or an intoxicating effect upon sinful man, favouring in either case the dreams of sensual life. Canaan, on the contrary, shares the lot of its inhabitants, as if it sympathized in it, as the harp does with the feelings of its player. The reason lies in the changeable and delicate tone of the climate and soil. Both are in the highest degree influenced by vegetation. Vegetation, however, in Canaan presupposes a peaceful, numerous, industrious, and pious people. What is more or less true of the earth in general, is especially so of Canaan—that the country deteriorates and improves with the people¹³ (Isa 13:11, &c., 24, 30:23, and other passages).

This country could be changed into a garden, and it was a garden at its best times. The hills of terrace-like form were often changed into terraces. On these happy hills the joy of harvest was ever resounding; on these pastures the shepherd was ever rejoicing. But when Israel forsook God, they became the prey of the nations whose gods they worshipped. The good land was trodden down, and became a road for the enemy, disgraced, stripped of its foliage, and converted into a sun-burnt stony field, neglected, and in its desolation often overgrown with thorns. The varying soil of the human heart, the bad reception given by many to the seed of the divine word, was reflected in the desolation of the land (Mat 13:3).

The Old Testament must be read to perceive how easily the country influenced its people, how well the people understood their country. This land is related to the highest problems and destinies of humanity; there is a constant interaction between the countenance of man and the face of the country. This theocratic and poetic consecration of the wells and springs, of the caves and hills of Israel—gleams of the blessing, the shadows of the curse, which are interwoven into the whole country, but especially the perpetual fragrance of that christological consecration which hovers over the summits of the hills surrounding the Sea of Galilee, and of the Mount of Olives,—every part of the Holy Land is an enduring testimony to the fact, that in Israel human nature was awakened and developed, in interaction with the promised land, to that state of mind which understands the ideal nature of the earth, its deep harmony with mankind.

Canaan received its highest consecration from the journeyings of Christ. As the loyal Israelite, dwelling first at Nazareth and then at Capernaum, Christ had to make the customary journeys to the sacred feasts at Jerusalem: As their Rabbi, He shared in the movements of His disciples; as His Father’s messenger, He followed the call of need, the track of recipiency, the paths of the poor, the ways of the sheep that had no shepherd, the movements of inimical and repelling antipathies and of sympathizing agencies;—alternately yielding to the want felt by His exalted nature for silent communion with His Father, and to the desire and duty of appearing in the theocratic centre of His nation. Thus out of the narrowly restricted path of His Israelitish pilgrimage, was formed the far-reaching, much-embracing path of His journeyings. He went about doing good. He transformed the rugged path of constant temple-service into a happy pilgrimage of free and rejoicing love. His time was spent between worship in the great temple of creation, in which He was alone with His Father, especially upon the heights on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and worship in the symbolic temple of His nation. In this journeying life He exhibited the union existing between an unfettered wandering life, passed amidst the scenes of nature and the absence of artificial wants, and the restricted life of that high degree of civilization which floats before the mind of Christian man as his exalted destiny. He revealed the rich inheritance of the believer who has not where to lay his head, but who, whether on the stormy midnight wave, or the burning noon-day journey, can with Him, and through Him, rest on the bosom of the Father, walk in the happy ways of His eternal Spirit, and find His meat and drink in the fulfilment of His will. By His birth, the cheerful pasture-fields of Bethlehem became fields of light, ever basking in the sun of joy. The town of Nazareth is ever the symbol of those obscure corners of the earth, in which many of the kings and princes of the spiritual kingdom, destined to prepare the way of the great Nazarene, have grown up in concealment. The lonely neighbourhood of Nazareth has deep and solitary valleys, covered with the most luxuriant vegetation, and silent retired paths, with rugged, snow-white, rocky walls; holy places, once trodden by the Saviour’s feet, and consecrated by His prayers.’¹⁴ Christ left Nazareth at the commencement of His public ministry. ‘A prophet hath no honour in his native town.’ The flame of the truly divine life could indeed be extinguished nowhere, but it would not choose the oppressive atmosphere of antipathy and indifference. Christ settled at Capernaum. This wealthy city, inhabited by publicans, soldiers, and travellers, was the most cosmopolitan dwelling He could have chosen within the limits of Israel’s claims upon Him; the centre of that caravan road of Galilee of the Gentiles, through which flowed the traffic between East and West, between Syria and Phœœnicia. So near did the large-heartedness of that loving Prince of the whole race lead Him to the door through which He might already send out His welcome to all the world; while, on the other hand, He sought and found amidst the population of the Sea of Galilee, the most genuine Israelites, the most pious and most liberal among the most unprejudiced. It was at Capernaum and other places on the Lake of Gennesareth that He specially displayed His glory; but they only plunged into deeper darkness, and turned the blessing into a curse.¹⁵ What celestial brightness attends those memories of Jesus which hover over the Sea of Galilee! It was on these declivities,¹⁶ as also in the miracle of Cana,¹⁷ that those ante-pasts of the Lord’s Supper took place, in the miraculous feedings of the multitude, in which Christ, for the moment, raised whole multitudes to a heavenly frame of mind. On the farther side of the lake, He enlightened the darkness of the country of the Gergesenes by His presence; on the nearer, He manifested, by the most touching miracles of mercy, the advent of the kingdom of God. It was from one of these mountains that the sermon which represents the way of salvation as a progressive series of blessings,¹⁸ resounded throughout the world. Upon a mountain Christ manifested Himself to His most confidential disciples, in the brightness of His essential glory.¹⁹ It was from silent mountains that He often looked with secret grief, but also with the saving pity of a divinely ordained Redeemer, upon deluded Israel, whom He saw as exiled and cast out from their inheritance, and upon His pleasant land, and His unhappy people. With what emotion of heart did He sit upon the Mount of Olives, and behold in spirit the destruction of the temple and the ruin of the nation! He foresaw that His own fate must be met at Jerusalem, yet He wept over the city! He died before her gates, without the camp of the legal Church, outlawed and proscribed, upon the accursed tree. On the Mount of Olives, near to each other, are the two places where the Christian consecration of the earth, its glorification by the deepest woe and the highest ecstasy, took place—Gethsemane and the mountain of the Ascension. The breath of sorrow issuing from Gethsemane hallows the earth as a dark valley of holy suffering, of the terrors of judgment; the spirit of peace and victory issuing from Mount Olivet, makes the whole earth one bright hill of victory, the victory of Christ reaching to heaven. And finally, Golgotha, together with the holy sepulchre, represents the union of these two points, the place of the curse become the place of honour, the region at once of most terrible defeat and most glorious victory, the curse converted into a blessing, the old sad earth into a new and rejoicing world. As we have no certainty of the locality of Paradise, so neither have we of that of Golgotha; the mysterious place has communicated it sacredness to the whole world.

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Notes

1. The relation between the life of man and the life of nature, is seldom seen in that purely spiritual light expressed in the sacred Scriptures. Man is often represented as the product of the region in which he is found; the influences which he receives there from being looked upon as his fate. Or nature is made to hold on her way, independently of the way of error and confusion, or of the heavenly way of man. Then, for a change, the opposite extreme is rushed into, and man is made the unconscious creator and conscious arranger and former of nature. By the first notion, man is made the child, by the latter the father, of nature. The distinction between the Father and the Son is misconceived, when man, who can only fulfil his destination as an instrument of the Son, is made a being equal to the Father. The Pantheist makes pretensions to being the first person in the Godhead. But the relation between individual man and the Son is also misconceived, when the former is made the product of his exterior world. Holy Scripture rightly makes man appear in his union with surrounding nature; it perceives in nature the sphere of man, dependent upon his mind and inclination. The earth stands, falls, and is renewed with Man.²⁰

2. Schubert writes of the shores of the Dead Sea (Reise in das Morgenland, vol. iii. 85): ‘The shores of the sea are rich in beauty of outline, as sublime as I have anywhere witnessed, and by no means more desolate than those coast regions of the Red Sea at which we touched during our journey; in some districts, especially on the eastern margin, the vegetation of the ravines reaches to the water’s edge, and forms itself into thickets, even beyond the mouths of the Jordan.” Of the Sea of Galilee (p. 238): ‘The vegetable world about Tiberias, though robbed of almost all its former ornaments, shows that the borders of this lake, if they were but rightly made use of, are capable of becoming a natural hothouse, in which the growths of Egypt, and even of Arabia, would flourish. The date-palm, though seldom met with, flourishes with the same luxuriance as about Akaba and Alexandria.’ Further on, Schubert calls the district ‘a paradise over whose quiet lake a spirit of heavenly thoughts and memories seems to hover, while the most lovely and sublime of natural scenes is reflected in its waters.’ In a bay ‘where a warm spring falls into the sea, he found a ‘ thicket of flowering oleander,’ whose ‘rosy glow spread abroad, like a dawn from the deep, over hills and valleys. Robinson (Researches in Palestine, ii. 380, &c., vol. iii. p. 499, &c.) expresses himself less favourably of the shores of the Sea of Galilee. ‘The lake presents, indeed, a beautiful sheet of limpid water, in a deep depressed basin ; from which the shores rise, in general, steeply, and continuously all around, except where a ravine, or sometimes a deep wady, occasionally interrupts them. The hills are rounded and tame, with little of the picturesque in their form; they are decked by no shrubs nor forests; and even the verdure of the grass and herbage, which, at an earlier season of the year, might give them a pleasing aspect, was already gone; they were now only naked and dreary. Whoever looks here for the magnificence of the Swiss lakes, or the softer beauty of those of England and the United States, will be disappointed.

My expectations had not been of that kind; yet from the romantic character of the scenery around the Dead Sea, and in other parts of Palestine, I certainly had promised myself something more striking.’ If, then, we imagine these rounded western heights of the sea-shore in the splendour of their former vegetation, we have the softest and most powerful of minor keys (compare again Schubert, p. 250; Robinson, p. 539). The eastern shore is said to rise to a greater elevation, though not into steep rocky walls and rugged forms. ‘Among the hills of the eastern shore, one is distinguished for its striking roundness of form; a plain runs at: the foot of this eastern caldron-shaped hill.’—V. Schubert, p. 253. ‘On the southern part of this lake, and along its whole eastern coast, the mountain wall may be estimated as elevated 800 or 1000 feet above the water, steep, but not precipitous,’—Robinson, ii. 416.²¹

3. The division of Palestine into Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and Perea, which became more and more marked after the captivity, was caused as much by national as by geographical relations. Even before the captivity, Samaria presented a strong contrast to Judea, which was subsequently increased by the fact that the Samaritans represented a people composed of Jews and heathens, with modified religious tendencies, whose temple-service on Mount Gerizim was opposed to the temple-service on Moriah. Galilee also formed a contrast to Judea before the captivity (Isa. viii. 23) ; for here dwelt Sean feat among Israelites, and no purely Israelitish blood was to be found.

Besides, the popular mind of the Galileans was more related to the popular mind of the heathens who bordered on, or travelled through it, than was that of the Jews. Finally, Judea enjoyed the double advantage of exhibiting the sphere of the temple, properly so called, and the sphere of education. In both these respects it eclipsed Galilee. To this was afterwards added the fresh disadvantage, that it was geographically separated from Judea by the situation of Samaria. Perea, the region east of Jordan, was separated by that river from these three provinces. This district was bounded on the north and east by Batanea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Gaulonitis, All these districts were included by, the Romanus under the name of Syria. The Roman general Pompey attained possession of the country by the conquest of Jerusalem, 63 B.C. The fraternal war of the Maccabean princes, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, in which the deep schism between Pharisees and Saddncees bore bloody fruit, had brought him into the country. He made it dependent upon Rome, and united it with Syria; it retained, however, a remnant of independence, in being governed by a prince of its own, the ethnarch Hyrcanus. His favourite, Antipater, however, became, by his own subtilty and the favour of Cesar, procurator of the country, and left to Hyrcanus the mere shadow of authority. Herod, the son of Antipater, who was at first procurator of Galilee, by the favour of Anthony and Octavins, became, on the flight of Antigonus the Maccabee to Rome, king of Judea, B.C. 37. He governed Judea at the time of Christ's birth with a despotism which went on increasing till the close of his life. Augustus divided his dominions among his sons: Archelaus became ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea; Herod Antipas became tetrarch of Galilee and Perea; Philip obtained possession of the northern part of the district east of Jordan, Batanea, Trachonitis, Gaulonitis, and Panias. The district of the ten cities, or Decapolis, consisted of separate townships, under the immediate supremacy of the Romans, scattered thronghout the land, and inhabited by Greeks and Syrians, All the above-named small Jewish principalities fell one after another entirely under Roman power. ‘This was first the case with Judea and Samaria, after the deposition of Archelaus on account of his tyranny (B.C. 6). The country was then placed under the proconsul of Syria, and governed by procurators. Once more, however, it was for a short time raised to the rank of a kingdom, under the rule of Herod Agrippa. At the commencement of Christ's public ministry, the region east of Jordan was governed by Philip, after whose death (A.D. 35) it was united to the Roman province of Syria. At this time Herod Antipas, the weak, yet cruel despot, who cansed the death of John the Baptist, was still ruling over Galilee and Perea. He was banished in the year 39 to Lyons in Gaul. Herod Agrippa, however, the grandson of Herod, who was living in private life at Rome, had already obtained, through the favour of the Emperor Caligula, the former tetrarchy of Philip, and now Galilee and Perea were also bestowed upon him, ‘To these the Emperor Claudius added also Judea and Samaria ; so that the whole Jewish country once more formed a single Jewish kingdom. He died of a disease, with which he was visited at the moment of his greatest self-exaltation (A.D. 44). Palestine was now again united to the Syrian proconsulate; and from this time the country advanced, under the threefold scourge of tyrannical Roman procurators, devastating highway robbers, and fanatic factions, towards its final catastrophe in the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). The region east of Jordan received (A.D. 53) once more an Idumean prince, Herod Agrippa II., who had, at the same time, oversight of the priesthood in Judea. He possessed, besides the tetrarchy of Philip, that of Lysanias also, and bore the title of king. In the Jewish war he united himself to the Romans.

4. The Jews had not suffered the Samaritans to take part in building their second temple (Ezra iv. 1). They had consequently set up their own worship on Mount Gerizim, and a mutual and ever increasing animosity had continually separated them from the Jews. Their religious development, from this time forth, could not but greatly differ in form from that of the Jews ; they had nevertheless so maintained that essence of the Jewish faith, the expectation of the Messiah, that, in the time of Christ, it was current even among the most ignorant of the people (John 4.) The supposition that they were of purely heathen descent (see Hengstenberg, Beitrage zur Einlettung ins A. T. vol. ii. p. 3, &c.) is certainly opposed by Christ’s conduct towards them (John 4. compared with Matt. 15:24). The reason adduced, viz., that the heathen colonists say (Ezra 4:2) to the Jews, Let us build with you, for we seek your God, as ye do, does not prove that there were no Israelite elements among them ; it is quite natural that the prevailing and domineering heathen clement should speak from its own consciousness. The fact that the people, in cases when the Jews were successful, appealed to their Jewish origin, and, when circumstances were altered, affirmed their Gentile descent, speaks more for their being, indeed, a mingled people than the contrary. That no Israelitish priests were found (2 Kings 17:26) among the remnant of Israelites, who gradually came forth from their concealment, and mingled with the colonists, and that the Jews at Jerusalem would not receive the Samaritans into their theocratic national union, for the sake of such a remnant, is but natural. Even in the saying, Matt. x. 5, 6, the Samaritans are not comprised among the Gentiles, but placed midway between Israel and the Gentiles. he disciples, indeed, were to confine their mission to those who had the first title to it, viz., genuine Israelites.

5. In Palestine was found every possible section of Judaism. Next to the Gentiles, living in contact with Jews in the ten cities, were the Samaritans ; heathens, who were both by birth and opinion Judaized. Next to these were the Galilean Jews, who were more or less tinged with Heathenism. ‘Then the obscure Jews of Perea; and lastly, the genuine Judean Jews, who dispersed themselves from Judea throughout the whole world, and who culminated in the super-Judaism of the Pharisees and the two other sects.

1) In the time of Christ this contact of Israel with the heathen was already fixed in various ways, The Samaritans were of old a mingled people, infected with heathen elements; Galilee, by its neighbourhood to Gentile nations, its mingling with the remnants of Gentile tribes, and by its intercourse with the Gentiles who traversed it upon the great caravan roads, had become ‘ Galilee of the Gentiles,’ according to the strictly Jewish feeling. Jerusalem itself, as a place of pilgrimage to all Jews and proselytes, could not but favour the ever increasing numbers of converted heathen.

2) Comp. Bräm, Beschreibung des h. Landes, p. 3; Geographie des Menschen von Fr. v. Rougemont, tr. by Hugendubel, p, 159.

3) Comp. Plieninger’s Weinachtsblüthen for 1838, p. 201.

4) To the present day the mountainous region of Lebanon has been the resort of free tribes, or of Christian flocks, though they have not been able to deliver themselves from the Mohammedan power.

5) “The volcanic nature of the basin of this lake (the Sea of Galilee), and of the surrounding region, is not to be mistaken. The hot springs near Tiberias and at Umkeis, S.E. of the lake, as also the Iukewarm springs along its western shore, the frequent and violent earthquakes, and the black basaltic stones which thickly strew the ground, all leave no room for doubt on this point.’ Robinson, ii. 416.* 8. Crowe, Geographisch-historische Beschreibung des Landes Palästina, Pt. i. p. 34.

* [All the references in this work to Robinson's Researches in Palestine are made to the second edition, London 1856, 3 vols.—ED.]

6) ʽFrom our calculations, soon afterwards confirmed by many observers, we unexpectedly found that the plain of Jordan is 528 Parisian feet below the level of the sea.’ Schubert’s Reise, iii, 80.

7) Fr. von Rougemont, Geogr. des Menschens, i. 158.

8) ʽThe Arabs say of Lebanon, that winter rests upon its head, spring sports on its shoulders, autumn lies on its lap, and summer slumbers at its feet.’—Biblische Geographie, Calw, 1643 (von Barth), p. 3. ‘In Jericho the wheat harvest was nearly over by the 14th of May, while here, in Tiberias, it was in about the same state of advance only on the 19th of June.’—Robinson, ii. 388.

9) Isa. ix. 2; Mal. iv. 2; Ps. xvii. 8, xci, 1.

10) ‘Besides the exotics of the warmer East, willows and poplars, as well as the tamarisk, flourish there; and among the songs of other minstrels of the wood, whose tones are strange to the ear, may be heard the familiar lay of the nightiugale.—’Schubert, Ueber die Gegend von Jericho (vol. iii, 84). ‘The western shore of the northern part of the lake, before and beyond El Medjel (Magdala), is extremely fertile, and covered, down to the water’s edge, with corn-fields, interspersed with thickets and trees, It seems to be a favourite haunt of wood-pigeons and turtle-doves : we saw them by hundreds, and heard their cooings.’—Id. p. 250,

11) See Schubert’s Reise in das Morgenland, vol. iii. pp. 72-77.

12) We do not here speak of the regions surrounding these two seas, Ancient prejudices concerning them have been corrected by modern travellers,

13) A fact utterly ignored by those critics who insist on drawing from the barren aspect of Canaan an inference against the truth of the Old Testament, in which the country is everywhere extolled as a land flowing with milk and honey. If, however, according to the accounts of modern travellers, a large laying out of gardens by Ibrahim Pacha could have an influence on the increase of the rain in the neighbouring country of Egypt, it may be supposed to what a degree the similar but certainly more susceptible climate of Canaan was dependent upon the operations of its inhabitants.

14) Bibl. Geographic, by Barth, p. 31.

15) Matt, xii, 23, Even the names of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin have perished. Robinson, ii. 405.

16) Matt. xiv.-xv, According to the indications given by Mark, the locality of both the miraculous feedings of the multitude must be sought on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee : Mark vi. and viii.

17) John ii, According to Robinson, Cana was not, as is usually supposed, the village of Kefr Kenna, about a league and a half N. of Nazareth, but a town three leagues distant from Nazareth, in a N. N. E, direction, where a ruin called Kana el Jelil is still pointed out.

18) ʽThe Kurun Hattin (horns of Hattin), between Mount Tabor and the Sea of Tiberias, is said by the Latins to have been “the Mount of Beatitudes,” the place where the Redeemer delivered the Sermon on the Mount to the multitude standing on the adjacent plain. There is nothing in the form or circumstances of the hill itself to contradict this supposition; but the sacred writers do not specify any particular height by name, and there are in the vicinity of the lake perhaps a dozen other mountains which would answer just as well to the circumstances of the history.’—Robinson, ii, 371.

19) ʽThe context of the narrative seems to imply, as has been shown by Lightfoot and Reland, that the Mount of Transfiguration is rather to be sought somewhere around the northern part of the lake, not very far from Cesarea Philippi, where there are certainly mountains enough. But a circumstance which these writers overlooked, and which puts Mount Tabor entirely out of the question, is the fact above substantiated, that long before and after the event of the transfiguration, the summit of Tabor was occupied by a fortified city.’—Robinson, ii, 359. ‘Its wonderfully beautiful and regular form, and isolated ‘position, caused it from very early times to be regarded by Christian tradition as the Mount of Transfiguration, I cannot, however, believe it, since the Saviour had withdrawn to Cesarea Philippi, to escape the researches of His enemies in the region of the sources of the Jordan; a fact which makes it probable that one of the bills of Hermon may have been the scene of the transfiguration,’—L, Völter in Plieninger’s Weihnachtsblüthen, p. 190.

20) [On the reciprocal action of countries and their inhabitants, see Schlegel’s Philosophy of History, passim; Humboldt’s Cosmos; and a very interesting little volume by William Miller, The Plan of History. On the adaptation of Palestine to its purpose, see Kurtz On the O. T. Covenant, vol. i. p. 147, and the works there cited. —ED.]

21) [Those who wish to study the geography of Palestine will find a complete list (fuller, at the time of its preparation, than any other extant’) of works on the subject in Robinson’s Researches, ii. pp. 583-555.—ED.]