xviii. 35, as well as in the other Evangelists, that the route taken

brought Jesus through Jericho. To approach Jerusalem from Jericho was a matter of course with the pilgrims from Galilee who had travelled by the eastern route.

The Jericho road was the scene of the parable of the Good Samaritan. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” The actual descent would be about 3000 feet; and every expression of that kind in the Scriptures, as of “going down” or “going up,” is always true to the features of the ground. The man “fell among thieves.” So likely a district is it, that in the days of the Crusaders nine knights banded themselves together to defend pilgrims going down this dangerous pass: and hence arose the Order of Knights Templars. “There came by a priest and a Levite.” Jericho was a sacerdotal city, and priests and Levites were continually passing and repassing between Jericho and Jerusalem. In going down the Jericho road the traveller has often a wide prospect on either side; but it is, for all that, a mountain pass, with no way of escape if one were attacked; and the Bedawin, whose black tents may be seen in the distance, are the very fellows to attack the traveller now, if they dared.

The road up from Jericho brings us past Bethany--a village now of about forty small dwellings--and over the Mount of Olives, to Jerusalem.

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Tent Work in Palestine.” Major Conder. “The Sea of Galilee.” Sir Charles Wilson. (In vol., “Recovery of Jerusalem.”) “East of Jordan.” Dr Selah Merrill. “Survey Memoirs.” Vol. of Special Papers. “Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” “Galilee in the time of Christ.” Dr Selah Merrill. “Twenty-One Years’ Work in the Holy Land.” P. E. Fund.]

2. _Christ in the Capital._

The Jerusalem of Christ’s day was the city as it existed in the days of Herod the Great. East and west it was no wider than at present; southward it covered the high south-western hill and a good part of the slope of Ophel; northward the third wall was not yet built, but there were suburban buildings outside the second. The Temple area had been so enlarged by Herod as to include all, or nearly all, the present Noble Sanctuary; and there were approaches from the west, one of which led over Robinson’s Arch. A main street from the Valley Gate led eastward to the Temple, passing over Wilson’s Arch. Another main street, running north and south, passed under Wilson’s Arch and Robinson’s Arch, and led to a gate in the south wall. In the north-western part of the High Town was Herod’s palace, with the three strong towers near the Valley Gate which defended it. The Tower of Antonia occupied the site of the present Turkish barracks, north-west of the Temple; and when Pontius Pilate was governor he occupied it. Westward of the city the _Birket Mamilla_ existed as a reservoir of water, and supplied the palace and towers: but the _Birket es Sultan_, or so-called Lower Pool of Gihon, had not been made. The Pool of Siloam was well known, and of course the spring-head which supplied it. The traditional Pool of Bethesda did not exist, but the true Bethesda--now buried under ruins--exhibited its five porches, and was in favour as a healing fountain. For the rest we may say that although all the valleys were deeper than they are now, the streets and bazaars probably followed in most instances the lines which they still preserve, and were just as narrow as they are at present.

In the High Town, called in Josephus’ day the Upper Market Place, there would be an open space somewhere, actually used for a market; and here, we may conjecture, Jesus would sometimes teach. The very circumstances of the spot would suggest the parable of the Labourers, some of whom stood idle till the eleventh hour. Christ also taught in the ample spaces of the Temple courts (John vii. 14); and in the last days of his ministry, at any rate, used to retire from the city before the gates were closed at sunset (Luke xxi. 37). Whether he ever lodged within the city we cannot tell, but that he had no home there and no friend in whose house he was sure of a welcome, may perhaps be inferred from the fact that a guest-chamber had to be engaged when he desired to eat the Passover (Mark xiv. 12).

_The Pool of Bethesda._--It is not doubted that when Christ told the blind man to “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam,” he was sending him to the very pool which still bears that name. About the Pool of Bethesda, “by the sheep _gate_” (John v.), there has not been the same assurance and unanimity. The traditional pool occupies what was once a valley north of the Temple; but as the valley itself was there when Titus sought to attack the Temple from the north, we judge the pool to be a later construction. The two arches at the western end of it, with their staircases now buried in rubbish, are not the same as “five porches.” Again, several writers have supposed that the so-called Virgin’s Fountain might be the true Bethesda, because it is an intermittent spring, and because the modern Jews believe the water of this pool to be a sure cure for rheumatic complaints. They often go in numbers, men and women together, and stand in their clothes in the pool, waiting for the water to rise. But the Virgin’s Fountain is too far away from the Sheep-gate to be the pool which the Evangelist refers to.

It was pointed out some years ago by M. Clermont Ganneau that the Pool of Bethesda should be sought near the Church of St Anne, where an old tradition has placed the house of the mother of Mary, calling it _Beit hanna_, “House of Anne.” This expression is exactly identical with _Bethesda_, both expressions signifying _House of Mercy_, or _Compassion_.[42] This anticipation has been verified; for in the year 1888 the ancient pool of Bethesda was found a short distance north-west of the present Church of St Anne. Certain works carried on by the Algerian monks laid bare a large tank or cistern cut in the rock, to a depth of 30 feet, and Herr Schick recognised this as the Pool of Bethesda. It is 55 feet long from east to west, and measures 12½ feet in breadth. A flight of twenty-four steps leads down into the pool from the eastern scarp of rock. Herr Schick, who at once saw the great interest of this discovery, soon found a sister-pool, lying end to end, 60 feet long, and of the same breadth as the first. The first pool was arched in by five arches, while five corresponding porches ran along the side of the pool. At a later period a church was built over the pool by the Crusaders, and they seem to have been so far impressed by the fact of five arches below, that they shaped their crypt into five arches in imitation. They left an opening for getting down to the water; and further, as the crowning proof that they regarded the pool as Bethesda, they painted on the wall of the crypt a fresco representing the angel troubling the water of the pool.

All this appears to agree very well with what Eusebius says in his “Onomasticon,” concerning a pool which he calls Bezatha--“a pool at Jerusalem, which is the _Piscina Probatica_, and had formerly five porches, and now is pointed out at the twin pools there, of which one is filled by the rains of the year, but the other exhibits its water tinged in an extraordinary manner with red, retaining a trace, they say, of the victims that were formerly cleansed in it.” Here we have a sheep pool, in which the sacrificial victims used to be washed, and close by it (so that they constituted twin pools) a second, which must have been intermittent, the very character attributed to those waters which, at a certain season, were troubled.[43] Eusebius gives no clue to the situation of the twin pools, but the Bordeaux pilgrim, who visited Jerusalem in A.D. 333, after speaking of two great pools at the side of the Temple, one on either hand as he entered Jerusalem from the east side (apparently at St Stephen’s Gate), refers to the twin pools as being more within the city. They “have five porches” (he says), “and are called Bethsaida. Here the sick of many years were wont to be healed. But these pools have water which, when agitated, is of a kind of red colour.”

There had been a disposition in recent years to identify these twin pools with two souterrains or tunnels existing under the Convent of the Sisters of Sion at the north-west corner of the Haram area, but that fancy is now dissipated. The manner in which most of the previous speculations have been set aside by the actual discovery of the Pool of Bethesda is an instructive testimony to the value of excavation work in Jerusalem.

_A Tablet from Herod’s Temple._--Josephus, in his “Antiquities of the Jews,”[44] after describing the cloisters of the Temple and the Court of the Gentiles, goes on to describe the inner court, and the middle wall of partition which divided Jews from Gentiles. He says, “Thus was the first enclosure; in the midst of which, and not far from it, was the second, to be gone up to by a few steps. This was encompassed by a stone wall for a partition, with an inscription which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death.” Again, in his work on the “Wars of the Jews,”[45]--“When you go through these first cloisters, unto the second court of the Temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits. Its construction was very elegant; upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek, and some in Roman letters, that no foreigner should go within the sanctuary,--for that second court of the Temple was called the Sanctuary, and was ascended to by fourteen steps from the first court.”

In the year 1871, M. Clermont Ganneau had the good fortune to discover one of these pillars or tablets, partly buried in the foundations of a building not far from the Haram area. It bears the following inscription in Greek, in seven lines:--

ΜΗΘΕΝΑΑΛΛΟΓΕΝΗΕΙΣΠΟ ΡΕΥΕΣΘΑΙΕΝΤΟΣΤΟΥΠΕ ΡΙΤΟΙΕΡΟΝΤΡΥΦΑΚΤΟΥΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΒΟΛΟΥΟΣΔΑΝΛΗ ΦΘΗΕΑΥΤΩΙΑΙΤΙΟΣΕΣ ΤΑΙΔΙΑΤΟΕΞΑΚΟΛΟΥ ΘΕΙΝΘΑΝAΤΟΝ

The translation is:--“No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the Temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue.”

M. Clermont Ganneau remarks that the episode in the Acts of the Apostles (xxi. 26, _et seq._) throws great light on this precious inscription and receives light from it. Paul, after purification, presents himself in the Temple; the people immediately rise against him, because certain Jews of Asia believed that Paul had introduced a Gentile--Trophimus of Ephesus--and had thus polluted the sacred place. They are about to put him to death when the Tribune commanding at Fort Antonia intervenes and rescues him. The people demand of the Tribune the execution of the culprit, _i.e._, the application of the law.

This inscription, and probably this very stone, was almost certainly seen and read by Christ; and it would be likely to impress him painfully with the exclusive spirit of the Jews. It certainly could not meet with the approval of the Teacher who preached to Samaritans at Jacob’s Well, and laboured more in the half-Gentile town of Capernaum than in Nazareth, defending his course by quoting the example of Elijah who went to Sarepta a city of Zidon. Christ declared himself the Light of all the World, and the Shepherd who had other sheep not of the Jewish fold. It was the work of Christ, before it became the work of Paul, to break down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. There can hardly be a question, then, that the sight of this inscription would intensify his desire to see this Temple destroyed and the Jewish ritual abolished, that he might rear upon its ruins a spiritual temple for all nations.

At the beginning of the week of his passion, Jesus Christ came up the steep ascent from Jericho, the road bringing him at last to Bethany. One night he halted in the village, as of old; the village and the desert were then all alive, as they still are once every year at the Greek Easter, with the crowd of Paschal pilgrims moving to and fro between Bethany and Jerusalem. In the morning he set forth on his journey. Three pathways lead, and probably always led, from Bethany to Jerusalem; one, a long circuit over the northern shoulder of Mount Olivet, down the valley which parts it from Scopus; another, a steep foot-path over the summit; the third, the natural continuation of the road by which mounted travellers always approach the city from Jericho, over the southern shoulder, between the summit which contains the Tombs of the Prophets and that called the Mount of Offence. “There can be no doubt” (says Dean Stanley) “that this last is the road of the entry of Christ, not only because, as just stated, it is, and must always have been, the usual approach for horsemen and for large caravans, such as then were concerned, but also because this is the only one of the three approaches which meets the requirements of the narrative which follows.

“Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, and as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palm rose on the south-eastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the Feast of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards Bethany, with shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there on the previous night, and who came testifying to the great event at the sepulchre of Lazarus. The road soon loses sight of Bethany.... Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge, where first begins ‘the descent of the Mount of Olives towards Jerusalem.’ At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the city.... It was at this precise point that the shout of triumph burst forth from the multitude, Hosanna to the Son of David!... Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view.... Immediately below is the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side--its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road, this rocky ledge, was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and ‘He, when he beheld the city, wept over it.’ Nowhere else on the Mount of Olives is there a view like this.”[46]

On one of those last days the Great Teacher, leaving the city a little before sunset, sat on one of the rocky banks of Olivet, over against the Temple. The mountain rises 150 feet above the level of the city; the city has the appearance of being tilted up on its western side, so that from the mountain you can look down into its streets. The Temple courts would be in the foreground, with Solomon’s Porch on the eastern side. Perhaps the 80 feet of rubbish which now rests against the wall had not yet half accumulated; and in that case the stones which Solomon laid down would be still visible--blocks 20 cubits long by 6 cubits thick, and extending a length of 400 cubits. The disciples had been calling their Master’s attention to the goodly stones and buildings of the Temple, as they came along, and he had declared that they would one day be thrown down; and now, sitting on Olivet he prophesies the end of the age.

From the Mount of Olives it was but a short way to Bethany, to spend the night. A wild mountain-hamlet, perched on its broken plateau of rocks, Bethany is screened by a ridge from the view of the top of Olivet. The modern name of the village--El-Azarieh--connects it with Lazarus, whose traditional house and grave are still exhibited, as well as the traditional house of Simon the leper. The welcome which awaited Christ in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus must have been very grateful after the day’s teaching and turmoil in the noisy city.

It is hopeless to try and identify in Jerusalem the house or the street in which the disciples made ready the Passover for their Master. The Garden of Gethsemane, which was visited afterwards, may probably have been at or near the place which is now pointed out on the slope of Olivet.

When Christ was brought before Pilate it would be at the Tower of Antonia, north-west of the Temple, on the site now occupied by the Turkish barracks.

Outside the barracks, on the north side, is the street now called the _Via Dolorosa_, because tradition says that Christ passed along it in going from the Judgment Hall to the place of crucifixion, marked now by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

_The True Site of Calvary._--The question has been much debated whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre occupies the true site of Calvary or not. We know that Jesus suffered and was buried at some spot outside the city, for it was “as they came out” that they found Simon of Cyrene, and compelled him to go with them to bear the cross. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is almost in the heart of the present city; but we have to remember that at the date of the crucifixion the third wall was not yet built. The first question to be settled is the course of the second wall, and the point whether it included the site of the church or not. In this connection the discovery of a portion of the second wall, running north-west, along by the Greek Bazaar, was very important: only it was not followed far enough to remove all doubt. If we adopt Herr Schick’s line for the second wall, the Church of the Sepulchre would be outside: but this is not enough. If the site were within the second wall it could not be Calvary; if it was outside the wall it may be Calvary or may not. The Church is closer to the wall than we should expect the place of execution to be; and unless Calvary were further away there would hardly seem to be reason enough for pressing Simon of Cyrene into service to carry the cross.

But another discovery must be mentioned which has some bearing on the question. A little way east of the church, on a piece of ground belonging to the Russians, the excavators passed through the remains of some bazaars which were known to have existed there in the middle ages, and below these they came upon a Byzantine pavement, which appears to be the one laid down by Constantine around the buildings which he erected. Thus it becomes morally certain that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands on the spot where Constantine built his church, believing it to be Calvary. But between the days of Christ and the days of Constantine there was time and room for mistake to arise. Jerusalem was destroyed in the year 70, the Christians did not return to it until eighty years after, and by that time it might be difficult to identify the sacred sites. When Constantine came to build his church he found the site occupied by a temple of Venus, a circumstance which may argue the traditional sacredness of the site, but scarcely the tradition that it had been the Jewish place of execution. Major Conder says he could devoutly wish that the site may turn out not to be genuine, because it is disgraced by the scenes that occur there.

Passing through the doorway we enter the vestibule, in which is the Stone of Unction, a slab of marble which is devoutly kissed by pilgrims. Passing round it to the left, the rotunda of the church is reached; to the right a narrow passage with small chapels runs behind the apses of the Greek church, and here a flight of steps leads down to the subterranean Chapel of Helena with its picturesque lighting and heavy eighth century basketwork capitals. Beneath this, again, is the dark cave so suggestively named the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. The rotunda is well lighted with a dome light blue in colour, and covered with golden lilies and arabesques. In the centre rises the old Chapel of the Sepulchre, dark and gloomy, of marble discoloured by age, surmounted by a queer cupola of Italian taste, and ornamented all along the top with gilt nosegays and modern-framed pictures. Stooping to enter, we pass into the vestibule or Chapel of the Angel, walled with marble slabs, and thence into the inner Chapel of the Sepulchre itself, where the darkness is only relieved by the glowing lamps over the altar on the tomb. The most impressive portion of the church is, however, the nave east of the rotunda, belonging to the Greeks, with its great screen in front of the three eastern apses. The floor is unoccupied, save by the short column marking the “centre of the world.” The dome above is poor, rudely whitewashed, and painted in fresco; but the glory of the place consists in the large screen and the panelling of the side walls.[47]

On Sundays the Christians of various churches--Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic--hold their services simultaneously, under the dome and in the side chapels which open off it. On one occasion when I was present the Greek patriarch was preaching under the dome of the rotunda, at the east end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre, when suddenly the Latins struck up their instrumental music and singing, drowning the preacher’s voice. I was prepared to sympathise with the Greeks, when presently they formed a procession and marched round the rotunda, passing right through a little band of Copts who were engaged in their own way of worship at the west end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre. This want of consideration for the members of other churches seemed so calculated to lead to quarrels that I was not surprised to find a hundred Turkish soldiers drawn up in front of the church to keep the peace. This was a fortnight before Easter. At Easter time itself, when the so-called miracle of the “holy fire” is enacted, and Christians of all churches struggle with one another to be the first to light their tapers at the sacred flame, quarrels do actually arise, and the place is a pandemonium. Woe to the owner of the taper first lit; it is snatched from him, and extinguished by having a dozen others thrust into it. Strong men struggle with one another, and even delicate women and old men fight like furies. We may well join with Conder in wishing that the evidence may finally prove Calvary to have been somewhere else.

For some years past a site has been coming into favour, outside the present north wall, not far from the Damascus Gate. Here is a rounded knoll with a precipice on the south side of it, containing a cave known to Christians as Jeremiah’s Grotto, from the tradition that Jeremiah lived in it and composed his Lamentations there. When this knoll is looked at from the south-east, especially from the southern shoulder of the Mount of Olives, it appears to many observers to bear a striking resemblance to a huge skull. As long ago as 1871, Mr Fisher Howe of Brooklyn proposed the identification, in a little book called “The True Site of Calvary,” published in New York.[48] Dr Chaplin and Major Conder have given additional probability to it by bringing into prominence the Jewish tradition which regards this knoll as the place of public execution. When the death was by stoning, the condemned person was hurled from the top of the cliff, which is about 50 feet high, and if he was not killed by the fall, stones were cast at him till he died. The place was called the House of Stoning, and Christian tradition has regarded it as the place of the martyrdom of Stephen. The circumstance that Jesus Christ was put to death in the Roman manner, being crucified and not stoned, makes little difference to the argument for the site of Calvary, since there is no reason to suppose that Jerusalem possessed two places of execution. It may be added that the surface of the knoll is now used as a Mohammedan burial ground; and this may also have been its character in Jewish times. About 200 yards west of the Grotto, Conder made the interesting discovery of an indisputably Jewish tomb judged to belong to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. It would be bold to hazard the suggestion that this is the very tomb in which the body of Christ was laid--the new tomb in the garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea--yet its position so near the old place of execution is certainly remarkable. “Thus,” says Conder, “to ‘a green hill far away, beside a city wall,’ we turn from the artificial rocks and marble slabs of the monkish chapel of Calvary.”

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Tent Work.” Major Conder. “The Recovery of Jerusalem.” Colonels Warren and Wilson. “Sinai and Palestine.” Dean Stanley. “Walks about Jerusalem.” W. H. Bartlett. “Quarterly Statements of Palestine Exploration Fund.”]