Part 20

I will not inflict upon you all my reasons for coming to the conclusion that the ruin at Tell el-Samak, the Mound of the Fish already alluded to, is the site of Sycaminum, though I doubt whether a larger population did not inhabit the city two miles nearer Haifa, where the porphyry fragments abound. To judge by the fine carvings at both places, they must have been wealthy as well as populous, and their most prosperous period was in all probability during the first three or four centuries of our era. The coins which I have found so far are of that epoch. Exploring the ruins of what must have been the upper tower of Sycaminus, distant about four hundred yards from the Fish Mound, and two hundred feet above it, a few days ago, I came upon a cistern with four circular apertures. Upon being let down into it I found it was seventy feet long, hewn out of the solid rock, twenty feet broad, and twelve feet high from the débris at the bottom, but in reality much deeper. The roof was supported by three columns, four feet square, also hewn from the living rock. The cement was still in some places perfect, and the cistern must have been capable of containing a vast supply of water. It was about fifteen yards from an angle of a wall composed of rubble, from which the ashlar had been removed, about four feet thick, and still standing in places to a height of four feet. In others the foundations of this wall were easily traceable. As the whole ruin seems to have escaped the observation of the Palestine Exploration Survey, I measured it, and found the east wall to be one hundred and twelve yards long, the south wall sixty-five, the west wall seventy, and an intersecting wall forty. I could find no traces of a north wall. It was probably a fortress, which was supplied by the cistern already mentioned. In the neighborhood were some fine rock-cut tombs, two with six loculi, each in a good state of preservation. I also picked up a piece of white marble on which was an inscription in early Arabic characters, but only the word “Allah” and two or three more letters remained on the fragment.

At Kefr Lam, the crusaders' Capernaum, which I had occasion recently to visit, I discovered two very remarkable vaults, each forty feet long by twelve broad and seven high. The roof was supported by five arches, each arch composed of a single stone four feet broad, on the top of which huge flat stones had been laid. I have never seen any constructions like these vaults, and think they probably dated from a very ancient period. In the immediate neighborhood the peasantry had recently opened an ancient well, thirty-five feet deep, the water being approached by a flight of steps round two sides of the well, the shaft of which was about thirty feet square. There were no fewer than seventeen handsome rock-cut tombs in the neighborhood of the village, and I regretted that I had not time to prolong my investigations, as I feel convinced that the vicinity would repay examination. As it is, I have obtained from the villagers several good specimens of terra-cotta lamps, two curious alabaster saucers, some coins, and other antiquities.

THE SEA OF GALILEE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST.

Haifa, Dec. 26.—In reading the works of Dr. Kitto and other writers who have endeavoured to present a picture of the manners and customs of the population which inhabited Palestine in ancient times, I have been much struck by the erroneous impressions which the descriptions of those writers are calculated to convey in many important respects. This has arisen from the fact that while they have portrayed, with tolerable accuracy, the rude civilization of the original inhabitants and the subsequent civilization grafted upon it by their Jewish conquerors, they have left out of consideration the changes worked upon, and the modifications introduced into, the social conditions thus produced by that still higher and later civilization which resulted from Greek and Roman invasions. Thus while they carefully trace back the habits of the modern fellahin, and show that they differ slightly from those of the peasantry of the country in the time of Christ, and invoke the testimony of modern Bedouins as evidence of a mode of life which has undergone no perceptible alteration since the days of Abraham, they leave out of account altogether that magnificent Roman and Byzantine civilization, traces of which still exist in such abundance as to astound the traveller with its splendor and its richness, but which has passed away like a dream, leaving nothing behind but the coarse barbarism which has succeeded it, and which is almost identical in character with what it supplanted. Hence it is that these writers have found those resemblances between the modern and ancient manners and customs of the inhabitants of this country by which they were so much struck, and which they have given to the public as furnishing an accurate picture of what ancient Palestine was like.

We are so much in the habit of confining our interest in this country to its history before the time of Christ that it will probably strike many with surprise to learn that the most flourishing epoch of its history was subsequent to that time; that never before had the arts and sciences reached so high a pitch; that never before had its population been so wealthy and luxurious, its architecture so grand, its commerce so flourishing, and its civilization generally so advanced. It is true it had lost its independence, and was only a Roman province, but it is just because it was one, and not a Jewish kingdom, that our impression of its actual condition at the time of Christ is apt to be so erroneous.

This fact has been very forcibly brought to my notice in a recent trip which I have made along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, more especially along its little-explored northern and eastern coasts, where the evidences of the wealth and luxury of the former inhabitants still remain in unexampled profusion. In reading in the Gospels the narrative of the works and life of Christ, so much of which was spent upon the shores of the lake, in one of the cities of which he for some time took up his abode, most of us have endeavoured, probably, to picture him to ourselves amid purely Jewish surroundings and conditions closely resembling those which we have been in the habit of associating with that previous period of Jewish history with which we are familiar in the books of the Old Testament. So far from that being the case, the part of the country in which his ministrations were principally exercised, was beyond all others a centre of Roman life, with all its luxurious accompaniments. Nowhere else in Palestine was there such a congeries of rich and populous cities as were crowded round the shores of this small lake. Nowhere else could the Jewish reformer come into closer contact with the rites of a worship alien to his own.

On the shores of this lake might be seen temple after temple rearing their vast colonnades of graceful columns, their courts ornamented with faultlessly carved statues to the deities of a heathen cult. Here were the palaces of the Roman high functionaries, the tastefully decorated villas of rich citizens, with semi-tropical gardens irrigated by the copious streams which have their sources in the plain of Genesareth and the neighbouring hills. Here were broad avenues and populous thoroughfares, thronged with the motley concourse which so much wealth and magnificence had attracted—rich merchants from Antioch, then the most gorgeous city of the East, and from the Greek islands, traders and visitors from Damascus, Palmyra, and the rich cities of the Decapolis; caravans from Egypt and Persia, Jewish rabbis jostling priests of the worship of the sun, and Roman soldiers swaggering across the marketplaces, where the peasantry were exposing the produce of their fields and gardens for sale, and where fish was displayed by the hardy toilers of the lake, among whom were those whom the Great Teacher selected to be the first recipients of his message and the channels for its communication to after ages.

Thus it was, as I rode along the margin of the sea the other day, that I was enabled to repeople its shores in imagination by the light of the remains with which they are still strewn, and, overtaken in its desolation by the shades of night, to fancy its now gloomy shores ablaze with the scintillations proceeding from the lamps of at least a dozen large cities, and the almost continuous street of habitations which connected them, and to illuminate its now dark and silent waters with countless brilliantly-lighted boats, skimming over its smooth surface, containing noble ladies and gallants on their way to or from scenes of nocturnal festivity, or indulging in moonlight picnics, with the accompaniments of wine and song and music. That life in these cities was profligate and dissipated in a high degree we may gather from Christ's denunciation of Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, which he declared to be so much more wicked than Tyre or Sidon, or even Sodom, that it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for those cities than for the three he was denouncing. That among these Capernaum was the one of the greatest splendor, and was puffed up therefore with the pride of its own pomp and magnificence, we may gather from the indignant apostrophe: “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven.” It may have been because he considered this city the wickedest, as it appears to have been the largest on the lake, and therefore the most in need of his ministrations, that he chose it for some time as his residence. Hence it came to be called “his own city.” This circumstance invests it with a special interest in our eyes.

Unfortunately, a violent contest rages between Palestinologists, if I may be allowed to coin the word, as to the exact site of Capernaum. The two places which claim this honor are now called Khan Minieh and Tell Hum respectively. Until lately the weight of opinion was in favor of the former site; latterly the researches of Sir Charles Wilson, on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, have convinced that accomplished archæologist and careful explorer that the true site of this celebrated city is to be found at Tell Hum. It would weary my readers if I were to quote all the texts relied upon by the disputants to maintain each hypothesis, supported by calculations of distance, the accounts of Josephus, and of early pilgrim or Arab travellers. The subject has been pretty well thrashed out, but I doubt whether it is even yet exhausted. I incline strongly to the Tell Hum theory, but as Khan Minieh comes first on our way as we glide from Tiberias to the head of the lake, as it is unquestionably the site of what was once a city, and as it is a highly picturesque spot, and one, moreover, full of Biblical interest as being, if not Capernaum itself, within three miles of that city, and therefore a spot which must have been the scene of some of Christ's labours, will begin by describing it.

The plain of Genesareth, the unrivalled fertility and luxuriance of which, though it is now uncultivated, I described in a former letter, when I crossed it eighteen months ago on my way to Safed, is terminated at its northern extremity by a mountain range, which projects in a lofty and precipitous crag into the lake, and renders any passage round it by land extremely difficult. This projection forms a little bay, or rather rush-grown lagoon, running back into the head of the plain. Into it falls a small stream, powerful enough, however, to turn a mill. It is this building and the ruins of an ancient khan near it, which was itself constructed from the remains of an ancient city about three hundred yards distant, which is now called Khan Minieh. The true site of the old city is not, however, where the khan now stands, but not far from a fountain, shaded by an old fig-tree, from which the fountain takes its name—Ain el-Tin, or the Fountain of the Fig-tree, which suggests the idea that either the name is very new or the fig-tree very old. A plentiful supply of water flows from it, slightly brackish, with a temperature of 82° Fahrenheit. The water is crowded with fish and surrounded with green turf. It appears to be one of the seven fountains mentioned by Theodorus, A.D. 530, as being two miles from Magdala, the city of Mary Magdalene, in the direction of Capernaum.

Near this fountain are some old foundations and traces of ruins, but these for the most part cover a series of mounds where a few walls are visible, but no traces of columns, capitals, or handsome blocks of stone, and much smaller in extent than those of Tell Hum. Indeed, the whole area is not more than two hundred yards long by one hundred broad, and this is one reason for supposing that it cannot be the site of that important city. The khan itself is at least as old as the twelfth century, being mentioned by Bohaeddin in his life of Saladin. A road from here leads up the steep hillside to Safed. The view from it, as we ascend to some elevation above the plain, is very beautiful. That fertile expanse which Josephus calls “the ambition of nature,” lies stretched at our feet, with the waters of the lake rippling upon its pebbly beach, while we look right up the gorge of Hammam, its beetling cliffs on both sides towering in rugged cave-perforated precipices to a height of twelve hundred feet above the tiny stream which, compressed between these lofty walls of limestone and basalt, winds its way to the lake.

But it is not up the wild mountain-side that our present way lies; so, taking our last look at the crumbling walls of the old khan, at the picturesque water-mill, the ruin-strewn mounds, and the grassy lagoon, we prepare to skirt the rocky flank of the ledge which here dips into the waters of the Sea of Genesareth, and by which we hope to reach the ruins of Bethsaida.

THE SCENE OF THE MIRACLE OF THE FIVE LOAVES AND TWO SMALL FISHES.

Haifa, Jan. 6, 1885.—If, as I stated in my last letter, students of Biblical topography have been much exercised in their minds as to the identification of the ruins on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, which indicate the site of the once famous city of Capernaum, and have applied not only a great amount of antiquarian research and of time in the way of minute local examination and literary labor in the hope of definitely settling this knotty point, there is another upon which they have no less anxiously expended their ingenuity. This is to solve the vexed question as to whether there were, in the time of Christ, two Bethsaidas or one. This question would never have arisen but for the confusion introduced into the scriptural narrative by the puzzling accounts given in all the four gospels of the miracle of the feeding of the multitude with five loaves and two fishes, the scene of which the four evangelists are unanimous in describing as having been in a desert spot which must have been on the eastern side of the lake, for immediately afterwards “they crossed over to the other side,” arriving at Capernaum, which was on the western side. But according to one (Luke) this desert place (on the eastern side) belonged to a city called Bethsaida; and according to another (Mark) Christ, after the miracle, “constrained his disciples to get into the ship and go to the other (or western) side before, unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people.” Hence the confusion; starting from the western side, they take ship, cross over to a desert place belonging to Bethsaida; the miracle is performed there, and the disciples are constrained by their Master to take ship and cross the lake back again to what must be another Bethsaida. Then the storm arises, he comes to them on the waters, and they finally reach Capernaum in safety.

Reland, the learned geographer of the last century, was the first to invent the second Bethsaida on the western side, which is not mentioned by either Josephus or Pliny, the latter of whom distinctly puts it on the eastern side; and I have not been able exactly to discover upon what authority Reland hit upon this easy solution of the problem. The only historical Bethsaida of which we have any certain record was a place at the northeastern extremity, originally a village, but rebuilt and adorned by Philip the Tetrarch, and raised to the dignity of a town under the name of Julias, after the daughter of the emperor. Here, in a magnificent tomb, Philip was himself buried. On the other hand, we have indications of the existence of another Bethsaida in the mention of a Bethsaida which was the birthplace of Peter and Andrew and Philip, which Mark tells us was “in the land of Genesareth,” and therefore on the west shore of the lake. Supposing Tell Hum to be Capernaum, and the western Bethsaida to be on the site usually assigned to it, this hypothesis would give us two Bethsaidas only six miles apart, not a very probable supposition; or else we have to suppose that the land of Genesareth extended across the Jordan to the east side, which we know to have had another name, and to have been in another province; or to suppose, as Dr. Thomson—who resolutely refuses to have two Bethsaidas—does, that half the town was on one side of the Jordan and half on the other, and that the half on the west side was called Bethsaida in the land of Genesareth, though the plain of that name is five miles distant. Moreover, there are no ruins conveniently placed to support the presumption, which is very strained. Altogether the subject is one which has puzzled every Biblical geographer hitherto, and, after a careful examination of all their arguments, I find myself just as much in the dark about it as when I entered upon the investigation. As, therefore, after visiting all the disputed localities, I do not feel any the more competent to enlighten your readers, I will confine myself to describing the different places which have been suggested as the sites of these cities, as well as of others which I visited in the section of country to the east of the Jordan, some of which I was the first to discover, and none of which have been positively identified.

Meantime, the scene, which the tradition of many centuries located erroneously as the spot upon which the miracle took place, is exactly above us as we wind along a rocky path cut in the precipice which overhangs the Sea of Galilee. This huge impending crag is crowned by an artificial plateau, which is two hundred feet long by one hundred broad, and in the northwest angle are the remains of a wall and the ruins of a building, probably a fortress of some sort. This spot was known in the middle ages as the Mensa Christi, or Table of Christ. In olden time the great Damascus high-road ran just below, and the fort above doubtless commanded this pass; but it has become impassable, and the path now follows the channel of an aqueduct hewn out of the living rock. For about two hundred yards we find ourselves riding along the narrow floor of this ancient watercourse. On our left the smooth rock rises precipitously, and on our right it forms a wall from three to four feet high, over which we could drop a stone perpendicularly into the waters of the lake. The aqueduct which thus forms our singular roadway is about three feet wide; emerging from it, after we turn the angle of the rock, we find ourselves overlooking a little bay, into which rushes a brawling torrent, the largest which enters the lake excepting the Jordan, and which here turns a mill. It is, however, only a few yards long, as it bursts from the ground in great force, in what is by far the most powerful spring in Galilee, and is, without doubt, the celebrated Fountain of Capernaum mentioned by Josephus as watering the plain of Genesareth. This it did by means of the aqueduct which we had already traversed, the distance from the fountain to the plain not being above a mile. Besides the principal fountain, which is estimated as being more than half the size of the celebrated source of the Jordan at Banias, there are four smaller fountains, all more or less brackish, and varying in temperature from 73° to 86°.

One of the special subjects of interest connected with these fountains is the presence in them of the remarkable fish called the coracinus. The only known habitats of this fish in the world are in the Nile, in a fountain which I have also visited in the plain of Genesareth, called Mudawara, and in this spring. Josephus accounts for its existence here, as well as in the Nile, by a hypothetical subterranean water communication with the great river of Egypt. Modern geologists point to it as an evidence of the fact that in some long bygone period Palestine might have been included in a great Ethiopian basin. However the circumstance is to be accounted for, it is most remarkable, and was doubted until Canon Tristram verified it twenty years ago by a somewhat singular experience. Crossing the little stream which issues from the fountain of Mudawara and flows into the lake, and which happened to be very low at the time, he was surprised to observe a quantity of fish wriggling along in single file, and so close together that the mouth of one touched the tail of the one before it. In places there was so little water that they had to flop across intervals of almost dry land; here he caught them easily with his hand, and, as many averaged three feet in length, he was not long in making a good bag. What surprised him most, however, was to find that as soon as he laid hold of one it began hissing and screaming like a cat. Making a bag of his cloak, he carried them off in triumph to his camp, which was three hours distant, and could hear them hissing and caterwauling in it all the way. He describes them as being a most delicious fish to eat, something like an eel in flavor, and possessed of extraordinary vitality, as some of them were still living after they had been two days out of the water. The last volume just issued by the Palestine Exploration Fund contains a print of this extraordinary creature, which has a long, slender body, apparently not much thicker than that of a good-sized eel, with two long fins, one on the back and one on the belly. The mouth, with its long, cartilaginous streamers (I do not know the ichthyological term for them), somewhat resembles that of a catfish. I unfortunately had no means of fishing for them on the occasion of my visit, and they did not happen to be migrating to their spawning grounds, which they were evidently doing when Tristram caught them; but my late experiences on the shores of the lake have been so full of interest that I propose to make another visit in the spring, when I hope to go supplied with tackle, and to give you my own piscatory experiences.