CHAPTER XIX.

GALILEE.

The Philistine campaign was followed by three weeks’ rest at Jerusalem during the east winds of May. On the 8th of June we once more marched out with our whole expedition, intending to finish the northern district, of 1000 square miles, within the year, if possible.

One of the principal pieces of work to be done was the running of a line of levels from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, for which purpose the British Association had voted £100. The line which I chose, and which was approved, was the shortest possible, and Wâdy el Melek afforded us a most convenient line of ascent to the Buttauf Plain, whence we were to descend to Tiberias. Under my direction, nineteen miles were run in 1875, and in 1877 Lieutenant Kitchener finished the remaining seventeen miles on the low ground, which could not be entered in summer. By this means the level of the Sea of Galilee, variously computed at from 300 to 600 feet below the Mediterranean, has been fixed as 682·5 feet.

Our most valuable discoveries in this part of the country included the probable site of a synagogue at Tireh east of Shefa ’Amr, and the recovery of Osheh, a town known to have been close to Shefa ’Amr (or Shafram) and one of the places where the Sanhedrim sat for many years; it seems undoubtedly to be the present ruin of Hûsheh. We also found a very remarkable tomb at Shefa ’Amr, profusely covered with sculpture, and with a Greek inscription and crosses. Outside the door are sculptured lions, a grape-vine with birds in the branches, and other designs. It appears to be a Christian sepulchre, probably of the fourth or fifth century, but perhaps earlier. A Byzantine church also exists in the village.

On the last day of June we marched east to the miserable little hamlet of El B’aîneh, which, with two others, stands on the north slopes of Jebel Tôr’an, an isolated block of mountain rising out of the plateau of the Buttauf. Here we found the inhabitants all fever-stricken from the malarious exhalations of the great swamp, which even as late as July extended over half the plain. The place was evidently unhealthy, and we were tortured by the armies of large musquitoes rendering sleep impossible at night. The levelling operations required us to camp in the plain, but we hastened on the work as much as possible, looking forward to a retreat into the mountains of Upper Galilee, which, being 4000 feet above the sea, would be cool and pleasant, and, as we hoped, safe from the scourge of cholera, which had already devastated Damascus, and was creeping slowly south.

The view from the summit of Tôr’an is interesting and extensive. The Sea of Galilee is visible, and we were able to fix the direction of many points along its shore.

On the south, separated from Tôr’an by a second plain, lay the low bare range of the Nazareth hills, Neby S’ain, and Gath Hepher with the tomb of Jonah, being visible, while rather farther east Kefr Kenna stood among its olive-groves and gardens of pomegranates.

Tabor, crowned with two monasteries, was also plainly visible, east of the Nazareth range, the slopes partly hidden by oak-groves. Through a gap, between it and the western hills, the outline of Gilboa and part of Jebel ed Duhy could be seen. The plain of Esdraelon was hidden, but the cone of Sheikh Iskander was visible to the south-west.

To the west the view extended over the low wooded hills to the long range of Carmel, which was visible, from the Peak of Sacrifice to the white monastery where, on a little spit, stands the German wind-mill, which showed up quite black against the gleaming sea.

The brown and fertile plain of the Buttauf, in the basaltic soil of which tobacco, corn, maize, sesame, cotton, and every species of vegetable grow luxuriantly, lay at our feet. The high blunt top of Jebel Deidebeh (“mountain of the watch-tower”), crowned with its ring of thicket, rose behind, shutting out the view. Beyond this was the chain of hills running eastwards, with rolling grey up-lands dotted with olives, while farther still, some ten or twelve miles away, rose the mountain wall of Upper Galilee, culminating in Jebel Jermûk, a bare craggy ridge which closed the view to the north. Turning yet farther east, the large town of Safed shone white on the mountain-side, divided into two quarters, with a double-pointed summit behind them. Beyond all, dark and dreamlike, the great Hermon, “Sheikh of the mountains,” was seen streaked with silver lines of snow.

But the view due east of Tôr’an was yet more interesting. A yellow plateau shelves down from the foot of the mountains of Upper Galilee and runs into little tongues and promontories, separated by tiny bays, along the north-western shores of the Sea of Galilee: only in one part of this line is there a cliff, just where the little fertile plain of Gennesaret terminates at Khân Minieh; the rest is shelving ground almost to the water’s edge.

The deep chasm running down from Safed, and known as “the Valley of Doves” (W. el Hamâm), debouches into the green oasis of the Ghŭweir--the plain of Gennesaret. East of the sea the long flat plateau of Bashan stretches from the precipices which enclose the lake, and reaches away to the volcanic cones and dreary lava-fields which are backed by the peaks of Jebel ed Drûz.

Tiberias was hidden below the cliffs, and only about half the blue and limpid lake was seen behind them; most conspicuous on this line are the Horns of Hattin, so fatal to the Christian kingdom in 1187, and here also, as on the east, a broad plateau runs almost to the top of the precipices.

It is wonderful to reflect how numerous are the ancient towns which encircled this little lake; speaking of the west side alone, they number more than twenty. Hidden by the cliffs we have Tiberias, or Rakkath, and Hammath (El Hummâm), Taricheæ (Kerek), Sinnabris (Sennâbreh), and Magdala (Mejdel), with Kedîsh, the probable site of the Kadesh of Barak.

On the western plateau stand Adamah (Admah), Adami (Ed Damieh), Bitzaanaim (Bessûm), Lasharon (Sarôna), Shihon (Sh’aîn), and other sites of Biblical interest. Arbela, with the synagogue of Rabbi Nitai (200 B.C.), Hattîn (the ancient Zer), Yemma (the Talmudic Caphar Yama), Kefr Sabt, (Caphar Sobthi), Seiyâdeh (the Talmudic Ziadethah), Tell M’aûn (Beth Maon), Sha’arah (Beth Sharaim), and several other towns of later times swell the long list of cities. The district is full of sacred places: Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Meir, and the great Maimonides, were buried near Tiberias, and the supposed tombs of Jethro and Habakkuk are still shown on the hills above.

One site alone is conspicuous by its absence--the tomb of Nahum, which was known to the Jews in the fourteenth century, but is apparently now lost for ever. This loss is a subject of real regret, for could we light upon the tomb of Nahum, we could perhaps settle for ever the position of Capernaum, “the village of Nahum.”

The various scholars and explorers who have written since Robinson are divided into two parties, one placing Capernaum at the ruins near Khân Minieh, the other selecting the large site at Tell Hûm. The places are only two and a half miles apart, but modern disputants are not content with such wide limits. There is a point which strikes one as curious in the controversy. In all the arguments usually brought forward, no reference is made to the information which can be deduced from Jewish sources dating later than Bible times. To this information I would call attention.

Identification, properly so called, is impossible when the old name is lost; but in the case of Capernaum traces of the name may perhaps be recovered still. It is generally granted that the Talmudic Caphar Nahum, or “Village of Nahum,” was probably identical with the New Testament Capernaum, and it is on this supposition that the only philological claim of Tell Hûm is based; but the loss implied of an important radical at the commencement of the name Hûm, if it be supposed to be a corruption of Nahum, is a change of which we have scarcely any instance; moreover, Hûm in Hebrew means “black,” and still retains its original signification in Arabic. Tell Hûm was so named, no doubt, from the black basalt which covers the site. If we are to seek for an ancient corresponding title, I would suggest Caphar Ahim, a town mentioned in the Talmud with Chorazin, and famous for its wheat, as being probably the ancient name of the ruined site at Tell Hûm. Even if this town were standing in the time of Christ, there seems no more reason why its name should be mentioned in the Gospels, than that Taricheæ or Sepphoris should be so noticed, or that Chorazin should be mentioned by Josephus when speaking of the same district.

An investigation of the name Minieh is more satisfactory. In Hebrew it is derived from a root meaning “lot,” or “chance.” In Aramaic it has an identical meaning, and the Talmud often mentions the Minai, or “Diviners,” under which title were included not only every kind of sorcerer and enchanter, but also the early Jewish converts to Christianity.

Now this word Minai is intimately connected with Capernaum. In the Talmud there is a curious passage (quoted in Buxtorf’s great Lexicon) where “sinners” are defined as “sons of Caphar Nahum:” and these Huta (or sinners) we find from another passage, were none other than the Minai.

It is evident that the Jews looked on Capernaum as the head-quarters of the Christians, whom they contemptuously styled “sorcerers;” and the importance thus attached by them to that town, as a Christian centre, is in accordance with the expression in the Gospel, where Capernaum is called Our Lord’s “own city” (Matt. ix. 1).

The Talmudic doctors speak, then, of Capernaum as the city of Minai, and as such it continued to be regarded by the Jews down to the fourteenth century. In 1334 A.D. Isaac Chelo travelled from Tiberias to Caphar Anan (Kefr ’Anân), presumably by the direct road passing near the “Round Fountain.” He was shown on his way the ruins of Caphar Nahum, and in them the tomb of Nahum, and he remarks incidentally as to the place, “here formerly dwelt the Minai.” It is evident that he cannot be supposed, without twisting the narrative, to refer to any place so far from his route as is Tell Hûm. The site at Minieh would have been within a mile and a half of his road, and the name is apparently connected with Capernaum by his valuable note about the Minai.

The same connection is traced in 1616 A.D., when Quaresmius speaks of Capernaum as shown at a place called Minieh, and thus we are able to trace back an apparently unbroken Jewish tradition connecting Capernaum with the “Village of the Minai,” and with the ruined site of Minieh.

In addition to the Jewish tradition connecting Minieh with Capernaum, there is a second indication which favours that identification. Josephus speaks of the fountain which watered the plain of Gennesaret, and which was called Capharnaum. It contained a fish named Coracinus, which was also found in the Nile. There are two springs to which this account has been supposed to apply, the one two and a half miles south of Minieh, the other scarcely three quarters of a mile east of the same site. The first irrigates a great part of the plain of Gennesaret; the Coracinus has been found in it, and the waters are clear and fresh; this is called ’Ain-el-Madowerah, “the round spring.” The second is called ’Ain Tâbghah, and Dr. Tristram points out that the water being warm, brackish, and muddy, is unfit for the Coracinus, which has never as yet been found in it.

’Ain Tâbghah is not in the plain of Gennesaret. It is a spring surrounded by an octagonal reservoir, which was built up to its present height by one of the sons of the famous Dhahr-el-’Amr in the last century, and the water is thus dammed up to about fifty-two feet above the lake. An aqueduct, of masonry apparently modern, leads from the level of the reservoir to the cliff at Minieh, where is a rock-cut channel three feet deep and broad, resembling more the great rock-cutting of the Roman road at Abila, than any of the rock-cut aqueducts of the country. The water was conducted through this channel to the neighbourhood of the Khân, or just to the edge of the plain of Gennesaret. It is important to notice that the spring can only have watered the neighbourhood of Minieh after the reservoir had been built, and that it was probably always unfitted for the presence of the Coracinus.

As ’Ain Tâbghah is not in the plain of Gennesaret, and as it does not irrigate that plain--the modern aqueduct being apparently constructed to supply some mills near Minieh--it seems impossible to identify this spring with that mentioned by Josephus as the abode of the Coracinus. And even if the Tâbghah spring were that of Capharnaum, the case for Tell Hûm is not thereby strengthened, the distance from the spring to that ruin (nearly two miles) being double that from the spring to Minieh--scarcely three quarters of a mile.

In favour of the Minieh site we have then Jewish tradition, and the existence of a spring fulfilling the description of Josephus; but it must not be denied that in favour of Tell Hûm we have a Christian tradition from the fourth century downwards.

Jerome places Capernaum two miles from Chorazin. If, as seems almost certain, by the latter place he means the ruin of Kerâzeh, the measurement is exactly that to Tell Hûm.

The account of Theodorus (532 A.D.) is more explicit, and seems indeed almost conclusive as to the site of his Capernaum. Two miles from Magdala he places the Seven Fountains, where the miracle of feeding the five thousand was traditionally held to have taken place; these, as will presently appear, were probably close to Minieh; and two miles from the fountains was Capernaum, whence it was six miles to Bethsaida, on the road to Banias. These measurements seem to point to Tell Hûm as the sixth-century Capernaum.

Antoninus Martyr (600 A.D.) speaks of the great basilica in Capernaum, which it is only natural to identify with the synagogue of Tell Hûm, which seems probably (by comparison with those at Meirûn) to be the work of Simeon Bar Jochai, the Cabbalist, who lived about 120 A.D.

Arculphus (700 A.D.) visited the fountain where the five thousand were fed, and from the hill near it he saw Capernaum at no great distance on a narrow tract between the lake and the northern hills. His account thus agrees with that of Theodorus, though in itself so indefinite, that it has been brought as evidence in favour of both the sites advocated for Capernaum.

Sæwulf (1103 A.D.) proceeded along the shore for six miles, going north-east from Tiberias, to the mountain where the five thousand were fed, then called Mensa, or “table,” which had a church of St. Peter at its feet. It is evident, from the measurements, that this hill was in the neighbourhood of Minieh, where Theodorus also seems to place the scene of the miracle, as above noticed.

John of Würtzburg (about 1100 A.D.) speaks of the mountain called Mensa, with a fountain a mile distant, and Capernaum two miles away.

Fetellus (1150 A.D.) is yet more explicit. Capernaum, he says, is at the head of the lake, two miles from the descent of the mountain, and apparently three from the fountain where the five thousand were fed, which fountain would probably be ’Ain-et-Tîn, a large source, west of Minieh, and not far from the hill which Sæwulf points out as being the Mensa.

The whole of this topography is summed up by Marino Sanuto, whose valuable chart of Palestine shows us the position of the various traditional sites of the fourteenth century. On this chart the Mensa is shown in a position which is unmistakable. The valleys which run down to the plain of Gennesaret are drawn with some fidelity, and the Mensa is placed north of them; at the border of the lake, Bethsaida is shown, about in the position of Minieh, and Capernaum near that of Tell Hûm; in the letter-press the account is equally clear, Capernaum being placed near the north-east corner of the lake, and Bethsaida just where the lake begins to curve round southward.

Christian tradition points, then, to Tell Hûm as being Capernaum, but Jewish hatred has preserved the Jewish site under the opprobrious epithet of Minieh; the question is simply whether--setting aside the important testimony of Josephus--Jewish or Christian tradition is to be accepted. A single instance will be sufficient to show the comparative value of the two. Jerome speaks of Ajalon, for example, as three miles north-east of Bethel, just where the ruin of ’Alya now stands; he very honestly adds, however, that the Jews pointed out another site at a village called Alus, which, from his description, may be proved to be the modern Yalo. Recent discovery has shown that Jerome was wrong and the Jews right; and yet, further, Jerome’s site cannot possibly be reconciled with the position in which he himself correctly places Beth Horon. This is but one instance out of many in which Jerome blunders when differing from the Jews, and no impartial reader can study the Onomasticon with Jerome’s translation, without seeing that in the fourth century the topography of Palestine was only imperfectly understood.

It may be safely said that Christian tradition, though affording often valuable indications, cannot be taken as authoritative, for the chances are equal that it is correct or the reverse. When, as in the case of the Temple, of the Place of Stoning, of Joseph’s Tomb, and of Jacob’s Well, it agrees with Jewish tradition, the sites thus preserved invariably appear to be authentic, and fulfil the required indications found in the Bible; but when these two traditions are discordant, the Christian ceases to be of much value, for it is evident that the traditions of the Jews, handed down unbroken by an indigenous population which was never driven from the country, must take precedence of the foreign ecclesiastical traditions of comparatively later times, which can so often be proved self-inconsistent, or founded on a fallacy.

It is a wonderful reflection that to Jewish hatred we perhaps owe our only means of fixing one of the most interesting sites in Palestine, and that through the opprobrious epithet of Minai or “Sorcerers,” the position of Christ’s own city is handed down to the Christians of the nineteenth century.

On Saturday, 10th July, 1875, the Survey party marched to Safed, where they were endangered by a fanatical attack by the Moorish settlers of the town. The Survey was suspended in consequence; and the spread of cholera necessitated the withdrawal of the party from Palestine. The chief offenders were however imprisoned at Acre, and a sum of £270 was paid as a fine to the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.