Part 1

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THE CHRISTMAS CITY

BETHLEHEM ACROSS THE AGES

THE

CHRISTMAS CITY

BETHLEHEM ACROSS THE AGES

BY

LEWIS GASTON LEARY, PH.D.

AUTHOR OF “THE REAL PALESTINE OF TO-DAY”

New York

STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

1911

Copyright 1911

BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911

THIS LITTLE BOOK ABOUT THE CITY OF DIVINE MOTHERHOOD IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

TO MY OWN MOTHER

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE CHARTER OF PRE-EMINENCE 17

I THE WELCOME TO BETHLEHEM 21

II THE GRAVE BY THE ROADSIDE 25

III THE GIRL FROM BEYOND JORDAN 35

IV THE BOY WHO WAS TO BE KING 43

V THE ADVENTURE OF THE WELL 51

VI THE NIGHT OF NIGHTS 59

VII THE BLOSSOMS OF MARTYRDOM 67

VIII THE STORY OF THE STABLE 73

IX THE EPITAPH OF THE LADY PAULA 83

X THE SCHOLAR IN THE CAVE 93

XI THE CHRISTMAS CORONATION 105

XII SOME BETHLEHEM LEGENDS 117

XIII THE LONG WHITE ROAD 129

XIV THE HOUSE OF BREAD 145

XV THE CHURCH WHICH IS A FORT 155

XVI THE SACRED CAVES 165

XVII THE GUARD OF THE SILVER STAR 175

XVIII THE SONG OF THE KNEELING WOMEN 181

XIX ACROSS THE AGES 187

ILLUSTRATIONS

Holy Night, _from the painting by Zenisek_ _Frontispiece_

PAGE

The Tomb of Rachel 31

The Church of the Nativity 79

The South Transept of the Church of the Nativity and one of the Stairways leading down to the Sacred Caves 97

St. Jerome and the Lion 123

The Bethlehem Road 133

Bethlehem Girls 137

Bethlehem 149

Interior of the Church of the Nativity 161

The Altar of the Nativity 169

THE CHARTER OF PRE-EMINENCE

Micah 5: 2-5

“But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting.... And he shall stand, and shall feed his flock in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God: and they shall abide; for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

“And this man shall be our peace.”

THE CHRISTMAS CITY

I

THE WELCOME TO BETHLEHEM

St. Paula, A. D. 386

“With what expressions and what language shall we set before you the cave of the Saviour? The stall where He cried as a babe can best be honored by silence; words are inadequate to speak its praise. Where are the spacious porticoes? Where are the gilded ceilings? Where are the mansions furnished by the miserable toil of doomed wretches? Where are the costly halls raised by untitled opulence for man’s vile body to walk in? Where are the roofs that intercept the sky, as if anything could be finer than the expanse of heaven? Behold, in this poor crevice of the earth the Creator of the heavens was born; here He was wrapped in swaddling clothes; here He was seen by the shepherds; here He was pointed out by the star; here He was adored by the wise men....

“In our excitement we are already hurrying to meet you.... Will the day never come when we shall together enter the Saviour’s cave?

“Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, wherein was born that Bread that came down from heaven! Hail, Ephrathah, land of fruitfulness and fertility, whose Fruit is the Lord himself.”

II

THE GRAVE BY THE ROADSIDE

The history of Bethlehem is the romance of Bethlehem; a story of love and daring, of brave men and beautiful women. We do not know that story in great detail; but here and there across the centuries, the light breaks on the little Judean town and we catch a fleeting glimpse of some scene of tender affection or chivalrous adventure. And it is striking to notice how many of these incidents involve womanly devotion and self-sacrifice, both before and after the Most Blessed of Women suffered and rejoiced in Bethlehem.

Long, long centuries before that first Christmas was dreamed of, the story of Bethlehem begins. And lo, the earliest episode has to do with a birth day.

In the yellow evening light a little band of nomadic shepherds is straggling along the dusty road past the high, gray walls of the outer fortifications of Jerusalem—not Jerusalem the Holy City, but Jerusalem the Jebusite stronghold, which is to remain heathen and hateful for a thousand years until, in that far-distant future, the arrogant fortress shall fall before the onslaughts of the mighty men of David.

At the head of the long line of herds and pack-animals and armed retainers walks the chief, Jacob ben-Isaac. A generation before, he had passed along this same ancient caravan route going northward; but no one would recognize that frightened, homesick fugitive in the grave, self-confident leader who travels southward to-day. For now he is Sheikh Jacob, full of years and riches and wisdom; Jacob the strong man, the successful man and, in his own rude way, the good man.

An hour’s journey beyond Jerusalem there appear shining on a hilltop to the left the white stone houses of Bethlehem, at the sight of which the tired herdsmen grow more cheerful and the slow-moving caravan quickens somewhat its pace; for close under those protecting walls the tribe of B’nai Jacob will shelter its flocks for the night, safe alike from wolves and from marauding Arab bands.

But just as they reach the spot where the road to Bethlehem branches off to the left from the main caravan route, there is a sudden change of plan. The hope of camping at the town is abandoned, and one of the low, black, goat-hair tents is hastily set up right by the roadside. Then there is an excited bustling among the household servants, and a time of anxious waiting for Sheikh Jacob, until Bilhah, the handmaid, puts into the old man’s arms his son Benjamin, his youngest boy, who is long to be the comfort of the father’s declining years.

Soon, however, the cries of rejoicing are hushed. From the women’s quarters comes a loud, shrill wail of grief. And before the B’nai Jacob break camp again the leader raises a heap of stones over the grave of Rachel—his Rachel—a gray-haired woman now and bent with toil, but still to him the beautiful girl whom he loved and for whom he labored and sinned those twice seven long years in the strength of his young manhood.

Many years afterward, when Benjamin was a grown man and Jacob lay dying in the distant land of Egypt, the thoughts of the homesick old sheikh dwelt on the lonely grave by the roadside.

“I buried her there on the way to Bethlehem,” he said.

Her tombstone remains “unto this day,” the Hebrew narrator adds. Indeed, even to our own day, a spot by the Bethlehem road, about a mile from the town, is pointed out as the burial place of Rachel. Probably no site in Palestine is attested by the witness of so continuous a line of historians and travelers. For many centuries the grave was marked by a pyramid of stones. The present structure, with its white dome, is only about four hundred years old. But there it stands “unto this day,” revered by Christians, Jews and Moslems, and the wandering Arabs bring their dead to be buried in its holy shadow.

Such is the first Biblical reference to Bethlehem. A son was born there! More significant still, there was a vicarious sacrifice—a laying down of one life for another.

III

THE GIRL FROM BEYOND JORDAN

In the Book of Judges are recounted the adventures which befell certain Bethlehemites in those lawless days when “there was no king in Israel and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” But the people mentioned in this history were no longer dwelling in the city of their birth; and we are glad of an excuse to pass by the tale of reckless crime and merciless vengeance. Yet here, too, if the story were not too cruel to repeat, we should find a woman dying for one whom she loved.

Even in that rough frontier period, however, there were interludes of peace and kindliness; and like the cooling breeze which blows from snow-capped Lebanon upon the burning brow of the Syrian reaper, is the sense of grateful refreshment when we turn from the heartrending monotony of scenes of cruelty and lust and treachery to the sweet, clean air of the whitening harvest fields of Boaz of Bethlehem.

* * * * *

When the two strange women entered the square there was great excitement among the chattering busy-bodies who were waiting their turn to fill their earthen jars at the public well; for one of the travelers was seen to be no other than old Naomi, who long years before had gone away across Jordan with her husband Elimelech to better their fortunes among the famous farm-lands of Moab. Now the wanderer has returned to the old home, poor and widowed and childless—no doubt to the secret gratification of the more cautious stay-at-homes, who had never dared tempt fortune by such an emigration to distant Moab, and who were still no richer and no poorer than their fathers’ fathers had been.

The other woman was younger, a foreigner, a widow, so the gossip ran, who had married Naomi’s dead son. The women at the well smiled at her quaint accent, for the dialect of Moab is quite different from that of the Bethlehem district. But many a stalwart young farmer dreamed that night of the lonely, appealing eyes of the stranger from beyond Jordan.

Even middle-aged Boaz is stirred when the next morning he finds the slender Moabitess among the women who are gleaning in his barley field; for romance is not always dead in the soul of a mature and wealthy landowner. Boaz, for all his grizzling hair, is a hero who makes us feel very warm and comfortable about the heart. He is so generous, so thoughtful, so humble in his final happiness. He has already been touched by the story of the faithfulness of the young widow who said to her mother-in-law,

“Entreat me not to leave thee, and to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

So the rich man drops a hint to his servants to let fall carelessly little heaps of grain where the new gleaner can easily gather them. He remembers the rough, dissolute character of the itinerant harvesters, and warns them to treat the young woman with respect and courtesy. At noontime he invites her to share the simple luncheon provided for the farm-hands. A few weeks later the lonely rich man discovers her affection for him, and our hearts beat in sympathy with his as, with characteristic modesty, he exclaims,

“Blessed be thou of Jehovah, my daughter: thou hast shown more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedest not young men, whether poor or rich.”

But as well might one attempt to retouch the soft colorings of the Judean sunrise as to re-tell the beautiful idyll of Ruth. Old Josephus quite misses the delicate beauty of the story; for he concludes his smug paraphrase by saying, “I was therefore obliged to recount this history of Ruth, because I had a mind to demonstrate the power of God, who, without difficulty, can raise those that are of ordinary parents to dignity and splendor.”

They lived together happily ever afterward. Even sad Naomi found a new interest in life when she took into her lonely old arms the form of little Obed. For this bit of Bethlehem history, like the first, and like the greatest later on, ends with the coming of a baby boy. And doubtless, if the whole of the tale were told us, we should some day see grandmother Ruth crooning over Obed’s son Jesse, who was to be the father of a king.

IV

THE BOY WHO WAS TO BE KING

An ancient Hebrew commentary on First Samuel says that Jesse became “a weaver of veils for the sanctuary.” This may be why the story of David and Goliath compares the giant’s staff to “a weaver’s beam.” Whatever his occupation, the grandson of rich Boaz must have been a man of some means, and influential in Bethlehem society. Also he had seven fine, stalwart sons. Indeed, he had eight sons; but, as we all know, the youngest was out tending the sheep when Samuel came.

The rough and ready era of the Judges, when every man did that which was right in his own eyes, was now gone forever. Israel had a king; and a tall, handsome figure of a man King Saul was. And for a while he was a king who defeated foreign invaders on every side. But Saul’s character could not stand the test of the sudden elevation to a position of power and responsibility. His strength lay in brilliant, spectacular efforts, rather than in a patient, well-organized rule. Quarrels arose between the jealous tribes of Israel. Conquered foes prepared new and better equipped forays against the poorly protected frontier of the new kingdom. Worst of all, Saul broke with his tried advisers and became prey to an irrational, suspicious melancholy, which prevented him from coping with dangers which a few years earlier would only have aroused his ambitious energy.

Saul had failed; so Samuel, the veteran prophet, judge and king-maker, went quietly to Bethlehem to select a new leader who should direct the troublous destinies of Israel.

It was doubtless the same farm where the young stranger from beyond Jordan had gleaned the sheaves of barley almost a century before. How proud Naomi would have been if she could have lived to see those tall great-grandchildren of Ruth and Boaz! How excited we boys used to get as we saw the seven sons of Jesse standing there in a row, and waited for old Samuel to tell us which one was to be the king! Surely it must be the eldest, Eliab, who is so tall and handsome, the very image of what Saul was in his youth. No, it is not Eliab, perhaps just because he is too much like King Saul. Abinadab is rejected and Shammah, too; and the prophet’s eye passes even more rapidly over Nethaneel and Raddai and Ozem.

Then Samuel turns to the father with a perplexed frown.

“Are these all your sons?”

“Yes—that is, all that are grown up. David is only a boy. He is taking care of the sheep this morning.”

“Call him, too,” commands Samuel. “Let Abinadab mind the sheep for a while.”

So in a few minutes David is brought in. He is fair in complexion, like so many Judean Jews to-day, but his skin is burnt to a deep tan by the sun of the sheep pasture. His eye has a captivating twinkle, and he can hardly keep from humming a tune even in the presence of the prophet.

We guessed it all the while! This is indeed a royal fellow; and the old prophet touches the thick brown hair of the shepherd lad with a strange, loving reverence as he tells him that some day he must be his people’s king.

This time I think that Josephus is probably right. For he tells us that while they were all sitting at dinner afterward, Samuel whispered in the boy’s ear “that God chose him to be their king: and exhorted him to be righteous, and obedient to His commands, for that by this means his kingdom would continue for a long time, and that his house should be of great splendor and celebrated in the world.”

Surely wise old Samuel must have given the boy some such advice as that.

V

THE ADVENTURE OF THE WELL

It was a long while, however, before David really became a king. As his frame grew into a sturdy manhood, he fought with lions and bears and Philistine champions. His sweet singing brought him to the notice of Saul and he became the king’s favorite musician, until the jealousy of the half-crazed monarch drove the young man into exile. Then for years the former shepherd lived a wild, half-brigand life among the caves of the rugged steppe-land south of Bethlehem, gradually gathering around him a company of intrepid outlaws, administering rough justice over a number of villages which put themselves under his protection, making sudden forays into the Philistine country just to the west, and again so hotly pursued by the soldiers of the relentless Saul that he was forced to seek an asylum among the enemies of Israel, who were always glad to forget old scores and welcome this dauntless free-lance and his redoubtable band of warriors.

* * * * *

It may have been during this outlaw period, or it may have been shortly after David’s accession to the throne, when his kingdom was still disorganized, and an easy prey to foreign invaders. At any rate, David and his band were hiding in the cave of Adullam, a few miles from Bethlehem. The little company was for the moment safe, but the country all around was overrun by foreign troops, and even Bethlehem, the scene of so many happy boyhood memories, was occupied by a Philistine garrison.

No wonder that David felt very weary and discouraged as he thought of the old home town in the hands of heathen soldiers. No wonder that he sometimes became irritable and petulant, and wished for things that he could not have. There was a spring right by the cave of Adullam. The inhabitants of Palestine, however, can distinguish between water drawn from different sources, in a manner which seems marvelous to our duller taste. Yet we need not believe that the water in the City of David was any better than that of the cave of Adullam in order to sympathize with the tired, homesick cry—

“Oh, that one would give me water to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!”

Then there was a little stir among David’s bodyguard. One soldier whispered to another, who nudged a third; and soon three dark forms slipped quietly away from the circle of lights around the campfire. For those rough outlaws idolized their fair-haired young leader, and they had been worried and grieved by his recent fit of melancholy.

At midnight there was a sudden rattling of the well-chain in the square by the Bethlehem gate—then a challenge from the startled Philistine sentry—a rush of soldiers along the stony street. But the three seasoned warriors slipped easily through the camp of the half-awakened army. They turned and doubled through the familiar maze of narrow, winding streets until they came to the steep terraces at the south of the town, where they dropped out of sight among the perplexing shadows of the olive orchards, through which they made their way swiftly back to the wild steppe-land and the mountain fastness where the band kept watch over their sleeping chief.

Mighty men they were, these three, and it is no wonder that their exploit became one of the favorite tales of Hebrew history. But when they offered David the water for which he had longed, there came a lump into his throat and he said, “I can’t take it. My thoughtless wish might have cost too much. It would be like drinking my brave men’s blood, to drink that for which they have endangered their lives. It is too precious to drink. I will pour it out on the ground—so—as an offering to Jehovah.”

Surely the God of Battles esteemed that simple libation as holy a thing as holocausts of bullocks and rams, and forgave many of the sins of those rough, hard outlaws because of the loving devotion they showed toward one whom He had chosen to be the deliverer of Israel.

* * * * *

An old legend says that after the mystic Star had guided the Wise Men to the Saviour’s cradle, it fell from heaven and quenched its divine fire in “David’s Well.” And surely, if the Star had fallen, it could have found no more fitting resting place than the Well by the Gate, whose water had been won by such unselfish adventure and dedicated with such tender gratitude.

VI

THE NIGHT OF NIGHTS

In the short twilight of the winter evening a husband and wife are trudging wearily along the road which winds past the high gray walls of Jerusalem—no longer Jerusalem the proud capital of the dynasty of David, but a mere provincial town of the mighty Roman Empire, whose streets are dizzy with the shouting of a dozen languages and thronged with crowds of Greeks, Romans, Persians, Armenians, Ethiopians, and travelers from even more distant lands, who rub shoulders carelessly with the fanatical Pharisees and intriguing Sadducees whose mutual bickerings make them a laughing-stock to their Gentile masters; while there sits upon the throne of David a half-breed underling Edomite, through whose diseased veins flow the cruelty and lust and cowardice and treachery of turgid streams of unspeakable ancestry—Herod, called in grim jest, “the Great.”

December in Judea is a cold, dreary month, with penetrating storms of rain and sleet. It may even snow; and sometimes the drifts lie knee-deep on that highroad from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. So they hasten their steps, these footsore travelers who have come all the way from distant Galilee at the command of their Roman rulers; for darkness is coming on, and this night, of all nights, they must find a safe, warm resting-place.

But when Bethlehem is at last reached, their cheerful anticipation changes to utter, weary dejection; for the village inn proves to be already overcrowded with other Bethlehemites who have returned to their birthplace to be registered there for the census.

Only in the stable is there room; and this is a low, dark place, half building, half cave. In front, it is walled up with rough stones; but at the rear it extends far into what seems to have been originally a natural opening in the hillside. Around three sides of the stable runs a low, level shelf, with an iron ring every few feet, to which the beasts are tied as they eat the fodder spread before them on the stone ledge. This manger is not an uncomfortable resting place for the hardy muleteers, who often sleep there on the straw. But it makes a hard bed for Joseph—and for Mary.

The sky has cleared now, and through the open door can be seen a square of twinkling stars, one of which shines with unusual brilliancy. Within, however, it is very dark; for the lantern of the night-watchman shines only a little way through the sombre shadows of the stable. The cattle and horses have finished munching the grain. The last uneasy lowing ceases. It is very still, except in one far corner where the strangers cannot sleep.

And then there is a baby’s cry. And the bright star shines with glorious radiance over David’s City. And upon the drowsy shepherds in the fields where the Moabitess gleaned, there bursts a wondrous light and the sound of heavenly singing.