Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister

“ Indeed the 19th century was disgraced, in Palestine, by a feverish “scramble” for sacred sites, in which the most rudimentary ethics of Christianity were forgotten in the all-mastering desire to oust rival sects and orders. Bribery, fraud, even violence, have in turn been employed to serve the end in view: and churches, chapels and monasteries, most of them in the worst architectural taste, have sprung up like mushrooms over the surface of the country, and are perpetuating the memory of pseudo-sanctuaries which from every point of view were best relegated to oblivion. ”

“ Trading intercommunication in the Levant and the constant passage to and fro of merchants brought Egypt to the front, and, in an age of archaic revival, the effort was made to re-establish the ancient supremacy over Palestine and Syria. ”

“ The Holy Places.—To the vast majority of civilized humanity, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, the religious interest of the associations of Palestine predominates over every other, and at all ages has attracted pilgrims to its shrines. We need not here do more than allude to the centralization of Jewish ideas and aspirations in Jerusalem, especially in the holy rock on which tradition (and probably textual corruption) have placed the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, and over which the Most Holy Place of the Temple stood. ”

“ Antiochus had spent his youth at Rome as a hostage, and the death of Seleucus found him filling the office of war minister at Athens. The Hellenistic Jews were, therefore, his natural allies, and allies were very necessary to him if he was to establish himself in Syria. Onias had proceeded to Antioch to explain the disorder and bloodshed due to Jason’s followers, and so Jason, high priest of the Jews by grace of Antiochus, had his way. The existing privileges, which the Jews owed to their ambassador to Rome, were thrust aside. ”

“ Different views as regards history (e.g. invasions, tribal movements, rival kingdoms) and religion (e.g. the Yahweh of Kadesh, Sinai, Jerusalem, &c.) , and different priestly, prophetical and popular ideas are only to be expected, considering the character of Palestinian population. Hence to weave the data into a single historical outline or into an orderly evolution of thought is to overlook the probability of bona fide divergences of tradition and to assume that more rudimentary or primitive thought was excluded by the admitted development of religious-social ideals. ”

“ Indeed, since the Samaritans subsequently accepted the Pentateuch, and claimed to inherit the ancestral traditions of the Israelite tribes, it is of no little value in the study of Palestinian history to observe the manner in which this people of singularly mixed origin so thoroughly assimilated itself to the land and at first was virtually a Jewish sect. But Samaria was not the only land to suffer. Judah, towards the close of the 8th century, was obviously very closely bound up with Philistia, Edom and Egypt ”

“ Investigation must concern itself not with what was possibly or probably known, but with what is actually presented. The fact remains that when accepted tradition conflicts with more reliable evidence it stands upon a level by itself; [75] and it is certain that a compilation based upon the knowledge which modern research—whether in the exact sciences or in history—has gained would have neither meaning for nor influence upon the people whom it was desired to instruct. ”

“ Biblical history itself recognizes in the times of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah and Ezra the commencement of a new era, and although only too much remains obscure we have in these centuries a series of vicissitudes which separate the old Palestine of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian supremacy from the land which was about to enter the circle of Greek and Roman civilization. ”

“ His Jewish friends, first Jason and then Menelaus, had been enlightened enough to throw off their prejudices, and, so far as he could know, they represented the majority of the Jews. Zeus was for him the supreme god of the Greek pantheon, and the syncretism, which he suggested for the sake of uniformity in his empire, assuredly involved no indignity to the only God of the Jews. At Athens Antiochus began to build a vast temple of Zeus Olympius, in place of one begun by Peisistratus ”

“ During the 7th century new movements were coming from Arabia, and tribes growing ever more restless made an invasion east of the Jordan through Edom, Moab and Ammon. Although they were repulsed, this awakening of a land which has so often fed Palestine and Syria, when viewed with the increasing weakness of Assyria, and subsequent vicissitudes in the history of the Edomites, Nabataeans and East Jordan tribes, forbids us to treat the invasion as an isolated raid. ”

“ No site, no legend, is too impossible for the unquestioning faith of these simple-minded men and women. And by comparing one record with another, we can follow the multiplication of “holy places,” and sometimes can even see them being shifted from one spot to another, as the centuries pass. Not one of these devout souls had any shadow of suspicion that, except natural features (such as the Mount of Olives, the Jordan, Ebal, Gerizim, &c.) ”

“ Thus Palestine lay at the gate of Arabia and Egypt, and at the tail end of a number of small states stretching up into Asia Minor; it was encircled by the famous ancient civilizations of Babylonia, Assyria, South Arabia and Egypt, of the Hittites of Asia Minor, and of the Aegean peoples. Consequently its history cannot be isolated from that of the surrounding lands. Recent research in bringing to light considerable portions of long-forgotten ages is revolutionizing those impressions which were based upon the Old Testament—the sacred writings of a small fraction of this great area ”

“ The bordering regions, moreover, are as varied in character as is the country itself—sea to the west, a mountainous and sandy desert to the south, a lofty steppe plateau to the east, and the great masses of Lebanon to the north. In describing the general physical features of the country, the most significant point to notice is that (though it falls westward to the sea and rises eastward to an elevated plain) the rise from west to east is not continuous, but is sharply interrupted by the deep fissure of the Ghor or Jordan valley ”

“ Its position gives the key to its history. Along the west coast ran the great road for traders and for the campaigns which have made the land famous. The seaports (more especially in Syria, including Phoenicia) , were well known to the pirates, traders and sea-powers of the Levant. The southernmost, Gaza, was joined by a road to the mixed peoples of the Egyptian Delta, and was also the port of the Arabian caravans. Arabia, in its turn, opens out into both Babylonia and Palestine, and a familiar route skirted the desert east of the Jordan into Syria to Damascus and Hamath. ”

“ There were kings of Syria in the train of Alexander who thought he was mad when he bowed before the high priest. We may draw the inference that they formed an insignificant item in the population of a small province of the Persian Empire, and yet doubt whether they did actually refuse—alone of all the inhabitants of Palestine—to submit to the conqueror of the whole. At any rate they came into line with the rest of Syria and were included in the province of Coele-Syria, which extended from the Taurus and Lebanon range to Egypt. ”

“ Unfortunately, there is very little evidence in the biblical history for the subsequent career of Samaria, but it is clear that the old Israel of the dynasties of Omri and Jehu received crushing blows. The fact that among the new settlers were desert tribes, suggests the introduction, not merely of a simpler culture, but also of simpler groups of ideas. In the nature of the case, as time elapsed the new population must have taken root as securely as—one must conclude—the invading Israelites had done some centuries earlier. ”

“ The biblical history is a “canonical” history which looks back to the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, the law-giving and the covenant with Yahweh at Sinai, the conquest of Palestine by the Israelite tribes, the monarchy, the rival kingdoms, the fall and exile of the northern tribes, and, later, of the southern (Judah) , and the reconstructions of Judah in the times of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes. ”

“ Too little is known of the north as a factor in Palestinian development to allow hasty inferences, but it is certainly noteworthy, at all events, that the names Amor and Ḥatti appear to move downwards, and that “Hittite” is applied to Palestine and Philistia by the Assyrians, and to Hebron in the Old Testament, and that Ezekiel (xvi. 3) calls Canaanite Jerusalem the offspring of an Amorite and a Hittite. It is to be observed, however, that the meaning of geographical and ethnical terms for culture in general must be properly tested—the term “Phoenician” is a conspicuous case in point. ”

“ The names are radically identical; but the hill is merely a salt-ridge 600 ft. high and 7 m. long, and cannot possibly represent an ancient city. The most that can be said the names have lingered in the Jordan valley in a vague tradition—very likely helped by, if not entirely due to, literary accounts of the catastrophe—just as has the name of Lot himself in the Arab name of the Dead Sea. The catastrophe has been explained as a volcanic eruption, or an explosive outburst of gas and oil stored and accumulating at high pressure. ”

“ The extraordinary development of Jewish colonization has since 1870 effected a revolution in the balance of population in some parts of the country, notably in Jerusalem. There are few residents in the country from the more eastern parts of Asia—if we except the Turkoman settlements in the Jaulan, a number of Persians, and a fairly large Afghan colony that since 1905 has established itself in Jaffa. The Mutāwileh (Motawila) , who form the majority of the inhabitants of the villages north-west of Galilee, are probably long-settled immigrants from Persia. ”

“ These centuries represent an age which the Jewish historians have partly ignored (as regards Samaria) and partly obscured (as regards the return from exile and the reconstruction of Judah) ; but since this age stands at the head of an historical development which leads on to Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism, it is necessary to turn from Palestine as a land in order to notice more particularly certain features of the Old Testament upon which the foregoing evidence directly bears. ”

“ Menelaus persuaded the deputy of Antiochus, who was dealing with a revolt at Tarsus, to put Onias to death. Antiochus, on his return, had his deputy executed and wept for the dead Onias. But Menelaus managed to retain his position, and his accusers were put to death. Antiochus could pity Onias, who had been tempted from the sanctuary at Daphne, but he needed an ally in Jerusalem—and money. Then, during the first or second invasion of Egypt, Jason, hearing that Antiochus was dead, returned suddenly and massacred all the followers of Menelaus who did not take refuge in the citadel. ”

“ The rumour of a pretender to the throne saved them from destruction, and they capitulated, exchanging the strongholds they had for their lives. At any rate the time of compulsory fusion with the Greeks was ended once for all. In 162 B.C. Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, escaped from Rome and was proclaimed king. Like Antiochus Epiphanes, who also had spent his youth as a hostage in Rome, he was inclined to listen to the Hellenizing Jews, whom he found assembled in full force at Antioch, and to support them against Judas, who was now supreme in Judaea. ”

“ Western Palestine is a region intersected by groups of mountain peaks and ranges, forming a southern extension of the Lebanon system and running southward till they finally lose themselves in the desert. The watershed of this system is so placed that from two-thirds to three-fourths of the country is on its western side. This fact, taken in connexion with the great depth of the depression of the Ghor below the Mediterranean—already 682 ft. at the Sea of Galilee—has a peculiar effect on the configuration of the country. ”

“ It is a matter of dispute whether Hauran should be included within Palestine proper, accepting its definition as the “ancient Hebrew territory.” It is a large volcanic region, entirely covered with lava and other igneous rocks. Two remarkable rows of these run in lines from north to south, through the region of the Jaulan parallel to the Ghor, and from a long distance are conspicuous features in the landscape. The soil is fertile, and there are many remains of ancient wealth and civilization scattered over its surface. ”

“ A god “Most High” (‛elyōn) was perhaps already known in Hamath. [25] The “Baal of Heaven,” reminiscent of the Egyptian title “lord of heaven,” given long before to Resheph, appears in the pantheon of Tyre (c. 677) . The reference here is probably to the inveterate Hadad who, in his Aramaean form Ramman (Rimmon) , is found in Palestine. Among the Hebrews, Yahweh, some of whose features associate him with thunder, lightning and storm, and with the gifts of the earth, has now become the national god, like the Moabite Chemosh or the Ammonite Milcolm. (For the Edomite gods, see Edom.) ”