BIBLE HISTORY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 84, 3 January 1930, Page 16

BIBLE HISTORY

A PALESTINE PILGRIM THE HOLY PLACES 400 ' YEARS AGO A young English book collector has just had an experience with which students are fairly familiar. Concerned especially with Italian and Jewish history, he picked up—was it in some Continental Ghetto?—an Illuminated manuscript of the sixteenth century describing and illustrating the sacred sites of the Holy Land and surrounding region. Such was its naive charm that • arrangements were made for the publication in a limited edition of a complete colour facsimile, with introduction and translation by the owner, Dr. Cecil Roth. Meanwhile events in Palestine have given the original document an unforeseen historical and political bearing. There was an ancient custom among the Jews for the pilgrim to the Holy Land to visit, besides the site of the temple, the graves of the patriarchs and the sages of former generations, beside which he would pray for the welfare of his brethren in the Diaspora : for prayer in such sacred ground was assured of notable efficacy. Now the number of pious dead (and most of the dead of ages sufficiently remote become pious in retrospect) is legion. Palestine is, moreover, a land of long and inventive memory, and there is in it a vast number of tombs of all ages. Few of these, therefore, lacked an ascription. After all. the pious: dead must have been buried somewhere, and where more likely than in a prominent unappropriated sepulchre near some place associated with his name? Similarly, any building of any antiquity readily acquired an association, more or less suppositious, with some person or event connected with the neighbourhood. All of these sites came into the itinerary of the complete pilgrim; and more than one considerate wayfarer, on his return to his native Ghetto (his garments still rent in token of mourning at the desolation he had witnessed, drew up an account, half description of his travels and half catalogue, for the benefit of followers in his tracks. The manuscript now in question accords with the common practice. Where it differs is in the returned pilgrim 1 (an Italian Jew, whose name has been obliterated from the volume) having had the inspiration to depict, as well as record, all that he had seen. • The result is unusual. It has well been described as a primitive Baedeker to .the Holy Land, fully illustrated in colour. The range of the work is considerable. There are sketches of almost every place in the pilgrim’s itinerary, in Palestine and elsewhere, to the number. of nearly one hundred. Most important is a series of representations of the Temple site and other places of peculiar sanctity in Jerusalem and the district. The pilgrim naturally included the tombs of the Patriarchs, especially at Hebron, where one of the worst of the late outrages took place. He paid, besides, much attention to the graves of the greater rabbis associated with the country both in Talmudic and medieval times, down to Maimonides; many of them (like that of Rabbi Meir of the Miracle near Tiberias) revered by Moslems as well as by Jews. Of peculiar archaeological interest are the pictures of synagogues in and near Palestine, some of which have since disappeared from our cognizance, such representations being rare in the extreme. From the following rendering some idea of the Hebrew inscriptions to the sketches may be gathered:— “To the west side is the Western Wall, whence the Presence of God has never moved: it was built by Solomon the King (upon whom be peace!). “They call it (the Gate of Benjamin) in Arabic Bab-el-Sabin, that is, the Gate of the Tribes. There is tlie conduit of the blood of the sacrifices. “Beneath the Temple are fair vaults and pillars built by David the King (upon whom be peace!), who built the foundations of the Temple. “There (Zion) is the palace of David the King (upon whom be peace!), where the Ark was kept; some df it is still standing. There the kings of the house of David are buried. “The foundations (of the Tower of David) are standing, but it has been built anew at the bidding of the King.” Photographic accuracy is not, of course, to >bo expected. The ’artist obviously had a roseate view. He took no account of the ravages of time. The buildings he portrays are as perfect, as upright, and as highly’ coloured ns those of a fairy tale. All constructions are symmetrical, all ruins made whole, everything is bright; and the eye of faith frequently supplies details not otherwise discernible. It is in this naivety, indeed, that a good deal of the charm of the work consists. Nevertheless, idealistic and (in some instances) fanciful as the rouresentations are, they bear in most cases a very real relation to actuality. It is here that the; present-day importance of the manuscript lies. There can be no doubt that the artist himself visited the Holy Land and made his sketches from personal acquaintance with the sites, which are, as a rule, easily recognisable, even though the traditions attached to them have altered. As has become increasingly evident in recent years, there is in Palestine no guarantee whatsoever that n spot with any particular association has enjoyed that distinction for long. Immemorial traditions are of mushroom growth in Oriental countries, and the reverence attached to a site is often no more than a ideal instance of a priori reasoning. In the course of a very few years hagioiogieal topography may completely alter. The Illustrations contained in the Roth Codex, fanciful though they are at times, help to show what the sites looked like and with what faith or individual they were associated over three centuries ago, when the traditions of the Holy Land still retained a good deal of their pristine purity. It is an assistance for which not only the archaeologist but also the harassed administrator is likely to feel grateful.