Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 1931. "THE EDEN OF PALESTINE"

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 74, 28 March 1931, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 1931.

"THE EDEN OF PALESTINE"

The wealth of Jericho is attested by one of those incidental references which carry more weight than general and superlative statements, especially in ancient and "tendencious" writings. No estimate is attempted in the Biblical narrative of the value or the quantity either of the property that Joshua included in his holocaust when he took the ray, or of the silver and gold that were reserved for "the treasury of the house of the Lord." But Achan's confession of the crime which had brought trouble upon the- invaders illustrates both the wealth of the city and the quality of the civilisation: — When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment and ■ two hundred shackcls of silver and a wodgc of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. None of the other Canaanitish cities captured by Joshua is credited with the wealth that is here implied. The reference to the "goodly Babylonish garment" is also interesting from the light that it throws on the commerce and the fashions of those early days. The "mantle of Shinar," which the margin shows to be the true rendering of the Hebrew phrase, was evidently a thing to have in Jericho 3000 years ago, just as now, to quote an American commentator, "one might have a gown from Paris." Though scholars have expressed surprise that so important a city as Jericho is not included among the Israelitish cities .mentioned in the Tel El Amarna tablets, Achan's confession establishes its relations with the great northern Power when the Canaanites were still in the land. And it is not unlikely that before Professor Garstang has completed his exploration of the necropolis which he was reported to have unearthed a fortnight ago, he may have linked up ancient Jericho with Egypt also. Though we are told of Moses at the age of 120 years that "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated," he may have had some difficulty in identifying all the things said to have been included in that Pisgah sight of Palestine which was all he was allowed, to have. But Jericho he could not miss; it was right under his feet. The two first mentions of the city in the Bible are in the definition of the position of Pisgah as "over against Jericho." And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to tho top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And toe Lord showed him all tho laud of Gilead unto Dan. . . . And the South and the Plain, of the Valley of Jericho, tho City of Palm Trees, unto Zoar. The City of Palm Trees presented a more beautiful sight to those aged eyes than it has presented to the acutest vision since the days of Herod. Writing in 1856, Dean Stanley thus describes in his "Sinai and Palestine" the scene upon which the successor of Moses looked after he had led his people across the river:— Beautiful as the spot is now in utter neglect, if must have been far more so when, it was first seen by the Israelite host at Gilgal. . . . They looked out over the intervening f orest^ to what was to bo the first prize of the conquest. The 'forest itself did not then consist, as now, merely of the picturesque thorn, but was a vast grove of majestic pabns, nearly three miles broad'and eight miles long. At Jericho, oven the solitary relic of the palmforest—seen as late as 1838 —has now disappeared. But, as Joshua witnessed it, it must have recalled to him the magnificent palm-groves of Egypt, such as may now be seen stretching along the shores of the Nile at Memphis. Amidst this forest—as is, to a certain extent, the case even now —would havebeen seen, stretching through its open spaces, fields of ripe corn; for it was "the time of tho barley harvest." . . . Above the topmost trees could be seea the high walls and towers of the city, which from that grove derived its proud name, "Jericho, the City of Palms," high and fenced up to Heaven —the walls over which the spies had been let down, and which were now to fall before their victorious countrymen. Though the capture of Jericho may not have been as easy, and its destruction was certainly not as complete as "The Book of Joshua" represents, it was never a great city again till the time of that powerful ruler who is best known as Herod the Wicked, but in respect of his building and his planting might well have been called Herod the Magnificent. Tlu: Jordan Valley is well described by Dr. Clieyne as "a tropical oasis sunk in the temperate zone," and at a. depth of 900 feet below Ihc level of the Mediterranean Jericho is not far from its hottest point. In "The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine." Colonel Powles records the daily shade temperature in the summer of 1918 as Varying from 109 to 120 degrees. Naked iron was so hot, nc says, that '"one literally dared not handle it," and to put one's hand on a horse's back at midday was "positively painful." But lie also speaks of a full flowing stream of delightfully cool and clear water, giving a flow of sonic 200,000 gallons a day, and of its conveyance across a small valley by a beautiful arched aqueduct of three tiers of Roman urclies in a perfect fitato of preservation. No less than nine of these aqueducts had been counted by Lawrence Olijihant in the neighbourhood, of Jeri-

cho. It was by their perfect system of irrigation that Herod and his masters, the Romans, made this hardbaked wilderness "rejoice and blossom as the rose," with results that stirred Josephus to an even more inspiring enthusiasm than Stanley's. There are in it (tho Plain of Jericho) many sorts of palm-trees, lie writes in "Tho Win's of Iho Jews," that arc watered by it ("ISlisha's fountain"), different from each other in taste and name; tho better sort of them, when they are pressed, yield an excellent kind of honey, not much inferior in sweetness to oilier honey. This country withal produces honey from bees; it'also bears that balsam which is tho most precious of all the fruits in that place, cypress-trees also, find Uioso that bear myrobalsamum, so that ho who should pronounce this place to bo divine would not bo mistaken. Sir George Adam Smilh denies Jericho's right to be regarded as one of the keys of Palestine on the ground that the enervating climate made its inhabitants as feeble as their walls proved to be in Joshua's time, and equally unable to stand up against an invader. Strategically he may be right, but commercially its position on the caravan route to Damascus and Arabia and at the junction of States gave the city a unique importance. When Antony made Cleopatra a present of it we may be sure that the lady, who, if not of "a frugal mind," certainly had an eye for business, valued it less for its beauty than for its immense revenues. And it was the size of ihesc revenues that give Zaccheus as the chief collector of them his great importance in this busy city and intensified the scandal of the orthodox when Christ, stopping at Jericho on that last long journey to Jerusalem, became his guest. In describing the setting of die visit which gives to Jericho its most sacred associations, Dr. Edersheim in his "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," presents a picture of the city fully Avorthy to be ranked with the two which we have already quoted. It is the Eden of Palestine, tho very fairyland of tho old world. And how strangely ia this gem set! Deep down in that hollowed valley, through which tortuous Jordan winds, to lose his waters in tho slimy mass of the Sea of Judgment. Tho river and the Dead Soa are nearly equidistant from the town —about six miles. Far across the river rise the mountain's of Moab, on which lies the purple and violet colouring. Towards Jerusalem and northwards stretch thoso bare limestone hills, the hiding-place of robbers along the desolate road towards tho city. There, and in the neighbouring wilderness of Judaea are also the lonely dwellings of anchorites —whilo over all this strangely varied scene has been flung the manycoloured mantle of a perpetual summer. And in tho streets of Jericho a motley throng moots; pilgrims from Galilee and Poraoa, x)riests who havo a "station" here, traders from all lands, who havo come to purchase or to sell, or aro on the great caravan road from Arabia and Damascus—robbers and anchorites, wild fanatics, soldiers, courtiers, and busy publicans—for Jericho was the central station for the collection of tax and custom, both on native produco aud on that brought from across Jordan. And yet it was a place for dreaming also, under that glorious summer sky, in those scented groves—when these many figures from far-off lands and that crowd of priests, numbering, according to tradition, half those in Jerusalem, seemed fleeting as in a vision, and (as Jewish legend had it) the sound of the Temple music came from Moriah, borne in. faint echoes on the breeze, like tho distant sound of many waters. It was through Jericho that Josus, "having entered," was passing ... He was going up to Jerusalem to meet His enemies I