CONVENT OF ELIJAH.

9

there appears a sea of brown and whitish mountains, most of which have pointed conical summits; and that behind these the Dead Sea lies hid, while the mountains of Moab, with their translucent tints, bound the prospect. About three quarters of an hour from the city, it is said, there stood once by the side of the road a large terebinth, under the shade of which Joseph and Mary, and the infant Jesus, rested, when they brought him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.* Near the convent of Elijah there is an old well, in whose water the wearied" wise men of the East," who had sat down beside it, first saw again the star that they had seen in the East, but had afterwards lost sight of,-on the authority of tradition, of course, and "rejoiced with exceeding great joy."+ The convent of Elijah has been built upon the place where tradition alleges that the prophet sat down, much depressed, under an olive-tree, yet was miraculously fed and strengthened by an angel. 1 Kings xix. 3 places this, however, a day's journey to the south of Beersheba, and then, in v. 5, speaks of a juniper-tree, not of an olive-tree. The convent stands on the left or east side of the road, and is surrounded with a garden and a high wall. On the opposite side of the road, too, there is a fine olive-garden, the shade of which looks pleasant contrasted with the bareness of the rest of the landscape. No sooner does one approach this point than a new scene opens out before him. A broad valley full of rocky banks and knolls runs in a transverse direction, through the hill-plateau of Judea. To the left a pretty steep path runs down between stunted olive-trees,

10

RACHEL'S TOMB-BETHLEHEM.

and then goes up on the opposite side away over the hill on which the village of Beit-jala lies, the Zelzah of 1 Sam. x. 2,* or Zela, where David caused the bones of Saul and Jonathan to be buried in the grave of Saul's father Kish. Beit-jala looks rather pleasantly from the verdant olive gardens that environ it. Suppose you want to take the nearest road to Hebron, you must keep to the path leading past the tomb of Rachel, which is situate at a full quarter of an hour's distance from the convent of Elijah; you must leave Beit-jala on the right, and follow the track straight south. Rachel's tomb makes no small appearance, with its white plastered dome, which has been often renewed, as travellers inform us; but the tomb is known with sufficient certainty to stand on the same spot where "Rachel died, and was buried, on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem," and where "Jacob set a pillar upon her grave." On the further side of this broad valley the way advances over the heights to the valley of Hebron. What now, however, keeps our attention most engrossed is Bethlehem, "not the least among the princes of Juda; for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel." It lies at not more than a half-hour's distance from the convent of Elijah, on the ridge of a range of white chalk-hills, which runs down with a steep declivity to the east. The houses of Bethlehem are distinguished from all others in South Palestine by the neatness of their architecture, and their sparkling whiteness. One may at once perceive, on looking at it from a distance, that the town

See also Joshua xviii. 28, and 2 Sam. xxi. 14. † Gen. xxxv. 16-20.

Micah v. 2; Matt. ii. 6.

BETHLEHEM.

is in a large measure inhabited by Christians; for nowhere do the Moslems keep their houses in such order. Nor is this town so very little; it makes a great show from whichever side it is seen. Nevertheless, how very different must it have looked in the days of our Lord! Possibly the houses might then have had the same conspicuously white colour as now; possibly the terraces along the hill of Bethlehem were then planted with olive-trees and vineyards, as now, and presented in winter a dry and far from promising aspect, but in summer, on the contrary, a rich covering of verdant foliage, beneath which the richest clusters of grapes lay concealed. Yet yonder convent that rises on the east side of the hill of Bethlehem, and is the most conspicuous building of all, was not then in existence. If we are to believe tradition, there was at that time only a natural grotto there, in which, according to the usual practice of the country, cattle were housed, and in that place it was that Mary "brought forth her first-born son- because there was no room for them in the inn."* Is the tradition true? This is the point on which all depends. Professor Robinson, who otherwise places little confidence in popular legends, is of opinion that there are no adequate grounds for doubting that the Bethlehem grotto was the birth-place of the Saviour, Eusebius, Jerome, Origen, and others, are the authorities who represent this to have been the case, and to them much confidence is due. Wilson,† nevertheless, justly remarks that Cyprian and Nicephorus, who are not to be rejected for the above-named writers, speak

* Luke ii. 7.

+ Lands of the Bible, vol. i. p. 392.

of the birth of Jesus as having occurred in a house, and not in a grotto; while he gives, in a note, the following remark of Maundrell:-"I cannot forbear to mention in this place an observation which is very obvious to all that visit the Holy Land, viz., that almost all passages and histories related in the Gospel are represented by them that undertake to shew where everything was done, as having been done, most of them, in grottoes; and that, even in such cases, where the condition and the circumstances of the actions themselves seem to require places of another nature. Thus, if you would see the place where St Anne was delivered of the Blessed Virgin, you are carried to a grotto; if the place of the Annunciation, it is also a grotto; if the place where the Blessed Virgin saluted Elizabeth; if that of the Baptist's, or that of our Blessed Saviour's Nativity; if that of the Agony; or that of St Peter's Repentance; or that where the Apostles made the Creed; or that of the Transfiguration; all these places are also grottoes. And, in a word, wherever you go, you find almost everything is represented as done under ground. Certainly grottoes were anciently held in great esteem ; or else they could never have been assigned, in spite of all probability, for the places in which were done so many various actions. Perhaps it was the hermits' way of living in grottoes from the fifth or sixth century downward, that has brought them ever since to be in so great reputation."-Maundrell's Travels, p. 114. As for Eusebius, Jerome, and others, Wilson frankly says, that "though they lived near the era of redemption, they must have shewn a greater deference to the inci

pient credulity and superstition of their times, which seem, wherever practicable, to enshrine themselves in grottoes, than to a fair interpretation of the plain narrative of the evangelists. . . . . The manifest discrepancy of even the oldest traditions with the sacred text in this case, is most instructive, and shews to us that the early Christians, in the true spirit of our holy faith, were more concerned with the great events which they were called to contemplate, than with the localities, however interesting in their associations, at which these events were transacted."

As almost everywhere else in Palestine, so also at Bethlehem, one must be satisfied with a general view of the prominent features of the place. Thus far is there an agreement between the Bethlehem Ephrata of Scripture and the Beit-lahm of our times. The same position on the ridge of yonder hill, fully 2400 English feet above the level of the sea, or somewhat higher than Jerusalem; the same white, soft, calcareous formation; the same environing hills; Rachel's monument also, although it has often been renewed since that time, and perhaps changed in its form, but still situated on the selfsame spot. But to look for any further agreement leads only to error and disappointment, to a superstitious veneration for earth and stone, or to offence at the desecration of certain places in our estimation considered holy.

The field of the shepherds, where the heavenly host. proclaimed God's praise, is not within sight when we look from this side. It lies behind, or to the southeast of the hill of Bethlehem. On the contrary, all here looks dry and rocky, so that one can hardly be