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ARTICLE IX.

TOPOGRAPHY OF JERUSALEM.'

BY JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D., NEW YORK.

WHEN Josephus wrote the fifth book of his Jewish War, he intended to give so accurate a description of the site and the structure of Jerusalem, that one familiar with the city should be able to reconstruct it in imagination; and, that the stranger should also be able to construct it upon a map, and to trace the siege of Titus, from wall to wall and tower to tower, as a spectator might have done from the summit of the mount of Olives. But in sketching the battle-ground of the Roman general, the Jewish historian only projected a battle-ground for future topographers; and squadrons of Rabbinists, traditionists, archæologists, geographers, explorers, engineers, and draughtsmen, sciolists and scholars, English, German, American, have deployed about the city, from Hippicus to Antonia, assaulting chiefly the second wall of their antagonists, and waging the fiercest conflict over the Tyropoon valley. Within the last twenty years, especially, the topography of Jerusalem has become a subject not only of renewed investigation, but of elaborate and even acrimonious controversy. Travellers, by no means versed in archæology, and with no previous thought of historical investigations, are incited by the view of unquestionable remains of the Jewish and the Roman periods of the city, to put forth descriptions and theories of its ancient structure with all the assurance and profundity of antiquarian research; and thus the public mind is perplexed and divided according to the seeming competence and authority of the witnesses. Others have visited the city with partisan theo

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1 The City of the Great King; or Jerusalem as it was, as it is, and as it is to be. By J. T. Barclay, M. D., Missionary to Jerusalem. Philadelphia: James Challen and Sons, and J. B. Lippincott and Co.

ries as to its principal points of historic interest, only to confirm themselves in preconceived opinions. Geographers have attempted, in the quiet of the study, to reconstruct upon paper the city as described by Josephus, and to harmonize with his detailed account the briefer allusions of other ancient writers, and the conflicting representations of travellers; but in so doing they have only provided new materials for controversy. Indeed, as Isaac Taylor has saidin making what at first view appears to be so simple a thing as a Plan of Ancient Jerusalem, one must "take position upon a battle-field; and he must prepare himself to defend, by all available means, every inch of that position; he must, in fact, make himself a party in an eager controversy, which has enlisted, and which continues to enlist, feelings and prepossessions of no ordinary depth and intensity.” 1

This diversity and controversy are owing, in part, to occasional obscurities and discrepancies in Josephus himself; to the impossibility of locating the gates and towers of Josephus in entire conformity with the outline of the city walls and gates as given by Nehemiah; to the modifications of the natural surface of the city, caused by the accumulation of debris and by military engineering; but more than all to certain ecclesiastical questions, which traditionists exalt above all the evidences of natural topography, of archæology, and of Jewish and Roman history. An illustration of this ecclesiastical spirit occurs in the Article on Jerusalem in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, from the pen of Rev. George Williams, B. D., of Cambridge University. The writer states without qualification, as if it were a point established in the topography of the Holy City, that "the valley of the Tyropoon meets the valley of Hinnom at the pool of Siloam, very near its junction with the valley of Jehoshaphat" [thus far all topographers do agree], "and can be distinctly traced through the city along the west side of the temple enclosure to the Damascus gate, where it opens into a small plain." The statement in italics assumes

Traill's Josephus, Note cxxi.

one of the most disputed points in the topography of Jerusalem; but it favors the traditional site of the holy sepulchre.1

Dr. Barclay's remark as to the definite course of the wall of circumvallation built by Titus, applies with equal force to the second wall and the true course of the Tyropoon: "To mark out on paper a line of intrenchment thirty-nine stadia in length, is indeed such a very easy matter that it may be effected in the study, to the entire satisfaction of the designer and the general reader; but to adapt it to the actual state of the localities and all the requirements and conditions of the case, is quite a different thing, and can only be accomplished by oft-repeated personal examination of the ground." It is mainly as the most recent and thorough explorer of Jerusalem, that Dr. Barclay himself is entitled to be heard above the conflicting assertions of travellers and the controversies of scholars who have read more than they have seen of the Holy City. In the month of February, 1851, Dr. Barclay took up his residence at Jerusalem, as a missionary to the Jews of Palestine. He went in the twofold capacity of a missionary-physician and a superintendent of such moral and educational appliances as should seem adapted to "ameliorate the condition of the Jews." Though representing a denomination of Christians who are sometimes thought to lay more stress upon the mode of baptism than upon certain cardinal doctrines of grace,3 Dr. B. ex

Mr. Williams advocates this in "The Holy City."

2 Page 142.

The Campbellite Baptists. The points upon which this sect differ from other Christians are chiefly these: They admit the proper personality of the Holy Spirit, but hold that in conversion the Spirit operates through the truth only. They make regeneration in a sense identical with immersion, "born of water." But they hold that this is the last of a series of acts and properly includes or implies all that precede it. First in order is conversion by the Spirit through the truth; this consists in, and is revealed by, a belief in Christ; after this faith the subject is immersed and so regenerated. He is then "begotten of the Spirit," i. e he believes the truth of Christ, and is "born of water," i. e. immersed. A declarative faith in Christ is made of more account than any inward "experience" as evidence of conversion.

The Campbellites are often called Arians; but their departure from the received Orthodox view of the Trinity is more in the line of Sabellius than of

presses his own belief in the main points of the evangelical system, and his regard for faith above ordinances. He distinctly recognizes "the great expiatory sacrifice of the Son of God," the "adorable Redeemer;" he speaks of Luke as a "Heaven-guided historiographer;" he declares that his object as a missionary is "not merely to establish a congregation of immersed professors of the Protestant religion;" and, while he is at variance with the whole scheme of the Anglo-Prussian bishopric at Jerusalem, he seems to be much in earnest to win souls to a "saving knowledge and reception of the truth as it is in Jesus."

Dr. Barclay remained at his post, almost without interruption, for three and a half years. In that time, besides gaining a familiar knowledge of people and languages, he acquired much personal influence even in high quarters, by his skilful treatment of disease, and his kind offices to the poor and the sick. This gave him facilities for examining the topography of ancient Jerusalem, which no occasional visitor could ever enjoy. The Haram esh-Sherif, the substructions of El-Aksa, Ain Hammam es-Shefa, the subterranean quarries, and other points hitherto guarded with Mohammedan superstition or jealousy, or visited stealthily by adventurous explorers, were opened to his repeated and careful inspection, either by the connivance of high officials, or through his own energy, perseverance, and skill. Though deficient in the niceties of archæology, and in those minutia of scholarship which accredit the labors of Tobler, Krafft, and Robinson, Dr. Barclay was an enthusiastic explorer, and

Arius. Strictly speaking, it is the old Monarchian view; that the Logos was divine and uncreated but became the "Son of God" only by entering into the flesh.

A statement of the Campbellite theory by M. E. Land, approved by Alexander Campbell, gives the following points:

1. "Christ in the state in which He existed as the Word, was as uncreated as the God with whom he existed."

2. "In his uncreated nature he is as perfectly divine, in the most essential sense of the term, as the Father who sent him."

3. "But he had no existence as the Son of God until born of Mary."

The Campbellites believe that the death of Christ made an expiation for sin.

an acute, and in the main accurate, observer. Dr. Robinson alludes to his researches in terms of respect.

The position of the Mission House, on the very brink of the steep eastern brow of Zion, is in itself favorable to the study of the antiquities of the city. The roof of the building commands a view of the Haram upon the opposite side of the Tyropoon, and directly beneath is the fragment of the ancient bridge over the valley, identified by Dr. Robinson. The causeway across the valley is also in view from the same point. The advantage of such a position for taking the bearings of objects, and the facilities which the possession of such a site affords for the inspection of surrounding localities, can be appreciated only by those who have enjoyed the view from the house-top or from the lofty windows of the dispensary. Recalling the beauties of the prospect and the tender associations of the worship of Him who is King in Zion, upon his holy hill, we can readily concede to Dr. Barclay much that he claims for the mission premises in this glowing description.

The Jews' Quarter. Perched upon a bold, rocky promontory of Mount Zion, at an elevation of ninety-one feet above the present level of the Tyropœon, is a cluster of rudely constructed houses, now occupied as the premises of the American Christian Mission. This spot is undoubtedly one of the most notable localities about the Holy City, though heretofore it has failed to attract the attention not only of tourists and pilgrims, but of professed antiquarians and topographers. It is the north-eastern-most projection of "the Holy Hill Zion," and is distant only one hundred and eighteen yards from the western wall of the Haram-es-Sheriff, which being identical in position with that of the western cloister of the Temple, defines the width of the Tyropoon Valley at that spot, between Mount Moriah and Mount Zion - the Mugrabin Quarter of the city.

This commanding situation must ever have been a very important one, whether in the possession of heathen, Jew, or Christian; and accordingly we learn from Josephus that it was, successively, the site of the royal palaces of the Davidian, Asmonean, and Herodian dynasties of Israel. Herod the Great, however, required a larger area for the display of his magnificent designs; and hence he erected another, and perhaps still more sumptuous, palace near the Tower of Hippicus (which he seems mainly to have occupied), on the site of the present splendid Anglican Church and Consulate, quite on the opposite side of the city. But not only did Herod Agrippa (called king) have his magnificent palace on this identical spot,

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