but makes this only the termination of the rocky ridge sometimes called mount Gihon. The precise difference between Williams and Robinson-whom we select as the strongest representatives of two opposing theories - may be comprehended at a glance upon any map of modern Jerusalem. Both agree that Zion, so far as it is enclosed within the present wall, is the area of the Armenian and Jewish quarters. Both also agree that the Temple-hill, sometimes called Moriah, is represented by the present enclosure of the Haram es-Sherif, or mosque of Omar. But Robinson identifies Acra mainly with the modern Christian quarter, while Williams makes Acra identical with the Mohammedan quarter-the Bezetha of Robinson, and leaves the Christian quarter entirely without the plot of the city as it stood in the time of Christ. But Williams's theory of Acra is disproved by the course given to the second wall, upon his own map, as compared with the testimony of the Jewish historian. Josephus states that "the city was built upon two hills, face to face (ȧντIπρóσwжоs), separated by an intervening valley, at which, one upon another, the houses ended." This accords with the terse and graphic picture of Tacitus. "Duos colles, immensum editos, claudebant muri per artem obliqui, aut introrsus sinuati, ut latera oppugnantium ad ictus patescerent." 1 The valley which separated the hill of the upper city (Zion) from that of the lower (Acra), Josephus calls the Ty ropœon. But Mr. Williams, while he rejects Robinson's theory of Acra, yet runs his second wall across the slope of that same hill, and across what he calls the Tyropoon, so that his Tyropoon nowhere separates Zion from Acra, the upper city" from the "lower," but divides the Lower. Neither do Zion and his Acra come, anywhere, face to face on opposite sides of his Tyropoon valley; only the northeastern corner of the upper city stands diagonally opposite to the south-western corner of the lower city, at a considerable distance from it. sketched by Josephus. This cannot meet the bold outline 'Hist. V. 11. directly north of Zion, lying between the Jaffa and Damascus gates was Acra. He maintains that the Tyropœon ran from the Damascus gate along the eastern side of that hill and the eastern side of Zion, down to the pool of Siloam. He avers that "during fourteen months' residence in Jerusalem, he could never find any traces of the valley which Dr. Robinson calls the Tyropoon," viz. a valley running eastward from the Jaffa gate between Zion and the present Christian quarter. And yet Williams draws his own line of the second wall midway across this very hill which he declares is not Acra, and carries it along on the western side of what he calls the Tyropoon, and thus throws that valley entirely within the Lower city, except where it separates Zion from Moriah. But Josephus describes this valley as between the Upper city and the Lower, which confronted each other across its chasm. There are other points in which Mr. Williams is inconsistent with Josephus and with himself. When he wishes to locate the Tyropcon according to his theory, he asserts that there are "no traces of a valley" from the Jaffa gate eastward; but when his object is to locate the gate Gennath, according to his theory of the second wall, far to the east of Hippicus, he makes much of the statement of Josephus that "the northern brow of Zion was a rocky eminence thirty cubits high;" which of course implies a depression beneath the brow of the hill. For another purpose he alludes to the fact that in making excavations for the foundation of the English church near the Jaffa gate, rubbish was removed to the depth of forty feet. This surely is one trace of a valley in that quarter. The old chapel of St. John, exhumed from a depth of thirty feet below the Jaffa-gate street, proves the same thing. The conjecture which Mr. Williams makes as to the course of the second wall, is also at variance with Josephus. He says "Let us suppose the gate Gennath in the north ern wall of Zion somewhere near the entrance to the bazaars from the west, and the second wall commencing here 1 Holy City, p. 261. to run in a northerly direction..... it will be carried along a sloping ground, which is a disadvantage; but the Tyropoon must be crossed; and since Acra is north of Zion, the wall must run in that direction along the declivity to the upper and more shallow part of the valley, near the Damascus gate; . . . . . it here reached the hill of Acra, round which it was carried until it met the wall of the fortress of Antonia." 1 Compare with this the statement of Josephus. "The city was built ȧvτπρóσwπоs, one part facing the other, upon two hills, separated by a valley between; at which, compactly built together, the houses ended." But Mr. Williams, instead of placing Acra face to face with Zion upon the opposite side of the Tyropoon, carries the second wall northward from the northern wall of Zion to the Damascus gate, before it strikes the Tyropoon or the hill of Acra; he locates that hill upon the east of the Tyropoon, so that this valley divides Acra from "the rocky ridge of Gihon," but at no point separates it from Zion. Moreover Josephus informs us expressly that the Lower city was commensurate with Acra; and that its buildings terminated on the edge of the Tyropoon opposite to the houses of Zion or the Upper city. But Mr. Williams, on his map and by the course of his second wall, includes the upper part of the Tyropœon within the Lower city, which he extends over "the rocky ridge of Gihon," as well as over the opposite promontory, which he designates "the hill of Acra." He thus interposes, between Acra and Zion, (1) the depression eastward from the Jaffa gate, which Dr. Robinson proves to have existed between Zion and the hill directly to the north, (2) the hill which Mr. Williams calls the termination of the broad swell of Gihon, and (3) the valley running southward from the Damascus gate, which he calls the Tyropoon; these three marked features, instead of the one valley of Josephus, the Tyropoon, on the opposite sides of which the two divisions of the city, the Upper on Zion and the Lower on Acra, stood "fronting each other." Mr. Williams's theory of Acra must 1 Holy City, p. 285. be dismissed as entirely without foundation. It is to be regretted that this is presented in Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography as if it were the established or conceded view of the position of the second hill. Dr. Tobler finds Acra in a subdivision of what is commonly called Zion. According to him the depression between the Armenian and the Jewish quarters answers to the Tyropœon, and within the modern walls the Upper city is to be sought mainly in the present Armenian quarter, and the Lower city in the Jewish quarter. The western half of Zion was the Upper city; the eastern half, nearest the temple, was the Lower. The profound learning of Dr. Tobler, and his patient research upon the ground, command our high respect. But his theory is impracticable upon any fair interpretation of Josephus. The depression between the Armenian and the Jewish quarters, could never have formed so marked a feature as to give the appearance of a two-hilled city to this bi-fronted hill of Zion;2 and the supposition that Acra intervened between Zion and the temple-mount, contradicts the express testimony of Josephus that a bridge joined "the Upper city to the temple: kai yépupa ovvάπтоνσа τ ieρ тην аvw пóмv." B. J. 6. 6. 2. Moreover, the theory of Tobler greatly contracts the area of the city. If the location of Acra by Dr. Robinson be incorrect, there seems to be no alternative but that resorted to by Thrupp, viz. to locate Acra upon the east of the Tyropœon, opposite the eastern front of Zion, now the Jews' quarter; thus making it identical with the temple-hill. This writer, in common with Robinson and Williams, identifies Zion with the Armenian and Jewish quarters of the present city and the southern brow of the hill upon which these are built, 1 Topographie von Jerusalem, I. 34, Berlin, 1853. 2 Dr. Tobler in his Plan represents this division as marked: "Die Oberstadt oder der Obermarkt entspricht der heutigen Westhälfte Zions, die sich ebenfalls mehr gerade in die Länge zieht oder von Süd nach Nord eine längliche Form hat. Ich verweise deshalb auf meinen Plan von Jerusalem. Wie die Form des Hügels mit der Oberstadt bezeichnet ist, so auch diejenige des die Unterstadt tragenden Hügels; eine rundliche, fast vollmondige Form, im Gegensaze zur länglichen... Die Westhälfte Zions die obere, die Osthälfte die untere," etc. now lying without the walls; Acra is the ridge of the Haram, beginning near the present Stephen's gate and extending southward to the terminus of the ridge below the village of Silwân on the east and the fountain of Siloam on the west; the third hill is the hill-part of the Mohammedan quarter of the modern city, lying to the north of the Haramesh-Sherif (the Bezetha of Robinson, Ritter, and others), and Bezetha is to be found in "the ridge of the modern Hâret Bâb el-Hitta," the greater part of which is excluded by the modern wall. This theory excludes from the city, in the time of Christ, the whole of the present Christian quarter, and that section of the Mohammedan quarter which lies westward of the street running down from the Damascus gate. By this plan of the city, Mr. Thrupp brings Acra and Zion face to face upon opposite sides of the Tyropoon, which he identifies with the Moors' quarter of the modern city; and by making Acra the temple-hill, he can connect the temple with the Upper city by a bridge over the valley, according to Josephus. But his plan contradicts the Jewish historian at one explicit point of his description, and can only be defended by a new and forced construction of his account of the third hill. Having described Acra as the hill of the Lower city, Josephus immediately adds: "Over against this was a third hill, naturally lower than Acra, and formerly separated from it by another broad ravine. Afterwards, however, when the Asmoneans were in power, desiring to connect the city with the temple, they filled in this ravine, and, cutting down the summit of Acra, they reduced its elevation, so that the temple might appear above it." Mr. Thrupp contends that the temple stood upon the second hill, viz. Acra; that the "third hill" lay to the north of the line of the Via Dolorosa, and that the northward portion of the temple-hill itself - the second hill or Acrawas levelled, in order that the temple, standing upon Acra, and already visible from Zion opposite, might also be made visible from the third hill on the north, and thus "be made 1 Ancient Jerusalem by Joseph Francis Thrupp, M. A. Cambridge, 1855. pp. 35-40. |