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The Bible As History
by Werner Keller

Contents

in 4 Parts
Part 1 - to page 186
Part 2 - to page 276
Part 3- to page 399
Part 4- Pictures & Figures
still being populated with illustrations

PAGE
CHAPTER
15

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

19 INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW REVISED EDITION
21 INTRODUCTI0N TO THE FIRST EDITION
DIGGING UP THE OLD TESTAMENT
I -- The coming of the Patriarchs from Abraham to Jacob
27 Chapter 1 -- IN THE "FERTILE CRESCENT" -- 4,000 years ago - Continents asleep - The great cradle of our civilisation - Culture in the Ancient East - Staged Towers and Pyramids had been built long before - Giant plantations on the banks of canals - Arab tribes attack from the desert.
31 Chapter 2 - UR OF THE CHALDEES -- Station on the Bagdad railway - A Staged Tower of bricks - Ruins with Biblical names - Archaeologists in search of scriptural sites - A consul with a pick - The archaeologist on the throne of Babylon - Expedition to Tell al Muqayyar - History books from rubble - Tax receipts on clay - Was Abraham a city dweller?
43 Chapter 3 -- DIGGING UP THE FLOOD -- The graves of the Sumerian kings - A puzzling layer of clay - Traces of the Flood under desert sands - A catastrophic flood about 4000 B.C.
50 Chapter 4 -- A FLOOD-STORY FROM OLD BABYLONIA -- The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible - Twelve clay tablets from Nineveh - An ancient epic from the library of Ashurbanipal - Utnapishtim, a Sumerian Noah? - The secret of Mt. Ararat - A gigantic ship in a museum of ice - Expeditions in quest of the Ark.
59 Chapter 5 -- ABRAHAM LIVED IN THE KINGDOM OF MARI -- A stone corpse - Lieut. Cabane reports a find - A Syrian Tell has important visitors - King Lamgi-Mari introduces himself - Professor
Parrot discovers an unknown empire - A Royal Palace with 260 apartments and courtyards - 23,600 clay tablets have survived for 4,000 years - Desert police report the "Benjamites" - Rebecca's home - A flourishing city - And Nuzi ... ?
70

Chapter 6 -- THE LONG JOURNEY TO CANAAN -- 600 miles by the caravan route - Nowadays four visas are required - The land of purple - Punitive expeditions against "Sand-dwellers" - Proud seaports with a troublesome hinterland - An Egyptian best-seller aboutCanaan - Sinuhe praises the Good Land - Jerusalem on magic vases - Strongholds - Sellin finds Shechem - Abraham chooses the high road.

82 Chapter 7 -- ABRAHAM AND LOT IN THE LAND OF PURPLE -- Famine in Canaan - A Family Portrait of the patriarchal age - Permit of access to the Nile grazings - The mystery of Sodom and Gomorrah - Mr. Lynch investigates the Dead Sea - The great fissure - Did the Vale of Siddim take a headlong plunge? - Pillars of salt at Jebel Usdum.

I I -- In the Realm of the Pharaohs From Joseph to Moses

97 Chapter 8 -- JOSEPH IN EGYPT -- Had Potiphar a prototype? - The Orbiney Papyrus - Hyksos rulers on the Nile - Joseph, official of an occupying power - Corn silos, an Egyptian patent - Evidence of seven years famine - Assignments to Goshen - "Bahr Yusuf": Joseph's Canal? - "Jacob-Her" on scarabs.
108 Chapter 9 -- FOUR HUNDRED YEARS' SILENCE -- Reawakening on the Nile - Thebes instigates revolt - Rout of the Hyksos - Egypt becomes a world power - Indian civilisation in Mitanni - The "Sons of Heth" on the Halys - Pharaoh's widow in quest of a mate - The first non-aggression pact in the world - Hittite bridal procession through Canaan.
118 Chapter 10 -- FORCED LABOUR IN PITHOM AND RAAMSES -- Joseph had died a long time ago - A story in pictures from a prince's tomb - Pithom labour camp in Egyptian texts - The royal seat is transferred to the delta - Ramesses II - A builder's enthusiasm and vanity lead to a fraud - Montet unearths the bond -city of Raamses - Moses wrote his name "MS" - A Mesopotamian story about a baby in the bulrushes - Moses emigrates to Midian - Plagues are no strangers to Egypt.
III -- Fory Years in the Wilderness From the Nile to the Jordan
125 Chapter 11 -- ON THE ROAD TO SINAI -- Departure from Raamses - Two possible sites for the "Miracle of the Sea" - Traces of fords beside the Suez Canal - Three days without water - Swarms of quails at the migration season - An expedition clears up the mystery of manna - Egyptian mining centre in Sinai - The alphabet at the Temple of Hathor.
135

Chapter 12 -- AT THE MOUNTAIN OF MOSES -- The "Pearl of Sinai" - Israel was 6,ooo strong - Striking water from rock - Practical experience in desert life - Was the Burning Bush a gas-plant? -The valley of the monks and hermits - The great miracle.

142 Chapter 13 -- UNDER DESERT SKIES -- Sinai -150 miles to Kadesh - Two springs at the chief halting-place - Scouts sent out to Hebron - The bunch of grapes was a vine - Foreign races - Peasant woman finds the Amarna Tablets - Letters from Indo-Aryan Canaanite princes - Scouts' report leads to a new decision - The "wilderness" of the Bible was steppe.
151 Chapter 14 -- ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE PROMISED LAND -- Rise of a new generation - Change of plan - Transit permit through Edom requested - Pressing on through Transjordan - King Og's "iron bedstead" - Dolmen discovered near Amman - Moab sends its daughters - Baal worship in Canaan - Moses sees the Promised Land - Camping opposite Jericho.

IV -- The Battle for the Promised Land From Joshua to Saul

157 Chapter 15 -- ISRAEL INVADES -- The world about 1200 B.C. - The weakness of Canaan - The first iron merchants - The ford across the Jordan - The stronghold of Jericho, the oldest city in the world - Scholars quarrel over broken walls - A trail of fire - Pharaoh mentions "Israel" by name for the first time - Excavations at Hazor - Graves at the Village ofJoshua.
169 Chapter 16 -- UNDER DEBORAH AND GIDEON -- Israel settles down - Pioneering in the mountains - Peasants' huts
instead of palaces - Deborah incites to revolt - Clash in the plain of
Jezreel - Victory over the "chariots of iron" - Israelite crockery at Megiddo - Marauders from the desert - Traces of Abimelech's destruction of Shechem - Gideon's successful tactics - First battle in history against a camel-corps - A new breed of long-distance carriers.
174 Chapter 17 -- THE WARRIORS FROM CAPHTOR -- Krethi and Plethi - Invasion by the "Sea Peoples" - The great trek from the Aegean - Triumphal progress with ox-waggons and ships - The Hittite empire disappears - Seaports in flames on the coast of Canaan - General mobilisation on the Nile - Pharaoh Ramesses III saves Egypt - The great land and sea engagement - Interrogation in P.O.W. camps - Life size portraits of the Philistines.
179 Chapter 18 -- UNDER THE YOKE OF THE PHILISTINES -- Philistines on the coast - Swan pattern pottery - Beer mugs with filters - Carefully guarded iron monopoly - Philistines occupy the high-
lands - Traces of the burning of Shiloh - Choosing a king from dire
necessity - Allenby successfully uses Saul's tactics - Surprising the
Turks - Albright finds Saul's castle - Two temples in Beth-Shan - The end of Saul.
V -- When Israel was an Empire-From David to Solomon

187

 

Chapter 19 -- DAVID, A GREAT KING -- A man of genius - From armour-bearer to monarch - Unintentional military aid for Assyria - From the Orontes to Ezion-Geber - Revenge at Beth-Shan - New buildings with casemated walls - Finding of the Pool of Gibeon - Jerusalem fell by a stratagem - Warren discovers a shaft leading to the city - The Sopher kept the "Imperial Annals" - Was David called David? - Ink as a novelty - Palestine's climate is unpropitious for keeping records.
197 Chapter 20 -- WAS SOLOMON "A COPPER-KING"? --
Expedition to the Gulf of Aqabah - Iron ore and malachite - Glueck
discovers Ezion-Geber - Desert storms used as bellows - The Pittsburgh
of old Israel - Shipyards on the Red Sea - Hiram brought the timber - Ships' captains from Tyre -The mysterious land of Ophir - An Egyptian portrait of the queen of Punt - U.S. archaeologists buy a Tell - A model dig at Megiddo - The fateful plain of Jezreel - Royal stables with 450 stalls?
214 Chapter 21 -- THE QUEEN OF SHEBA AS A BUSINESS PARTNER -- "Arabia Felix", the mysterious land - Death-march of 10,000
Romans - Number One exporter of spices - First news of Marib - Halevy and Glaser have a dangerous adventure - When the
great dam burst - American expedition to Yemen - The temple of the moon in Sheba - Camels: the new long distance transport - Export talks with Solomon.
220 Chapter 22 -- ISRAEL'S COLOURFUL DAILY LIFE -- Israel's love of ornamentation - Secrets of the boudoirs of Palestine - Sleeping with myrrh and aloes - The Balsam gardens of Jericho - Mastic, a favourite chewing gum - Perfumes of Canaan - Did the Egyptians invent the bed? - An ostracon describes a cloak being taken in pledge - Noisy flour-mills.
VI -- Two Kings - Two Kingdoms From Rehoboam to Jehoiachin
227 Chapter 23 -- THE SHADOW OF A NEW WORLD POWER -- The Empire splits - Frontier posts between Israel and Judah - Napoleon reads Shishak's report on Palestine - Samaria, the northern capital - Traces of Ahab's "ivory palace" - A mysterious "third man" - Arabs blow up victory monument in Moab - Mesha the mutton-king's song of triumph - Assyria steps in - The black obelisk from Nimrud - King Jehu's portrait in Assyria - Consignments of wine for Jeroboam II - Uzziah's palace - The prophet Amos warns in vain - The walls of Samaria are strengthened to 33 feet.
242 Chapter 24 -- THE END OF THE NORTHERN KINGDOM -- Pul the soldier becomes 'I"iglath-Pileser III - King Pekah mentioned at Hazor - Assyrian governors over Israel - Samaria's three-year defiance - Consul Botta looks for Nineveh - The bourgeois king opens the first Assyrian mseum - Searching for evidence by moonlight - The library of Ashurbanipal - Deportation of a people.
252 Chapter 25 -- JUDAH UNDER THE YOKE OF ASSYRIA -- Hopes aroused by Sargon's dtath - A fig poultice cures king
Hezekiah - A well-tried Ancient Eastern remedy - Merodach-Baladan: gardner and rebel - Secret armaments in Judah - Aqueduct through the rocks of Jerusalem - Inscription describes Hezekiah's tunnel - The fate of Lachish in stone relief - Traces of Assyrian battering-rams in the ruins - A puzzling retreat - Herodotus' story of the king with the
mouse - Starkey finds a plague-grave - Sennacherib describes the siege of Jerusalem.
263 Chapter 26 -- THE SEDUCTIVE RELIGIONS OF CANAAN -- The "abominations of the heathen" - Harsh words from the prophets - Philo of Byblos: a witness - Eusebius, the Christian Father, finds no one to believe him - Ploughman stumbles upon Ugarit - A powerful seaport disappears - Schaeffer digs at the "Head of Fennel" - The library in the priest's house - Three scholars decipher an unknown alphabet.
270

Chapter 27 -- THE END OF NINEVEH AS A WORLD POWER -- Ashurbanipal plunders Thebes - An empire stretching from the Nile to the Persian Gulf - The "great and noble Asnapper" - Big game hunting with bow and arrow- Assyria's strength is exhausted - Crushed between two powers - Medes and Chaldeans arm - Scythian hordes in Palestine - Nineveh sinks in ruins - The "Fertile Crescent" breathes again - A Biblical slip of the pen - Gadd's discovery in London - Nebuchadnezzar, crown prince of Babylon.

Part 3 of 4

277 Chapter 28 -- LAST DAYS OF JUDAH -- First deportation - King Jehoiachin in Babylonian court records - Discovery in the basement of the Berlin Museum - Nebuchadnezzar on the conquest of Jerusalem - Second punitive campaign - Despatches on clay - Starkey's tragic death - Incendiary technique of Babylonian engineers - A clean slate for the archaeologists.
VII -- From the Exile to the Maccabean Kingdom
From Ezekiel to John Hyrcanus
287 Chapter 29 -- EDUCATION THROUGH EXILE -- Good advice from the prophet Jeremiah - The firm of Murashu and Sons, Nippur - Interest 20% - Farmers and shepherds turned traders - Koldewey excavates Babylon - A town plan like New York - The greatest city in the ancient world - Tower of Babel 300 feet high - Chamber of Commerce - on the Euphrates.
294 Chapter 30 -- SUNSET IN THE ANCIENT ORIENT -- The old world about 500 B.C. - Last spasms before the end - Escape into the past - Nabonidus restores ancient buildings - First museum in the world at Ur - Semitic empires make their exit - The birth of the west.
297 Chapter 31 -- CYRUS, KING OF PERSIA -- Two famous dreams - Cyrus unites Media and Persia - The Writing on the Wall - Belshazzar was merely crown prince - Peaceful entry into Babylon - Persian toleration.
301 Chapter 32 -- RETURN TO JERUSALEM --
The edict of Cyrus - The trek of the 42,000 - A caravan of fateful significance - Starting work on the ruins - A lonely grave in Pasargadae - Rebuilding the Temple - The Persian Empire: from the Nile to
India - Duncan finds Nehemiah's work - The secret of the "thick water" - A theocratic state - Judah coins stamped with the Athenian owl - A Persian province for two centuries.
307 Chapter 33 -- UNDER GREEK INFLUENCE -- Alexander the Great in Pales tine - Causeway forces capitulation of Tyre - Siege towers 160 feet high - Alexandria: the new metropolis - Ptolemies occupy Judah - 72 scholars translate the Bible - Pentateuch in Greek - The Septuagint came from Pharos - A stadium below
the Temple - High Priest in "gaming house" - Jewish athletes give offence.
315 Chapter 34 -- THE BATTLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY -- Tax official plunders Jerusalem - Worship of Zeus in the Temple - The
revolt of the Maccabees - The Battle of the Elephants at Bethlehem - Americans find Beth-Zur - Coins from Antioch among the
rubble - Canteen supplies from Rhodes - Pompey storms Jerusalem - Judah becomes a Roman province.
DIGGING UP THE NEW TESTAMENT

I -- Jesus of Nazareth

321 Chapter 35 -- PALESTINE ON MARE NOSTRUM --
A Province of the Roman Empire - Greek cities on the Jordan - The New Testament - The governor appears in history - A census every 14 years.
325 Chapter 36 -- THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM -- A suggestion by Origen - Halley's comet over China - Kepler's observations in Prague - Astronomical tablets found at Sippar-Babylonian astronomers' records - Modern astronomical calculations - December frost in Bethlehem.
334 Chapter 37 -- NAZARETH IN GALILEE -- Death of King Herod - "The most cruel tyrant" - Unrest in the land - Checking Jerusalem's finances - Sabinus steals the Temple treasures - Varus crucifies 2,000 Jews - " Nazarene" or "Nazarite"?
338 Chapter 38 -- JOHN THE BAPTIST -- The witness of Josephus -A forbidden marriage - Herod Antipas orders
an arrest - The castle of Machaerus in Moab - The dungeon of death - Princess Salome - Capernaum "on the sea" - Ruins in a eucalyptus grove - The place where Jesus taught.
342 Chapter 39 -- THE LAST JOURNEY, TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION -- Detour through Transjordan - The tax-collector of Jericho - View from the Mount of Olives - Arrest on the Mount of Olives - The "clubs" of the high priests - The Procurator Pontius Pilate - Vincent discovers the "Pavement" - Scourging in the courtyard of the Antonia - "The most cruel form of execution" - A crown of Syrian Christ-thorn - A drink to stupify - Heart failure as the cause of death - Crurifragium hastens the end - A solitary tomb under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - Tacitus mentions "Christus" - The evidence of Suetonius.
354 Chapter 40 -- THE TURIN SHROUD -- Books from Constantinople - Discovery in the photographic negative - Tests by forensic medical experts - A scientific proof of authenticity?
II -- In the days of the apostles
357 Chapter 41 -- IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL -- The Tentmaker from Tarsus - Triumphal arch in Antioch - Galatia, a Roman province - Wood digs in Ephesus - The temple of Artemis - The ruins of the gateway of Philippi - In ancient Corinth - A meat-market with a cooling system - "The Hebrew Synagogue" - A prisoner on the way Rome.
364 Chapter 42 -- THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM -- Rebellion - The Jewish War - Fighting in Galilee - General Titus - -80,000 Romans advance - Order to attack - Parade outside the gates - 500 crucifixions daily - Jerusalem sealed off - The spectre of famine - Castle of Antonia taken - The Temple in flames - The city is raised - Triumph in Rome.
374 THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS -- A lost lamb - The Dead Sea Scrolls - Harding and de Vaux in Wadi Qumran -
Archbishop Samuel goes to Chicago - Nuclear physicists assist
with the dating - Testing linen in the "Atomic Clock" - A book of Isaiah 2,000 years old - A prophetic roll in Jesus' day - A mysterious flood of documents - In the valley of the pirate-diggers - A text that corresponds after 2,000 years.
383 REBUILDING WITH THE HELP OF THE BIBLE -- Economic planning with the help of the Old Testament - The wells of the patriarchs provide for the settlers - " Honey out of the rock" - Stone walls to collect dew - Digging again in Solomon's mines - Pioneering on Bibilical pattern.
387 POSTCRIPT TO THE REVISED EDITION BY JOACHIM REHORK
394 BIBLIOGRAPHY --
399 GENERAL INDEX

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"Watchman, What of the Night?" (WWN)
William H. Grotheer, Editor of Research & Publication for the ALF
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ALF SHORT STUDIES - William H. Grotheer -
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OTHER BOOKS, MANUSCRIPTS & ARTICLES:

Additional Various Studies --
"Saving Faith" - Dr. E. J. Waggoner
"What is Man" The Gospel in Creation - "The Gospel in Creation"
"A Convicting Jewish Witness", study on the Godhead - David L. Cooper D.D.

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Bible As History - Werner Keller

Place of the Bible In Education, The - Alonzo T. Jones

Facts of Faith - Christian Edwardson

Individuality in Religion - Alonzo T. Jones

Letters to the Churches - M. L. Andreasen

"Is the Bible Inspired or Expired?" - J. J. Williamson

Sabbath, The - M. L. Andreasen

Sanctuary Service, The
- M. L. Andreasen

So Much In Common - WCC/SDA

Daniel and the Revelation - Uriah Smith

Spiritual Gifts. The Great Controversy, between Christ and His Angels, and Satan and his Angels - Ellen G. White

Canons of the Bible, The - Raymond A. Cutts

Under Which Banner? - Jon A. Vannoy

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continuously from Jan, 1968 to the end of Dec. 2006 . by the Adventist Laymen's Foundation of Mississippi, Inc.(ALF), with William H. Grotheer as the Editor of Research & Publication.

Due to his failing health, Elder Grotheer requested that ALF of Canada continue publishing thoughts through its website www.AdventistAlet.com which now has developed into frequent Blog Thought articles plus all of the Foundation's historical published works written and audio.

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The Nov. 1977 issue discusses "What is the "Watchman What of the Night?"

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The Bible As History
by Werner Keller

Part 3 of 4

2nd Revised Edition
Translated from the German by William Neil
Revised and with a postscript by Joachim Rehork
New material translated from the German by B. H. Rasmussen
WILLIAM MORROW AND COMPANY, INC. New York 1981

p 277 -- Chapter 28 -- LAST DAYS OF JUDAH -- First deportation - King Jehoiachin in Babylonian court records - Discovery in the basement of the Berlin Museum - Nebuchadnezzar on the conquest of Jerusalem - Second punitive campaign - Despatches on clay - Starkey's tragic death - Incendiary technique of Babylonian engineers - A clean slate for the archaeologists.

In his days Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years - 2 Kings 24:1.

About the turn of the 6th century there took place the calamitous event which in a few years was to blot out Judah for ever as a nation with a place in the history of the ancient orient. Events now began to close in with frightening speed upon the tiny vassal state on the Jordan and its inhabitants, which were to result in Judah's most grievous hour of affliction. They ended with the road to exile and forcible removal to Babylon.

It began with refusal to pay tribute, and rebellion against the new feudal lord. In 598 B.C. open revolt broke out in Judah. King Jehoiakim "... turned and rebelled against him" (2 Kings 24:1)

At first Nebuchadnezzar did not intervene in person. Perhaps he did not think it sufficiently important: in a great empire local rebellions are no rare occurrence. He was content to leave it, to begin with, to troops from Moab, Ammon and Syria, strengthened by Chaldean regulars. They do not appear to have taken control of the situation however, whereupon Nebuchadnezzar himself hurried to Judah.

He was already ~on his way to Palestine with a considerable force when Jehoiakim unexpectedly died. It appears that so far he is the only king of Judah of whom we have a portrait. In Ramath-Rahel near Jerusalem, where a royal citadel from the time of Jehoiakim was found, a sherd with a line drawing on it was recently unearthed. This is thought to represent Jehoiakim. His son followed him upon the throne: "Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months.... And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city and his servants did besiege it.... And he carried away all Jerusalem.... And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon" (2 Kings 24:8-15).

In 597 B.C., as the Bible says, king Jehoiachin and his family were deported to Babylon as prisoners. But after 2,500 years who could hope

p 278 -- to check up on the reliability of this factual statement? Nevertheless, shortly before the beginning of the 20th century an opportunity came the way of the archaeologists to find out something definite about the destination of the royal family of Judah.

In 1899 the German Oriental Society equipped a large expedition under the direction of Professor Robert Koldewey, the architect, to examine the famous ruined mound of "Babil" on the Euphrates. The excavations, as it turned out, took longer than anywhere else. In eighteen years the most famous metropolis of the ancient world, the royal seat of Nebuchadnezzar, was brought to light, and at the same time, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the "Hanging Gardens", loudly extolled by Greek travellers of a later day, and "E-temen-an-ki", the legendary Tower of Babel. In the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and on the Ishtar-Gate, which was situated beside it, countless inscriptions were discovered.

Nevertheless the scholars were conscious of a certain disappointment. In contrast to the detailed records of Assyrian rulers, in which the names and fortunes of the kings of Israel and Judah were frequently given a historical setting, the Neo-Babylonian records hardly mentioned anything apart from the religious and architectural events of their day. They contained for example no corroboration of the fate of Judah.

. Thirty years later, when the great finds at "Babil" had long since found their way into archives and museums, there emerged a number of unique documents from the immediate neighbourhood of the Ishtar Gate - in Berlin!

On Museum Island, in the middle of the Spree in the heart of the German capital, the wonderful Ishtar Gate from Babylon had been reconstructed in the great Central Court of the Kaiser- Friedrich Museum. Menacing and sinister, the bright yellow bodies of the long row of lions stood out against the deep blue of the glazed tiles on the Processional Way of Marduk.  1  As it had done by the Euphrates, so now it led astonished citizens of the 20th century to the splendid gate dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, with its dragons and wild oxen.

While deeply impressed visitors from all over the world stood in the Central Court upstairs in front of the lofty and brilliantly coloured twin-gate, and, as Nebuchadnezzar had done long ago, turned under its arch on to the Processional Way, 300 cuneiform tablets lying in the basement rooms of the museum were waiting to be deciphered.

Koldewey's team had rescued them from the outbuildings of Nebuchadnezzar's palace near the Ishtar Gate, had numbered them and packed them in boxes. Together with masses of brightly glazed tiles, bearing reliefs of lions, dragons and wild oxen, they had made the long journey to Berlin, where, as luck would have it, the old tablets were
1 - Babylonian god.

p 279 -- lying in their packing-cases by the Spree, almost exactly as they had been in Babylon, only a few yards under the Ishtar Gate.

After 1933 E. F. Weidner, the Assyriologist, took in hand to look through the tablets and sherds in the basement rooms of the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum. He then translated them one by one. They contained nothing but court inventories, receipted accounts from the royal commisariat, book-entries of ancient bureaucrats, nothing but ordinary everyday matters.

Despite that, Weidner stuck it out manfully day after day in the basement under the Ishtar Gate and worked at his translations tirelessly.

Then all of a sudden his monotonous job came unexpectedly to life. Among this dull administrative rubbish Weidner suddenly found some priceless relics of red tape in the ancient world.

On four different receipts for stores issued, among them best quality sesame oil, he came upon a familiar Biblical name: "Ja'-u-kinu" - Jehoiachin!

There was no possibility of his being mistaken, because Jehoiachin was given his full title: "King of the [land of ] Judah". The Babylonian clay receipts moreover bear the date of the thirteenth year of the reign of king Nebuchadnezzar. That means 592 B.C., five years after the fall of Jerusalem and the deportation. In addition the Babylonian steward of the commissariat has mentioned in three cases five of the king's sons, who were in charge of a servant with the Jewish name of "Kenaiah".

Other personnel on the ration-strength of Nebuchadnezzar's stores are noted as "eight persons from the land of Judah", who possibly belonged to the retinue of king Jehoiachin, among them a gardener by the name of "Salam-ja-a-ma".

Jehoiachin, the deposed king of Judah, lived with his family and his retinue in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. We may conclude from Weidner's discovery that the Biblical account in the Second Book of Kings may be thus supplemented: "And for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon, every day a portion, until the day of his death, all the days of his life" (Jer, 52:34).

A sensational addition to the account of these events was made in 1955 through the examination of 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablets which had long lain in peaceful oblivion in the British Museum. D. J. Wiseman was engaged in deciphering these tablets when to his great surprise he came across the following entry in the official records of the Babylonian royal house:

"In the seventh year, in the month Chislev, the king assembled his army and advanced on Hatti-land [Syria]. He encamped over against the city of the Judaeans and conquered it on the second day of Adar [16th March 5971. He took the king [Jehoiachin] prisoner, and

p 280 -- appointed in his stead a king after his own heart [Zedekiah]. He exacted heavy tribute and had it brought to Babylon."

Here we have the original account in Babylonian chronicals of the first conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar as it has been preserved for us in the Bible in the 24th chapter of the Second Book of Kings.

"And it came to pass in the ninth year of his reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month, that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came, he and all his host, against Jerusalem.... And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah" (2 Kings 25:1, 2)

Eleven years had gone by since the capture of Jehoiachin and the first deportation to Babylon. The time had now come for Judah's fate to be sealed.

The last scene in the tragedy of this tiny nation provides a classic example of how Biblical narratives and archaeological discoveries illuminate the same event from different points of view, and how accurate are the statements of the prophet alongside the official account in the Second Book of Kings and in Chronicles. Jeremiah sketches with swift strokes of his brush scenes taken from the exciting and anxious events of the last days, which through discoveries in Palestine in our own day are confirmed as being startling in their accuracy and historically genuine.

After the first conquest in 597 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar allowed Judah to continue its existence as a vassal state. The successor to the throne, after Jehoiachin had been led off into captivity, was his uncle Mattaniah, who was renamed Zedekiah by the Chaldean king. As we may conclude from Jer. 13:19 the territory of Judah was reduced: "The cities of the south shall be shut up and none shall open them" (Jer. 13:19).

The deportation of their kinsmen before their very eyes, the bitter experiences of a century and a half, the miserable fate of the northern kingdom, still only too fresh in their memories, nevertheless did not extinguish the will to resist.

Soon indeed voices were being raised, denouncing Babylon, and demanding the recovery of all that had been lost (Jer. 28:1-4). The prophet Jeremiah raised his voice in warning but it was the anti-Babylonian group which was more and more heeded. They egged the people on and eventually got the upper hand of the spineless and vacillating king. Alliances were struck with the bordering vassal states. There was a meeting of "messengers" from Edom, Moab, and Ammon as well as from the seaports of Tyre and Sidon in the presence of king Zedekiah in Jerusalem (Jer. 27:3).

The fact that in 588 B.C. a new Pharaoh, Apries,.  1   ascended the throne had clearly a decisive influence on the decision to revolt (Jer. 44:30). The
1 --
558-568 B.C. Jeremiah calls him "Hophra".

p 281 -- new ruler of Egypt must have given Judah assurances of armed help, for "Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon" (2 Kings 24:20).

In the "tenth month" (2 Kings 25:1) of the same year 588 B.C. - it was the ninth year" of king Zedekiah - Nebuchadnezzar arrived with a strong.army from Babylon. With the speed of lightning the punitive campaign against rebellious Judah was unfolded.

The Chaldean divisions of infantry, fast cavalry and charioteers smashed all resistance and conquered city after city. Except for the capital, Jerusalem, and the frontier fortresses of Lachish and Azekah in the south, the whole land was finally subdued.

Jerusalem, Lachish and Azekah were determined to fight to the end: "When the king of Babylon's army fought against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish and against Azekah: for these defenced cities remained of the cities of Judah" (Jer.34:7).

Impressive and enduring evidence of the last phase of this hopeless struggle lies before us.

Twenty miles south-west of Jerusalem the green valley of Elah pushes its way far into the mountains of Judah. This was the scene of the duel between young David and Goliath the Philistine giant (I Sam. 17:19f).

FIG. 60.- Fortress of Lachish in Judah with double walls and triple gate. (Reconstruction.)

The little brook out of which David gathered "five smooth stones" for his sling still runs and burbles between its oak trees (I Sam. 17:40)

From the river bed the hill slopes gently upwards to a height of 1,000 feet. From the top the cornfields and olive groves of the old plain of Philistia can be seen stretching away to the far horizon where they meet the silvery sparkle of the Mediterranean. On this spot Dr. Frederick J. Bliss, the British archaeologist, identified a fort with eight stout towers as ancient Azekah, one of the frontier fortresses which, as we have seen, remained unconquered. Just about 12 miles to the south the ruins of Lachish were found to contain valuable evidence. J. L. Starkey, the archaeologist, disinterred them in the thirties when the Wellcome-Marston expedition from the U.K. investigated the ruins of the great city gate, where the battle was fiercest. Eighteen ostraca,

p 282 -- inscribed clay sherds, contained information about forward posts, observation posts and strong points held by Judahite troops which had not yet been overwhelmed. These despatches on clay had been sent to "Jaosh", the "commandant of the fort of Lachish", during that fateful "tenth month" of the year 558 B.C. The messages, scratched out in haste, indicate with every line the frightful tension that existed just before the collapse. One of the last of these eye-witness reports reads: "May Yahweh grant that my lord should hear good tidings ... we are watching for the signal stations of Lachish, according to the signals which my lord has given ... we are no longer receiving signals from Azekah." This message told Jaosh, the commanding officer at Lachish, that Azekah had fallen. Nebuchadnezzar could now withdraw his engineers for the attack on the last fortress but one.

British archaeologists with the Wellcome- Marston expedition obtained information about the terrible end of Lachish in 1938 after six strenuous seasons of excavating.

It was the last success that was to crown the career of James Lesley Starkey, the famous excavator of Lachish. During the Palestinian troubles which had broken out he was shot by Arabs at the age of forty-three in the neighbourhood of Hebron on the road from Lachish to Jerusalem. His death was a tragic case of mistaken identity. In the course of the protracted excavations he had grown a beard and the Arabs took him for a Jew.

In 701 B.C. the storm troops of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, had rushed the walls of Lachish with "tanks" fitted with battering rams. Nebuchadnezzar's special detachments adopted an entirely different technique to force the city to surrender.

Investigation of the stratum which marked the Babylonian work of destruction produced, to Starkey's astonishment, ashes. Ashes in incredible quantities. Many of the layers are several yards thick and are still - after 2 500 years - higher than the remains of the solid walls of the fortress. Nebuchadnezzar's engineers were specialists in the art of incendiarism, past masters at starting conflagrations.

Whatever wood they could lay hands on they dragged to the spot, stripped the whole area around Lachish of its forests and thickets, cleared the hills of timber for miles around, piled the firewood as high as a house outside the walls and set it alight. Countless olive-groves were hacked down for this purpose: the layer of ashes contains masses of charred olive stones.

Day and night sheets of flame leapt sky high, a ring of fire licked the walls from top to bottom. The besieging force piled on more and more wood until the white-hot stones burst and the walls caved in.

So Lachish likewise fell and only Jerusalem still offered resistance. The whole weight of the Babylonian war machine could now be directed against it. It was impossible to use the new incendiary tech-

p 283 -- nique in this case, for the forests around Jerusalem had, since the time of the patriarchs and of Joshua's conquest, been reduced to miserable little plantings and undergrowth (Josh. 17:15, 18). They therefore preferred to storm Jerusalem with the approved technique of battering rams and siege engines. For eighteen months Jerusalem was besieged and heroically defended: "And the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of king Zedekiah" (2 Kings 25:2).

What made the defenders hold out, despite the fact that famine had long been raging in the city and was taking a heavy toll, was a desperate hope that Egypt might come to their assistance.

It seemed that this hope was to be fulfilled, for the Babylonians suddenly withdrew. "Then Pharaoh's army was come forth out of Egypt: and when the Chaldeans that besieged Jerusalem heard tidings of them, they departed from Jerusalem" (Jer. 37:5). An army did in fact at that time come up from the Nile under Pharaoh Apries, as Herodotus also mentions. Its destination was however not Jerusalem. Apries was making an attack by land and sea against the Phoenician ports.

Archaeologists have found evidence on fragments of Egyptian monuments of Pharaoh's presence in Tyre and Sidon at that time.

So it came about as Jeremiah had prophesied: "Behold, Pharaoh's army, which is come forth to help you, shall return to Egypt unto their own land" (Jer- 37:7). After a few days the enemy was back in front of Jerusalem, the siege continued with the utmost fury, and the end could no longer be delayed.

"And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night, by the way of the gate between two walls which is by the king's garden" (2 Kings 25:4).

Thanks to the result of excavations, the route taken by the defenders in their flight can now be reconstructed without difficulty.

King Hezekiah had strengthened the old fortifications of the city of David by a second wall on the south side (2 Chron. 32:5). There is still no certainty as to the line it followed.

The moment the enemy entered the city through a breach in the walls the defenders retreated in the first instance behind the double walled southern part of the fortifications and only with the onset of darkness did they escape through an outer gate into freedom and then over the hills to Jericho. In the process King Zedekiah was taken. His children were "slaughtered" before his eyes, he himself had his eyes put out (2 Kings 25:7) - the harsh Babylonian martial law for traitors. This cruel punishment by blinding is frequently attested on pictorial reliefs.

Jerusalem was given over to plundering: the royal palace and the temple were set on fire, the city walls and fortifications were razed to the ground. The order to destroy was given to "Nebuzar-Adan, captain of the guard" (2 Kings 25:8), a grand vizier who appears in the Babylonian

p 284 -- list of court officials as " Nabu- Seri- Idinnam". Once more in 587 B.C. part.of the population was deported (2 Kings 25:11). Nebuchadnezzar erased the royal house of David, which had reigned without interruption for 400 years.The land of Judah became a Babylonian province. Those who were left waged a maquis type of war from their hide-outs in the mountains and claimed as their victim Gedaliah, who had been appointed governor by the Babylonians. There are those who believe that the third and last deportation was in reprisal for this (Jer- 52:30). Little groups of Judahites were able to escape it by fleeing to Egypt (2 Kings 25:26; Jer. 43:7). The curtain of history was lowered on an empty land. The tribes of Israel were scattered to the four winds.

Scholars like S. A. Cook and C. C. Torrey have denied the truth of the Biblical tradition of this carrying off into exile. In their view there was never a mass deportation from Judah, at the most some of the nobility were imprisoned in Babylon.

Fig. 61.- Map (Neo-Babylonian Empire 585 B. C.)

On the other hand, Professor Albright in his writings never tires of emphasising the severity and the extent of the devastations in Judah, so that one is more inclined to believe that the Babylonians made a clean sweep in Judah as the Bible indicates. What was the real state of affairs? One year after the first edition of the present work, a publication appeared which earned a doctorate for Enno Janssen, a Protestant theologian, at the University of Kiel. With great diligence he had assembled all the available results of the investigations of modern research and all the views expressed by experts on the situation in the devastated kingdom of Judah at the time of the Babylonian exile. Janssen did not by any means demolish what Albright insisted upon so emphatically. Systematically, painstakingly, almost pedantically, he listed the towns which had been worst hit, he assembled the information on how extensive the destruction had been in the towns which had been less affected - insofar as that can be ascertained today - and the places which continued to be inhabited during the period of exile. His results may surprise many who find it difficult to free themselves from the idea that the towns of Judah had been completely laid waste.

Certainly the destruction was great and the human losses through war, deportations and executions were not small, yet there were still people, including priests, even in Jerusalem, who lamented the destruc-

p 285 -- tion of the Temple and went about earning their living. Land was distributed among people of the poorer classes by the Babylonians and those who were better off were not completely liquidated or deported.

It can be deduced from certain statements in the Bible that there apparently still were comparatively well-to-do people who had managed to survive the catastrophe in their "wainscotted houses", or at least had once again been able to acquire "wainscotted houses" in Judah during the period of exile. The governor, appointed by the Babylonians, was a Jew named Gedaliah and the Bible mentions his father as a friend and protector of the prophet Jeremiah. When Jeremiah escaped the deportation, he went to Gedaliah in Mizpa where the remnants of the Jewish upper classes had assembled. As has already been mentioned, Gedaliah was finally assassinated by a Jewish nationalist, but the mere fact that there was a governor indicates that something was left to administer, or to put it in other words, that people were still living in Judah. The fact that Gedaliah lived in Mizpa, which is situated to the north of Jerusalem, tells us that Mizpa was still functioning tolerably well as a community.

Certainly we do not wish to minimise what had happened to Judah. Perhaps we may refer to the experience of towns and cities throughout the world which in our own day have been reduced to rubble, which despite devastation, despite all the horrors of war, despite the deportation of their inhabitants and all the risks and uncertainties brought about by warfare, were far from being completely depopulated. Moreover, our interpretation of the past depends at least as much on how we experience the present as on what actually happened in the past. In 1945 nobody would have raised any objections if a writer had described cities such as Coventry, Hiroshima, Stalingrad, Dresden or Berlin as "completely destroyed". When we read in Jeremiah 34:22: "Behold .." saith the Lord, "... I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without an inhabitant", these words may well express what Judah's inhabitants felt but perhaps even more what was felt by those people carried off into Babylonian exile, for they probably thought all hope lost of ever seeing Ancient Israel rise again to its former greatness. The end of the Kingdom of Judah marked the end of the history of Ancient Israel; the history of the Jews now began.

p 286 -- Blank page.

p 287 -- SECTION VII -- From the Exile to the Maccabean Kingdom - From Ezekiel to John Hyrcanus

Chapter 29 -- EDUCATION THROUGH EXILE -- Good advice from the prophet Jeremiah - The firm of Murashu and Sons, Nippur - Interest 20% - Farmers and shepherds turned traders - Koldewey excavates Babylon - A town plan like New York - The greatest city in the ancient world - Tower of Babel 300 feet high - Chamber of Commerce - on the Euphrates.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them: and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them ... that ye may be increased there and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives - Jer. 29:5-7.

So wrote the prophet Jeremiah from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets and to the whole nation that at Nebuchadnezzar's bidding had been carried off to Babylon. Following his well-considered advice, they sought and found "the peace of the city", and did not fare at all badly. The Exile in Babylon was not to be compared with the harsh existence of the children of Israel on the Nile, in Pithom and Raamses in the days of Moses. Apart from a few exceptions (Is. 47:6) there was no heavy forced labour. Nowhere is there any mention of their having to make bricks by the Euphrates. Yet Babylon ran what was probably the greatest brick-making industry in the world at that time. For never was there so much building going on in Mesopotamia as under Nebuchadnezzar.

Anyone who took Jeremiah's advice as his guide got on well, some indeed very well. One family which had made the grade has left to posterity its dust-covered business documents on clay. "Murashu and Sons"- International Bank - Insurance, Conveyancing, Loans - Personal and real estate - Head office: Nippur - Branches every-where - a firm with a reputation throughout the world, the "Lloyd's" of Mesopotamia.

The Murashus - displaced persons from Jerusalem - had done well for themselves in Nippur since 587 B.C. They were an old established office. Their firm still stood for something in Mesopotamia even in the Persian era. The "books" of "Murashu and Sons" are full of detailed information about the life of the exiles, such as their names, their occupations, their property.

Scholars from the University of Pennsylvania discovered some of the

p 288 -- Jewish firm's deeds stored in its former business premises in Nippur. They were in great clay jars, which, in accordance with security precautions in those days, had been carefully sealed with asphalt. It was not only Assyriologists who read the translations of these documents with delight.

The offices of Murashu and Sons were a hive of activity. For 150 years they enjoyed the confidence of their clients, whether it was a matter of conveyance of large estates and sections of the canals or of slaves. Anyone who could not write, when he came eventually to add his signature, put, instead of his name, the print of his finger-nail on the documents. It corresponded to putting a cross, in the presence of witnesses, as in the case of illiterates today.

One day three jewellers called on Murashu and Sons... "Elil-aha-idinna and Belsunu and Hatin said to Elil-nadin-sum, son of Murashu: In the case of this emerald ring, we give a twenty-years guarantee that the stone will not fall out of the gold. If the emerald falls out of the ring before the expiry of twenty years, Elil-aha-idinna, Belsunu and Hatin undertake to pay damages to Elil-nadin-sum amounting to 10 Minas of silver." The document is signed by seven people. Before the lawyer's name the clay bears the imprint of three finger-nails. These are the signatures of the three jewellers who were unable to write.

An exiled Jew, Mannudannijama, came to Murashu and Sons, because he wanted to arrange a deed of conveyance with a Babylonian concerning an important herd of cattle: "13 old rams, 27 two year old rams, 152 lambing ewes, 40 year old rams, 40 year old ewe-lambs, an old he-goat, a two year old he-goat ... a total Of 276 white and black, large and small sheep and goats ... cash on delivery.... Mannudannijama to be responsible for pasture, feeding, and safe custody....

Nippur, the 25th of Ulul ... Signed: Fingernail of Mannudannijama."

Securities for those imprisoned for debt were deposited with the bank. There were special departments for all eventualities of life.

The rate of interest was 20 per cent, not introduced by Murashu, let it be said. That was the normal rate in those days.

"Murashu and Sons" may serve as an example of the profession, which since the days of the Exile has been associated with the children of Israel. It became for them the profession par excellence and has remained so until now: that of merchant and trader. In their homeland they had only been peasants, settlers, cattle breeders and tradesmen. The law of Israel had made no provision for commerce: it was an alien occupation. The word "Canaanite" was for them synonymous with "shopkeeper", "merchant", people whom the prophets had vigorously castigated for their sins. "He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress" (Hos. 12:7; Amos 8:5, 6).

The switchover to this hitherto forbidden profession was extremely

p 289 -- clever - a fact that is seldom properly understood. For it proved to be in the last resort, when added to a tenacious attachment to their old faith, the best guarantee of the continuance of Israel as a people. As farmers and settlers scattered throughout a foreign land they would have intermarried and interbred with people of other races and in a few generations would have been absorbed and disappeared. This new profession demanded that their houses should be in more or less large societies, within which they could build themselves into a community and devote themselves to their religious practices. It gave them cohesion and continuity.

The Israelites could have chosen no better training college. Babylon as an international centre of trade, industry and commerce, was the great school for the cities and capitals of the whole world, which from then on were to become the home of the homeless. The metropolis, whose ruins after 2,500 years still betray its ancient power and glory, had no equal in the ancient world.

Sixty miles south of busy Bagdad the desert is churned up, scarred and furrowed. As far. as the eye can see, there stretches a maze of trenches, rubble heaps, and pits which bear witness to the efforts of German archaeologists, over a period of eighteen years. As a result of this prolonged campaign  1   Professor Robert Koldewey has been able to bring to light the fabulous Babylon of the Bible.

Scarcely forty years after the excavations the site presented a dismal and chaotic appearance. Wind and desert sand were slowly but relentlessly covering up again the gigantic skeleton of the old metropolis. Only on one side a few block-like towers stood out with sharply defined silhouette against the sky. Their brick walls, once brightly tiled, were bleak and bare. Here at the Ishtar Gate began the long Processional Way. Where it ended, a massive hump on the other side of the city proclaimed the presence of one of the greatest edifices of the ancient world, the Tower of Babel .

The pomp and glory, the power and might of the city which "sinned against the Lord" (Jer- 50:14) were all destroyed and disappeared. It was never again inhabited. Could the oracle of the prophet Isaiah have been more completely fulfilled?

"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans' pride shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.... But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there: and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures: and ostriches shall dwell there.... And wolves shall cry in their castles and jackals in the pleasant palaces" (Is. 13:19-23 -R.V.).

It is a long time now since the site was deserted by jackals and owls
1 -- 1899-1917

p 290 -- and more so by ostriches. Even the mighty Euphrates has turned its back on it and has chosen a new bed. Once upon a time the arrogant walls of the city and the lofty Tower were reflected in its waters. Now a silhouette of palm trees in the distance indicates its new course. The little Arab settlement of "Babil" preserves in its name the memory of the proud city: but it lies some miles north of the ruins.

"Babylon Halt" is written in Arabic and English on the signboard of the station on the Bagdad railway which lies a few hundred yards from the mounds and allows the visitor, a rare occasion these days, to make a tour of the desolate yellowish-brown ruins. Here he is surrounded by the silent stillness of utter solitude.

The ruins preserved as their most precious treasure documents of incomparable value: it is thanks to them that we are able today to reconstruct an accurate picture of the time of the Jewish exile which was also the period of Babylon's greatest prosperity.

"Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty" (Dan- 4:30). These words which Daniel puts into the mouth of King Nebuchadnezzar do not exaggerate. Hardly any other monarch in the past was such an assiduous builder. There is scarcely any mention of warlike activities, conquests and campaigns. In the forefront there is the constant building activity of Nebuchadnezzar. Hundreds of thousands of bricks bear his name, and the plans of many of the buildings have been preserved. Babylon in fact surpassed all the cities of the ancient orient: it was greater than Thebes, Memphis and Ur, greater even than Nineveh.

"The centre of the city, which is full of three and four-storied buildings, is traversed by dead straight streets not only those that run parallel to the river but also the cross streets which lead down to the water side." So Herodotus described what he himself had seen. The town plan of Babylon is reminiscent of the blueprints for large American cities.

Coming from Palestine, even from proud Jerusalem, the exiles had only known narrow twisting streets, little better than alleys. In Babylon however they made the acquaintance of streets as broad as avenues and as straight as if they had been drawn with a ruler. Every one of them bore the name of one of the gods in the Babylonian pantheon. There was a Marduk street and a Zababa street on the left bank of the river. In the right-hand corner of the city they crossed the streets of the moon-god Sin and of Enlil, the "Lord of the World". On the right bank Adad street ran from east to west, and intersected the street of the sun-god Shamash.

Babylon was not only a commercial but a religious metropolis as can be seen from an inscription: "Altogether there are in Babylon 53 temples of the chief gods, 55 chapels of Marduk, 300 chapels for the

p 291 -- earthly deities, 600 for the heavenly deities, 180 altars for the goddess Ishtar, 180 for the gods Nergal and Adad and 12 other altars for different gods."

Polytheism of this kind with worship and ritual which extended to public prostitution must have given the city, in terms of the present day, the appearance of an annual fair.

"But the most vicious practice of the Babylonians is the following," writes Herodotus in shocked astonishment (1, 199). "Every woman in the country must take her seat in the shrine of Aphrodite, and once in her life consort with a stranger. ... And only when she has been with him, and done her service to the goddess, is she allowed to go, home: and from then on no gift is great enough to tempt her. All the women who are tall ' and beautiful are quickly released: but the unattractive ones have to wait for a long time before they can fulfil the law: some of them have to wait three or four years."

The abominable temptations and enticements which were part of everyday life in Babylon remained indelibly fixed in the minds of the exiled Jews. Through the centuries until the time of Christ the brilliant metropolis was for them: "Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth" (Rev. 17:5). The idea of Babylon as a cesspool of vice is rooted in the vocabulary of every modern language.

The German archaeologists had to clear away over a million cubic feet of rubble before they had exposed part of the temple of Marduk on the Euphrates, which had been rebuilt under Nebuchadnezzar. The structure, including its out-buildings, measured approximately 1,500, feet by 1,800 feet. Opposite the temple rose the Ziggurat, the tower of Marduk's sanctuary.

"Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven: and let us make us a name. ..." (Gen. 11:3, 4).

The bricklaying technique described in the Bible at the building of the Tower of Babel corresponds with the findings of the archaeologists. As the investigations confirmed, actually only asphalted bricks were used in the construction, especially in the foundations. That was clearly necessary for the security of the structure in accordance with building regulations. In the neighbourhood of the river the regular rise in the level of the water and the constant dampness of the ground had to be borne in mind. Foundations and stonework were therefore made waterproof and damp-proof with "slime", i.e. asphalt.

The beginning of the building of the Tower of Babel is described in the book of Genesis and comes before the days of the patriarchs. Abraham lived, as we can gather from what has been discovered at Mari, in the 19th century B.C. Is this a contradiction? The history of the

p 292 -- tower, ."whose top may reach unto heaven", points back into the dim past. More than once it had been destroyed and rebuilt. After the death of Hammurabi the Hittites tried to raze the mighty structure to the ground. Nebuchadnezzar merely had it restored.

Seven stages, "seven squares", rose one above the other. A little tablet belonging to an architect which was found in the temple expressly mentions that length, breadth and height were equal and that only the terraces had different measurements. The length of the sides at the base is given as being rather more than 290 feet. The archaeologists measured it as 295 feet. According to that the tower must have been almost 300 feet high.

The Tower of Babel was also involved in dubious religious rites. Herodotus describes them: "On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. There is no statue of any kind set up in the place, nor is the chamber occupied at nights by anyone but a single native woman, who, as the Chaldeans, the priests of this god, affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity out of all the women of the land. They also declare - but I for my part do not believe it - that the god himself comes down into the temple and sleeps upon the couch. This is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in Thebes, where a woman always sleeps in the templel of the Theban Zeus.

On the streets and squares between the temples, the chapels and the altars, trade and commerce flourished. Solemn processions, heavily laden caravans, traders' barrows, priests, pilgrims, merchants surged to and fro, colourful and noisy. Religious life and business life were so closely associated in Babylon's everyday affairs that they often dovetailed into each other, as they did in the temples. What else could the priests do with all the sacrificial animals, all the "tithes" that were presented daily on the altars, many of them quickly perishable, apart from turning them into money as soon as possible? Just as in Ur, the temple authorities in Babylon ran their own department stores and warehouses. They also ran their own banks to invest their revenues to the best advantage.

Outside the double walls of the city, which were broad enough "to allow a four-horse chariot to turn on them",  1   lay the "Chambers of Commerce". It was on the river-bank that prices were fixed and exchange rates established for the commodities that arrived by boat. "Karum", "quay", was the name the Babylonians gave to what we now call the Exchange. As well as taking over the Quay, or Exchange, from the Babylonians the old world has also taken over its system of weights and measurements.

However much the Jews may have sought "the peace of the city" and found it; however much they may have learned in the cities of

p 293 -- Babylonia which would profit future generations, broaden their own outlook and raise their standard of living, all of which would benefit future generations in many ways - nevertheless their heart-yearnings for their distant little homeland on the Jordan left them no inward peace. They could not forget the city of David, their beloved Jerusalem. "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137). These were no empty words. For thousands of them set out on the difficult journey home. They rebuilt their shattered city and the temple of Yahweh. Without a passionate longing for the homeland they had lost, that would never have happened.
1 -- Herodotus

p 294 -- Chapter 30 -- SUNSET IN THE ANCIENT ORIENT -- The old world about 500 B.C. - Last spasms before the end - Escape into the past - Nabonidus restores ancient buildings - First museum in the world at Ur - Semitic empires make their exit - The birth of the west.

Behold evil shall go forth from nation to nation and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth - Jer. 25:32.

The hands of the cosmic clock are approaching 500 B.C. The ancient orient carries more than 3,000 years on its shoulders. The nations in the "Fertile Crescent" and on the Nile have grown old, their creative impulse is exhausted, they have fulfilled their task, and the time is drawing near for them to step off the stage of history.

The sun of the ancient orient is setting and its peoples are vaguely conscious of the approaching night.

Yet there is to be a last flicker of life among these weary nations: they summon up enough strength for one last effort. From Egypt to the lands on the Euphrates and the Tigris it is as if there is to be one final attempt to rise before sinking into insignificance. Were they looking back and thinking of the leading role they had played on the world's stage? It would almost seem as if they were. Their monarchs look back to the great symbols of their glorious past. They believe that with a new display of strength they can delay the inevitable.

Pharaoh Necho and Pharaoh Apries made great efforts to reconquer Syria and Palestine. The Old Kingdom with its "campaigns against Asia" became the ideal of the 26th dynasty.  1 Large navies were built and an attempt was made to restore the old canal between the Nile and the Red Sea.

Even if the new manifestations of strength bore no fruit, and success eluded their military exploits, nevertheless the example of the great days of the builders of the Pyramids lent vitality in other directions. Painters and sculptors copied the works of their great predecessors. Names of Pharaohs of the third millennium were engraved on new scarabs. Ancient official titles and court titles were revived, the civil service was, as it were, antiquarianised.

The same thing happened on the Mediterranean coast in Phoenicia.In 814 B.C. according to tradition, but somewhat later according to the
1 -- 663-525 B.C.

p 295 -- results of archaeological research, Carthage was founded as a North African colony of the city of Tyre. By this time the power of these Phoenician merchant sailors had reached its limit. From the Black Sea to the Straits of Gibraltar they had trading posts and bases along the shores of the Mediterranean. A century later the Greeks had inherited their world trade. Sanchuniathon, the priest, wrote the history of Phoenicia. He was commissioned by a king to copy old inscriptions and texts which Philo of Byblos was to use much later as the source for his history.

With Ashurbanipal  1 the Assyrian Empire reached the zenith of its power. It stretched from the Persian Gulf to Upper Egypt. The tiger of the ancient orient had eaten his fill, and the ruler of the most powerful of all conquering nations allowed himself to be painted in an arbour of grape-vines, reclining on soft cushions and being handed a goblet of wine. Collecting old books was his hobby and he had the biggest library in the ancient world. On his instructions the repositories of old temples were ransacked in a search for lost documents. His scribes made copies of thousands of tablets from the reign of the great Sargon I (2350 B.C.)., The hobby of his brother Shamash-Shumukin of Babylonia went even further. He had the events of his day written up in the ancient language of Sumeria.

Nebuchadnezzar too,  2 the last great ruler on the throne of Babylon, was afflicted with this longing for old forgotten far-off things. His court chroniclers had to compose inscriptions in Old Babylonian, which nobody could either speak or read. Architecture and literature flourished once again among the Chaldeans.

Observing the sky in the interests of astrology led to undreamt of advances. They were able to predict eclipses of the sun and moon. In the Babylonian School of Astronomy about 750 B.C. observations of heavenly bodies were recorded and continued without interruption for over 350 years, the longest series of astronomical observations ever made. The accuracy of their reckoning exceeded that of European astronomers until well into the 18th century.

Nabonidus  3   may well have been the first archaeologist in the world. This monarch, the last of the Babylonian rulers, caused ruined shrines and temples to be excavated, old inscriptions to be deciphered and translated. He restored the staged tower at Ur which had been weakened by age, as was shown by the finds at Tell al Muqayyar.

Princess Bel-Shalti-Nannar, sister of the Belshazzar in the Bible, had the same interests as her father Nabonidus. Woolley discovered in an annexe to the temple in Ur, where she had been priestess, a regular museum with objects which had been found in the southern states of Mesopotamia - probably the earliest museum in the world. She had actually carefully catalogued her collection piece by piece on a clay
1 -- 669-626 B.C. 2 -- 605-562 B.C. 3 -- 555-538 B.C.

p 296 -- cylinder. This is, in Woolley's words, the "oldest museum catalogue known".

One people alone - broken up into many parts and at that time scattered far and wide throughout the "Fertile Crescent" - did not succumb to surfeit or slackness: the children of Israel, descendants of the patriarchs, were filled with eager hope and had a definite end in view. They did not disappear: they found the strength to preserve themselves for new millennia - up to the present day.

For 1,500 years mankind's biggest light had come from the "Fertile Crescent," the oldest centre of civilisation since the Stone Age. About 500 B.C. darkness fell, imperceptibly but irresistibly, over the lands and peoples who had within them the seed of all that would come after them - but in other lands.

A new light was already shining from the mountains of Iran: the Persians were coming. The great Semitic states and Egypt had fulfilled their assignment in history: the most significant and decisive part of man's early existence had helped to prepare the ground for the Indo-Germanic kingdoms which gave birth to Europe.

From the extreme south-eastern tip of the continent the light travelled farther and farther west. From Greece to Rome, across the barrier of the Alps, across Western Europe and up to Scandinavia and the British Isles. Light from the East!

On its way, within a few centuries, new civilisations would appear, art would reach unimagined heights of beauty and harmony, the human mind in the philosophy and science of the Greeks would soar to pinnacles denied to the ancient orient.

On its way the light would also bring the varied colourful legacy of the ancient orient, from a practical system of weights and measures to astronomy, it would bring writing, the alphabet and - the Bible.

p 297 -- Chapter 31 -- CYRUS, KING OF PERSIA -- Two famous dreams - Cyrus unites Media and Persia - The Writing on the Wall - Belshazzar was merely crown prince - Peaceful entry into Babylon - Persian toleration.

Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut - Is. 45:1.

Seven years after Nebuchadnezzar's death, Nabonidus, the "first archaeologist", ascended the throne of Babylon in 555 B.C. He was to be the last ruler from Mesopotamia. For events in the highlands of Iran suggested that world history was quickly heading for a great revolution.

Five years after the accession of Nabonidus the new era began with the Persians' rise to power.

The Medes - who since the fall of Nineveh in 612 B. C. had shared the stricken Assyrian empire with the Babylonians - were unexpectedly overcome by their neighbours and vassals, the Persians. Astyages, king of the Medes, was beaten by his own grandson, Cyrus.

In the ancient world great men were wont to herald their arrival in extraordinary ways; often the remarkable circumstances of their birth took them outside the normal framework of the lives of their contemporaries. Two unusual dreams are said to have decided the destiny of Cyrus. They were gossiped around the whole of the ancient orient and in this way came to the ears of Herodotus, who recounts them:

"Astyages ... had a daughter who was named Mandane. He dreamt that from her such a stream of water flowed forth as not only to fill his capital but to flood the whole of Asia. This vision he laid before such of the Magi as had the gift of interpreting dreams, who expounded its meaning to him in full, whereat he was greatly terrified. On this account, when his daughter was of marriageable age, he would not give her to any of the Medes lest the dream should be accomplished, but married her to a Persian by name Cambyses.

"When Mandane was living with Cambyses, Astyages in the very first year saw another vision. He fancied that a vine grew from the womb of his daughter and overshadowed the whole of Asia. After this dream, which he submitted also to the interpreters, he sent to Persia and fetched away Mandane, who was now with child, and was not far

p 298 -- from her time. On her arrival he set a watch over her, intending to destroy the child to which she should give birth: for the Magian interpreters had expounded the vision to foreshow that the offspring of his daughter would reign over Asia in his stead. To guard against this, Astyages, as soon as Cyrus was born, sent for Harpagus, a man of his own house and the most faithful of the Medes ... and addressed him thus: '... Take the child born of Mandane: carry him with thee to thy home and slay him there...."'

Harpagus found that he had no heart to carry out this murderous command of the child's grandfather. No more had a shepherd to whom he deputed the task. So Cyrus remained alive.

It was not only the birth and boyhood of Cyrus that were wrapped in legend. This Persian king's son, descended from the royal race of Achaemenes, has, more than any other prince of the ancient world, caught the imagination and evoked the admiration of all nations. Xenophon, the Greek, celebrated the foundation of his empire in a complete romance, the "Cyropaedia".

The Bible remembers him as an enlightened monarch. His unparalleled, swift and brilliant rise to power was marred by no deed of violence. His able and humane policy made him one of the most attractive figures in the ancient orient. The most repugnant feature of oriental monarchs before him, despotic cruelty, was foreign to this Persian.

The figure of Cyrus became a hard fact of history in 553 B.C. In that year he captured Ecbatana, capital of the kingdom of Media. His royal grandfather Astyages was banished. Cyrus amalgamated Media with the Persian kingdom. Babylonia, Lydia in Asia Minor and Sparta formed an alliance against the conqueror. Croesus king of Lydia - his name is still proverbial for great riches - attacked the Persians. Cyrus took Sardis,  1 his capital, and defeated him.

The way to Babylonia was open and Babylon lay invitingly before him. Against the background of such a sittiation a strange and mysterious story got about which, since it has been recorded in the Bible, has gripped the imagination of the western world:

"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. .. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of stone. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace. ... Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. ... And the king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of
1 -- Fifty miles east of Izmir.

p 299 -- gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom" (Daniel 5:1, 4-7). "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin" were the words on the wall which have become famous. They mean: "God hath numbered thy kingdom". "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting". "Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians" (Dan.5:25-28).

When Joseph in Egypt was able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams of the seven fat kine and the seven lean kine and of the ears of corn, he was made second man in the kingdom, grand vizier.

What was the meaning of the promised reward for guessing the meaning of the mysterious writing to be "the third ruler in the kingdom"?

This Biblical statement was unintelligible and was only explained with the help of archaeology.

Who Belshazzar was has now been established by cuneiform texts from his own father. He was not, in fact, as the book of Daniel says (5:2), the son of Nebuchadnezzar, but of Nabonidus, who says in an inscription: "And put into the heart of Belshazzar, my first born son, the fruit of my loins, fear of thy sublime divinity, that he commit no sin, and that he may have fulness of life."

Thus it is clear that Belshazzar was crown prince, therefore the second man in Babylonia. He could only therefore hold out a promise of third highest place in the kingdom.

The story of Belshazzar's Feast and the Writing on the Wall reflects through the eyes of the prophets a contemporary political situation. In 539 B.C. Cyrus turned his attack against Nabonidus, and the Babylonian army was defeated. With that the hours of the last great Mesopotamian empire were numbered.

Come down, and sit in the dust, 0 virgin daughter of Babylon: there is no throne, 0 daughter of the Chaldeans - Is. 47.

A year after the battle Cyrus, king of Persia, made his triumphal entry into conquered Babylon.

Hittites, Kassites, Assyrians had at various times threatened the great city with the same fate. This conquest however did not follow the normal pattern: it was without a parallel in the military practice of the ancient orient. For this time there were no columns of smoke rising from behind shattered walls, no temples or palaces razed to the ground, no house plundered, no man was butchered or impaled. The clay cylinder of Cyrus narrates in Babylonian script what took place:

"As I entered Babylon in peace, and established my royal residence in the palace of the princes amid jubilation and rejoicing, Marduk, the great lord, warmed the hearts of the Babylonians towards me, while I for my part devoted myself daily to do him reverence. My troops wandered peacefully widespread throughout Babylon. In all Sumer

p 300 -- and Akkad I let no man be afraid. I concerned myself with the internal affairs of Babylon and all its cities. The dwellers in Babylon. ... I freed from the yoke that ill became them. I repaired their houses, I healed their afflictions ... I am Cyrus, king of all, the great king, the mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the earth..."

The last sentences almost suggest that the Biblical Chronicler had known the text of the clay cylinder. "Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me...." (2 Chron, 36:23).

That rulers should make tolerance, including religious tolerance, their motto was uncommon, and marked the Persian king out from the first.

After his entry into Babylon Cyrus at once had the images and shrines of the local gods set up again. He was concerned with "the daily worship of the chief god of the city Marduk". In the city of Ur he did the same. On a broken cylinder which was preserved among the ruins Cyrus himself says: "Sin, the light of heaven and earth, with his favourable omens gave into my hands the four corners of the earth. I brought the gods back into their sanctuaries."

His tolerance was also to the advantage of the Jews. After these many years of exile their dearest wish was now to find fulfilment.

p 301 -- Chapter 32 -- RETURN TO JERUSALEM --
The edict of Cyrus - The trek of the 42,000 - A caravan of fateful significance - Starting work on the ruins - A lonely grave in Pasargadae - Rebuilding the Temple - The Persian Empire: from the Nile to India - Duncan finds Nehemiah's work - The secret of the "thick water" - A theocratic state - Judah coins stamped with the Athenian owl - A Persian province for two centuries.

In the first year of Cyrus the king, the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, Let the house be builded, the place where they offered sacrifices, and let the foundations thereof be strongly laid: the height thereof threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof threescore cubits - Ezra 6:3.

This meant permission for them to return to Jerusalem. The text of the royal decree is in imperial Aramaic, the new official language of the Persian government. Archaeology has been able to -establish the authenticity of this permit, which has been incorporated in chapter six of the Book of Ezra.

It was a matter of reparation. It is clear from the terms of the enactment that the Persians regarded themselves as successors of the Babylonians: ". . . let the expenses be given out of the king's house. And also let the golden and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took forth out of the temple which is at Jerusalem, and brought into Babylon, be restored and brought again unto the temple, which is at Jerusalem, every one to his place, and place them in the house of God" (Ezra 6:4, 5).

The carrying out of the order was entrusted by Cyrus to Sheshbazzar,  1  the governor (Ezra 5:14), a prince of Judah, and probably a member of the house of David.

It is understandable that fifty years after the deportation not everyone would take advantage of this permission to return to the land of their fathers. In any case it was a risky business to leave this wealthy country of Babylon where they had established themselves and where most of them had grown up and to set out on the difficult road back to the ruins of a ravaged land. Despite this, in the spring of 537 B.C., after long preparations a lengthy caravan set out on the trail towards the old
1 -- It is thought that Sheshbazzar is the same as Shenazar, the fourth son of king Jehoiachin (I Chron. 3:18).

p 302 -- homeland. "The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore. Besides their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven, and there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women. Their horses were seven hundred thirty and six: their mules two hundred forty and five, their camels four hundred thirty and five, their asses six thousand seven hundred and twenty" (Ezra 2:64-67).

Whether this list of people returning to their homeland really is that of the members of a mighty trek from the Euphrates to Judah is debatable. It is all repeated in Nehemiah almost word for word except that the number of singing men and singing women is not quite the same as there is a difference of 45. In this instance, however, the list is of a population census, a register of the Persian satrapy which Judah had become under Persian rule. However this may be and whatever the number of people who did, in fact, return to Judah after the long years in exile, we can vividly imagine their journey into the land west of the Jordan.

Almost 8oo miles have to be covered between Babylon and distant Jerusalem, with the clouds of dust churned up by the caravan as a faithful companion throughout the whole journey. One day they would pass the site of old Mari. They would reach the spot where, on the opposite side of the river, the Balikh, on whose lower reaches Haran was situated, enters the Euphrates.

From then on the returning exiles were following the same track which had been taken by Abraham 1,400 years earlier, when he left the land of his fathers to go to Canaan, via Damascus and along the foot of Hermon to the Lake of Galilee. Then came the day when from among the brown peaks of the mountains of Judah the desolate ruins of the city of Zion rose before their eyes - it was Jerusalem.

What fateful significance this journey had for the generations that were still to come!

"The future of the world lay in this procession to Jerusalem," says the American scholar and educationist Mary Ellen Chase, who lectured in universities on "The Bible as Literature" from 1926 onwards. "It rested with it whether we should have a Bible at all as we know it - the Bible, the Jewish faith, Christianity and many centuries of western culture. If there had been no return to Jerusalem, Judah would assuredly have shared by and large the fate of Israel, become intermingled with the east and eventually been lost as a united people."

Soon after their.arrival in Jerusalem the foundations of the new Temple were laid amid great enthusiasm. But then the work slackened off (Ezra 5:16). The great enthusiasm of the returned settlers quickly waned: life was too hard and barren in this depopulated land, where dilapidated houses provided the scantiest of shelter. Added to this was the problem of making a living, as Haggai said "ye run every man unto

p 303 -- his own house" (Haggai 1:9). Everyone was too concerned with his own problems.

The rebuilding advanced but slowly. The first settlers were poor, and as the remains of their household belongings indicate, few in number. The objects which have been discovered clearly reflect the harshness of that first early stage.

Cyrus, the liberator, died on an expedition to the east in 530 B.C. and was buried in the royal palace of Pasargadae near Persepolis.  His palace was built in the form of individual pavilions: each one lay in the centre of a magnificent garden: the whole area was enclosed by a high wall.

FIG. 62.- Mausoleum of Cyrus.

Un the southern slopes ot a long range of hills there still stands among the rough grass of the highlands a small unpretentious stone building dating from the time of Cyrus. Six square blocks form the steps which lead up to a small chamber, above the entrance to which there could at one time be read the following plea: "0 man, whoever you are and whenever you come, for I know that you will come - I am Cyrus, who gave the Persians their empire. Do not grudge me this patch of earth that covers my body." Alas, the small stone chamber in which a golden sarcophagus enclosed the mortal remains of the great Persian is now as empty as the place above the entrance which bore the inscription. Occasionally shepherds with their flocks pass unconcernedly by this forgotten spot, as they did in olden times, across the wide plateau where the lion is still lord of the chase.

Cyrus was followed by his son Cambyses II.   With the conquest of Egypt Persia became under him the greatest empire that the world had ever seen: it stretched from India to the Nile.

It was not until the reign of his successor Darius I  3   that.the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem was finally taken in hand. Almost twenty years had passed since the foundations had been laid. At the request of the official responsible for the administration of Judah, the Satrap of Transeuphrates, Darius I expressly confirmed the permit issued by Cyrus. The official exchange of letters with the Persian court on this matter can be found in the Book of Ezra (5:6 - 6:12).

Many experts are convinced of the historicity of these documents although others are doubtful. If they are not genuine, however, they are very clever imitations both as to form and content. The Bible here even uses the Aramaic of the empire, the commercial language of the
I  -- Thirty miles north-east of Shiraz in Southern Iran, famous in modern times as a centre of carpet weaving.
2 -- 530-522 B.C.
3  -- 522-486 B.C.

p 304 -- Achaemenide Empire. Numerous other contemporary texts confirm, moreover, the extent to which Darius fostered the indigenous cults of the peoples incorporated in his empire, not only in Palestine, but also in Asia Minor and Egypt.

FIG. 63.- Map of the Persian Empire c.a. 500 B.C.

For example the inscription of Usahor, an Egyptian doctor, runs as follows: "King Darius -may he live for ever - commanded me to go to Egypt ... and make up once more the number of the holy scribes of the temple and bring new life into what had fallen into decay...."

Darius wrote to Gadata, the steward of his demesnes, in no uncertain manner. He took him sharply to task for his attitude to the priesthood of the temple of Apollo in Magnesia: "I hear that you are not carrying out my instructions properly. Admittedly you are taking trouble over my estates, in that you are transferring trees and plants from beyond the Euphrates to Asia Minor. I commend this project and the Court will show its gratitude. But in disregarding my attitude to the gods you have provoked my displeasure and unless you change your tactics you will feel its weight. For you have taken away the gardeners who are sacred to Apollo and used them for other gardening jobs of a secular character, thereby showing a lack of appreciation of the sentiments of my ancestors towards the god who has spoken to the Persians ...."

The efforts of the returned exiles were for many years confined exclusively to rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem. Building operations started in October-November 520 B.C. and by 12 March 515 B.C. they were completed. 1

1 - Zech. 1:1 - the eighth month of the second year of Darius = Oct.-Nov. 520 B.C. (Start of building operations).
Ezra 6:15 - the third day of the month of Adar, (Babylonian: Addaru) in the sixth year of Darius = 12 March 515 B.C. (Completion of Temple).

p 305 -- They had to wait for the city wall until the next century. It was not until the time of Nehemiah, who was installed as independent governor of Judah by king Artaxerxes I  1   of Persia in 444 B.C., that they began work on the wall, which was finished in record time. "So the wall was finished ... in fifty and two days" (Neh. 6:15). A new wall in fifty-two days - impossible! Nehemiah himself tells us of "the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire" (Neh. 2:13). The walls were thus merely repaired. And that must have happened in a hurry. For the neighbouring tribes, above all the Samaritans, wanted to stop the refortification of Jerusalem by every means in their power. The Jews had to be constantly on the look out: everyone with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon" (Neh, 4:17)

It is no different today in the case of the building operations of farmers, workers and shepherds in the modern state of Israel.

The speedy filling up of holes and patching up of gpas in the walls reflect the pressure of the time factor and the feverish anxiety with which the work went forward. The British archaeologist J. Garrow Duncan dug up parts of the wall on the little hill to the south-east above the Gihon spring. In his report he says: "The stones are small, rough, irregular and unequal. Some of them are unusually small and seem to be merely chips broken off from bigger stones, just as if they were using any kind of material that came to hand. The large holes and hollow spaces are filled up with a haphazard mixture of clay plaster mixed with tiny chips of stone...."

FIG 64. - Stamp on Judahite pitcher bearing the inscription "Jerusalem".

During the time that Nehemiah was governor of Jerusalem we are told how the holy fire of the Temple was rediscovered. The first two chapters of 2 Maccabees tell how Nehemiah "sent in quest of the fire the descendants of the priests that hid it". They "had found no fire but thick water". When at Nehemiah's command they poured this thick water over "the wood and the things laid thereupon" "There was kindled a great blaze so that all men marvelled" (2 Macc. I:21-22). Nobody paid much attention to the observation that followed: "And Nehemiah and they that were with him called this thing Nephthar" (2 Macc. 1:36). Yet this passage in the Bible contains a very clear hint regarding a quite specific mineral
product which must have been well known to the Israelites, and it is only very recently that this was recognised. In the new state of Israel petroleum, or naphtha - the word is of Babylonian derivation - has in fact been found. Since 1953, drilling near the Dead Sea, in the Negev and in the neighbourhood of Askelon has led to the successful opening
of Israeli oil-wells.
1  - 465-424 B.C.

p 306 -- The rebuilding of the Temple and of the old city of David after the return from exile in Babylon make it abundantly clear that Israel knew full well that the days of the monarchy had gone for ever and that only the inward solidarity of a religious community, could guarantee the further existence of the tiny state in face of what political developments might be in store for them. With this end in view they made the holy city the centre of Jewry, both for those Jews who lived in the homeland of Judah and for those who were scattered throughout the world. The High Priest of the new Temple at Jerusalem became head over all Israel. The little theocracy in Palestine took no noteworthy part in the affairs of the world during the subsequent centuries. Israel turned its back on politics.

With Persian approval the Law of God became the law of Israel, indeed of Jews everywhere, as the Book of Ezra clearly indicates (Ezra 7: 23-26).

The Biblical passage is convincingly borne out by another document from the same period.

In 1905 three papyrus documents were discovered on the palm-covered island of Elephantine, which lies beside the first cataract of the Nile near the Aswan dam. They are written in imperial Aramaic and date from the year 419 B.C. One of them is an Easter message from king Darius II of Persia containing instructions as to how the Feast of the Passover is to be celebrated. The recipients of the letter were the Jewish-military colony in Elephantine. The sender signs himself Hananiah, "agent for Jewish affairs at the court of the Persian governor of Egypt".

For two centuries the Persians were liege lords of Jerusalem. The history, of Israel during this period seems to have been subjected to no violent variations. The Bible makes no mention of it, nor have the layers of rubble anything significant to tell us of this long space of time. At all events there is a complete absence of large buildings, or objects of art and craft, among the archaeological trophies recovered from the appropriate layer. Fragments of simple household utensils prove how miserably poor life in Judah must have been at that time.

FIG. 65.- Coin from Judah with Zeus and the Athenian owl (Persian period).

Coins certainly occur in the course of the fourth century B.C. They bear the proud legend "Yehud", "Judah". Apparently the Persians had granted the high priest the right to mint silver coins. Following the example of the Attic drachma, they are decorated with the portrait of Zeus and the owl of Athens, testimony to the way in which Greek trade and influence had been able to penetrate everywhere in the Orient long before the days of Alexander the Great.

p 307 -- Chapter 33 -- UNDER GREEK INFLUENCE -- Alexander the Great in Palestine - Causeway forces capitulation of Tyre - Siege towers 160 feet high - Alexandria: the new metropolis - Ptolemies occupy Judah - 72 scholars translate the Bible - Pentateuch in Greek - The Septuagint came from Pharos - A stadium below the Temple - High Priest in "gaming house" - Jewish athletes give offence.

And it came to pass, after that Alexander the Macedonian, the son of Philip, who came out of the land of Chittim,  1  and smote Darius king of the Persians and Medes, it came to pass, after he had smitten him, that he reigned in his stead, in former time, over Greece. And he fought many battles, and won many strongholds.... I Maccabees 1:1 - R.V.

In the 4th century B.C. the centre of political power gradually shifted from the "Fertile Crescent" to the West. The prelude to this development, which was of decisive importance for the whole world, had been two famous battles in the previous century, in both of which the Greeks called a halt to any further Persian advance. At Marathon in 491 B.C. they defeated the Persian armies of Darius I. At Salamis, off Athens, they smashed the Persian fleet eleven years later in 480 B.C.

With the victory of Alexander the Great  2   over Darius III,   king of Persia, in 333 B.C. at Issus, near the present day seaport of Alexandria in North Syria, the Macedonians arrogated to themselves the leading role among the nations of the world.

Alexander's first target was Egypt. With a picked force of 32,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry he marched south at the age of twenty-four, accompanied off shore by a fleet of 160 ships. Twice he was held up on the coast of Syria and Palestine.

The first occasion was at Tyre. This Phoenician city, heavily fortified and protected by stout high walls, was built on a small island which guarded the coastline. Alexander performed here a miracle of military ingenuity by building a 2,000 foot mole in the sea out to the island city. To safeguard the operations, mobile protective shields, so-called "tortoises" had to be employed. Despite this the construction of the causeway was greatly hindered by an incessant hail of missiles. Meantime his engineers were on shore building veritable monsters: "Helepoleis". These were mobile protective towers many stories high, which held the
1 -- Greece.
2 -- 336-323 B.C.
3 -- 336-331 B.C.

p 308 -- detachments of bowmen and light artillery. A drawbridge on the front of the towers enabled a surprise attack to be made on the enemy's walls. They were the highest siege towers ever used in the history of war. Each of them had twenty stories and the topmost platform towered at a height of over 160 feet far above the highest city walls.

FIG. 66.- Alexander the Great built a 650 yard causeway across to Tyre. 
FIG. 67.- Alexander's mobile siege-towers were I 60 feet high.

When after seven months preparation these monsters, bristling with weapons, slowly and clumsily rolled towards Tyre, the fate of the maritime stronghold, which was considered to be impregnable, was sealed.

"And Tyrus did build herself a stronghold and heaped up silver as the dust and fine gold as the mire of the streets. Behold, the Lord will cast her out and he will smite her power in the sea; and she shall be devoured with fire." (Zechariah 9:3-4). This is the Bible's comment on Alexander's conquest. It was incorporated in the Book of Zechariah, in the later, second part. Today nobody has any doubts about the authenticity of these words as a genuine commentary by the Jewish community of Alexander's day on the events of the year 332 B.C.

"... Gaza shall ... be very sorrowful" we read in the following verse (Zechariah 9:5) which deals with this year in Alexander's life. It was indeed the old Philistine town of Gaza which brought the Macedonian king to a halt for the second time. But this siege lasted only two months, and then the road to the Nile lay open.

The siege of Gaza in south-west Palestine especially must have made some impact on the Jews. The noise of troops marching down the coast below them and camping there must have been heard on their hills above. Yet the Bible has as little to say about these events as indeed about the whole period of Greek supremacy for almost 150 years. Its historians do not take us

p 309 -- beyond the end of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the creation of the theocracy under Persian sovereignty. It is only with the beginning of the Maccabean wars that it embarks once more upon detailed history.

But Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, gives an account which is not found in the Bible of the campaign of the victorious Greek through Syria and Palestine at this time. After the capture of the fortress of Gaza, he says, Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem. The people and Jaddua the High Priest received him with great ceremony. Alexander offered sacrifices in the Temple and granted the people favours.

Alexander can hardly have found time for a trip to Jerusalem, since he had already been held up for nine months by the resistance of Tyre and Gaza. After the fall of Gaza he hurried on by the quickest road to Egypt, leaving the conquest of the territory inland to his general Parmenion, who had no difficulty in subduing the country. Only Samaria, the seat of the governor of the province, had to be forcibly brought to heel. As a punishment it had a colony of Macedonians settled in it.

Jerusalem and the province of Judah seems to have submitted to their new masters without more ado. At all events no contemporary source has so far suggested that there was any resistance from the theocracy.

The visit of Alexander to Jerusalem is probably only a legend which nevertheless contains a grain of truth. It bears eloquent witness to the fact that the Greek conqueror too tolerated the way of life of the theocracy of Judah. It was left unmolested as a religious community.

This is quite in accord with what archaeology has been able to establish. There are no traces of either a Greek conquest or a Greek occupation of Judah at that time.

Only in the neighbouring city of Samaria a strong Greek fortress came into existence about 322 B.C. Excavations disclosed a whole series of round towers. They lean against the old casemated wall which was built in the days when Samaria was still the capital of the kingdom of Israel.

Alexander remained in Egypt, which welcomed him as a liberator, during the winter of 332-331 B.C. On the outermost tip of the Nile delta he founded the city of Alexandria, which was destined for the role of the metropolis of the new age. It quickly blossomed into the centre of a new intellectual life which attracted the best minds of the Greek and oriental world within its orbit.

At its foundation Alexander issued instructions which were to be of the highest significance in future days. He guaranteed to the Jews - descendants of the refugees in the Babylonian era - the same rights as were accorded to his own countrymen. This provision, carried on by the successors of the great Macedonian, led to Alexandria

p 310 -- becoming subsequently one of the great reservoirs of Jewish life and culture.

The name of the city founded by Alexander does not appear in the Bible earlier than the Book of Acts: "And a certainjew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus" (Acts 18:24).

On the way to one of the greatest and most successful military expeditions known to history, Alexander marched once more through Palestine. Every country in the Ancient East fell before him. He pressed on to the Indus, almost to the foot of the Himalayas. On the way back he was attacked by a fever. Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 33 on the 13th of June 323 B.C.

In view of the fact that, long before Alexander, the Greeks had been stretching out their feelers in a thoasand ways in the direction of Mesopotamia and Egypt, we can only shake our heads in amazement at Jewish ignorance of the ways of the world. Time seems to have been standing still in the little theocracy and the life of its tiny religious community appears to have been influenced only by the Torah, the Law of God.

A long way back there had been Greek mercenaries in the armies of Pharaoh Psamtik II and Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Chaldeans. It was also a long time since the first Greek forts and trading stations had started to spread along the coast of Syria and Palestine. In the 5th century B.C. there were already highly educated Greeks travelling and studying in all countries of the ancient orient: Herodotus and Xenophon, Hecataeus and Ctesias.

FIG. 68.- Map - HELLENISTIC EMPIRE 300 B.C.

p 311 -- Were these men in their theocratic community no longer able to recognise or understand the signs of the times? Or did they intentionally shut their eyes and blindly hope to keep the future at bay?

If so they must have had all the ruder awakening when they came face to face with Greece but a few steps from the sanctuary of the Temple and could disguise from themselves no longer that Jewish youth had fallen completely for the sport of throwing the discus, which had been imported from Greece. Athletic contests on the Greek pattern quickly found an enthusiastic response among the young people.

Greece was not a danger to the Jews by reason of its growing ascendancy, or militarism or seductive teinptations. The danger lay far more in the freer atmosphere of a fabulous modern world. Hellas, with its Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, with its Phidias and Polygnotus, its Plato and its Aristotle, had climbed up to a new stage in human development.

Undisturbed by the new era of mankind the tiny theocracy went on obstinately in its own way, held tenaciously and inflexibly to its traditions and to the past. Despite all this it was forced to join issue with the new ideas. But there was still time enough before the 2nd century B.C.

So Alexander ... died. And his servants bore rule every one in his place. And after his death they all put crowns upon themselves: so did their sons after them many years: and evils were multiplied in the earth -- I Macc. 1:7-9.

The idea behind the struggle for power of Alexander's captains - the Diadochi - is not unknown even in 20th century politics. In its original form it was no more of an advertisement for the profession of army commanders. Alexander's generals had no scruples about getting rid of his whole family by murdering them: Philip Arrhidaeus his half brother, his mother Olympia, his widow Roxana and his posthumous son. The conflict came to a head in the division of the empire into three kingdoms.

The kingdom of Macedonia in Northern Greece.

The kingdom of the Seleucids, which extended from Thrace through Asia Minor and Syria to the border of India. Antioch, in the north of Syria, situated on the lower reaches of the Orontes, was founded as capital of this second and by far the largest of the successor states. Thereafter almost all the Seleucid monarchs added to their own names the name of this city: Antiochus.

The third was the Ptolemaic kingdom on the Nile with Alexandria as its capital. It was ruled by a dynasty whose last representative, Cleopatra, has ever since enjoyed a certain amount of fame for having

p 312 -- so successfully turned the heads of her distinguished contemporaries Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Ptolemy I was the first ruler of this dynasty.

Two unusually far-sighted rulers, Ptolemy I and his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, developed their capital city of Alexandria into a nursery of Hellenistic culture and learning, whose fame extended far beyond the borders of their own kingdom and made it a radiant centre of attraction for emigrants from Judah among others. In this crucible they steeped themselves in the beauty of the Greek language, the only means of tasting the delights of the prodigious advances of the human mind and the human spirit. It was the international language of learning and of commerce, the language of tens of thousands of Israelites who knew no other home.

The rising generation no longer knew Hebrew as their mother tongue. They could no longer follow the sacred text in the services of the synagogue. Thus it came about that the Jews in Egypt decided to translate the Hebrew scriptures. About 250 B.C. the Torah was translated into Greek, a fact of immeasurable import for Western civilisation.

The translation of the Bible into the Greek tongue was for the Jews in Egypt such an incredible step forward that legend took hold of it. The story is told in an apocryphal letter of Aristeas of Alexandria.

Philadelphus,  1   the second of the Ptolemaic dynasty, took great pride in the fact that he possessed a collection of the finest books in the world. One day the librarian said to the monarch that he had brought together in his 995 books the best literature of all nations. But, he added, the greatest books of all, the five books of Moses, were not included among them. Therefore Ptolemy II Philadelphus sent envoys to the High Priest to ask for a copy of these books. At the same time he asked for men to be sent who could translate them into Greek. The High Priest granted his request and sent together with the copy of the Torah 72 learned and wise scribes. Great celebrations were organised in honour of the visitors from Jerusalem, at whose wisdom and knowledge the king and his courtiers were greatly astonished. After the festivities they betook themselves to the extremely difficult task which had been assigned to them, and for which there was neither prototype nor dictionary. They set to work out at sea, on the island of Pharos off Alexandria, at the foot of one of the seven wonders of the world - the 300 feet high lighthouse which Ptolemy II had erected as a warning for shipping far and near. Each of them worked in a cell by himself. When the scholars had completed their work and the translations were compared with one another all seventy-two are said to have corresponded exactly, word for word. Accordingly the Greek translation of the Bible was called the "Septuagint", meaning "the Seventy".
1 -- 285-246 B.C.

p 313 -- What had previously been made known only in the sanctuary, only in the old tongue, and only to the one nation was now all at once available and intelligible for people of other tongues and other races. The hitherto carefully guarded door was thrown wide open.

Judah's attachment to the kingdom of the Ptolemies lasted for more than 100 years. Then the Seleucids of Antioch forced their way southwards, an expansion for which they had long been striving. After a victorious battle against Ptolemy V at the sources of the Jordan, Antiochus III, called the Great, took over Palestine in 195 B.C., and Judah thereby once more came under a new sovereignty.

Gradually the foreign seed began to sprout even in the theocracy. The manifold and enduring influence of the Greek attitude of mind, which had been infiltrating since Alexander's victorious campaigns, became more and more apparent.

When "Antiochus surnamed Epiphanes ... reigned in the hundred and thirty and seventh year of the kingdom of the Greeks" (I Macc. 1:10) and "Jason ... laboured underhand to be high priest ... he forthwith brought his own nation to the Greekish fashion.... For he built gladly a place of exercise under the tower itself, and brought the chief young men under his subjection.... Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase in heathenish manners through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch and no high priest; that the priests had no courage to serve any more at the altar, but despising the temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus called them forth" (2 Macc- 4:7-14)

This "place of exercise" - Luther even translated it as a "gaming-house" - was nothing more or less than a stadium. Why then so much excitement over a sports ground? Gymnastics in Jerusalem - discus throwers and sprinters in the holy city - it sounds perhaps unusually progressive, but why should Yahweh be displeased at it, how could a High Priest be denounced as ungodly on that account?

Between the method of playing games today and playing games in those days there is a slight but very essential difference. It has nothing to do with the exercises themselves, which have remained practically the same for over 2,000 years. The difference lies in dress. True to the Olympic pattern, games were played completely naked. The body could only be "covered", with a thin coat of oil!

Nakedness itself must have been regarded by all orthodox believers in Judah as a challenge. They firmly believed in the corruption of human nature from youth onwards and in the sinfulness of the body. It is impossible that athletics in full view of the Temple, only a few steps from the Holy of Holies, should not have been regarded as an outrageous insult or that it should not have given rise to vigorous opposition. According to contemporary sources the High Priest, Jason, had

p 314 -- located the stadium in the heart of Jerusalem, in the valley   which bordered the Temple hill.

But that was not the end of the scandal. It was not long before Jewish athletes were guilty of a serious crime against the Law, they "made themselves uncircumcised" (I Macc. I:15).

The Greek conception of beauty and the circumcision of Jewish athletes displayed in full view of the public eye were two irreconcilable things. Jewish teams - not in Jerusalem among their own people naturally - met with scorn and ridicule, and even aversion, as soon as they appeared in contests away from home. The Bible speaks of "the game that ... every fifth year was kept at Tyrus" (2 Macc, 4:18), although this does not refer to a Jewish team but to a ceremonial delegation whose duty was confined to the presentation of gifts.

Many of them must have suffered so much from the disgust which they encountered that they sought a remedy. Other translations refer to a surgical operation which restored the natural state (see Kautzsch on I Macc. 1:15).

Nakedness had come for a second time to be Judah's great temptation. Nakedness had been the outstanding characteristic of the fertility goddesses of Canaan, nakedness was now paraded by the athletes in the sports grounds which had sprung up all over the country. In those days a much deeper significance was attached to athletics than to sport in the modern sense. They were religious exercises, dedicated to the foreign Greek gods Zeus and Apollo. The reaction of orthodox Judaism to this revival of a real threat to their religion could only be uncompromising.

Their new overlords, the Seleucids, gave them all too soon every reason to be so.
1 -- "Josephus calls it the "Tyropoeon" - " (Valley) of the cheesemakers".

p 315 -- Chapter 34 -- THE BATTLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY -- Tax official plunders Jerusalem - Worship of Zeus in the Temple - The revolt of the Maccabees - The Battle of the Elephants at Bethlehem - Americans find Beth-Zur - Coins from Antioch among the rubble - Canteen supplies from Rhodes - Pompey storms Jerusalem - Judah becomes a Roman province.

And taking the holy vessels with polluted hands, and with profane hands putting down the things that were dedicated by other kings to the augmentation and glory and honour of the place he gave them away -- 2 Macc. 5:16..

King Antiochus IV,   called Epiphanes, plundered and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem in 168 B.C. Plundering temples was his speciality, so his contemporaries tell us. Polybius, the Greek historian, observed in his forty-volume "History of the World" that Antiochus IV had "despoiled most sanctuaries".

However, the treasures of the Temple were not enough for the Seleucid king. He sent in addition his chief tax collector Apollonius with an armed force to Jerusalem. This man, "when he had taken the spoils of the city, [he] set it on fire, and pulled down the houses and walls thereof on everyside. But the women and children took they captive, and possessed the cattle" (I Macc. 1:29-32; 2 Macc. 5:24ff).

Throughout the chances and changes of its history Israel had been spared none of the horror and ignominy which could befall a nation. But never before, neither under the Assyrians nor under the Babylonians, had it received such a blow as the edict issued by Antiochus Epiphanes by which he hoped to crush and destroy the faith of Israel.

And the king sent letters by the hand of messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, that they should follow laws strange to the land -- I Macc. 1:44.

The worship of Olympian Zeus was set up in the Temple of Yahweh. For taking part in any Jewish religious ceremonies, the traditional sacrifices, the sabbath or circumcision, the penalty was death. The holy scriptures were destroyed. This was the first thorough going religious persecution in history.

But Israel gave the world an example of how a nation that refuses to
1 -- 175-163 B.C.

p 316 -- be untrue to itself can and must react to a violation of its conscience of this kind.

There were of course even in those days weak characters who chose the way of least resistance. Nevertheless many ". . . chose rather to die, that they might not be defiled..." (I Macc. 1:63). But it was the resolute and fervent faith of an old man which first kindled the torch of revolt in the land.

Modin was the name of a small village, 20 miles from Jerusalem on the western fringe of the highlands of Judah. Today it is the market town of el-Medieh. Here lived the priest Mattathias with his five sons. When Antiochus' officers came to Modin to force the inhabitants to "forsake the law", to offer sacrifices and to burn incense, Mattathias steadfastly refused to obey the order, and when he saw one of his countrymen offering a sacrifice he could not "forbear to show his anger according to judgement: wherefore he ran and slew him upon the altar. Also the king's commissioner, who compelled men to sacrifice, he killed at that time, and the altar he pulled down" (I Macc. 2:1-25). This act was the signal for open resistance, for a life and death struggle for religious freedom - the "Wars of the Maccabees".

Mattathias and his sons escaped. In their secret haunts in the mountains and in caves they gathered round them a band of those who shared their beliefs and with their assistance waged bitter guerrilla warfare against the occupying power. After the death of the old priest his son Judas, whose surname was Maccabaeus,  1  became the leader.

It was in the highlands of Judah that the rebels achieved their first successes. Their achievements were indeed remarkable. This small untrained and badly equipped band mastered the well-drilled and numerically superior occupation troops. Beth-Horon, Emmaus and Beth-Zur were captured. The Seleucids had to retreat until reinforcements arrived from Antioch. Judas Maccabaeus liberated Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and restored the old order in the Temple. The altar was rebuilt and sacrifices to Yahweh were offered as in former times (I Macc- 4:36ff )

In the course of military expeditions which took him more and more across the frontiers of the province of Judah, Judas Maccabaeus entered Galilee and Transjordan and wherever there were Israelites who remained true to the old faith. On the way to Idumaea, the old town of Hebron in Southern Judah was besieged and destroyed. This continuing good fortune of Judas Maccabaeus in battle compelled king Antiochus V Eupator,   son of Epiphanes, to intervene with a large armed force. In the decisive battle, which took place a few miles south-west of Bethlehem near Beth-Zachariah,   the Seleucids employed elephants, flanked by detachments of cavalry. The Maccabeans were unable to cope with this colossal superiority and were 
1 -- i.e. "Hammer"
2 -- 163-162 B.C.
3 --
Now Bet-lskarje.

p 317 -- defeated. Dissension amongst themselves drove the victors to make peace with surprisingly favourable terms for the vanquished. The decrees of Antiochus IV Epiphanes of 167 B.C. were rescinded, liberty of worship was guaranteed and the religious community at Jerusalem was once more recognised (I Macc.30ff, 58ff)..

The aims of the Jewish rebellion had been achieved.

Not content with that, the Maccabees wanted political independence as well as freedom of religion. The successors of Judas Maccabaeus, his brothers Jonathan and Simon, began the struggle anew. It ended in 142 B.C. under Simon, with Syria granting them also political freedom (I Macc. 15:1ff).

A fortress which was in the midst of the struggle and changed hands several times was Beth-Zur.   The results of excavation correspond to the historical circumstances described in the first book of the Maccabees.

FIG. 69.- Map - KINGDOM OF THE MACCABEES 100 B.C.(GREATEST EXTENT)

"Khirbet et-Tubeka" is the modern name of this once hotly contested spot. It controls the old road from Jerusalem to Hebron on the frontier between Judah and Idumaea which lies to the south of it. In 1931 the American archaeologist W. F. Albright and 0. P. Sellers found here a large collection of coins. One hundred and twenty-six out of a total of over 300 were stamped with the names of Antiochus Epiphanes and Antiochus Eupator.

The hill still bears the foundations of a powerful fortress in which three stages of construction can be clearly distinguished. Only fragments remain of the lowest and oldest. They date from Persian times. The next stage above it is of oriental character. This is the work of Judas Maccabaeus dating from the first period of his successful revolt. "And they set there a garrison to keep it, and fortified Bethsura to preserve it: that the people might have a defence against Idumaea" (I Macc- 4:61).

After the Battle of the Elephants near Beth-Zachariah, Antiochus V
1 -- Or Beth-Sur.

p 318 -- Eupator occupied this border fortress: "So the king took Bethsura, and set a garrison there to keep it" (Ii Macc. 6:50).

The troops of the Seleucids likewise have left unmistakable traces of their stay. As the archaeologists were able to establish, these consisted of relics of their catering arrangements, which were found among the ruins of the walls erected by Judas Maccabaeus. Part of the rations of these soldiers was wine of excellent quality from the hills of Greece. From the handles of the jars, which lay about among the mass of broken earthenware, Albright and Sellers were even able to tell where the wine came from. A wine merchant in Rhodes must have been the army's principal supplier.

That was in 162 B.C. A year later the Seleucids fortified Beth-Zur anew. A new citadel, with characteristic Hellenistic masonry, arose upon the ruined Maccabean walls. Their general Bacchides "repaired the strong cities in Judah.... He fortified also the city Bethsura ... and put forces in them and provision of victuals" (I Macc. 9:50, 52).

The Biblical record ends with the murder of Simon, brother of Judas Maccabaeus. The spiritual and political leadership of Judas was transferred, with the office of High Priest, to Simon's son John. He was called John Hyrcanus. "John, the High Priest, and the Jewish people" and "John the High Priest, Head of the Jewish people" are the inscriptions on coins "which he had minted and which have since been found.

We are indebted to Flavius Josephus' careful account of the history of the period for accurate information about this Maccabean and his successors.   By dint of incessant and purposeful fighting the frontiers of Judah were extended farther and farther. Under Alexander Jannaeus  2   they enlarged their territories until they almost covered the area previously occupied by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

. As time went on the Seleucids became less and less serious adversaries. They lacked the strength to cope with the Maccabeans when Rome - now, having overthrown Hannibal of Carthage,   undisputed mistress of the Western Mediterranean - had expanded its sovereignty beyond Greece into Asia Minor.

Pompey, the Roman general, marched through the kingdom of the Seleucids into Palestine. After a three months' siege Roman legions entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. Judah became a Roman province.

With this event the political independence of Israel came to an abrupt end.

1 -- Josephus calls them "Hasmoneans" from the name of their ancestor the father of Mattathias (Wars of the Jews, I, I.3).
2  -- 103-76 B.C.
3 -- At the battle of Zama in 202 B.C.

p 319, p 320 -- pictures

p 321 -- DIGGING UP THE NEW TESTAMENT --

SECTION I -- Jesus of Nazareth

Chapter 35 -- PALESTINE ON MARE NOSTRUM -- A Province of the Roman Empire - Greek cities on the Jordan - The New Testament - The governor appears in history - A census every 14 years.

But when the fulness of the time was come God sent forth his son.... - Gal. 4:4

In the wide circle of countries which surround Mare Nostrum,   1   from North Africa and Spain to the shores of Asia Minor, the will of Rome, now mistress of the world, reigned supreme. After the disappearance of the great Semitic empires of the "Fertile Crescent", Palestine was drawn into the new world and shared its destinies. Roman occupation troops enforced the will of Rome in a land which was ruled and exploited by men who were likewise nominees of Rome.

Life in the Roman Empire took on more and more the stamp of Greece: Roman civilisation was to a large extent Greek civilisation: Greek was the world language which united all the subject peoples of the East.

Anyone wandering through Palestine at the turn of the eras might have imagined he was in Greece. Across the Jordan lay out and out Greek cities. The "Ten Cities"' of the gospels (Matt. 4:25; Mk. 5:20) took Athens as their model: they had temples which were sacred to Zeus and Artemis, they had their theatre, their pillared forum, their stadium, their gymnasium and their baths. Greek in architecture as well as in the habits of their citizens were likewise Caesarea, the seat of Pilate's government, which lay on the Mediterranean south of Carmel, Sepphoris and Tiberias, which lay a few miles north of Nazareth on the Lake of Galilee, Caesarea Philippi, built at the foot of Hermon, and likewise Jericho. Only the many small towns and villages in Galilee, as in Judah, had retained their Jewish style of architecture. It was in these genuine Jewish communities that Jesus lived and worked, and nowhere do the Gospel writers speak of his ever having lived in one of the Greek cities but only in their neighbourhood (Mark 7:31).

Nevertheless Greek dress and much of the Greek way of life had long before Jesus' day penetrated into the purely Jewish communities.
1 -- The Roman name for the Mediterranean.
2 --
Greek: Dekapolis.

p 322 -- Natives of Galilee and Judah wore the same sort of clothes as were worn in Alexandria, Rome or Athens. These consisted of tunic and cloak, shoes or sandals, with a hat or a cap as head covering. Furniture included a bed and the Greek habit of reclining at meals was generally adopted.

The Old Testament covers a period of nearly 1,200 years if we reckon from the Exodus from Egypt under Moses, or nearly 2,000 years if we reckon from the time of the patriarchs. The New Testament on the other hand covers a period of less than 100 years. From the beginning of the ministry of Jesus to the end of the Acts of the Apostles is only a little more than thirty years. The Old Testament largely reflects the varied history of the people of Israel; the New Testament is concerned with the life and sayings of a few individuals: it revolves exclusively round the teaching of Jesus, round his disciples and the apostles.

Archaeology cannot produce extensive evidence from the world of the New Testament. For the life of Christ offers nothing that would leave any material traces on this earth: neither royal palaces nor temples, neither victorious campaigns nor burnt cities and country sides. Jesus was essentially a man of peace, he taught the Word of God. Archaeologists have recognised their task to be that of reconstructing his environment and rediscovering the villages and cities where he lived, worked and died. Yet for this purpose they have been given a unique guide. No event out of the whole of Graeco-Roman history, no manuscript of any classical author has come down to posterity in anything like so many ancient copies as the scriptures of the New Testament. They can be numbered in thousands, and the oldest and most venerable among them are only a few decades removed from the time of Christ.

A manuscript containing part of St. John's Gospel, for example, the famous Papyrus Bodmer II, comes from the time of Trajan, the Roman emperor who reigned from A.D. 98- 117. This precious document in Greek script, so far probably the oldest New Testament writing, was discovered by a lucky chance in Egypt in 1935.

And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife... - Luke 2:1-5.

The census is by no means the invention of modern statisticians. Practised in ancient times, it fulfilled then as now two extremely

p 323 -- reasonable purposes. It provided the relevant information firstly for calling up men for military service and secondly for taxation purposes. In subject countries it was the second of these that mostly concerned the Romans.

Without exacting tribute from its foreign possessions, Rome would never have been able on the strength of its own resources to afford the luxury of its much admired magnificent buildings and pleasances, its extravagant way of living, or its expensive system of administering its empire. Roman emperors were able to guarantee their people "Panem et Circenses", "bread and circuses", on a grand scale at no cost to themselves. Egypt had to provide the corn for the free bread. And the great arenas for the games were built by slaves with money derived from tribute.

The census, which was its official name in Rome, was originally held every five years. This five year period even entered the literature of Rome as the "lustrum" and this word enjoyed great favour among Roman writers and in formal speech. Changes in the economy as well as in the constitution, the introduction of immunity from taxation for Roman citizens and the troubles of the later Republican period led to the gradual abandonment of the census. Especially in the later Republican period there was no longer any question of a regular five yearly census. It is true that Augustus revived the census, particularly in the provinces, but even he did not reintroduce it on the old five year basis. It is important to remember this for the dating of the birth of Jesus depends upon it to some extent.

:Cyrenius the governor" was the senator P. Sulpicius Quirinius, who is otherwise known to us from Roman documents. The Emperor Augustus rated highly the outstanding ability of this social climber both as soldier and administrator. He was born in modest circumstances near Tusculum in the Alban hills, a place which was reckoned among the favourite resorts of the noble Roman families.

In A.D. 6 Quirinius went as legate to Syria. Coponius was sent with him from Rome to be the first Procurator of Judaea. Between A.D. 6 and 7 they carried out a census. Can this refer, however, to the census mentioned by St. Luke? In the first place, Luke speaks of an Imperial decree "that all the world should be taxed", i.e. the whole Roman empire. But the census taken in the years 6 and 7 A.D. was merely a provincial one and, secondly, Jesus would then have been born around 7 or 6 B.C. as many believe. According to the Biblical account, the census decreed by Caesar Augustus took place about the year Christ was born. There is no record of a general census throughout the empire in the years 7 and 6 B.C.

Is it possible that St. Luke made a mistake?

For a long time it seemed as if he had. It was only when a fragment of a Roman inscription was discovered at Antioch that the surprising fact

p 324 -- emerged that Quirinius had been in Syria once before on a mission from the Emperor Augustus in the days of Saturninus the pro-consul.

At that time his assignment had been purely military. He led a campaign against the Homonadenses, a tribe in the Taurus mountains in Asia Minor. Quirinius established his seat of government as well as his headquarters in Syria between 10 and 7 B.C.

p 325 -- Chapter 36 -- THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM -- A suggestion by Origen - Halley's comet over China - Kepler's observations in Prague - Astronomical tablets found at Sippar-Babylonian astronomers' records - Modern astronomical calculations - December frost in Bethlehem.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him - Matt. 2:1, 2.

International expeditions of astronomers have been regarded as a matter of course for a long time now. Scientists from all countries, laden with special instruments and measuring apparatus, stream into every corner of the globe when there is a total eclipse or some other important astronomical phenomenon to be observed.

For centuries St. Matthew's story of the Messianic star has exercised men's imaginations. Laymen and experts alike have aired their views on the subject and these have found expression in a considerable volume of literature. Anything that has ever moved across the canopy of heaven, as well as much that has only existed in men's imaginations, has been dubbed the "Star of Bethlehem".

That this is a case of a phenomenon in the sky of quite an unusual type is indicated by the Bible in unmistakable terms. Astronomers are the experts in these matters of heavenly phenomena and we should therefore expect from them an explanation which would fit in with modern scientific knowledge.

If we think of a sudden bright light in the sky, we can only reckon with two types, apart from shooting stars: either a comet or an exploding star, technically known as a "nova".

Conjectures of this kind were expressed in early times. Origen, one of the Christian Fathers, who lived in Alexandria about A.D. 200, wrote as follows: "I am of the opinion that the star which appeared to the Wise Men in the east was a new star which had nothing in common with those stars which appear either in the firmament or in the lower levels of the atmosphere. Presumably it belonged to the category of these heavenly fires which appear from time to time and have been given names by the Greeks depending on their shape, either comets, or fiery beams, or starry hosts, or starry tails, or vessels or some such name."

Bright comets, with tails often stretching half across the sky, have

p 326 -- always made a deep impression on men's minds. They were held to portend special events. Is it surprising that this most magnificent of all stellar spectacles should be associated with the idea of the star of the Wise Men of the East? Artists seized upon this attractive motif: in many popular representations of the crib in pictures of the birth of Christ a radiant comet shines over the manger bed of Bethlehem.

Excavations and ancient writings which have come to light have produced astonishingly detailed information about astronomical occurrences stretching back over thousands of years. We now possess notes and observations from Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian and Chinese sources.

After the assassination of Caesar, shortly after the Ides of March in 44 B.C., a brilliant comet was seen. Seventeen years before the turn of the eras, another extremely bright comet appeared suddenly, and was observed for a whole night in Mediterranean countries. The next dazzling comet to be reported was in the year A.D. 66, shortly before Nero committed suicide.

Between these two there is another account with most precise details, this time from Chinese astronomers. Their observations are recorded in the Wen-hien-thung-khao encyclopaedia of the Chinese scholar Ma Tuan-lin: "In the first year of [the Emperor] Yuen-yen, in the 7th month, on the day Sin-ouei [25 August] a comet was seen in the region of the sky known as Toung-tsing [beside the Mu of the Gemini]. It passed over the Ou-tschoui-heou [Gemini], proceeded from the Ho-su Castor and Pollux] in a northerly direction and then into the group of Hien-youen [the head of Leo] and into the house of Thaiouei [tail of Leo].... On the 56th day it disappeared with the Blue Dragon [Scorpio]. Altogether the comet was observed for 63 days."

This very full account from ancient Chinese sources contains the first description of the famous Halley's comet, that great trailing star which always reappears close to the sun after an interval of seventy-six years. The last time it was seen was between 1909 and 1911. The strange display will be seen again in 1986. For the comet keeps to a strict time schedule on its tremendous elliptical course through space. But it is not always visible and not equally visible everywhere. Thus in the year 12 B.C in China it was an astral phenomenon which could be accurately observed in all its phases. Whereas in the Mediterranean countries, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, there is no mention whatever at that time of a heavenly body of such striking and impressive brilliance.

The same is true of "new stars". These "Novae" are constellations in space which suddenly burst asunder in an atomic explosion of colossal magnitude. Their radiance, which outshines the light of all other stars, is so noticeable and so unusual that it is always remarked upon. About the turn of the eras the blazing light of a new star is only twice mentioned, in 134 B.C. and A.D. 173. None of the old sources and

p 327 -- traditions says anything about a bright comet or a new star in the
Mediterranean world about the year A.D. I.

Shortly before Christmas 1603, on December 17th, the Imperial Mathematician and Astronomer Royal Johannes Kepler was sitting through the night high above the Moldava in the Hradcyn in Prague, observing with his modest telescope the approach of two planets. "Conjunction" is the technical name for the position of two celestial bodies on the same degree of longitude. Sometimes two planets move so close to one another that they have the appearance of a single larger and more brilliant star. That night Saturn and Jupiter had a rendezvous in space within the constellation of Pisces.

Looking through his notes later Kepler suddenly remembered something he had read in the rabbinic writer Abarbanel, referring to an unusual influence which Jewish astrologers were said to have ascribed to this same constellation. Messiah would appear when there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces.

FIG- 70- Conjunction of Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in December 1603 according to Kepler.

Could it have been the same conjunction at the time of the birth of Christ as Kepler had observed at Christmastide in 1603? Had it announced, as Kepler wrote later, the coming of the real "Star of Bethlehem"? Or was this constellation perhaps itself the "Christmas Star" as some people believed at a still later date with Kepler as their authority?

Kepler checked his calculations again and again. He was a mixture of scholar and quack, astronomer and astrologer, a disciple of those doctrines which had been put in the same class as mixing poisons as far back as the Code of Justinian. The result was a three-fold conjunction within the space of a year. Astronomical calculations gave the year as 7 B.C. According to astrological tables it must have been 6 B.C. Kepler decided in favour of 6 B.C. and dated the conception of Mary consequently 7 B.C.

His fascinating discovery was published in a number of books, but this enlightened genius who established the planetary laws named after him eventually steeped himself overmuch in the realm of mysticism. Consequently Kepler's hypotheses were for a long time rejected and finally disregarded. It was not until the 19th century that astronomers remembered them again.

Finally in 1925 the German scholar P. Schnabel deciphered the

p 328 -- "papers" in Neo-Babylonian cuneiform of a famous professional institute in the ancient world, the School of Astrology at Sippar in Babylonia. Among endless series of prosaic dates of observations he came across a note about the position of the planets in the constellation of Pisces. Jupiter and Saturn are carefully marked in over a period of five months. Reckoned in our calendar the year was 7 B.C.!

Archaeologists and historians have to reconstruct their picture of a bygone age with enormous effort, from monuments and documents, from individual discoveries and broken fragments. It is simpler for the modern astronomer. He can turn back the cosmic clock at will. In his planetarium he can arrange the starry sky exactly as it was thousands of years ago for any given year, any month, even any day. The position of the stars can be calculated backwards with equal precision.

In the year 7 B.C. Jupiter and Saturn did in fact meet in Pisces and, as Kepler had already discovered, they met three times. Mathematical calculations established further that this threefold coniunction of the planets was particular1y clearly visible in the Mediterranean area.

The time-table of this planetary encounter when it is presented in the prosaic dating system of modern astronomical calculations looks something like this:

FIG. 71. -Third conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 4th in 7 B.C. in the constellation of Pisces.

About the end of February in 7 B.C. the clustering began. Jupiter moved out of the constellation Aquarius towards Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. Since the sun at that time was also in the sign of Pisces its light covered the constellation. It was not until April 12th that both planets rose in Pisces heliacally with a difference of 8 degrees of longitude. "Heliacal" is the word used by astronomers to indicate the first visible rising of a star at daybreak.

On May 29th, visible for fully two hours in the morning sky, the first close encounter took place in the 21st degree of Pisces with a difference of 0 degrees of longitude and of 0.98 degrees of latitude.

The second conjunction took place on October 3rd in the 18th degree of the constellation of Pisces.

On December 4th for the third and last time a close encounter of the planets Jupiter and Saturn took place. This time it was in the 16th degree of Pisces. At the end of January in the year 6 B.C. the planet Jupiter moved out of Pisces into Aries.

"We have seen his star in the east" (Matt. 2:2), said the Wise Men, according to the A.V. The translation is however incorrect, for the words "in the east" are in the original "En te anatole" - the Greek singular - but elsewhere "the east" is represented by "anatolai" - the Greek plural. The singular form "anatole" has, it is main-

p 329 -- tained, quite a special astronomical significance, in that it implies the observation of the early rising of the star, the so-called heliacal rising. The translators of the Authorised Version could not have known this.

When "en te anatole" is translated properly, Matt. 2:2 reads as follows:

"We have seen his star appear in the first rays of dawn." That would have corresponded exactly with the astronomical facts, if the constellation under discussion, and this, of course, is the big question, was the Star of the Wise Men, the Star of Bethlehem, the Christmas Star. Perhaps the following considerations will help us.

But why this ancient learned expedition of the three Wise Men to Palestine when, as we know, they could see the occurrence just as well in Babylon?

The skygazers of the east in their capacity as astrologers attached a special significance to each star. According to the Chaldeans, Pisces was the sign of the West, the Mediterranean countries: in Jewish tradition it was the sign of Israel, the sign of the Messiah. The constellation of Pisces stood at the end of the sun's old course and at the beginning of its new one. What is more likely than that they saw in it the sign of the end of an old age and the start of a new one?

Jupiter was always thought of by all nations as a lucky star and a royal star. According to old Jewish tradition Saturn was supposed to protect Israel: Tacitus equates him with the god of the Jews. Babylonian astrology reckoned the ringed planet to be the special star of the neighbouring lands of Syria and Palestine.

Since Nebuchadnezzar's time many thousands of Jews had lived in Babylon. Many of them may have studied at the School of Astrology in Sippar. This wonderful encounter of Jupiter with Saturn, guardian of Israel, in the constellation of the "west country", of the Messiah, must have deeply moved the Jewish astrologers. For according to astrological ways of thinking it pointed to the appearance of a mighty king in the west country, the land of their fathers. To experience that in person, to see it with their own eyes, that was the reason for the journey of the wise astronomers from the East.

This is what may have happened: on May 29th in the year 7 B.C. they observed the first encounter of the two planets from the roof of the School of Astrology at Sippar. At that time of year the heat was already unbearable in Mesopotamia. Summer is no time for long and difficult journeys. Besides that, they knew about the second conjunction on October 3rd. They could predict this encounter in advance as accurately as future eclipses of the sun and moon. The fact that October 3rd was the Jewish Day of Atonement may have been taken as an admonition, and at that point they may have started out on their journey.

p 330 -- Travel on the caravan routes even on camels, the swiftest means of transport, was a leisurely affair. If we think in terms of a journey lasting about six weeks, the Wise Men would arrive in Jerusalem towards the end of November.

"Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." "When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him"(Matt. 2:2-3).

For these Eastern astronomers that must have been the first and obvious question, which would however arouse nothing but startled concern in Jerusalem. They knew nothing about schools of astrology in the Holy City.

Herod, the hated tyrant, was alarmed. The announcement of a new-born king brought his sovereignty into question. The people on the other hand were pleasurably startled, as appears from other historical sources. About a year after this conjunction of planets which has just been described, a strong Messianic movement came into being. Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, records that about this time a rumour went around that God had decided to bring the rule of the Roman foreigners to an end and that a sign from heaven had announced the coming of a Jewish king. Herod, who had been appointed by the Romans, was in fact not a Jew but an Idumaean.

Herod did not hesitate. He "gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together" and "demanded of them where Christ should be born". They searched through the ancient sacred scriptures of the nation and found the allusion which is contained in the book of the prophet Micah, who had lived 700 years before in the kingdom of Judah: "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ..." (Micah 5:2).

Herod therefore summoned the Wise Men and "sent them to Bethlehem" (Matt. 2:4-8). Since Jupiter and Saturn came together for the third time in the constellation of Pisces on the 4th December, "they rejoiced with exceeding great joy" and set out for Bethlehem "and lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them" (Matt. 2:10, 9).

On the road to Hebron, 5 miles from Jerusalem, lies the village of "Bet Lahm", which was the old Bethlehem of Judah. The ancient highway, which Abraham had once passed along, lay almost due north and south. At their third conjunction the planets Jupiter and Saturn appeared to have dissolved into one great brilliant star. In the twilight of the evening they were visible in a southerly direction, so that the Wise Men of the East on their way from Jerusalem to Bethlehem had the bright star in front of their eyes all the time. As the gospel says, the star actually "went before them".

Every year millions of people all over the world hear the story of the Wise Men of the East. "Star of Bethlehem", a symbol which is always

p 331 -- associated with Christmas, impinges on life in other ways. In biographical dictionaries and on tombstones it has its place beside the date of birth.

Christendom celebrates Christmas from December 24-25. Astronomers and historians, secular and ecclesiastical, are however unanimous that December 25 of the year one was not the authentic date of the birth of Christ, neither as regards the year nor the day. The responsibility for this lies at the door of the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who made several mistakes and miscalculations. He lived in Rome, and in the year 533 he was instructed to fix the beginning of the new era by working backwards. But he forgot the year zero which should have been inserted between I B.C. and A.D. 1. He also overlooked the four years when the Roman emperor Augustus had reigned under his own name Octavian.

The Biblical tradition gives us this clear indication: "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of Herod the king ... " (Matt, 2:1). We know from numerous contemporary sources who Herod was and when he lived and reigned. In 40 B.C. Herod was designated king of Judaea by the Romans. His reign ended with his death in 4 B.C. Jesus must therefore have been born before 4 B.C. if Matthew's statement is correct.

December 25 is referred to in documents as Christmas Day in A.D. 354 for the first time. Under the Roman emperor Justinian   it was recognised as an official holiday. An old Roman festival played a major part in the choice of this particular day. December 25 in ancient Rome was the "Dies Natalis Invicti", "the birthday of the unconquered", the day of the winter solstice and at the same time, in Rome, the last day of the Saturnalia, which had long since degenerated into a week of unbridled carnival, and therefore a time when the Christians could feel most safe from persecution.

Webmaster note: Regarding Dec.25 - refer to The Two Babylons , by Rev.Alexander Hislop, Ch. III, p.91 "Festivals".

Meteorologists as well as historians and astronomers have something of importance to contribute to this question of fixing the date of the birth of Jesus. According to St. Luke: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2:8).

Meteorologists have made exact recordings of the temperature at Hebron. This spot in the southern part of the highlands of Judah exhibits the same climatic conditions as Bethlehem, which is not far distant. The temperature readings show over a period of three months that the incidence of frost is as follows: December 2.8 degrees; January 1.6 degrees; February 0.1. The first two months have also the greatest rainfall in the year: approximately 6 inches in December, and nearly 8 inches in January. According to all existing information the climate of Palestine has not changed appreciably in the last 2,000 years,
1 --
A.D. 527-565.

p 332 -- consequently modern accurate meteorological observations can be taken as a basis.

At Christmas-time Bethlehem is in the grip of frost, and in the Promised Land no cattle would have been in the fields in that temperature. This fact is borne out by a remark in the Talmud to the effect that in that neighbourhood the flocks were put out to grass in March and brought in again at the beginning of November. They remained out in the open for almost eight months.

Around Christmas-time nowadays both animals and shepherds are under cover in Palestine.

What St. Luke tells us points therefore to the birth of Jesus as having taken place before the onset of winter, and the description of the brilliant star in St. Matthew's gospel points to the year 7 B.C.

In recent years, several publications dealing with the life of Christ have appeared. They have attracted a good deal of attention although some of them are not from the pens of professional Biblical specialists. We cannot merely disregard them, as some of them provide us with thoroughly prepared collections of material while also presenting us with a reliable assessment of the opinions of the specialists. These publications have not actually produced any new facts, although they have sometimes shed new light on already published material. Yet, in fact, this new light is not really new, for these views have for long been under discussion among the experts. The public has been made aware of these questions, however, by these publications and this is a sufficient reason for not neglecting them.

It will probably not be generally realised that Johannes Kepler himself did not consider the conjunction of the planets Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, which he had calculated, as the actual "Star of Bethlehem", the "Christmas Star", but merely as its forerunner. For his part he still remained convinced that Jesus was born later and not as early as 7 or 6 B.C. Of course, nobody can guarantee that in the days of Jesus people saw any connection between him and the heavenly phenomenon calculated by Kepler and observed in Babylon. Everything else that can be deduced and has actually been deduced from this heavenly phenomenon and from the fact that it was also noticed in Mesopotamia may indeed be very ingenious, but it remains mere speculation, however brilliant, which in itself lacks all conclusiveness and would require convincing proof in order to be unreservedly accepted as correct.

For the problem of the "assessment" mentioned in Luke 2:1-5 still remains. It is a historical fact that it was made in the year 6/7 after Christ's birth, although with the reservation that during the year in question no general census throughout the empire was made, as Luke asserts, but merely a limited provincial one.

In consequence, of all these facts and considerations, the views

p 333 -- expressed today in regard to the date of the birth of Jesus are much more restrained than was the case a few years ago. The period between the year 7 B.C. (if Kepler's conjunction of planets is to be connected in any way with the birth of Jesus) and the year A.D. 7 (on account of the population census by Quirinius) is the time span in question. Jesus must have been born during this period. It is not possible today to be more specific ...

One thing is remarkable. Towards the end of Herod's reign, about the year 6 B.C., a Messianic dispute between Herod, who regarded himself as a kind of Messiah, and the Pharisees who had other notions about the Messiah, became so acute that the Pharisees predicted Herod's early death, whereupon Herod had the ringleaders executed. This was about the time of Kepler's conjunction of the planets. We naturally do not know whether there were people who believed in the stars and who actually ascribed some Messianic interpretation to this conjunction and whether it was this, among other things, which inflamed people's minds and feelings. That would, however, be a possibility. It would also be possible that the action taken by Herod against his opponents in the Messianic quarrel was the reason why the Evangelist Matthew portrays Herod as a pitiless persecutor of the Messiah who did not even shrink from the Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16).

p 334 -- Chapter 37 -- NAZARETH IN GALILEE -- Death of King Herod - "The most cruel tyrant" - Unrest in the land - Checking Jerusalem's finances - Sabinus steals the Temple treasures - Varus crucifies 2,000 Jews - " Nazarene" or "Nazarite"?

But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life.... But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither - Matt. 2 19, 20, 22.

Herod died at the age of seventy in 4 B.C., thirty-six years after Rome had made him king. It is said that immediately after his death there occurred an eclipse of the moon which modern astronomers reckon to have happened on March 13th.

Flavius Josephus passes harsh judgement on him when he comes to write about Herod a few decades later: "He was no king but the most cruel tyrant who ever ascended the throne. He murdered a vast number of people and the lot of those he left alive was so miserable that the dead might count themselves fortunate. He not only tortured his subjects singly but ill treated whole communities. In order to beautify foreign cities he robbed his own, and made gifts to foreign nations which were paid for with Jewish blood. The result was that instead of their former prosperity and time honoured customs the people fell victim to utter poverty and demoralisation. Within a few years the Jews suffered more misery through Herod than their forefathers had done in the long period since they left Babylon and returned under Xerxes."

In thirty-six years hardly a day passed without someone being sentenced to death. Herod spared no one, neither his own family nor his closest friends, neither the priests nor least of all the people. On his list of victims stand the names of the two husbands of his sister Salome, his wife Mariamne and his sons Alexander and Aristobulus. He had his brother-in-law drowned in the Jordan and his mother-in-law Alexandra put out of the way. Two scholars who had torn down the golden Roman eagle from the gateway of the Temple were burned alive.

Hyrcanus the last of the Hasmoneans was killed. Noble families were exterminated root and branch. Many of the Pharisees were done away with. Five days before his death the old man had his son Antipater

p 335 -- assassinated. And that is only a fraction of the crimes of this man who
"ruled like a wild beast".

The Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem, which the Bible lays at his door (Matt. 2:16), fits in perfectly with this revolting picture of his character.

After the murder of Antipater, Herod on his death bed made a will in which he nominated three of his younger sons as his successors. Archelaus was to succeed to the kingdom, Herod Antipas and Philip were to be tetrarchs, rulers of Galilee and Peraea, part of Transjordan, and the territory north-east of the Lake of Galilee. Archelaus was acknowledged as king by his family and was acclaimed by Herod's mercenaries-Germans, Gauls and Thracians. But throughout the country the news of the despot's death brought uprisings of a violence which had seldom been seen in Jewry. Their burning hatred of the house of Herod was mingled with their loathing of the Romans.

Instead of lamenting the death of Herod they proclaimed their grief over the deaths of his innocent victims. The people demanded that the learned Jehuda ben Saripha and Mattathias ben Margoloth, who had been burned like torches, should be atoned for. Archelaus replied by sending his troops to Jerusalem. Three thousand people were butchered on one day alone. The courts of the Temple were strewn with corpses. This first act of Archelaus revealed at one stroke the true character of the man-Herod's son yielded nothing to his father in cruelty and in justice.

However, the will had to be approved by the Emperor Augustus. Archelaus and Herod Antipas accordingly set out for Rome one after the other. At the same time fifty of the elders representing the people of Israel hastened to Augustus to beseech him to rid them of this "monarchy". In the absence of the Herodians the unrest assumed more serious proportions. As a security measure a Roman legion was despatched to Jerusalem. Right in the midst of this turmoil, as luck would have it, there arrived one of the hated Romans in the person of Sabinus, agent of the Imperial Treasury. Disregarding all warnings he took up his abode in Herod's palace and proceeded to audit the taxes and tribute of Judaea.

Masses of pilgrims were streaming into the Holy City for the Feast of Weeks. Bloody clashes ensued. Bitter fighting broke out in the Temple area. Stones were thrown at the Roman troops. They set fire to the arcades, then rushed into the Temple and pillaged all they could lay hands on. Sabinus himself relieved the Temple treasury of 400 talents. At which point he had to retreat precipitately to the palace and barricade himself in.

.Revolt spread from Jerusalem through the country like wildfire. The royal palaces of Judaea were plundered and set ablaze. The governor of Syria hastened to the scene with a powerful Roman army strengthened

p 336 -- with troops from Beirut and Arabia. As soon as the marching columns appeared in sight of Jerusalem the rebels fled. They were pursued and captured in droves.

Two thousand men were crucified.

The Roman governor of Syria who issued this order wrote his name in the history books through a decisive defeat which he suffered in A.D. 9. He was Quintilius Varus, who was posted from Syria to Germany, and lost the battle of the Teutoburgian Forest.

This was the terrifying situation when Joseph, on his way back from Egypt, "heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod". It was for this reason that "he was afraid to go thither".

King Herod is one of those figures in world history whom we know only from what their adversaries said about them. The impression created is correspondingly sinister. It is confirmed by the account of the Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16). At the same time, however, it must be remembered that we have here an example of the widespread literary motive of the chosen child, who for that very reason is exposed to danger - a motive that was attached to a number of prominent figures in antiquity, to Sargon of Akkad, Moses, Cyrus the Great and even to the Emperor Augustus as well as to such mythical characters as Oedipus whom his father Laius maimed and rejected.

We have consequently become much more cautious nowadays in regard to our views on the historicity of the Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem. Today we look upon the doubtful story rather as an attempt, prompted by the mentality of those days and using the methods current at the time, to emphasise the importance of Jesus. In so doing, matters such as the historicity of the measures taken by Herod in his quarrel with the Pharisees concerning the Messiah form an additional factor (cf. the end of the preceding chapter). Furthermore, the story of the Massacre of the Innocents linked Jesus with Moses who, as the Bible tells us, miraculously escaped from similar persecution by the Pharaoh of Egypt (Exodus 1:15 - 2:10). Herod's persecution of Jesus fits in very well with the flight of Joseph, Mary and the child to Egypt, for which the Evangelist gives as the real reason: "... that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son (Matthew 2:15. Cf. also Hosea 11:1). This constitutes another reference to Moses whose name can mean "son" in Egyptian. On the other hand, there is absolutely no historical or archaeological proof of the flight to Egypt any more than there is for Jesus' stay in Nazareth.

Strictly speaking, the term "Nazarene" is capable of more than one interpretation. Although it means "man from Nazareth", there may also be a punning intention on the Hebrew word nezer which means twig" or "rod" (cf. Isaiah 11;1: "... a rod out of the stem of Jesse"). The word "Nazarene" occurs in Matthew in connection with a

p 337 -- promise: "... that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene" (Matthew 2:23). This does not make matters any easier, for to which words Matthew is referring, if not to the words quoted from Isaiah, is not clear. Perhaps a certain echo of the appellation Nazarite ("consecrated by or dedicated to God") is intended, although this presents certain philological difficulties. Nazarite is a descriptive term, earlier applied to Samson (Judges 13:5 and 7, also 16:17) which demanded of him who claimed to be one, a certain asceticism, such as the observance of a number of taboos. Again there is uncertainty and it cannot be denied that more than one specialist considers the statements in the Gospels regarding the birth-place of Jesus as emanations from the fantasy of the Gospel writers who, not properly understanding the word, simply changed it to Nazarene. Mark Lidzbarski has even asserted that a place called Nazareth did not exist in the time of Jesus. It can be objected, however, even if we do not know what Nazareth was called in Jesus' day, that occupation of this spot, if by "occupation" we mean living in wretched caves, was continuous from about 900 B.C. to about A.D. 600, as has been shown by the unearthing of small objects among which are a number dating from the time of King Herod the Great (40 or 37-4 B.C.). The somewhat deprecatory words of Nathanael (John 1:46): "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" may well refer to the wretchedness of the place in those days, although the Bible calls it a "town". There is no reference to Jesus, Mary or Joseph. The spring in Nazareth where women still draw water in pitchers as they did in the time of Jesus is not on record under the name "Mary's spring or fountain" before the 11th century ....

p 338 -- Chapter 38 -- JOHN THE BAPTIST -- The witness of Josephus -A forbidden marriage - Herod Antipas orders an arrest - The castle of Machaerus in Moab - The dungeon of death - Princess Salome - Capernaum "on the sea" - Ruins in a eucalyptus grove - The place where Jesus taught.

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan, unto John, to be baptised of him - Matt. 3:13.

This was the event which took Jesus for the first time from his Nazareth home. After the years of childhood and youth, about which we are told almost nothing, he stepped on to the stage for his public ministry. "And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23 - R.V.).

John preached and baptised in the Jordan valley south of Jericho, where the river is crossed by the well-known ford. He was therefore in the territory of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch appointed by Rome.

Apart from his baptism of Jesus, it is principally through his tragic end that John has become known throughout the world. He was beheaded.

Specialists are puzzled by many questions concerning him. What was his attitude towards the Essenes who left behind them the famous Dead Sea scrolls in Qumran? Was he perhaps a Nazarite, as the Old Testament calls the sort of person, like the hero Samson, who had dedicated himself entirely to God and as a sign of this observed certain taboos? And was he really the forerunner of Jesus as the New Testament describes him? What part did he play in the Messianic movements of his day? Did he consider himself, or did people consider him perhaps as a kind of Messiah? Was he perhaps, as has been suggested, a sort of rival to Jesus whom the Jesus tradition has appropriated and remodelled as the forerunner of Jesus?

Did the godly Baptist, who appears at the decisive turning point in Jesus' life, exist at all? His contemporary, Josephus, tells us that John was a high-minded man "who urged the Jews to strive towards perfection and exhorted them to deal justly with one another and walk humbly with God and to present themselves for baptism. As they flocked to him from all directions Herod Antipas began to be alarmed lest the influence of such a man might lead to disturbances. In conse-

p 339 -- quence of Herod's suspicions John was put in chains, sent to the castle of Machaerus and there beheaded."

"For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him and put him in prison for Herodias' sake..." (Matt. 14:3; Mark 6:17; Luke 3:19). According to the Gospels this was the reason for John's arrest. Josephus has some more background detail to offer:

In the course of a trip to Rome Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great got to know Herodias, his brother's wife, and was so much attracted by her that he ventured a proposal of marriage. Herodias agreed and brought with her into the marriage her daughter Salome.

According to Mosaic law marriage with a sister-in-law was forbidden and - according to the gospels - John the Baptist denounced it, an offence which in the eyes of the enraged Herodias could only be expiated by his death.

Josephus puts the event in a concrete historical setting, the castle of Machaerus, one of the numerous strongholds which Herod the Great had built in Palestine.

Machaerus, the place where John forfeited his life, lies in dark and rugged country on the east side of the Dead Sea. No road links this isolated spot with the outside world. Narrow paths lead up from the valley of the Jordan into the bare and desolate mountains of what was once Moab. In the deep wadis a few Bedouin families wander with their flocks over the scanty rough grass.

Not far from the river Arnon one lofty peak rises above the round humps of the other mountains. Its summit, which is swept by chill winds, is still crowned with ruins. "El Mashnaka", "The Hanging Palace", is what the Bedouins call this deserted place. This was the fortress of Machaerus. Far to the north can be seen with the naked eye the part of the Jordan valley where John baptised the people and where he was arrested.

So far no excavations have been carried out among the ruins of "El Mashnaka" and few have visited the lonely spot at all. Below the summit the rock-face is at one point hollowed out to a considerable depth. Narrow passages lead into a large vaulted chamber which from time to time provides shelter for nomads and their flocks when sudden storms take them by surprise among the mountains of Moab. From the carefully shaped walls it is obvious that this was once the castle dungeon. This gloomy vault sheltered John the Baptist after his arrest. It is probable that he was beheaded here, if the statement of Josephus is correct, for according to Mark 6:17ff the execution evidently took place in Galilee, presumably in the new palace which had recently been constructed by Herod Antipas at Tiberias on the Lake of Galilee.

Anyone who has heard of the beheading of John associates automatically with it the name of Salome, and thinks at once of the daughter of Herodias who at her mother's behest is said to have asked for the

p 340 -- head of John as a reward for her dancing. This Salome has taken her place in the literature of the world. Oscar Wilde wrote a play "Salome", Richard Strauss made the story of this Jewish princess the theme of his famous opera "Salome", even Hollywood has used the story of Salome as the subject of one of its epoch-making films.

But in the New Testament we may search in vain for the name of this princess. The Bible makes no mentioh of Salome. In the story of John the Baptist she is simply called the "daughter of Herodias" (Mark 6:22).

It is Josephus who has told us the name of this "daughter of Herodias". A small coin has preserved her appearance for posterity. She is depicted on it with her husband Aristobulus. The coin bears the inscription "King Aristobulus - Queen Salome". Salome must have been still a girl when John the Baptist was beheaded - about nineteen years old.

Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison he departed into Galilee: and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of ZabuIon and Nephthalim - Matt. 4:12,13.

During the short course of Jesus' ministry, which according to the evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke cannot have lasted more than a year and a half, one place always takes priority. Matthew indeed on one occasion calls it "his own city" (Matt. 9:1): Capernaum on the Lake of Galilee.

At the north end, not far from the spot where the fast running waters of the Jordan pour into the lake, the shore curves into a small bay. Out of the dark greenness of eucalyptus bushes comes a glint of white stone flags with four pillars rising out of them. Tufts of grass sprout from between the paving stones of the courtyard, shattered columns and blocks of basalt with carved ornamentation lie strewn around. All that remains of what was once the entrance are the broad steps of a staircase, the last remnants of a one-time splendid synagogue.

That is all that is left to bear witness to ancient Capernaum.

In 1916 the German archaeologists H. Kohl and C. Watzinger discovered hidden under rubble and overgrown with grass the fragmentary remains of this edifice. Franciscans rebuilt part of the old facade out of the ruins. The walls of the original building consisted of white limestone: on three sides it was surrounded by rows of tall pillars. The interior, measuring 80 x 50 feet, was decorated with sculptures of palms, vine branches, lions and centaurs. From there the view through a large window ranged southwards over the broad surface of the lake to where Jerusalem lay behind the pale blue outlines of distant hills.

Both archaeologists were convinced that they had found the synagogue of Capernaum dating from the time of Christ. But in the whole of Palestine there is not one synagogue left from those days.

p 341 -- When the Romans in two bloody wars razed Jerusalem to the ground and the inhabitants of the ancient country were scattered to the four winds, their sanctuaries also fell a prey to destruction.

This building came into being for the first time about A.D. 200 on top of the ruins and foundations of the synagogue in which Jesus often stood and taught on the Sabbath day: "And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught" (Mark 1:21).

Most of the inhabitants of the little town of Capernaum lived on the natural riches of the lake: huts and houses in large numbers nestled quietly on the gentle slopes or surrounded the synagogue. On the day when Jesus came from Nazareth to Capernaum he took the first decisive step towards proclaiming his message: "Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them: Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Mark 1:16-17). He met another pair of brothers, James and John, as they were mending their nets. The first people to listen to his words, to accept his teaching and to become his disciples, were simple men, fishermen of Galilee.

Jesus often wandered up from the lake into the Galilean hills, and preached in many of the towns and villages, but always returned to the little fishing town: it remained the main centre of his mission. And when one day he left Capernaum and set out with twelve disciples for Jerusalem, it was his last journey.

p 342 -- Chapter 39 -- THE LAST JOURNEY, TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION -- Detour through Transjordan - The tax-collector of Jericho - View from the Mount of Olives - Arrest on the Mount of Olives - The "clubs" of the high priests - The Procurator Pontius Pilate - Vincent discovers the "Pavement" - Scourging in the courtyard of the Antonia - "The most cruel form of execution" - A crown of Syrian Christ-thorn - A drink to stupify - Heart failure as the cause of death - Crurifragium hastens the end - A solitary tomb under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - Tacitus mentions "Christus" - The evidence of Suetonius.

Then he took unto him the twelve and said unto them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished - Luke 18:31.

Out of all the journeys that Jesus undertook in his lifetime, one can be traced without difficulty - his last journey through Palestine, the journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem.

He went a long way round to get there. The shortest route from Galilee to the Holy City lies directly south through the hills of Samaria. The path keeps to the hills, over the tops of Gerizim and Ebal, the site of ancient Shechem, and then on through Bethel into the heart of Judah, along the old high road which Abraham followed with his family and his flocks.

It took three days to make this journey on foot from Galilee to Jerusalem.

Jesus too would have chosen this road through Samaria (Luke 9:51-56). But since the anti-Jewish feeling among the Samaritans was well known it seemed doubtful to him whether they would permit his little company to pass through their territory. To make sure, he sent his disciples James and John in advance. And indeed the Samaritans refused permission.

Jesus and his disciples therefore went by way of "the borders of Judaea and beyond Jordan" (Mark 10:1 - R.V.). The road goes down-stream through the middle of the wide and torrid valley, where the banks alone are fringed with tropical growth, with little clumps of tamarisks and poplars, with castor oil and liquorice trees. There is solitude and stillness in the "pride of Jordan" (Zech.11:3'; Jer. 12:5) . For

p 343 -- the valley, which for nine months of the year is as sultry as the tropics, is but thinly populated.

At the ancient ford, where once the children of Israel under Joshua's leadership had passed over in safety, Jesus crossed the Jordan and arrived in Jericho (Luke 19:1). It was no longer the fortified city of old Canaan, entrenched behind its walls. On the south side of the hill lay a new up to date city, built by Herod the Great, a gem of Graeco-Roman architecture. At. the foot of the citadel called Cyprus, a magnificent palace had arisen. A theatre, an amphitheatre, cut into the hillside, and a circus, all adorned with dazzling white pillars, sparkled in the sunlight. Magnificent fountains played in the luxuriant gardens with their massed banks of flowers. Outside the town stretched the balsam plantations - the most precious plants in the whole of the Mediterranean land - while deep palm groves offered coolness and shade.

Jesus spent the night in Jericho in the house of the Jewish tax-collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19:2ff), far away from all this magnificence. He could not have avoided Jericho, which was a centre of Greek paganism. For the road to Jerusalem led through the city.

It is 23 miles from Jericho to Jerusalem. Twenty-three miles of dusty road winding and twisting between steep and almost barren cliffs nearly 4,000 feet high. Hardly anywhere else in the world can there be a stronger contrast than this short stretch of road affords. Straight from the wonderfully luxuriant growth and the sheer unbearable heat of a tropical sun by the Jordan's banks, one is whisked into the chill air of forbidding and barren mountain peaks.

This was the road, like a prelude to the end, which Jesus followed with his disciples a week before the Passover. This was the time when Jews from far and near flocked to celebrate the feast in the Holy City.

At the highest point on the road, which is almost at the end of the journey, the Holy City emerges from behind the top of the Mount of Olives as if some wizard had conjured it out of the hills. The view that Jerusalem presented to Jesus and the disciples can be imagined from a contemporary description:

"Anyone who has not seen Jerusalem in all its beauty has never beheld a great and lovely city in all his life: and anyone who has not seen the structure of the second Temple has never seen an impressive building in his life." This was the proud verdict of the Jewish rabbis of the time.

Research into the appearance of old Jerusalem has been summed up by Garstang in the following words: "At no point in their history can the Temple and the city have presented a more wonderful picture. The rhythm and harmony of Graeco-Roman art, which stood out so marvellously against the eastern sky, repressed the extravagant architectural tendencies of Herod, and brought order and good taste into the traditional chaos of the city."

p 344 -- The great walls towered 250 feet high above the valley. Behind their battlements rose the contours of mighty edifices from a constricted chequer-board of houses, streets and alleys.

Immediately opposite the Mount of Olives lay the Temple, right in the foreground, and outshining all other buildings in its magnificence. Its facade 150 feet high and of equal breadth, faced eastward and consisted entirely of light marble. Its decorations were of pure gold. Pillared colonnades hemmed in the spacious courts and vestibules. The crowning glory was however the Tabernacle in the centre, sparkling "like a snow capped mountain", to quote Josephus' words.

Directly on the north-west side of the Temple wall rose the Tower of Antonia, perched on a rocky eminence. Each of its four great corner turrets measured nearly 120 feet high. A viaduct led from the south side of the Temple area to the palace of the Hasmoneans in the upper city. At the highest point in the city stood Herod's palace by the west wall, likewise surmounted by three towers 130, 100 and 80 feet high. Herod had named them Hippicus, Phasael and Mariamne. From this point a thick wall ran through the sea of houses to the Temple area, thus dividing the heart of the city once more into two sections.

There is an indomitable air about this city with its multiplicity of fortifications, walls and towers surrounding its Temple. As the sight-seer looks over Jerusalem he almost feels that he is breathing in its obstinacy, rigidity and inflexibility. It was these very attributes of obstinacy, rigidity and inflexibility which helped Israel for more than 1,000 years to stand out against every world-power. Obstinacy, rigidity and inflexibility were also responsible for the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and the ejection of Israel from the land of their fathers.

Jesus predicted the future fate of Jerusalem. "And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it" (Luke 19:41).

And straightway in the morning the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and delivered him to Pilate. ... And so Pilate willing to content the people ... delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified - Mark 15:1, 15.

The descriptions of the trial, sentence and crucifixion in the four Gospels have been checked with scientific thoroughness by many scholars and have been found to be historically reliable accounts even to the last detail. The chief witnesses for the prosecution against Jesus have been indirectly attested and the place where sentence was pronounced has been accurately ascertained by excavations. The various incidents in the course of the trial can be verified from contemporary sources and modern research.

With the arrest the incomparable tragedy began to unfold. Jesus had gathered his disciples round him in the Garden of Gethsemane on the

p 345 -- Mount of Olives, "and immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders" (Mark 14:43).

A taunt-song in the Talmud reminds us of the "clubs" and "staves" of the Boethusian high priests who had been in control since Herod's day:

"A plague on the house of Boethus: a plague on their clubs! A plague on the house of Annas: a plague on their spying!"

It ends: "For they are high priests and their sons are in the Treasury, and their sons-in-law in the Government and their servants beat the people with staves."

Among the high priests who are expressly named is one well known to us: the "Annas" in the gospels. "Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him, and led him away to Annas first: for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year. Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people" (John 18:12-14).

Joseph ben Caiaphas had been appointed high priest by the Roman procurator Valerius Gratus. He remained in office 1   under his successor Pontius Pilate also.

After his arrest Jesus was brought before the High Council - the Sanhedrin - which at that time was the highest Jewish authority and combined within itself all spiritual and temporal power. At the same time it functioned as the highest judicial court of the Jews. It met below the Temple near the bridge which gave access to the upper city.

What were the grounds on which the council condemned Jesus to death?

"The expectation of the old Jewish prophets which centred on a future Messianic king," writes Professor Martin Noth, "had developed during the long period of foreign domination into hope of a political liberator; and the greater the resentment of the Roman government of the country the more this picture of a Messianic conqueror who would destroy the hateful foreign power filled their minds. Measured by these standards Jesus of Nazareth could not be the Messiah they were waiting for. ... But if Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah, 'the Christ', then he must be a fraud and an impostor. And if he was a fraud and an impostor then for the safety and peace of the religious life of Jerusalem he must be got rid of. ... The fact that Jesus during his trial claimed to be the Messiah and therefore, on the basis of Old Testament teaching, the Son of God was sufficient ground for condemning him to death on a charge of outrageous blasphemy."
1-- From A.D. 18 - 36.

p 346 -- According to the existing law the sentence had to be confirmed by the Roman procurator, to whom belonged the so-called ius gladii. Only he could authorise the death penalty. The procurator of Judaea was Pontius Pilate. 1

Contemporaries like Josephus and Philo of Alexandria describe him as an extortioner, a tyrant, a blood sucker and a corruptible character: "He was cruel and his hard heart knew no compassion. His day in Judaea was a reign of bribery and violence, robbery, oppression, misery, executions without fair.trial and infinite cruelty."  2   That Pilate hated and despised the Jews was made unmistakably plain to them again and again.

Pilate must have recognised at once that the accused man, Jesus, was the object of a hatred which had been stirred up by the Pharisees. That alone must have been sufficient reason for him to reject their demand and to acquit him. Indeed first of all and without hesitation he actually declared him to be innocent: "Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man" (Luke 23:4).

But the mob, incited and goaded by the councillors, tumultuously repeated their demand for the death penalty. Pontius Pilate gave in.

How was it that this tyrannical enemy of the Jews yielded to their request?

St. John's Gospel contains a cogent explanation: "But the Jews cried out, saying, if thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend; whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar" (John 19:12).

This was a dangerous political threat which clearly implied reporting Pilate to Rome for neglect of duty in acquitting a rebel. "Making himself a king" meant treason against the Roman emperor. According to the Lex Juliana the penalty for that was death. Pilate was afraid of this unambiguous threat. He had not forgotten that the Jews had carried it out once before.

FIG. 72.- Coins of the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate.

As Philo tells us, Pontius Pilate had brought to Jerusalem the golden shields bearing the emperor's name and had hung them up in Herod's palace in the middle of the city. That was a serious offence against the rights of the Jewish religious community which had been guaranteed by Rome. It was a challenge. He scornfully rejected their request to have the golden shields removed from the Holy City. Thereupon the Jews appealed to Rome and secured their rights. The Emperor Tiberius himself ordered the removal. of the golden shields. Because of this and sundry other arbitrary actions, which ran counter to Roman colonial
1 -- A.D. 26-36.
2 -- Philo of Alexandria A.D. 25-50.

p 347 -- policy, Pontius Pilate's reputation in Rome was at a low ebb at the time of the trial.

When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgement seat, in a place that is called t'he Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. ... Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified - John 19:13, 16).

The Pavement in Pilate's court, where this scene took place, survived even the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D- 70. Its rediscovery was the result of years of work on the part of the archaeologist Father L. H. Vincent. His success was due to the exact description given in St. John's Gospel.

The Authorised Version has translated the word "Lithostroton" by "Pavement". It means a stone pavement. The Aramaic word "Gabbatha" means "raised ground".

Just beside the north-west perimeter wall of the Temple there lay in the time of Jesus the powerful Tower of Antonia. It stood upon a rocky eminence, therefore on "raised ground". Herod I had built it and called it after a friend. The Roman occupation troops had taken it over as a garrison. In A.D. 70, at the conquest of Jerusalem, Titus had the castle of Antonia demolished. Later buildings arose upon the ruins.

On the spot where the courtyard of the Antonia had been, Vincent was able to establish the existence of a large flat pavement nearly 3,000 square yards built in the Roman style and typical of the time of Jesus.

This was where Jesus stood before Pilate while the mob howled outside. It was on this Pavement too that the scourging took place (John 19:1). This always preceded crucifixion, as Josephus expressly mentions twice. For this horrible punishment the body was stripped naked and flogged until the flesh hung down in bloody shreds.

Then Jesus was seized by Roman soldiers to complete the sentence of crucifixion. Cicero calls it "the most cruel and most frightful means of execution", Josephus recoils from it as "the most pitiable of all forms of death". This typically Roman death penalty was unknown in the
Jewish penal code.

Still inside the court buildings the soldiers vented their wanton mischief on Jesus and "clothed him with purple and platted a crown of thorns and put it about his head" (Mark 15:17).

So far, botanists have not been able to agree on what sort of plant this was. The only thing that is certain is that the "Christ's Crown of Thorns",  1  familiar to Europe and U.S.A. in the present day, has nothing to do with the Biblical crown of thorns. "It is a native of Madagascar and was completely unknown in Jesus' day," says the American botanist Dr. Harold Moldenke. Many other experts assume that the crown of thorns was woven from the Syrian Christ-thorn,  2
1 -- Euphoribia milii desmoul.
2 --
Sisyphus spina Christi.

p 348 -- hence its name. The Syrian Christ-thorn is a bush or small tree, 10 to 15 feet high, with pliant white twigs. Its stipulae have each two strong thorns which curve backwards. According to Dr. G. E. Post, who is an expert on these matters, this plant grows in the neighbourhood of old Jerusalem, especially in the area where Golgotha is said to have been.

The way from the courthouse to Golgotha was mercifully short: "for the place ... was nigh to the city" (John 19:20), beside the main road which entered Jerusalem from the north-west. A pilgrim from Bordeaux who visited Jerusalem in the year 333 specifically mentioned "the little hill of Golgotha  1   where the Lord was crucified".

"And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not" (Mark 15:23). Similar acts of mercy are frequently recorded on other occasions. We read in an old Jewish Baraita: "Anyone who is led out to execution is given a small piece of incense in a beaker of wine to numb his senses. ... The good women of Jerusalem have a custom of dispensing this generously and bringing it to the victims." Moldenke, who has done much research into Biblical flora, has this to say: "Wine mixed with myrrh was given to Jesus just before the Crucifixion to lessen the pain, just as in the days before anaesthetics, intoxicating drinks were poured into the unfortunate patients on the eve of big operations." Jesus however declined the drink and endured with all his senses the torture of being nailed to the cross.

And it was the third hour and they crucified him - Mark 15:25.

According to our division of time the "third hour" in the Ancient East is 9 a.m. "And at the ninth hour", in our reckoning three o'clock in the afternoon, the tragedy came to an end. "And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost" (Mark 15 34, 37).

What was the cause of Jesus' death? Some years ago Dr. Hermann Modder of Cologne carried out scientific tests in an attempt to answer the question from a medical point of view. In the-case of a person suspended by his two hands the blood sinks very quickly into the lower half of the body. After six to twelve minutes blood pressure has dropped by 50% and the pulse rate has doubled. Too little blood reaches the heart, and fainting ensues. This leads to a speedy orthostatic collapse through insufficient blood circulating to the brain and the heart. Death by crucifixion is therefore due to heart failure. 2

It is a well authenticated fact that victims of crucifixion did not usually die for two days or even longer. On the vertical beam there was often a small support attached called a "sedile" (seat) or a "'cornu" (horn). If the victim hanging there eased his misery from time to time by supporting himself on this, the blood returned to the upper half of his body and the faintness passed. When the torture of the crucified man
1 -- Monticulus Golgotha.
2 --
Coronary insufficiency.

p 349 -- was finally to be brought to an end, the "crurifragium" was proceeded with: his legs were broken below the knee with blows from a club. That meant that he could no longer ease his weight on the footrests and heart failure quickly followed.

Jesus was spared the "crurifragium". "Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs" (John 19:32-33).

The Jews had asked Pilate for the "crurifragium", for it was "the day before the sabbath" (Mark 15:42; Luke 23:54) and also the day of preparation for the Passover. According to Jewish law the bodies of victims after crucifixion were not allowed to remain hanging overnight (Deut. 21:23) . And at 6 p.m. the Sabbath of Passover week began, when all kinds of normal activity were forbidden. The imminence of this important festival explains the precipitate haste of the events which preceded it, the arrest by night, the condemnation, execution and burial of Jesus all within a few hours.

It is barely 1,000 paces from the Ecce Homo arch, the site of Pilate's judgement seat, along the narrow Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In 326 the Emperor Constantine erected a magnificent sepulchral tower over the tomb of Jesus, which had just then been rediscovered. Richly decorated pillars supported a roof of gilded beams, as can be seen from old books on pilgrimages and early Christian art. Today the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a chaotic jumble of dim chapels. Every branch of the Christian Church has established for itself a little place of worship in this holiest of all the sites of Christendom.

In the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre a well worn flight of steps leads down to a grotto where a 6 foot long tomb is hewn out of the rock. Is this the burial place of Jesus?

FIG. 73.- It was in a Palestinian tomb of this sort, with a millstone rolled across the entrance, that Christ was buried.

Over 1,000 graves have been found in Palestine dating from this period, but all of them were in cemeteries or family vaults. This tomb is however by itself. According to the Gospel tradition Jesus was the first to be laid in a great sepulchre: "And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed" (Matt. 27:59-60).

One question has always been pressing for an answer since early times: How is it possible that apart from the books of the New

p 350 -- Testament no contemporary records exist which deal with the events of those days? "World history at the time took no notice of him [Jesus of Nazareth]," writes Professor Martin Noth in his important History of Israel. "For one short moment his appearance stirred men's minds in Jerusalem: then it became an episode in past history and people had to concern themselves with what seemed more important things. And yet this was a final decisive crisis in the history of Israel. It was only when the numbers of his followers made them a force to be reckoned with in terms of world history that his name began to be mentioned at all."

Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews, which he wrote in the last part of the 1st century A.D., in referring to the early Christian community in Jerusalem, speaks of "Jesus who was called Messiah".  1   Tacitus the Roman historian mentions Jesus specifically in his Annals,  2  while explaining the meaning of the word "Christians": "Christ, from whom they derive their name was condemned to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius."

The most important comment comes however from the Roman Suetonius:  3   he is describing a messianic movement during the reign of Claudius, who was Roman emperor from A.D- 41 to 54. Suetonius says of him in his account of the life of the Emperor Claudius: "He drove the Jews out of Rome who were rioting because of Chrestus." The writer Orosius mentions that this expulsion took place in the ninth year of Claudius' reign, i.e. A. D. 49. That means that a Christian community is attested in Rome not more than fifteen to twenty years after the Crucifixion.

There is, in the Acts of the Apostles, an amazing corroboration of this Roman evidence. When Paul came from Athens to Corinth he found there "a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla: because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome" (Acts 18:2).

It cannot be denied, however, that the rare non-Biblical reports on Jesus are very problematical. Although there is a phonetic connection between Greek long "e" and "i", which is known as "itacism", so that chrestos meaning "capable", "skilful", "valuable", "good", could easily be confused with christos, which means "the anointed one" and is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messias, it is not at all certain whether the disturbances in Rome which were provoked by the question of the Messiah and which Suetonius mentions in his account of the life of the Emperor Claudius, really had anything to do with Jesus. The above quoted passage in Josephus must be considered a forgery. In its positive and approving tone it does not fit in either with Josephus' basic anti-Messianic attitude or with the surrounding
 1 -- Antiquities, XX , 9, para. 200.
 2 --  Annals, XV, 44 - written A.D. 115-117.
 3  -- A.D. 65-135.

p 351 -- text which gives an account of the uprisings of Jewish nationalists which in the opinion of Joseph were abominable and to be condemned. Moreover, the internal structure of this passage is not typical of Josephus' way of writing. It is more like the preaching style of the Evangelist Luke. The statement made by Tacitus does not yield much either. It nevertheless confirms that there were Christians who derived from Christ their name "Christians" - Christ who
had been crucified at the time of the Emperor Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) under the procurator Pontius Pilate. It is an open question whether Tacitus himself thought this true. The only safe deduction we can make is that during the reign of the Emperor Nero (A.D- 54-68), whose persecution of the Christians provides the opportunity for Tacitus to make his statement about them, a Christian community was in existence in Rome and that in certain respects their traditions coincided with points in the New Testament.

The year of Jesus' death, moreover, is no less debated than the date of his birth, concerning which we were able to say with any certainty only that it must have occurred somewhere and at some time between 7 B.C. and A.D. 7. The time span between the limits set by modern specialists for the year of Jesus' death is not so great, however, as that for his birth. Today the possibilities have been narrowed down to A.D. 29, 30, 32 and 33. If we wish to be very cautious, then we have at our disposal the ten years of the period that Pontius Pilate held his office (A.D. 26-36). Caiaphas, the High Priest, held office from A.D. 18-37.

Even the day of the trial and execution of Jesus is uncertain for if we work out the dates indicated by the Evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke and compare them with those given by John, they show a difference of a day. There is even less uniformity concerning the hour of Jesus' death.

Moreover, the Evangelists linked the crucifixion of Jesus with so many passages from the Old Testament that it would almost be possible to have doubts about Jesus' crucifixion. Can all these terrible things have been imagined merely for the sake of cross references in the Bible? And it must not be forgotten that Jesus was by no means the first god to be crucified! He had been preceded by fertility gods who suffered and were put to death. In Berlin, for example, there is a* small amulet with a crucified person, the Seven Sisters and the moon which bears the inscription ORPHEUS BAKKIKOS. It has a surprisingly Christian appearance. The same can be said of a representation of the hanging Marsyas in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.

On the other hand, we know that a crucifixion took place and we also know who ordered the crucifixion and who suffered this dreadful form of death. The Dead Sea Scrolls mention as outrageous a mass crucifixion ordered by Alexander Iannaios (103-76 B.C.). The Romans

p 352 -- showed a preference for this manner of execution. It was inflicted on persons belonging to defeated peoples who had committed crimes against the Roman State as well as on slaves. But the question arises as to the actual cause of death of the crucified person as well as to the length of time he remained alive on the cross.

There was also disagreement concerning certain details of the way in which the cruel punishment was carried out. A macabre discovery on a hill named Givat Hamivtar on the eastern edge of Jerusalem helped solve the problem. Two Israeli specialists, the archaeologist Vassilios Tzaferis and the pathologist Nicu Haas, have published a report on it, while the American journalist and author Jerry M. Landay has written an account of it for the general public in his book on Biblical archaeology Silent cities, sacred stones.

It was in the summer of 1968. In the course of construction work a bulldozer cut into graves dating from the time between the accession of Herod the Great (37 B.C.) and the destruction of Herod's temple (A.D. 70). These graves lay on the hill of Givat Hamivtar so that the people buried in them must more or less have been contemporaries of Jesus. The name of one of the dead was Johanan Ben Ha'galgol. It was noticed with feelings of horror that his feet were separated from the smashed skeleton and were lying one on top of the other and joined together by a rusty nail which had been driven through both feet. Fragments of wood, the remains of a wooden slab, were attached to it. Behind Johanan's feet, the nail was bent obviously by having been driven into harder material. Johanan's fore-arms also showed signs of having had nails driven through them. In the course of Johanan's death struggles, his skin had suffered abrasions on the nails.

This discovery undeniably called for detailed investigation. Vassilios Tzaferis and Nicu Haas wondered whether any conclusions could be drawn from Johanan's injuries concerning the shape of the crucifix and the way in which the victim had been nailed to it. In fact, the nails had not been driven through the palms of the hands in the way usually depicted, but through the forearms near the wrist. Presumably this was the usual practice for this manner of execution, for the palms of the hands when pierced by nails would have torn under the weight of a body writhing in the agonised throes of death. This fact had already been established, moreover, in the gruesome experiments of Dr. Barbet of Paris in connection with the "Turin Shroud" which will be discussed in the next chapter. The crucified person, whose imprint the shroud shows, contrary to all the artistic conventions of the usual manner of depicting a crucifixion, had not had the nails driven through his palms. There was one way, however, in which the case of Johanan Ben Ha'galgol obviously differed from the normal Roman method of execution. The question has been raised whether the crurifragium, the smashing of the shinbones with a blunt instrument, was an additional torture

p 353 -- or perhaps in the end an act of mercy, a "coup de grace", for the victim then collapsed and died more quickly. In Johanan Ben Ha'galgol's case, however, this "act of mercy" was not deemed sufficient. Together with the nail and the wooden slab his feet had been cut off his smashed legs. ...

p 354 -- Chapter 40 -- THE TURIN SHROUD -- Books from Constantinople - Discovery in the photographic negative - Tests by forensic medical experts - A scientific proof of authenticity?

Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury - John 19:40.

In the year 1204, during the course of the Fourth Crusade, the Crusaders captured Constantinople. In connection with this event the chronicler Robert de Clari reports that a Frenchman named Otto de la Roche came into the possession of a linen cloth as part of the spoils. This cloth, which measured 1.10 metres in width and 4. 36 metres in length, had the peculiarity that it bore marks made by blood and sweat. On closer inspection the indistinct outlines of a human body, which must have measured about 1.80 metres in height, became apparent. Otto de la Roche took it with him back to France.

A century and a half later, the linen cloth reappeared in Besancon where it was worshipped as Christ's shroud. When a fire occurred, it was not consumed by the flames, it is true, but it did sustain slight damage. Its subsequent history can be followed in detail.

When the plague broke out in Milan, the devout Carlo Borromeo, bishop of the town, who was subsequently canonised, fulfilled his vow to make a pilgrimage to the shroud which had been brought for him from the south of France to Turin where it has since remained.

The linen. cloth is said to have been in Jerusalem until the fifth or sixth century. Tradition has it that this is the linen cloth in which Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Christ.

It is impossible to provide historical proof of these, claims. There are, moreover, two pieces of linen in addition to that in Turin, for which the claim is also made that they came into contact with Christ's body.

The more important of these is the handkerchief of Saint Veronica. According to legend, the saint gave Christ her handkerchief as he was on the way to his crucifixion. When she received it back, it bore the imprint of his face.

The portrait of Christ in the possession of King Abgar V of Edessa, "Antiochia", was also considered authentic, but the French theologian and historian Chevalier came across proof to the contrary in the Papal archives in a document dated 1389 which states that an artist had painted such a cloth. When this became known, the Turin shroud was

p 355 -- identified as a copy by that artist and consequently in the estimation of all those interested, it ceased to have any value as a contemporary document.

That might have been the end of the matter if interest in the legendary piece of linen had not been aroused anew in 1889. Technical progress had made possible the first photograph of the "Turin shroud". Something extraordinary was the result, for the photographic plate converted the impressions on the cloth into black and white. A face became clearly visible.

Specialists all over the world studied the sensational photograph. Art specialists, to whom it was submitted, noticed, moreover, that the negative was astonishingly natural and anatomically correct for, as with every human being, the features are not the same on both sides of the face. Artists in the early Middle Ages certainly did not pay any attention to this dissimilarity. Attempts made by painters showed that no artist was able, even when using a model, to convert a human face by the processes of the mind into a negative image and paint it.

The "Turin Shroud" could consequently not be a forgery insofar as it was the imprint of a human face. Even art specialists, who began by denying its authenticity, now admit that it cannot have been painted as a negative. Nobody can do that.

After this exciting discovery, scientists also began to take an interest in the shroud and a number of prominent specialists in various branches of science began their researches. Decades of study, experiments and investigations have brought certain conclusions. Concrete and very significant results have been obtained. A whole mosaic of infinitely painstaking studies exists which were undertaken to answer the question:

How did the shroud originate?

Professor Vignon of Paris was the first to concern himself experimentally with the impression of a body on linen. He placed a cloth sprinkled with aloes in contact with a corpse. The experiments were not satisfactory, however, as considerable distortions seemed unavoidable. Italian forensic medical specialists, Professors Judica of Milan and Professor Romanese of Turin, were more successful. In their experiments they adhered to the Biblical account which indicates the correct method: and there camealso Nicodemus ... and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred weight. Then they took the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (John 19:39-40). A long series of experiments showed that the corpse must be powdered and the cloth moistened with aromatic oil. Impressions which do not show any distortion are obtained more particularly when the hair on the head prevents too close contact of the side of the face with the cloth. The results of the Italian tests provide the highest degree of correspondence.

p 356 -- The imprint on the "Turin shroud" shows swellings on the face. It is possible that they result from blows. "Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palm of their hands" (Matthew 26:67). Patches of blood are clearly visible on the forehead and neck. "And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head" (John 19:2). Small swellings can also be seen on other parts of the body. They come from wounds on the hands and feet made by nails as well as from a wound on the right side of the chest ". . . one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water" (John 19:34).

Dr. Barbet of Paris has thoroughly investigated the nature of these wounds and here, too, the results were surprising. The wounds do not correspond to the customary manner of artistic depiction. The "Turin shroud" clearly shows the places where the nails were driven in. They were not driven through the palms of the hands, but through the wrists. From the physical and medical angle, the artistic depictions are wrong. And here, too, an unusual experiment led to a conclusion in the shroud's favour.

Dr. Barbet nailed a corpse to a crucifix.The wound in the palm of the hand was torn when bearing a weight Of 40 kilos. A wide tendon runs through the wrist, however, and is strong enough to support the weight of the human body.

Some medical men believed they were able to detect two kinds of blood in the traces left by the wounds. They distinguished between blood which must have flowed while the victim was still alive - such traces are found on the head, the hands and the feet - and blood after death from the wound in the side of the chest and also on the feet.

From what period does the linen of the famous shroud date? Because of the manner of weaving, specialists have repeatedly situated the shroud in the decades around the beginning of our era, although a precise determination of the time has not yet been attempted. It would be possible to undertake this, however, by using highly sensitive Geiger counters. The C 14 method developed by Professor W. F. Libby of the Chicago Institution of Nuclear Physics would allow the date to be determined within a range of a few years. We should then know at least when the flax was grown from which the linen was made (cf. also p. 376).

These are the results which scientific investigation could achieve, but the question as to who the dead man was who lay in the shroud and when he lay there would still not have been answered.

p 357 -- DIGGING UP THE NEW TESTAMENT --

SECTION II -- In the Days of the Apostles --

Chapter 41 -- IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL -- The Tentmaker from Tarsus - Triumphal arch in Antioch - Galatia, a Roman province - Wood digs in Ephesus - The temple of Artemis - The ruins of the gateway of Philippi - In ancient Corinth - A meat-market with a cooling system - "The Hebrew Synagogue" - A prisoner on the way Rome.

And ye shall be witness unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth - Acts 1:8.

I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." Thus Paul, who was by trade a tentmaker (Acts 18:3), describes himself in Acts 21:39. Tersoos, a little town of 20,000 inhabitants lying at the foot of the Taurus mountains in the south of Turkey, has preserved none of its former glory. Paul had every reason to laud his native city to the skies. An inscription calls Tarsus "the great and wondrous metropolis of Cilicia", and the Greek geographer Strabo  1 mentions that Tarsus had a university to match those of Athens and Alexandria. The famous teacher of the emperor Augustus, Athenodorus the philosopher, was one of its sons. All that remains from the past is its tentmaking. As in Paul's day, the material comes from flocks of goats who grow magnificent thick coats among the Taurus mountains where the snow lies right up to the month of May.

Long journeys by sea and land, such as Paul undertook, were in those days nothing out of the ordinary. Roman roads were in their way the finest that even Western Europe knew until the railways began to be built in the 19th century. An inscription on the tombstone of a Phrygian merchant in the heart of modern Turkey proudly proclaims that in his lifetime he made seventy-two journeys to Rome alone. The busy, well maintained Imperial roads were equipped with halts for changing chariots and horses. Inns and hostelries offered rest and refreshment to travellers. A special police force was responsible for the protection of the roads against the attacks of brigands.

The marvellous network of roads throughout the vast empire - a masterpiece of Roman skill and organisation - together with the Greek language which Paul could make use of on all his journeys contributed
1 --
63 B.C.-A.D. 20.

p 358 -- as much to the speedy spread of Christianity as the widely dispersed Jewish communities. "Jerusalem is not only the capital of Judaea," wrote king Herod Agrippa I  1  to the emperor Caligula, "but also of most countries in the world through the colonies which it established in neighbouring lands when it had the opportunity."

Even last century scholars had begun to search for the cities in Asia Minor whose names have become so familiar to the Christian world through the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul. Where were the places whose inhabitants received the famous Epistle to the Galatians?

In 1833, Francis V. J. Arundell, British chaplain in Smyrna, discovered the ancient "Antioch in Pisidia" (Acts 13:14) near the Turkish town of Yalovach. North of the Taurus a great arched aqueduct sweeps down from the majestic scenery of the Sultandagh mountains into the valley. In the early twenties of this century scholars of the University of Michigan stood entranced before the remains of monuments of unique beauty. In the centre of the old city the archaeologists uncovered a broad flight of steps at the top of which stood three triumphal arches. Marvellous reliefs depicted the victories of the emperor Augustus on land, while a frieze with Poseidon, Tritons and dolphins commemorated the naval victory of Augustus at Actium. In the Roman quarters they found the gaming tables where the soldiery whiled away their leisure hours. The archaeologists were looking at the Antioch, so often mentioned, where Paul founded a church on his first missionary journey (Acts 14:21).

And they "came unto Iconium ... unto Lystra and Derbe, ... and unto the region that lieth round about: and there they preached the gospel" (Acts 13:51; 14: 6, 7).

Konia, 60 miles south-east of Antioch and main station on the Anatolian railway, was the Iconium of Paul's missionary activity. In 1885 Professor J. R. Sitlington Sterrett discovered the remains of an altar in the mountains 25 miles farther south. A thick stone slab bore a Latin inscription to the effect that a Roman colony had existed on this site. He was able to decipher the name "Lustra". 2

A day's journey farther on Sterrett also discovered the ancient Derbe. These four cities - Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe - belonged in Paul's day to the Roman province of Galatia, the home of the "Galatians".

On the island of Cyprus near the ancient town of Paphos a Roman inscription came to light. It made mention of Paulus, the proconsul who is described as "a prudent man" in the Book of Acts (13:7), likewise the riot at Ephesus, as the New Testament depicts it, has become a living reality, thanks to the tireless efforts of the archaeologists.

"For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made
1 -- King Agrippa (A.D. 37-44): see Acts 12.
2 -- i.e. Lystra.

p 359 -- silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen: whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said: Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth." He then went on to incite them: "not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people", and graphically described how they would all be reduced to starvation as a result. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" was the answering cry. "And the whole city was filled with confusion: and having caught.... Paul's companions in travel, they rushed with one accord into the theatre" (Acts 19:24 - 29).

This story fired an English architect J. T. Wood with a desire to investigate the Temple of Artemis,  1  which was widely renowned in the ancient world. The British Museum put funds at his disposal for this enterprise, and in the beginning of May 1863 Wood landed on the coast opposite the island of Samos. If he had not been so incredibly persistent and obsessed with his purpose he might well never have achieved it. For six long years he dug down doggedly through layer after layer of what was left of the masonry of the old city - and found nothing. Eventually while digging in the old amphitheatre, the site of the riot, he found a signpost which put him on the right road.

An inscription listed several gold and silver images of Artemis from two to six pounds in weight which were to be offered as a gift to the goddess and placed in the temple. The vanity of that Roman donor showed Wood the way to the fulfilment of his dream without further ado. For in order to ensure that the greatest possible number of people would admire his gifts he had described in detail the exact route along which they were to be borne in solemn procession on the goddess' birthday, from the temple to the ceremony in the amphitheatre and back again.

They were to be carried in through the Magnesian Gate.... Wood searched for the gate and found it, followed the prescribed route and found himself a mile north-east of the city, at the finishing point of the procession which was also the end of his own indefatigable quest.

Under nearly 25 feet of soil and rubble he came upon a magnificent pavement, the bases of massive pillars, and great stone cylinders adorned with sculptures: the Temple of Artemis.

Dinocrates, the famous Alexandrian architect, had designed the shrine; Alexander the Great had been responsible for completing it in such splendour that in olden times the temple was admired as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The foundations measured 390 feet long by 260 feet broad, sheets of white marble covered the roof, and a hundred columns 65 feet high led the way into the interior of the temple, which was extravagantly decorated with sculptures, paintings and gold ornamentation.
1 --
Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting, was called Diana by the Romans.

p 360 -- Thirty-five years later one of Wood's countrymen, David G. Hogarth, found under the shattered altar a large collection of statues of the goddess made of bronze, gold, ivory and silver. They had been made by those craftsmen and workers who scented in Paul's preaching of the Gospel at Ephesus a threat to their livelihood and therefore responded to Demetrius with cries of: "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

Immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them. Therefore loosing from Troas - Acts 16:10, 11.

Where once the proud stronghold of Priam's Troy held sway, St. Paul boarded a sailing ship for his first journey to Europe. Near the fishing village of Kavalla  1   he set foot on European soil and set out on the ancient Via Egnatia which climbed up into the wild mountains of Macedonia to Philippi.

Can anyone hear the name of this city without thinking of the ominous words: "Thou shalt see me at Philippi"? For it was here in 42 B.C. that the legions of Antony and young Octavian won a brilliant victory over Brutus and Cassius, who had assassinated Caesar in an attempt to save the republic of Rome from dictatorship. But who reflects that it was outside the walls of Philippi that St. Paul won for Christianity its first congregation on European soil?

French archaeologists on the strength of the concrete evidence in the Book of Acts excavated the Roman colony. They found the old forum, the temples and public buildings, the pillared arcades, the paved streets and squares with their rain-gutters still intact. At the western exit of the city a great colonial archway spanned the Via Egnatia which soon afterwards crossed the swift narrow river Gangites. "And on the sabbath day we went forth without the gate by a river side where we supposed there was a place of prayer" (Acts 16:13 - R.V.). On the banks of the Gangites Paul's first convert was Lydia, the seller of purple.

By way of Thessalonica   2   and Athens, where he preached only for a short time, St. Paul turned his steps towards Corinth.

In 1893 dredgers cut a narrow channel through the isthmus which joined the Peloponnese with the mainland and thus realised a plan which was already in the minds of notable figures in the ancient world, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. In A.D. 63 Nero had indeed begun to put the plan into effect. After a song in praise of Neptune in which he accompanied himself on the harp, he dug the first sod with a golden spade. Six thousand Jews had been commandeered from Pales-
1 -- One of the many towns called Neapolis (new town) in Classical Antiquity.
2 -- Now Salonika.

p 361 -- tine to cut the canal, which was however very quickly filled in again when the suspicion was voiced that a breach in the land might wash away the Peloponnese.

Three years after the first ship passed through the new canal the American School of Classical Studies began to search for the renowned and important trading and packing centre of Corinth, where the wares of the ancient orient met those of Europe. Here too the archaeologists followed the footsteps of St. Paul to the places which if they could only speak could tell so much about his activities.

The road from Lechaeum, the west harbour, led into the heart of the old city of Corinth. Through the great marble arch of the Propylaeum it debouched into the market place, the agora. In those days the business quarter lay to the west of Lechaeum street, and colonnades led past its shops and up to the steps of the Temple of Apollo. What aroused genuine admiration among the hygienically-minded Americans was the ingenious system of water mains which they found immediately under the houses which fronted the broad and handsomely paved market place. It obviously provided the shops with a constant supply of fresh mountain water to keep fresh such foodstuffs as were liable to perish quickly. An inscription at this place dating from the last years of the reign of Augustus actually mentioned a " meat-market". The Christians in Corinth were allowed to make their purchases in these shops without scruple. "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat", is Paul's advice to the church in I Cor. 10:25.

At the marble steps of the Propylaeum the excavators found a heavy stone lintel on which they were able to decipher the words "Hebrew Synagogue", clearly cut out in Greek letters. The house in which Paul proclaimed the new doctrine must have stood beyond the colonnade in the region of Lechaeum street. For "he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks" (Acts 18:4). Among the ruins of the numerous dwelling houses in the same quarter of the city must certainly be those of the house of the Justus with whom Paul lodged, "whose house joined hard to the synagogue" (Acts 18:7).

Finally the archaeologists found in the market place a raised platform, on which a Latin inscription indicated that it had been the rostra, the judgement-seat. "And when Gallio was the deputy of Achaia, the Jews made insurrection with one accord against Paul, and brought him to the judgement-seat, saying, This fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the law." Gallio however declined to intervene "and drave them from the judgement seat" (Acts 18:12-16).

The detailed reproduction of the trial scene made it possible to establish the exact time that Paul spent in Corinth. Lucius Junius Annaeus Novatus Gallio - which was the governor's full name - was the worthy offspring of a highly respected family. His brother, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the great Roman philosopher and tutor of Nero,

p 362 -- dedicated two books to him.  1   And the poet Statius called him the "beloved Gallio".

FIG. 74.- (Map) Spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. 45 A.D.-325 A.D.

In old Delphi a letter of the emperor Claudius came to light from which it appeared that Gallio must have been in Corinth from A.D. 51-52. The letter contains the words: "As Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend the proconsul of Achaia,   2   wrote ... "and is dated at the beginning of the year 52. According to a decree of Claudius newly appointed officials had to leave Rome for their provinces on June 1. Gallio must therefore have arrived in Achaia about July 1, A.D-51 . Paul "continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them" (Acts 18:11) until the Jews became incensed and dragged him before the governor. Thus it is highly probable that the apostle went to Corinth at the beginning of A.D 50.

Two years after the crucifixion of Christ the fanatical persecutor of the Christians, Saul of Tarsus, was converted to Christianity (Acts 6:3ff). Almost exactly thirty years later the great missionary and evangelist embarked upon his last journey, this time as a prisoner. In Judaea Festus had been procurator since A.D. 61. He sent Paul to Rome to face a serious charge in the custody of the centurion Julius (Acts 27:1). There Paul was allowed "to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him" (Acts 28:16).

"And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all
1 --
De Ira and De Vita Beata.
2 -- The Peloponnese was in Roman times the province of Achaia.

p 363 -- confidence, no man forbidding him." With these words St. Luke concludes his narrative in the Book of Acts.

In the persecution of the Christians which took place under Nero, Paul died a martyr's death. As a Roman citizen he did not die on a cross like Peter but was beheaded.

p 364 -- Chapter 42 -- THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM -- Rebellion - The Jewish War - Fighting in Galilee - General Titus - -80,000 Romans advance - Order to attack - Parade outside the gates - 500 crucifixions daily - Jerusalem sealed off - The spectre of famine - Castle of Antonia taken - The Temple in flames - The city is raised - Triumph in Rome.

And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.... And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.... For there shall be great distress upon the land and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles.- .Luke 21:5, 6, 20, 23, 24.

Countless royal palaces and castles, cities, mansions and temples, buildings whose foundations were laid in the first, second or even third millennium before Christ, have been wrested from the past. Archaeology has used its spades and the sharp wits of its experts to free them from the dust in which they have been buried at a cost of untold effort. But the city and Temple of Jerusalem, whose importance for posterity cannot be rated too highly, have eluded the endeavours of the archaeologists: they have been blotted out for ever from this earth. For barely within a generation after the crucifixion of Jesus they suffered in "the days of vengeance" (Luke 21, 22) the fate that Jesus prophesied for them.

Old Israel, whose history no longer included the words and works of Jesus, the religious community of Jerusalem which condemned and crucified Jesus, was extinguished in an inferno which is almost unparalleled in history - the "Jewish War" of A.D. 66-70.

Louder and louder grew the protests against the hated Romans. In the party of the "Zealots" fanatics and rebels banded themselves together, demanding incessantly the removal of the foreign power. Every one of them carried a dagger concealed under his cloak. Their deeds of violence disturbed the country. Autocratic encroachment by the Roman procurator heightened the tension. More and more supporters flocked to the side of the radicals.

p 365 -- This mounting anger broke into open revolt in May 66, when the procurator, Florus, demanded 17 talents from the Temple treasury. The Roman garrison was overrun. Jerusalem fell into the hands of the rebels. The prohibition of the daily sacrifices to the emperor meant an open declaration of war against the Roman world empire. Tiny Jerusalem threw down the gauntlet at Rome's feet and challenged the great Imperium Romanum.

This was the signal for the whole country. Rebellion flared up everywhere. Florus was no longer in command of the situation. The governor of the province of Syria, C. Cestius Gallus, marched to the rescue with one legion and a large number of auxiliary troops, but was forced to retire with heavy losses. The rebels controlled the country.

Being certain that Rome would strike back with all its might, they hastened to fortify the cities. They repaired the old defence walls and appointed military commandants. Joseph, later known as Josephus the historian, was appointed commander-in-chief of Galilee. On the Roman side, the Emperor Nero entrusted the command to General Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who had proved himself a brilliant soldier and distinguished himself during the conquest of Britain.

Accompanied by his son Titus, three of the best legions in the army and numerous auxiliaries, he attacked Galilee from the north.

The villages on the Lake of Galilee, where but a few years earlier Jesus had been preaching to the fishermen, saw the first of the bloody butchery. The whole of Galilee was subdued by October 67. Among the crowds of prisoners marched Josephus, the commander-in-chief. He was put in chains and conveyed to headquarters at Vespasian's orders. From then on he saw the Jewish War from inside the enemy's camp. Six thousand Jews went as slaves to build the Corinth canal.

In the following spring the suppression of the rebels in Jjudaea was resumed. In the midst of the fighting news came which for the time being halted the campaign - Nero had committed suicide.

Civil war broke out in Rome. Vespasian awaited developments. One after another three insignificant emperors lost their thrones and their lives. At last the legions in the east stepped in. A year after Nero's death the cry went up in Egypt, in Syria, in Palestine, throughout the whole of the orient: "Vivat Caesar". Vespasian became master of the Roman empire. From Caesarea on the coast of Palestine, where the news reached him, he embarked without delay for Rome, leaving his son Titus to finish the last act of the Jewish War.

Shortly before the full moon in the spring of 70 Titus appeared with an enormous army outside Jerusalem. Marching columns filled the highways and byways leading to the city such as Judaea had never seen before. They were made up of the 5th, 10th, 12th and 15th Legions, accompanied by cavalry, engineers and other auxiliary troops, almost 80,000 men.

p 366 -- The Holy City was swarming with people: pilgrims had come from far and near to celebrate the Passover. Disputes between the extremists among the Zealots and the moderate party interrupted the devotions: the wounded and the dead remained untended.

Meantime the Romans moved into their camps in the environs of the city. A call to surrender was met with derisive laughter. Titus replied with the command to attack. The Roman artillery, "scorpiones", quick-firing siege engines and "ballistae", stone throwers, closed in. Every one of these heavy weapons could throw stones weighing a hundredweight a distance of 600 feet. On the north side the engineers were cracking open the Achilles heel of the fortress. On the south, east and west sharp precipices protected the ramparts. The north side was however unusually strongly fortified by three massive walls. Battering rams and siege engines began to crack and thunder as they attacked the foundations. Only when an incessant hail of great stones came hurtling into the city, and when night and day the heavy thud of the battering rams could be heard, did civil war end within the fortress. The rival factions came to terms. Simon bar Giora, leader of the moderates, took over the defence of the north side, John of Gischala, leader of the Zealots, took over the defence of the Temple area and the Tower of Antonia.

FIG 75.- Roman siege technique during the conquest of Jerusalem.

By the beginning of May the siege engines had in the space of two weeks made a gaping hole in the most northerly wall. In five more days the Romans were through the second wall. A determined counterattack put the defenders once more in possession of the wall and it took the Romans several days before they could recapture it. With that the northern suburb was firmly in Roman hands.

p 367 -- Convinced that in view of this situation Jerusalem would surrender, Titus called off the attack. The grandiose spectacle of a great parade of his forces immediately under the eyes of the beleagured people would surely bring them to their senses.

The Romans doffed their battledress and polished their full-dress uniform until it shone. The legionaries put on their armour, their coats of mail and their helmets. The cavalry decked their horses with the richest caparisons, and amid loud blasts from the trumpets tens of thousands of warriors marched past Titus and received their pay and ample rations in full view of the garrison. For four days from early morn till dusk the sound of the tramping feet of these unbeaten Roman columns echoed in the air.

It achieved nothing. Packed tight along the old wall, on the north side of the Temple, on every roof, the people spat hatred down at the Romans. The demonstration had been useless - the beleagured garrison had no thought of surrender.

Titus made one last attempt to win them round. He sent their captive countryman Flavius Josephus, the Jewish commander-in-chief in Galilee, to harangue them under the fortress walls.

Josephus' voice hailed them from below: "0 hard hearted men, throw away your weapons, have pity on your country that stands on the edge of the abyss. Look round and behold the beauty of all that you are ready to betray. What a city! What a Temple! What gifts from so many nations! Who would dare to let all of this be given to the flames? Is there one of you who can wish for all this to be no more? What more precious treasure could have been given to man to preserve - You obdurate creatures, more unfeeling than these very stones!."

In heartrending words, Josephus reminded them of the great deeds of the past, of their forefathers, of their history, of the mission of Israel - his exhortations and pleas fell on deaf ears.

The battle began anew from the second wall and surged against the castle of Antonia. The front was pushed forward through the streets of the suburbs to the Temple area and the upper part of the city. The engineers built ramps and auxiliaries dragged trees for this purpose from far and near. The Romans proceeded with all their tried methods of siege warfare. Their preparations were constantly being sorely hampered by the determined efforts of the defenders to upset them. Apart from wild sorties, no sooner were their wooden ramparts in position than they went up in flames. When darkness set in, the Roman camp was surrounded by swarms of figures who had crept out of their hiding places or through subterranean passages or over the walls.

Titus ordered reprisals to be made against these half starved ghostly figures and against deserters. Anyone caught outside - deserters, raiders or foragers - was to be crucified. Mercenaries nailed 500 of them every day to crosses just outside the city. Gradually a whole forest of

p 368 -- crosses sprang up on the hillsides till the lack of wood called a halt to the frightful practice.

Tree after tree was sacrificed for crosses, siege ramps, scaling ladders and camp fires. The Romans had come into a flourishing countryside. Now the vineyards had disappeared as had the market gardens, the wealth of fig-trees and olive-trees; even the Mount of Olives no longer provided shade. An unbearable stench hung over the bare and desolate countryside. The corpses of those who had died of starvation and of those who had died in battle, thrown over the ramparts by the beleaguered garrison, were piled beneath the walls by the thousand. Who had the strength to bury them in the traditional way?

FIG. 76.-Map. Jerusalem during the siege by Titus, A.D. 70.

"No stranger who had seen Judaea of old, and the lovely suburbs of its capital, and now saw this devastation," mourned Josephus, "could have restrained his tears and lamentations at the hideous change. For the war had turned all that beauty into a wilderness. And no man who knew these places of old and suddenly saw them again could possibly have recognised them."

To seal off the city hermetically Titus ordered the erection of a "circumvallatio". Working night and day they constructed a massive high wall of earthwork in a wide circle round Jerusalem, strengthened by thirteen fortified strong points and guarded by a close chain of pickets. If so far it had been possible to smuggle supplies and provisions into the city by night by way of secret paths through tunnels or ditches, the "circumvallatio" stopped even this last meagre reinforcement.

p 369 -- The spectre of famine haunted the city, which was filled to overflowing with pilgrims, and death mowed them down in a dread harvest. The craving for food, no matter of what sort, drove men beyond all bounds and killed all normal feeling.

"The terrible famine that increased in frightfulness daily annihilated whole families of the people. The terraces were full of women and children who had collapsed from hunger, the alleys were piled high with the bodies of the aged. Children and young people, swollen with lack of food, wandered around like ghosts until they fell. They were so far spent that they could no longer bury anyone, and if they did they fell dead upon the very corpses they were burying. The misery was unspeakable. For as soon as even the shadow of anything eatable appeared anywhere, a fight began over it, and the best of friends fought each other and tore from each other the most miserable trifles. No one would believe that the dying had no provisions stored away. Robbers threw themselves upon those who were drawing their last breath and ransacked their clothing. These robbers ran about reeling and staggering like mad dogs and hammered on the doors of houses like drunk men. In their despair they often plunged into the same house two or three times in the one day. Their hunger was so unbearable that they were forced to chew anything and everything. They laid hands on things that even the meanest of animals would not touch, far less eat. They had long since eaten their belts and shoes and even their leather jerkins were torn to shreds and chewed. Many of them fed on old hay and there were some who collected stalks of corn and sold a small quantity of it for four Attic drachmas. - But why should I describe the shame and indignity that famine brought upon men, making them eat such unnatural things?" asks Josephus in his history of the Wars of the Jews.

"Because I tell of things unknown to history, whether Greek or barbarian. It is frightful to speak of it and unbelievable to hear of it. I should gladly have passed over this disaster in silence, so that I might not get the reputation of recording something which must appear to posterity wholly degrading. But there were too many eye-witnesses in my time. Apart from that my country would have little cause to be grateful to me were I to be silent about the misery which it endured at this time."

Josephus, whose own family suffered with the defenders, was not afraid to describe an inhuman occurrence which proves that the raging famine had begun to cloud the brains of the blockaded citizens.

Zealots were foraging through the lanes of the city in quest of food. From one house came the smell of roast meat. The men plunged into the house at once and were confronted by Maria, daughter of the noble line of Beth-Ezob in Transjordan, an extremely wealthy family. She had come to Jerusalem on pilgrimage for the Passover. The Zealots threatened her with death unless she handed over the roast meat to

p 370 -- them. With a wild look she gave them what they asked for. Aghast, they found themselves looking at a half consumed infant-Maria's own child.

Soon not only the whole city learned of this, but the news also seeped out through the walls to the Roman camp. Titus swore that he would bury this dreadful deed under the ruins of the whole city.

Many fled from death by starvation under cover of darkness and ran into the arms of an equally cruel fate. The story had got around among the Romans' auxiliaries that fugitives from within the walls always carried gold and jewels, which they had swallowed in the hope of preserving them from being seized by strangers. If any of these unsuspecting people were caught they were felled to the ground and their bodies slit open in the endless quest for plunder. In one night 2,000 alone lost their lives in this way. Titus was furious. Without mercy he got his cavalry to decimate an auxiliary unit. An order of the day made the crime punishable by death. But it was of little avail, the slaughter continued secretly.

Meantime day and night the battering rams were hammering on the suburbs of Jerusalem. New ramps were laid down. Titus was in a hurry. He wanted to end this frightful nightmare as quickly as possible.

At the beginning of July his soldiers stormed the Tower of Antonia. The castle, on whose "Pavement" Jesus of Nazareth had been sentenced to death, was razed to its foundations. Its walls abutted on the north wall of the Temple.

It was now the turn of the Temple, that powerful and extremely well fortified complex of galleries, balustrades and forecourts. The commander-in-chief discussed the situation with his officers. Many of them wanted to treat the Temple like a fortress. Titus opposed them. He wanted if possible to spare this famous sanctuary which was known throughout the empire. For the last time his heralds demanded that the rebels should surrender. Once more the answer was a refusal. Titus then finally embarked upon the attack against the sacred precincts.

An incessant hail of heavy stones and a rain of arrows showered down upon its courts. The Jews fought like men possessed and did not yield an inch. They relied on Yahweh hastening to their aid at the last moment and protecting his shrine. More than once legionaries on scaling ladders reached the perimeter wall. Every time they were thrown back. Rams and siege engines were powerless against these walls. It was impossible to shatter the vast stone blocks of which Herod had built the Temple. In order to force an entry Titus set fire to the wooden Temple gates.

Hardly were they consumed when he gave instructions to put out the flames and make a passage for the legionaries to attack. Titus' order of the day read "Spare the sanctuary". But during the night the fire had reached the inner court and the Romans had their hands full to put it

p 371 -- out. The beleaguered rebels profited by this favourable opportunity to make a violent attack. With remorseless slaughter the legionaries drove the Jews back, and pursued. them through the courts. In wild tumult the battle raged round the sanctuary. Carried away by excitement, "one of the soldiers, without waiting for orders and without any sense of the horror of his deed, or rather being driven by some evil spirit, seized a blazing torch and, hoisted on the shoulders of one of his comrades, flung it through the Golden Window that opened into the rooms which lay beside the Holy of Holies".

These rooms were panelled with old wood and contained, as well as highly inflammable materials for the sacrifices, jars of holy oil. The flaming torch found instantaneous and ample fodder. Titus saw the flames springing up and tried to check the spread of the fire.

"Caesar   1   then commanded that the fire should be put out, calling in a loud voice to the soldiers who were in the thick of the fighting and giving them a signal with his right hand. But they did not hear what he said for all his shouting. . . . And since Caesar was unable to restrain the hot rage of the soldiery, and since the flames were spreading further and further, he entered the Holy Place in the Temple together with his commander and viewed it and all its contents.... But since the flames had not yet reached the inner rooms, and were still devouring the rooms that surrounded the Tabernacle, Titus, assuming, as was indeed the case, that the Tabernacle itself could still be saved, hurried away and made every effort to get the soldiers to put out the fire, giving orders to Liberalius, the centurion and to one of his own body guard, to beat the soldiers with staves if they refused and by every means to restrain them. But however great their enthusiasm for Caesar and their dread of what he had forbidden them to do, their hatred of the Jews and their eagerness to fight them was equally great.

"In addition the hope of booty spurred many of them on. They had the impression that all these rooms within were full of gold, and they saw that all around them was made of pure gold.... Thus the Holy Place was burnt down without Caesar's approbation."

In August A.D. 70 Roman legionaries erected their banners in the sacred precincts and sacrificed before them. Although half of Jerusalem was in the hands of the enemy, although ominous black columns of smoke rose from the burning Temple, the Zealots would not surrender.

John of Gischala escaped with quite a large band from the Temple area into the upper part of the city on the western hill. Others fled into the strong towers of Herod's palace. Once again Titus had to deploy his engineers, artillery, siege engines and all his brilliant technical skill. In September these walls too were forced, and the last bastions conquered. Resistance was finally at an end.

Murdering and plundering, the victors took possession of the city
1 -- Titus became Emperor in 79.

p 372 -- that had so fiercely and bitterly resisted them and cost them so much blood and time. "Caesar ordered the whole city and the Temple to be razed to the ground. He left standing only the towers of Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne and part of the city wall on the west side. This was to provide quarters for the garrison that was to remain behind."

The legion that occupied the garrison in this dreadful place for sixty long years bore the symbol "Leg XF", which meant "Tenth Fretensian Legion". Their home station was on the "Fretum Siciliense", the straits of Messina. They left behind them in and around Jerusalem thousands upon thousands of indications of their presence. Gardeners and peasants still find occasionally small tiles with the legion's number and its emblems of a galley and a boar.

The loss of life among the Jews was unimaginably high. During the siege, according to Tacitus, there were 600,000 people in the city. Josephus gives the number of prisoners as 97,000, not counting those crucified or ripped open, and adds that within a period of three months 115,800 corpses were taken out of one of the city gates alone by the Jews.

In the year 71 Titus paraded his great victory over Jerusalem in a gigantic triumphal procession through Rome. Among 700 Jewish prisoners John of Gischala and Simon bar Giora were marched past in chains. Amid great rejoicing two other costly trophies of pure gold were born in procession, the seven branched candlestick and the table of the shewbread from the Temple at Jerusalem. They found a new home in the Temple of Peace in Rome. Both these accessories of Jewish ritual can still be seen on the great arch of Titus which was erected to commemorate his successful campaign.

On top of these desolate and cheerless ruins, on which neitherjews nor Christians were allowed to set foot on pain of death, the emperor Hadrian 1   built a new Roman colony: Aelia Capitolina. The sight of a foreign settlement on this sacred Jewish soil provoked yet another open rebellion. Julius Severus was summoned to Judaea from his governorship in Britain and smashed the last desperate attempt of the Jews to regain their freedom. But it took him three years to do so. The emperor Hadrian then erected a race-course, two baths, and a large theatre. A statue of Jupiter was enthroned above the ruins of the Jewish Temple as if in derision, and on the site which Christian tradition believed to be that of the Holy Sepulchre, strangers climbed the terraced steps to do homage at a shrine of the pagan goddess Venus.

The greatest part of the population of the Promised Land, which was not massacred in the bloody Jewish War of 66-70 and in the Bar Kokhba rebellion of 132-135, was sold into slavery: "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations."

Archaeologists have found no material evidence of Israel's existence
1 -- A.D. 117-138.

p 373 -- in Palestine after the year 70, not even a tombstone with a Jewish inscription. The synagogues were destroyed, even the house of God in quiet Capernaum was reduced to ruins. The inexorable hand of destiny had drawn a line through Israel's part in the concert of nations.

But by then the teaching of Jesus was well started on its irresistible and victorious journey, uniting and giving new life to the nations.

p 374 -- Chapter 43 -- THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS -- A lost lamb - The Dead Sea Scrolls - Harding and de Vaux in Wadi Qumran -
Archbishop Samuel goes to Chicago - Nuclear physicists assist with the dating - Testing linen in the "Atomic Clock" - A book of Isaiah 2,000 years old - A prophetic roll in Jesus' day - A mysterious flood of documents - In the valley of the pirate-diggers - A text that corresponds after 2,000 years.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever - Is- 40:8.

Mohammed Dib, a Bedouin shepherd of the tribe of Ta'Amireh, shared the experience of young Saul, who set out to find his father's asses which were lost and acquired a kingdom (I Sam. 9, 10).

One fine day in the spring of 1947 Mohammed was combing the rocky ravines on the north shore of the Dead Sea in quest of a lost lamb, when he unwittingly came upon a veritable royal treasure in the shape of Biblical material.

He had been clambering to no purpose for several hours up and down the clefts and gullies of the ridge, which had many a time served as a hideout for hermits and sectaries, to say nothing of bandits, when he spied a dark crevice above his head in the rock face of Wadi Qumran. Could his lost lamb have taken refuge there? A well aimed stone whistled through the air. But instead of the sharp crack which he expected in reply, a dull rumbling noise came from the cave instead. Mohammed Dib fled in terror and fetched two of his fellow tribesmen to the scene. They approached the cave with great caution and eventually squeezed their way through its narrow entrance. To their amazement they saw in the dim light of the little vault some clay jars. Treasure was their first thought.and the three shepherds pounced on the jars and smashed them. But to their disappointment they contained neither jewels, nor gold, nor coins: nothing appeared but battered looking written scrolls of ancient leather and papyrus, wrapped in linen. In their annoyance they threw their finds carelessly aside, trampling on many of them, until it suddenly dawned on them that there might be money in them. At all events they took a few of the best looking scrolls to see if perhaps they had some cash value. With that the ancient documents set out on a remarkable journey.

They were smuggled into Bethlehem and came via the black market into the hands of antique dealers. Jewish and Arab collectors bought

p 375 -- some of the scrolls, and a bundle of four came into the possession of the Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem, Yeshue Samuel, for a handful of coins. The archbishop had no idea how precious was the treasure he had acquired, until experts from the American School of Oriental Research paid a visit to St. Mark's Monastery, where the documents were stored. A cursory examination convinced the archaeologists that they were dealing with Biblical documents of an uncommonly early date. A 23-foot-long scroll with the complete text of the book of Isaiah in Hebrew was among them. A short published report by the Americans on their find aroused incredulous astonishment among experts all over the world. The immediate question however as to the exact age of the leather and the papyrus could best be solved by examining the place where they were discovered.

With endless trouble and patience the origin of the documents was therefore traced back through the dealers and the black market in Bethlehem to the Arabs of the Ta 'Amireh tribe and so eventually to the cave in Wadi Qumran. But access to the cave was prohibited. For following on the establishment of the new state of Israel the Arab-Jewish war had broken out in 1948 and the whole of Palestine was a hotbed of unrest.

The persistence of a Belgian United Nations observer in Jerusalem finally helped to overcome all difficulties. Captain Philippe Lippens had studied papyrology at the ancient University of Louvain. At the end of 1948 he established contact with Gerald Lankester Harding, the British director of the Department of Antiquities in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Their united efforts succeeded in interesting officers of the Arab Legion in the cave where the discovery was made. Thirty miles in a jeep from Amman to Wadi Qumran presented no problems. After several fruitless quests among the numerous caves they eventually found the right one. The entrance to the cave was guarded by sentries until in February 1949 G. L. Harding and Father Roland de Vaux, Dominican director of the French Ecole Biblique et Archeologique at Jerusalem, arrived at the spot in person.

Their hopes were however disappointed. They found neither complete scrolls nor undamaged jars. Everything pointed to the fact that in the meantime others had rummaged through the mysterious cave on their own. With infinite patience and labour the two scholars examined the floor of the cave, literally with their finger-nails, in search of even the tiniest remains of manuscripts or of clay jars. What they collected in the way of fragments permitted them nevertheless to draw some important conclusions. The potsherds were uniformly Graeco-Roman, dating from 30 B.C. to A.D. 70. Six hundred tiny scraps of leather and papyrus made it possible to recognise Hebrew transcriptions from Genesis, Deuteronomy and the book of Judges. Pieces of linen fabric which had served to wrap up the scrolls completed the meagre spoils.

p 376 -- In response to an American invitation Archbishop Yeshue Samuel took his precious scrolls to the United States in the summer of 1949 and submitted them for examination to the Oriental Institute in Chicago. A violent dispute broke out among the experts on the question of the age and authenticity of the documents. To settle the matter, one of them proposed a course which was still unfamiliar to archaeologists, namely to invite the assistance of a nuclear physicist. This was all the easier since the Oriental Institute is next door to the University of Chicago, where nuclear physicists had begun to determine the age of organic substances with the aid of Geiger-counters.

Professor Willard F. Libby of the Chicago Institute of Nuclear Physics had already carried out his first astonishingly accurate calculations of age by the use of the so-called "atomic calendar" which he had evolved.

The idea behind this method is as follows: As a result of the bombardment of cosmic rays, which are constantly penetrating our atmosphere from outer space, nitrogen is transformed into the radioactive isotope of carbon C-14. Every living organism - men, animals, plants - absorbs this C- 14 with its food and the air it breathes every day until it dies. In the course of 5,600 years this carbon loses half of its original radioactivity. In the case of any dead organic substance a highly sensitive Geiger-counter can establish how much radiation has been lost from its content of C- 14. This makes it possible to calculate how many years ago it was since it absorbed carbon for the last time.

Professor Libby was asked to conduct an investigation. He took pieces of the linen, in which the Isaiah scroll had been wrapped, burned them to ashes, put them into a battery of Geiger-tubes, and came to an astonishing conclusion. The linen had been made from flax which had been harvested in the time of Christ. The documents which had been wrapped in it must therefore have been older still. After exhaustive and minute examination the papyrologists came to the same conclusion. The text of Isaiah from the cave of Qumran had actually been copied about 100 B.C., as Professor Albright once more had been first to recognise.

This discovery means more than simply a scientific sensation. To estimate the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls it is necessary to remember that the oldest text of the Bible which we possess in the Hebrew language - the so called Massoretic Text (Massora = tradition), which is the work of rabbinical scribes - dates from no earlier than the 9th - 10th century A.D. The chief sources for our version of the scriptures are the Septuagint, the Greek translation, and the Vulgate, the Latin translation of St. Jerome (4th century A.D.). Our knowledge of the text of the Bible rested for a long time on nothing but these two translations and the very late Hebrew manuscript. But with the discov-

p 377 -- ery of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah we have a Hebrew text of the Bible which is 1,000 years older. And the remarkable and wonderful fact is that that ancient scroll of Isaiah, just like the book of the prophet in any printed Bible, whether in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German or any other language, has sixty-six chapters and agrees with our present day text.

Seventeen sheets of leather, sewn together into a length of almost 23 feet - this must have been what the roll of the prophet looked like as it was handed to Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth so that he might read from it to the congregation. "And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias" (Luke 4:16, 17) . "Every movement of Jesus' hands is brought closer to us," writes Professor Andre Parrot, "for we can still see on the reverse side of the leather the marks of the readers' fingers. "

That first chance find made by a Bedouin in 1947 at Qumran was to lead to a whole series of most astonishing and highly significant discoveries. Soon after, for the first time a systematic investigation of the Judaean hills was undertaken with a view to finding more documents and further historical evidence. Expeditions were mounted both in Israel and Jordan. Hundreds upon hundreds of lonely gullies and hitherto unexplored caves in the Dead Sea area were searched. Many a time it was a race between the experts and unofficial explorers, because it had very quickly become clear to the natives that there was big money in these unlikely scraps of parchment and papyrus with any hint of writing on them. The result was that within ten years a whole host of documents and written records, including many Old Testament writings, came to light, providing a vast amount of new knowledge about Biblical and post-Biblical times.

In Khirbet Qumran, near the cave where the first discoveries were made, scholars came upon the ruins of a settlement and a cemetery of the Jewish sect of Essenes, of whose existence we had only previously known from the accounts given by ancient writers - Philo, Josephus, and Pliny. The Essenes - first mentioned in the time of Jonathan, brother of Judas Maccabaeus (I 60-143 B.C.) - were members of an ascetic order who lived strictly in accordance with the law. They formed communities which were completely self-supporting and refused to do military service. The particular group at Qumran survived up to the Roman invasion in A.D. 68. Presumably it was members of this group who were responsible for many of the copies of the books of the Old Testament which have been rescued from caves in the adjacent hills, since a proper scriptorium was discovered among the ruins of the settlement. This Jewish monastic order, as their records now disclose, recognised as their head a "Teacher of Righteousness" who had revealed to them a secret rule of life. Some scholars were at first inclined to say that Qumran had strongly influenced John the Baptist, Jesus,

p 378 -- and the early Church. This view, which caused a stir at the time, has on closer investigation proved to be unfounded.

Almost at the same time as the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, a collection of manuscripts was found not far from Luxor in Egypt which was to prove highly significant for our understanding of early Christianity. Fellaheen had discovered at Nag Hammadi, near the ancient Chenoboskion, a clay jar containing thirteen leather-bound volumes with about 1,000 leaves. These papyrus manuscripts written in Coptic, dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D., and including a collection of the Sayings of Jesus ascribed to the Apostle Thomas, "the Gospel according to Thomas", shed light on an early Christian Gnostic sect of which, apart from the writings of the early Christian Fathers, we hitherto knew little or nothing. The Fathers attacked the Gnostics as heretics since they tried to combine Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Persian, and Jewish mysticism with Christian doctrine. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, apart altogether from what further research discloses as to the authenticity of the teaching of Jesus which they contain, give us some idea of the formidable opposition and competition which the early Christian teachers had to face.

Following on the finds at the Dead Sea which aroused worldwide interest, came the discovery in 1952 of two inscribed copper scrolls in a cave to the north of the ruined monastery of Qumran. When eventually in the winter of 1955-56, after careful chemical experiments, experts in the Manchester College of Technology succeeded in opening them, the contents about which everyone had been agog turned out to be a curious inventory of hidden treasure. While the experts are still far from clear as to the real significance of this list, a geographical reference in the text confirmed the reliability of a piece of topographical information contained in the Fourth Gospel. According to John 5:2 "there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches . . . " The accuracy of this description was questioned until quite recently, when Bethesda was cleared of the rubble of centuries and brought once more to the light of day: a vast double pool covering over 5,000 square yards to the north of the Temple area. It had in fact five colonnades. Four of these surrounded the whole place, but the fifth porch, in which the sick folk lay waiting to be healed, stood on a ridge of rock which divided the two pools. The text of the copper scroll makes it quite clear that the lay-out at Bethesda consisted of two pools, since one of the hiding places is given as the smaller of the two reservoirs.

In the ancient Jewish fortress of Massada on the Dead Sea, Israeli scholars in 1956 came upon armouries and storehouses of Herod the Great. A fragment of papyrus was discovered inscribed with Hebrew characters and written in black ink. According to Dr. Aharoni, the fort

p 379 -- and . Herod's palace which crowned it were destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 73 after the end of the Jewish War.

Other expeditions have made interesting discoveries which shed an odd ray of light here and there on the Jewish rebellion under Simon Bar-Kokhba, which took place after the Biblical period. Hitherto, all that was known of this great revolt of the Jews against the emperor Hadrian and their struggle against the legions of Julius Severus consisted of comments in later Jewish writings, in the works of the Greek historian Dio Cassius, and the Christian Fathers Eusebius and Jerome.

In 1951 Professor Lankester Harding and Father de Vaux had retrieved original letters of the leader of the revolt dating from A.D. 130 - including several copies of a document proclaiming the liberation and issued by Bar-Kokhba - from caves to the south of Qumran in Wadi Murabba'at, one of the most desolate spots in Palestine. Then in 1960 a group of archaeologists under the direction of Professor Yigael Yadin of Jerusalem University found army orders from the leader to his .subordinates in caves in the Hever Ravine. The original letters deal with arrests, confiscation of crops and removal of population from Tekoa, the birthplace of the prophet Amos. A second expedition led by Professor Yadin in 1961 found in the same place a bundle of documents - papyri in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. It is thought that these are minutes dating from the year A.D. 134 from the archives of the commandant of the stronghold at En-Gedi by the Dead Sea who had been installed there by Bar-Kokhba. Together with coins of the "Son of a Star" - which was Bar-Kokhba's title - and pieces of crockery, a gruesome discovery awaited the archaeologists: skeletons of rebels indicated the desperate last act of this historical tragedy. Women and men who had taken refuge there had obviously died of starvation in their hide-out.

With all these discoveries since the first finds in 1947, quite apart from the recovery of numerous Biblical manuscripts, the period immediately after Biblical times has for the first time been illuminated in a way which no one a few years ago would have dared to hope.

So far the total number of manuscripts discovered at the Dead Sea amounts to over 400, including 100 Biblical, manuscripts. Apart from the Book of Esther every book of the Old Testament is represented. The best known is the complete scroll of the Book of Isaiah. The scrolls and fragments which come from Qumran date from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 68; those from Wadi Murabba'at go up to A.D. 132-135.

These unexpected discoveries in the words of Professor Lankester Harding are "perhaps the most sensational archaeological event of our time. It will take a whole generation of Biblical scholars to assess the value of these manuscripts."

In the summer of 1947 a sheer coincidence led to the discovery of the oldest manuscripts of the Bible so far known. Among a collection of

p 380 -- writings on leather and payrus which Bedouin shepherds came across in a cave in Wadi Qumran on the north side of the Dead Sea was a 23-foot leather scroll containing the complete text of the book of Isaiah in Hebrew. Expert examination of the document revealed beyond doubt that the Isaiah text dated from 100 B.C. It is an original prophetic scroll of the type that Jesus held in his hands when he read the lesson in Nazareth on the sabbath (Luke 4:16ff). This copy of Isaiah, over 2,000 years old, is a unique proof of the reliability of the holy scriptures that have been handed down to us, for the text agrees exactly with what we have in our present day Bible.

The oldest and most complete text of the Old and New Testaments were, until recently, the famous Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus dating from the 4th century A.D., supplemented in 1931 by the Chester Beatty papyri dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. Besides these, there were some fragments of the Old Testament from pre-Christian times (Fuad and Rylands Fragments). But all of these documents are in Greek, that is to say translations as far as the Old Testament is concerned. The oldest and fullest MS. in Hebrew was the Codex Petropolitanus, dating from A.D. 916. By the discovery of the leather scroll of Isaiah at the Dead Sea the Hebrew text has been carried back to almost exactly 1,000 years before. In 1935 a part of St. John's Gospel in Greek - the famous Bodmer papyrus - dating from the time of Trajan (98-117) was discovered. These old MSS. are the most convincing answer to all doubts as to the reliability of the text that we have in our Bibles today.

Much has been written about Qumran in the meantime. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been the subject of publications of a strictly specialised nature, but Qumran has also figured in literature intended for the general public. The time has certainly come to ask whether Qumran has actually proved to be the sensational find it seemed to be. The answer cannot be definitely either positive or negative. Once more we shall be obliged to record that the reply to this question is: partly "'yes" and partly "no". The Dead Sea Scrolls have failed to provide the spectacular discoveries concerning the lives and activities of John the Baptist and Jesus the Nazarene, for which people had secretly hoped. Instead the "voice from the desert" of Qumran has made us aware of how little we really know about the historical John the Baptist and the historical.Jesus. What a part of the scrolls does confirm, however, is the striking agreement between the Old Testament texts on which they are based and the Masoretic version of the Hebrew Old Testament of a full thousand years later. This fact is of the greatest importance in the textual history of the Old Testament.

The contents of the Qumran texts with their innumerable anticipations of Christian concepts, teachings, demands, rules and regulations were and still are grist to the mill of the sceptics and to those who doubt

p 381 -- the originality of Jesus and his Church. After the Qumran discoveries, they are not willing to grant Christianity anything from the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount to the white baptismal robe, from the Last Supper to the community organisation. Among the people belonging to the Qumran sect, the Essenes, there was a "community council" consisting of 12 men and 3 priests. The number twelve corresponds not merely to the. 12 tribes of Israel but also to the 12 apostles of Jesus. The Qumran people had "elders" and the word "priest" comes ultimately from the term loaned from the Greek for an elder of the Christian community, "presbyter".  1  Even the office of bishop was not unknown to the people of Qumran. The word "bishop" has its origins in the Greek word "episkopos" which literally means "overseer". The dignity of "overseer", which in Aramaic is "mebagger" was not unknown to the Qumran sectarians.

In short, from the 12 apostles and the whole "community organisation" to the value concepts and beliefs as well as to the consciousness of guilt, the idea of redemption and the expectation of eternity, all these Christian fundamentals were already known to the Essenes.

Occasionally the correspondences verge on the grotesque. Thus we find in Paul the curious passage: "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels" (I Corinthians 11:10). As a last resort we can understand this to mean that women should wear a veil as a sign that they were in the power of the man. But what has this to do with the "angels"? The Qumran rule provides the explanation. The Essenes believed that at the sacral community meal there were "holy angels" who could be offended by the presence of certain persons or groups of persons. As far as women were concerned, the early Christians acted in the same way, even if they did not go so far as the Essenes and exclude women completely from their sacral community meal. They merely imposed on them certain restrictions such as the wearing of a veil. In the case of the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf and the maimed, the Essene ordinance went beyond what they could accept. "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt and the blind" (Luke 14:21). Some scholars consider these words to be a clear protest and a refusal to accept the regulation of the community of Qumran.

Here we reach the differences between Qumran and Christianity. Again we find in Luke something like a disagreement. He records the parable of the unjust steward and has Jesus say: "'. . . for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8). The Essenes were "children of light". The members of the early Christian communities are here called upon not to imitate the Essenes who isolated themselves and withdrew into the desert and so lost
1 -- The German text has been slightly adapted to bring it into line with facts of English rather than German.

p 382 -- contact with the world. Whilst the people of Qumran concealed themselves from the rest of the world, the Christian messengers went out into " the streets and lanes" and what they preached was meant not only for the chosen, but also for "the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind". The message was not "justice", but "judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1) and also ". . . love one another, As I have loved you" (John 15:12). This was a new message which was unknown to the "voice from the desert" of Qumran. In whatever way Christianity subsequently developed and whatever cause for criticism it has offered, even its sharpest critics cannot deny that it is kindliness which made it different from Qumran with its strict ordinances.

p 383 -- Chapter 44 -- REBUILDING WITH THE HELP OF THE BIBLE -- Economic planning with the help of the Old Testament - The wells of the patriarchs provide for the settlers - " Honey out of the rock" - Stone walls to collect dew - Digging again in Solomon's mines - Pioneering on Bibilical pattern.

No one would dispute that the Old Testament is filled with that imponderable moral and spiritual power which outlasts time and loses nothing with its passing. But that its power should extend to the sober and prosaic business of remoulding the economy of a country is a sensational development.

Since 1948, the Book of Books, now more than 3,000 years old, has been playing the role of a trusted adviser in the rebuilding of the modern state of Israel. In the growth of both agriculture and industry the exact historical information given in the Bible has proved to be of the highest importance.

The territory of the new. state covers about 8,000 square miles. In 1948 it was only in the Plain of Jezreel and the productive lowlands by the Lake of Galilee that there seemed to be even a remote reflection of the Biblical description of the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey. Large areas in Galilee and almost the whole of the Judaean highlands presented an entirely different picture from Biblical times. Centuries of mismanagement had even destroyed the grass roots. Careless cultivation of olive and fig groves on the hillsides had dried them up. Increasing barrenness and considerable erosion were the sequel.

The inexperienced settlers, to whom the country was a completely unknown quantity, found the Old Testament of priceless assistance. It helped them to make many a decision in questions of cultivation, afforestation or industrial development. It is nothing unusual even for experts to consult it on doubtful problems.

"Fortunately," says Dr. Walter Clay Lowdermilk, an expert on agricultural economics, "the Bible tells us what plants can grow in particular places. We know from the book of Judges that the Philistines grew corn, for Samson tied foxes tails together, 'and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails' and 'let them go into the standing corn of the Philistines'. In the same manner he set fire to their olive groves and as he was on his way to visit his lady love he passed vineyards (Judges 15:5; 14:5). All these plants are now doing well there."

Every attempt to settle in the Negev must have seemed hopeless.

p 384 -- South of the mountains of Judah between Hebron and Egypt lay nothing but desert, interspersed with wadis and barren of any vegetation. Meteorological measurements showed an average annual rainfall of less than 6 inches. It was a discouraging prospect.

Nothing can grow with a rainfall as small as that. But had the stories of the days of the patriarchs nothing of value to contribute? "And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh, and Shur and sojourined in Gerar" (Gen. 20:1). The father of the patriarchs was a shepherd, he kept close company with his large flock, and it needed pasture and water.

A reconnaissance party spent weeks with geologists scouring the desolate sand-dunes and rocky hills of the "south country".  1   They actually found what they were looking for. And the Israelis did exactly what Isaac had done. "And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father" (Gen. 26:17,18). Choked with sand, the ancieni wells are still there and still as before at the foot of them runs clear pure water, "springing water", as Isaac's servants called it. They meant by that drinking water, for otherwise the underground water in the Negev - as was proved by testing the soil - is brackish and unpalatable. Once again tents stood on the same spots by the water-holes. The well beside which Abraham's rejected bondwoman Hagar rested with her son Ishmael (Gen. 21:14-19) now supplies water for sixty families of settlers. Rumanian Jews have settled on a nearby hillside only a mile or two from the Beersheba of the Bible.

In the same area there is another remarkable feature. The settlers have planted seedlings, slender young trees which are coming along famously. "The first tree which Abraham planted in the soil of Beersheba was a tamarisk," declared Dr. Joseph Weitz, the Israeli forestry expert. "Following his example we have planted 2,000,000 of them in this area. Abraham did absolutely the right thing. For the tamarisk is one of the few trees, as we have proved, that will flourish at all in the south where the annual rainfall is under 6 inches." Here again the Bible pointed the way: "And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba" (Gen. 21:33-R.V.).

Afforestation is an essential prerequisite in making a countryside which is short of water into a fertile land. Since the beginning of the return of the Jews to Palestine the settlers have been planting forests. In choosing the types of trees they could rely on the observations of their forefathers just as much as in the choice of suitable areas. A few years ago, when the question arose as to whether the bare mountain slopes in the northern part of the country could be afforested, the book of Joshua gave them the answer. "And Joshua spake unto the house of Joseph,
1 -- Negev.

p 385 -- even to Ephraim and to Manasseh saying: 'Thou art a great people and hast great power: thou shalt not have one lot only: but the mountains shall be thine for it is a wood and thou shalt cut it down"' (Josh. 17:17-18).

Both these tribes, it was known, settled north of Jerusalem from the mountain ridge of Bethel past Biblical Shechem at the foot of Mt. Gerizim right to the Plain of Jezreel. "Since trees are known to grow better in places where there have been trees before," argued Professor Zohary of the Hebrew University, "we are relying on the Book of Books."

Much discussion has centred round an extremely obscure reference which until a few years ago was understood by nobody: "He made him (Israel) . . . that he might eat the increase of the fields: and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock" (Deut. 32:13). The riddle was solved when in the Negev they came across thousands of little circular stone walls. There was no water in the neighbourhood, neither springs nor any pools of underground water worth speaking of. When the sand was shovelled out of them they found the remains of the roots of ancient olive trees and vines. The stone walls had served their ancestors as valuable collectors of dew.

Their construction indicated an astonishing practical knowledge of the process of condensation. The stones in the circles were loosely stacked to ensure that the wind could blow through them. In this way. the moisture from the air was deposited inside. This moisture was enough to feed an olive or a vine. Inside each wall there was always one tree only. The sweet juice of the grapes was often extolled in ancient times as "honey". The olive tree produces oil. Honey and oil were sucked "out of the rock ... out of the flinty rock". Present day Israelis set great store by these serviceable little dew-collectors in the redevelopment of their agriculture.

In the second half'of 1953 for the first time in Israel 3,000 tons of copper were mined. Where the houses of Solomon's workmen and slaves stood 3,000 years ago, new miners' houses stand today. Copper mining still pays. Dr. Ben Tor, the geologist, had the ancient copper mines tested in 1949 as to their mineral resources and their possibilities as an economic proposition. Experts estimated that there was enough ore to provide 100,000 tons of copper. According to their calculations the ramifications of the mines could produce at least another 200,000 tons. Since then, "Ezion Geber, which is beside Eloth on the shores of the Red Sea" (I Kings 9:26), has been a hive of activity. jeeps and trucks scurry around, churning up clouds of yellow dust, and gangs of sunburnt men ply pick and shovel. "Wherever the ore is particularly rich," maintains a mining engineer, "we come upon the slag and furnaces of Solomon's miners. It often seems as if they had just left the place."

In the company's main office there is a text hanging on the wall. It reads: "For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land ... a land

p 386 -- whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass" (Deut. 8:7, 9).

Iron is however not yet being mined. But the outcrops have already been recorded. Not far from Beersheba, exactly where the iron-smelting Philistines lived, Dr. Ben Tor noticed steep hillsides with reddish-black veins, the sign of iron ore deposits. Investigation showed that they amounted to 15,000,000 tons on a rough estimate. Most of this is ore of inferior quality but in the course of the survey excellent ores were discovered with between 60%-65% of pure iron.

Another very well known Biblical passage kept running in the mind of Xiel Federmann, a shrewd business man. It was the sentence in which the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is described, "... and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace" (Gen. 19;28). He could get no peace. Did these conflagrations not indicate subterranean gas? And where there is underground gas there are also deposits of oil, as has long been recognised. A company was formed and the experts who were sent to the Dead Sea confirmed completely Federmann's guess. On November 3, 1953, the first Israeli oil well was drilled.

More than fifty farming communities have sprung up again between the sites of the Biblical settlements of Dan and Beersheba. Almost every one of them possesses a small modern pumping station above a spring or a well dating from ancient times. Gradually many parts of the country are coming to resemble once more the cheerful picture of Old Testament times.

It is a hard task that the state of Israel has set itself. But its people are fully convinced that they and their descendants will overcome all difficulties - not least thanks to the Bible - and that the prophecy of Ezekiel to the children of Israel will be fulfilled.

And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, this land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden - Ezek. 36:34-35.

p 387 -- POSTCRIPT TO THE REVISED EDITION -- BY JOACHIM REHORK - Is the "accuracy" of the Bible important? - Inaccuracies - Problematical - patriarchs - The Bible: the most diligently researched work in world literature - Endless questions - Contact with the past - Is the Bible right after all? - Ancient Israel between the fronts - Reading between the lines - The Bible as a record of events.

More than twenty years have passed since the first appearance of this book. We have now come to the end of an attempt to incorporate new knowledge into it without disturbing the substance of the original text by tendentious criticism arising from the fresh discoveries. If we now ask ourselves again: "Well, is the Bible right after all?", some readers will reply with a definite "yes", while others will answer with a no less definite "no". Between these two answers there is room for a wide variety of opinion.

There is no lack of scholars - among them historians, theologians, philologists and archaeologists - who after conscientious examination of the Biblical tradition have come to the conclusion that fundamentally it is of secondary importance whether the facts reported in the Bible are correct or not. According to them, the Bible is primarily "prophecy". It is a religious message, made known wit * h the means available at the time of its origin, or rather the different times of its origin, for the Bible is the extraordinarily complex product of numerous "growth strata" which in the course of centuries produced the "Bible" in its present form while leaving clear indications of the stages of its growth. It is more important in their view to shed light on the origin, the growth process of the collection of writings known as the "Bible" and to understand how the various elements of the Biblical tradition fit into the whole in order to obtain an idea, with the help of such knowledge, of what the authors of the individual books of the Bible wanted to tell their readers. In any case, the emphasis lay on getting the message across and not on the accuracy of historical details.

For the majority of Bible readers, on the other hand, as well as for a large number of Biblical scholars, a great deal still depends on the question whether statements in the Bible can be proved. The Dominican father, Roland de Vaux, for example, one of the most prominent figures in the history of Biblical antiquity, regarded the capacity to survive of the Jewish and Christian faith as dependent upon the agree-

p 388 -- ment between "religious" and "objective" history. He stated his opinion thus: "... if Israel's historical faith does not have its roots in history, then it is wrong and the same is true of our faith." The no less distinguished American Biblical archaeologist George Ernest Wright expressed the opinion that in Biblical belief everything depends on whether the main events actually took place. That is exactly the spirit in which the present work had its origin twenty years ago.

These two scholars, de Vaux and Wright, however, encountered active opposition in specialist circles. Not from less deeply religious colleagues, but from specialists who took their religion no less seriously than de Vaux and Wright, but who at the same time felt the desire to base their religious convictions on a more solid foundation than the confirmation of historical statements in the Bible. This is no cause for surprise since the Bible certainly does not make things easy for the researcher. It is full of problematical statements with the consequence that representatives of the most diverse disciplines, "schools" and opinions have racked their brains again and again over contradictions, repetitions and inconsistencies in the Biblical text - inconsistencies of
which the following are a few examples.

In the Bible there are two accounts of the Creation (Genesis I:1-2, 3 and Genesis 2 4ff).

In the first of these two accounts of the Creation, God created man last; in the second, however, God created him first, that is to say, before all other creatures.

In one case God created mankind from the beginning as "male and female"; then, however, only the man came into being from "the dust of the ground", while woman was formed subsequently from a rib of the man.

The second account of the Creation contains details not mentioned in the first.

The two accounts of the Creation also differ from one another in their literary form. The first is hymnal, of the nature of a litany, whilst the second is a simple narrative.

So far reference has been made only to repetitions. The name of Moses' father-in-law has been transmitted in three different forms, once as Jethro (Exodus 3:1; 4:18; 18:1-12), once as Reuel (Exodus 2:18) and finally as Hobab (Judges 4:11). Other passages in the Bible also make us wonder what their meaning is, for example:

What sort of darkness "over the land of Egypt" was it from which the Egyptians suffered whilst the Israelites in bondage in Egypt did not (Exodus 10:22f)?

How could Moses describe his own death (Deuteronomy chap, 34)? Or to put the question in another way: can the first five books of the Bible really have been written by Moses when they tell us of his death?

p 389 -- These are only a few examples of inconsistencies in the Bible. These and similar incongruities have raised questions, however, which have led scholars to examine the Bible time and time again and to offer fresh interpretations. For generations the Bible has been the object of critical investigation and it can claim to be not only one of the most widely distributed and best selling books, but also the work of world literature which has been subjected to the most objective and thorough scholarly research. It has long been known that it contains elements belonging to the most varied literary genres, from the edifying treatise to the thriller, from the sermon to the legal text, from the liturgical hymn to the love song, from historiography to the novel, not to mention legends, anecdotes and folk-tales. A complete "national literature" is to be found in this collection known as the "Bible". In consequence, we also know that from the outset historians and archaeologists attach more historical weight to some books of the Bible than to others which have rather to be considered as "literary". In short, we know that the Bible is certainly not homogeneous and to a certain extent we are aware of the "joins".

It was indeed a matter of centuries before the various books of the Bible were brought together and codified, that is to say, given a final written form. Perhaps what we know as the song of Miriam (Exodus 15:21) is really a genuine example which has come down to us from the Late Bronze period (13th century B.C.), whilst the second Epistle of Saint Peter, which is probably the nearest to us in date of the Biblical works, may not have been composed until the second quarter of the second century A.D. The majority of the Biblical works were probably brought together to form the "Bible" between the sixth century B.C. and the first century A.D., although in indicating these dates a few centuries must be added at the beginning of the period for a number of books of the Bible and some source material as well as a few decades at the end for some of the books of the New Testament.

Yet however much we know about the Bible today, we still do not know nearly enough. There is no end to the problems. On the contrary, every new discovery raises new questions. And there is no lack of fresh discoveries, certainly not of those in the area of archaeology. A veritable boom in archaeology has occurred precisely in the principal region where the events of the Bible took place, in ancient and present day Israel. The results of archaeological work there achieve a publicity which it is unlikely they will ever receive here. This is no cause for surprise, since for the Israelis of today archaeology is "a handshake with the past". Archaeological finds are called "greetings from our forefathers". Archaeology is part of the search for the collective identity which is here being documented, a search for what binds together the immigrants to Israel from all over the world, whether they be religious orthodox or liberal. Each one of the "greetings from the forefathers",

p 390 -- however, each one of the direct "handshakes with the past", is also more or less a contribution to Bible research and each of the discoveries helps not only to solve problems but also indicates fresh problems. The situation in Bible scholarship is no different from that in other branches of knowledge. This is also the reason why a book such as this was in need of revision after the passage of two decades.

The discovery of the tablets at Nuzi (Yorgan Tepe) can here be cited again as an example. It provided striking enlightenment concerning the legal customs of the patriarchs, whilst at the same time opening to question the generally accepted date for the beginning of the period of the patriarchs.

In view of such a host of questions and correspondences, can we really say that the Bible "is right"? Of course, there are quite different levels of "being right". There is the level of belief, of religious conviction, and of subjective feeling that something is right. Such belief is not at all in question here and must remain a matter of belief. The Bible cannot be proved as a document of faith, nor for the believer can it be convincingly disproved, for belief begins where knowledge and proof have their limit. In any case, proofs such as we are seeking can only be produced for or against the Bible as a historical source.

Here we have to condemn a bad habit current these days. Recently the rather derogatory term "less than a history book" has become customary in referring to the Bible. Quite respectable writers today have adopted this bad habit. In so doing they forget that the Bible is intended to be a representation of history. This is true of at least a large number of its texts. It would be foolish to criticise these texts because their authors did not yet adhere to the standards which we are now accustomed to apply to the writing of history and which in their turn are not destined to be eternal. Let us not forget that the Bible speaks to us from the historical past! But the historical past is powerful. It has to do with the state of man, his moods, the trends of the period which affect him, the influences exerted by his environment, the spirit of the times, the fads to which he is exposed. It is only in the light, or the twilight, of all these things that we experience our environment and all these things determine what can enter our sphere of experience and thus become available to us as knowledge.

In other words, if we do not wish to subject it to force, we must not squeeze the Bible into the Procrustean bed of our demands for "historical truth" and "scientific objectivity", which are themselves sufficiently problematical. It is, or rather, it was an historical work, but not such as we understand the term. It is the account of a people and its god, whose powers his worshippers came to know in the course of history. The Bible does not attempt to be a neutral, objective account of the events it relates. It is far too committed for that, much too rooted in its own times, in the times of which it speaks the language. This, too,

p 391 -- must not be forgotten - the Bible uses descriptive methods which are by no means always those we employ. Biblical language is naturally abstract, yet is much more rich in images than ours. What we reduce to a short, conceptual formulation, the Bible converts into a story and its descriptions are often puzzles whose ambiguity is quite often intentional.

The sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham commanded by God but not carried out just at the last moment (Genesis 22:1-13) may serve as an example. It can be interpreted in three ways.

In the first place it may be the vestige of a primitive initiation rite, a kind of "blood baptism". Only he who wholly and unconditionally submits himself to his god becomes a full member of the community.

Secondly, the passage is a renunciation, in more or less allegorical form, of the custom of human sacrifice and more particularly of the sacrifice of boys which was widespread in the Ancient East.

Thirdly, it is a test of faith for Abraham. The author of this chapter in the Bible himself suggests this when he writes at the beginning of his account: "God did tempt Abraham."

As our time and patience have grown short, we usually feel extremely ill at ease when faced with the task of decoding these "linguistic allegorical puzzles".

In order to transport ourselves back into the thoughts of the Bible authors, we have simultaneously to turn back the wheel of history to that point in time which marks the beginning of the codification, the definitive text of the hitherto oral or written separate traditions of Ancient Israel, and thus of the growth of the complex structure known as the "Bible".

Is the Bible always right? We shall certainly be able to answer in the affirmative for those passages which have been confirmed by non-Biblical parallel sources or by archaeological discoveries. The Bible can claim another form of "rightness", however, insofar as it brings nearer to us its times and the people of its times with their ways of thought and behaviour so that we learn how better to understand their sermons, parables, allegories, visions, symbols, and allusions. Perhaps we shall some day be in a position to affirm, even of passages which are still unclear and puzzling to us today, that the Bible is right after all, as seen through the eyes of the people of its times!

p 392 -- CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF BIBLE DEVELOPMENT -- (From: Claus Westermann: Abriss der Bibelkunde, p. 266 f)

Epoch Date Parts of the Bible
Occupation of the land 13th century B.C. Song of Miriam (Exodus 15:21).
Period of the judges c. 12th/11th century B.C Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20:22 to 23:33).
David c. 1000 B.C. Beginning of the composition ofthe Psalms. Story of the Ark of the Covenant. (I Samuel 4-6; 2 Samuel 6)
Period of the kings (Solomon and later the two kingdoms) 10th century to 722/721 B.C. Origin of the written source by the Elohists and Jahvists. 1
Hezekiah of Judah 727 (721) to 698 (693) B. C. The so-called "Proto-Isaiah" (=Isaiah 1-39), Micah.
The so-called "Deutero-nomistic Reform" 2 (621 B.C.) King Josiah of  Judah (639/638 to 609 B. C.) Deuteronomy (5th Book of Moses) Habakkuk, Nahum, Zephaniah.

First exile .

597 B. C. Jeremiah (original scroll). A small part of the Book of Ezekiel.
"Babylonian exile" 586 to 539/8 B.C. Lamentations, the so-called "Deutero-Isaiah" (=Isaiah 40-55), the so-called "Deuteronomical historical work" 3    (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings), the so-called "priestly writings".
Restoration until the consecration of th"Second Temple" 539/8 to 515 B.C. The so-called "Trito-Isaiah" (=Isaiah
56-66), Haggai, Zechariah 1-8.
Persian period 539/8 B.C. until Alexander the Great (King 336 to 323 B.C.) 460 Malachi, around 450 probably Ezra and Nehemiah (Nehemiah was governor under Artaxerxes I, [465-424 B. C.]). Between 400 and 200 B.C.: Jonah, perhaps in the 4th century B.C.: Job, 4th or 3rd century B.C.: Joel and the so-called "chroniclers' history work".
Hellenism From Alexander the Great until Rome's annexation of Egypt (30B.C.) Around 332: Zechariah 9-14. 3rd century: Proverbs and Song of Solomon.
Around 250: Ecclesiastes. Beginning of the Septuagint (between 285 and 246 B.C.).
Maccabees 167/166 B.C. until the intervention of Pompey (63 B.C.) or until Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.)
Between 170 and 160 B.C.: Book of Esther, Book of Daniel. (Perhaps between 166 and 160 B.C.: first canon of the Bible [under Judas Maccabaeus]?) Qumran texts.

p 393 --
Roman period

From A.D. 6 (A.D 66: rebellion; A.D. 70: destruction of Herod's temple; A.D. 73: fall of Masada). Middle of the first century A.D.: New Testament Epistles. About A.D.70: Gospel of
St. Mark. . Between 75 and about A.D. 95.: Matthew and Luke. Probably after 90: John's apocalypse. End of the 1st century: Acts of the Apostles and Gospel of St. John. Also the establishment of the Hebrew Bible canon at Jabneh (Jamnia). Further New Testament Epistles. Middle of the 2nd century A.D.: Second Epistle of St. Peter.

 

1 -- The written sources of the first five books of the Bible, known as the "Pentateuch", which are attributed to Moses. The source we owe to the Jahvists employs the name "Jahveh" for "God", whilst that due to the Elohists employs the name "Elohim". The work by the Jahvists originated in Southern Judaea probably during the 10th - 9th century B.C., that of the Elohists probably in the 8th century B.C. in northern Israel. The two works were later merged with one another to begin with and subsequently together with the "Second Book of the Law" (Deuteronomy {7th century B.C.]) and the "priestly writings" (6th century [period of exile] or not until the 5th century B.C.) to form what are known as the "five books of Moses".

2 -- The "Deuteronomistic Reform" is referred to in this way because this reform carried out by King Josiah of Judah (639/8-609 B.C.) in 621 B.C. attempts to put into practice the norms of the "Second Book of the Law" (Deuteronomy [the so-called fifth book of Moses]) which had only recently been codified (622 B.C.); efforts were made to lend importance to it by giving it the style of an address to the people by Moses at the end of the wanderings in the wilderness.

3 -- The Biblical books Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are called the "Deuteronomistic History" because, having originated probably in the 6th century B.C., they are composed entirely in the spirit of the "Second Book of the Law" (Deuteronomy [the so-called fifth book of Moses]), which was codified in the 7th century (622 B.C.), and of the "Deuteronomistic Reform" of King Josiah (621 B.C.). It has a connection with "Deuteronomy" only by reason of content, however, but not of chronology, for it originated, as stated, not before the 6th century B.C. and possibly later.

p 394 -- BIBLIOGRAPHY --

Abel, F.- M.: Geographie de la Palestine I (1933), II (1938), Histoire de la Palestine depuis la conquete d'Alexandre jusqu'a l'invasion Arabe I/II (1952).
Adams, J. M. K.: Ancient Records and the Bible (1946).
Albright, W. F.: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (1953), Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands (1936), Exploring Sinai with the University of California (1948), Archaeology of Palestine (1954), From the Stone Age to Christianity (1949)
Alt, A.: Die Herkunft der Hyksos in neuer Sicht (1954), Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel I/II (1953)
Andrae, W.: Das wiedererstandene Assur (1938).
Augstein, R.: Jesus Menschensohn (1972).
Avigad, N.: Bullae and seals from a post-exilic Judean archive (1976).

Bailey, A. E.: Daily life in Bible Times (1943).
Barrois, A. G., Manuel d'archeologie biblique I/II (1939/53).
Bauer, H.: Die alphabetischen Keilschrifttexte von Ras-Shamra (1936).
Begrich, J.: Die Chronologie der Konige von Israel und Juda (1929).
Ben-Chorin, Sch.: Bruder Jesus. Der Nazarener in judischer Sicht (1970).
Benzinger, I.: Hebraische Archaologie (1927).
Biblisches Nachschlagewerk, Stuttgarter (1955).
Bittel, K.: Die Ruinen von Bogazkoy (1937).
Bittel, K., und R. Naumann: Bogazkoy (1938).
Bodenheimer, Fr. S. u. 0. Theodor: Ergebnisse der Sinai-Expedition 1927 (1929).
Boschke, F. L.: Die Schopfung ist noch nicht zu Ende (Econ, 1962).
Bossert, H. Th.: Altanatolien (1942). 
Breasted, J. H.: The Dawn of Conscience (1933), Ancient Records of Egypt I-V (1906/07), History of Egypt, 2nd Ed. 1954.
Budge, W. E. A.: The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamesh (1920) revised by C. J. Gadd (1929).
Burrows, M.: What mean these Stones? (1941).

Caiger, S. L.: Bible and Spade (1936).
Canyon, Fr.: Bible and Archaeology (1955).
Carleton, P.: Buried Empires (1939).
Chase, M. E.: The Bible and the Common Reader (1946).
Clay, A. T.: Business Documents of Murashu Sons (1898).
Clemen, C.: Die phonikische Religion nach Philo von Byblos (1939).
Clermont-Ganneau, C. S.: La Stele de Mesa (1887).
Collart, Philippes ville de Macedoine.
Contenau, G.: La civilisation phenicienne (1949), La vie quoditienne a Babylone et en Assyrie (1953), Les civilisations anciennes du Proche Orient (1945), Manuel d'Archeologie orientale I-IV (1927/47).
Cornfeld, G., ed.: Pictorial Biblical encyclopedia; a visual guide to the Old and New Testaments. Edited by Gaalyahu Cornfeld assisted by Biblical scholars, historians and archaeologists (1964).
Craveri, M.: Das Leben des Jesus von Nazareth (1970).

p 395 -- Crowfoot, J. W., Kathleen M. Kenyon, E. L. Sukenik: The Buildings at Samaria (1942). Cuneiform Texts: British Museum (Ed.).

Dalman, G.: Heilige Statten und Wege (1935), Licht vom Osten (1923), Arbeit und Sitte in Palastina I-VII (1928/42).
Dalmas
, G.: Die talmud. Texte uber Jesu (1900).
Davis, J. D.: Dictionary of the Bible (1953).
Davis, J. D. and H. S. Gehman: The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible (1944).
Delitzsch, Fr.: Babel und Bibel (1903).
Deschner, K.: Jesusbilder in theologischer Sicht (1966).
Dobschutz, E. v.: Die Bibel im Leben der Vo1ker (1954).
Dougherty, R. P.: Nabonitus and Belshazzar (1929).
Duncan, G.: Digging up Biblical History I/II (1931).
Dussaud, R.: Les Decouvertes de Ras Shamra et l'Ancien Testament (1941).

Ebeling, E. u. B. Meissner: Reallexikon der Assyriologie I/II (1932/38).
Eberhard, E. G.: Bible-Thesaurus (1953).
Eissfeldt, 0.: Philister und Phonizier, Der Alte Orient (1930), Baal Zephon, Zeus Kasios und der Durchzug der Israeliten durchs Meer (1932), Handbuch zum Alten Testament (1935).
Ellermeier, F.: Prophetie in Mari und Israel (1968).
Elliger, K.: Ein Zeugnis der judischen Gemeinde im Alexanderjahr 332 v. Chr., in: ZAW 62=Neue Folge 21 (1949/50), 63ff. Kleine Propheten (1975).
Ephesus, Forschungen in Veroffentl. V. Osterr. Archaol. Inst. (1937).
Eusebius, Historica ecclesiastica, ed. by E. Schwartz (1914), The Life of Constantine.

Finegan, J.: Light from the Ancient Past (1954).
Frayzel, S.: A. History of the Jews (1952).
Fritz, V.: Israel in der Wuste (1970).

Gadd, E.: The Fall of Nineveh (1923).
Galling, K.: Biblisches Reallexikon (1937), Textbuch zur Geschichte Israels (1950).
Gardiner, A. H. and E. Peet: The Inscriptions of Sinai (1952).
Garis-Davies, N. de: The Tomb of Rekh-mi-re at Thebes (1943).
Garlake, P. S.: Great Zimbabwe (1973).
Garstang, J. B. E.: The. Story of Jericho (1940).
Gerke, S.: Die Christ. Sarkophage d. vorkonstantin. Zeit (1940).
Gese, H. u.a.: Die Religion Altsyriens (1970).
Glueck, N.: The Other Side of the Jordan (1940), The River Jordan (1946).
Goldschmidt, L.: Der Babylonische Talmud (1935).
Gordon, C. H.: The Living Past (1941), Ugaritic Literature (1949).
Gotze, A.: Hethiter, Churitter u. Assyrer (1936).
Gressmann, H.: Die a1teste Gesichtsschreibung und Prophetie Israels (1921), Altorientalische Texte und Bilder zum Alten Testament (1927).
Gunkel, H., W. Stark u. a.: Die Schriften des Alten Testaments in Auswahl I-VII (1921/25). Guthe, H.: Bibelatlas (1926), Palastina, Monographien zur Erdkunde 21 (1927).

Haag, H.: Bibellexikon (1968).
Haas, N.: Skeletal Remains from Givat ha-Mivtar (1970).
Harper: Bible Dictionary (1952).
Heidel, A.: The Gilgamesh-Epic and the Old Testament (1953).
Hengel, M.: Mors turpissima crucis. Die Kreuzigung in der antiken Welt und die >> Torheit << des >>Wortes vom Kreuz << (1976).
Herodotus: History. Herrmann, S.: Israels Aufenthalt in Agypten (1970).

p 396 -- Hogarth, D. G.: Excavations in Ephesus (1908).
Honor, L. L.: Sennacherib's Invasion of Palestine (1926).

International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (1952).

Jannsen, E.: Juda in der Exilheit (1956).
Jansen, H. L.: Die Politik Antiochus' IV (1943).
Jirku, A.: Die agypt. Listen palastinens. u. syr. Ortsnamen (1937).
Josephus, Flavius: Antiquities, Wars of the Jews.
Junge, P. J.: Dareios I., Konig der Perser (1944).

Kaiser, 0.: Altes Testament. Vorexilische Literatur (1973), Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1975), Der Prophet Jesaja (1977), Israel und Agypten (1963), Zwischen den Fronten (1972). Kapelrud, A. S.: The Ras Shamra Discoveries and the Old Testament (1965).
Kaufmann, C. M.: Handbuch der christl. Archaologie I-III (1922).
Kenyon, Sir F.: Bible and Archaeology (1940).
Kenyon, K. M.: Jerusalem; excavating 3000 years of history. (New Aspects of Antiquity) Thames, London (1967), Archaeology in the Holy Land (1970), Royal Cities of the Old Testament (1971), Digging up Jerusalem (1974).
Klausner, J.: Jesus von Nazareth (1950), Von Jesus zu Paulus (1950).
Knopf, Lietzmann, Weinel: Einfufirung in das Neue Testament (1949).
Knudtzon, J. A.: Die El-Amarna-Tafeln I/II (1908/15).
Koeppel, P. R., Palastina (1930).
Kohl und Watzinger: Antike Synagogen in Galilaa (1916).
Koldewey, R.: Das wiedererstehende Babylon (1925).
Kraeling, E. G.: Gerasa. City of the Decapolis (1938).
Kugler-Schaumberger: Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel (1935).

Laible, H.: Jesus Christus im Talmud (1900).
Landay, J. M.: Silent Cities, sacred stones - archaeological discovery in the land of the Bible (1971).
Layard, A.: Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853).
Lefebvre, G.: Romans et contes Egyptiens de l'epoque pharaonique (1949).
Lentzen, H. J.: Die Entwicklung der Ziggurat (1942).
Lepsius, C. R.: Konigsbuch der alten Agypter (1858), Denkmdler aus Agypten und Athiopien (1849/56).
Lietzmann, H.: Petrus und Paulus in Rom (1927).
Loud, G.: Megiddo Ivories (1939), Megiddo II (1948).

Macalister, R. A. S.: Gezer I-III (1912), The excavations of Gezer (1912), ACentury of Excavations in Palestine (1925).
McCown, C. C.: Tell en-Hasbeh. Berkeley, Calif., The Palestine Institute of Pacific School of Religion and the American Schools of Oriental Research (1947).
Mari: Archives royales de, ed. Musee du Louvre I-V.
Meyer, Ed.: Der Papyrusfund von Elephantine (1912), Geschichte des Altertums I-III (1925/37). Miller, M. S. and J. L.: Encyclopedia of Bible Life (1944).
Moldenke, H. N. and A. L.: Plants of the Bible (1952).
Montet, P.: Les nouvelles fouilles de Tanis (1929/32, 1933), Avaris, Pi-Ramses, Tanis (Syria XVII 1936), Tanis (1942).
Moret, A.: The Nile and Egyptian Civilisation (1927).
Morton, H. V.: In the Steps of the Master (1953), Through Lands of the Bible (1954).
Moscati, S.: Geschichte und Kultur der semitischen Vo1ker (1953).
Mowinckel, S.: Studien zum Buche Ezra-Nehemia I (1964).

p 397 -- Negev, A.: Archaologisches Lexikon zur Bibel (1972).
Newberry, P. E.: Beni Hasan I (1893).
Noth, M.: Die Welt des Alten Testaments (1953), Geschichte Israels (1954).
Origen: Contra Celsum I, 32.
Orlinski, H. M.: Ancient Israel (1954).
Otto, E.: Agypten (1953).
Otto, W.: Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft (1928).
Parrot, A.: Mari une ville perdue (1936), Archeologie mesopotamienne, Les Etapes I (1946), Studia Mariana (1950), Deluge et arche de Noe (1952), Decouverte des mondes ensevelis (1952).
Petrie, Fl.: Researches in Sinai (1906).
Pfeiffer, R. H.: History of New Testament Times (1949), Introduction to the Old Testament (1948).
Pingre, M.: Cometographie I (1783).
Pius XII., Pope: Die Gottesbeweise im Lichte der modernen Naturwissenschaft (Universitas, Okt. 1952).
Plutarch: Life of Alexander.
Post, G. E.: Flora of Syria, Palestine and Sinai (1933).
Pottier, E.: Musee du Louvre, Catalogue des Antiquites Assyriennes No. 165.
Pritchard, J. B.: Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament (1950), The
Ancient Near East in pictures relating to the Old Testament (1954), Solomon and
Sheba 0974).

Ramsay, W. M.: The Cities of St. Paul (1900).
Redford, D. B.: A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (1970).
Rehork, J.: Archaologie und biblisches Leben (1972).
Reisner, Th., H. and W. 0. E. Oesterley: Excavations at Samaria I-II (1924).
Ricciotti, G.: Storia d'Israele I-II (1949).
Riemschneider, M.: Die Welt der Hethiter (1954).
Rothenberg, B.: Timna-das Tal der biblischen Kupferminen (1973).
Rowe, A.: The Topography and the History of Beth-Shan (1930), The Four Canaanite Temples of Beth-Shan I (1940).
Rowley, H. H.: The Re-discovery of the Old Testament (1945), The Old Testament and Modern Study (1952), From Joseph to Joshua (1948).
Schaeffer, C. F. A.: The Cuneiform Texts of Ras Shamra-Ugarit (1939), Ugaritica I-II (1939/49).
Scharff, A.: Handbuch der Archaologie I (1939).
Scharff, A., Moortgat, A.: Agypten und Vorderasien im Altertum (1950).
Schmidt, E. F.: The Treasury of Persepolis and other Discoveries in the Homeland of the Achaemenians (1939).
Schmidt, W. H.: Konigtum Gottes in Ugarit und Israel (1966). 
Schnabel, P.: Berossos u. d. babylon. - hellenist. Literatur (1923).
Schott, A.: Das Gilgamesch-Epos (1934).
Sellin, E.: Wie wurde Sichem israelitische Stadt? (1923), Geschichte des israel.-jud. Volkes (I-II 1924/32).
Sethe, K.: Die Achtungstexte feindl. Fursten, Volker u. Dinge auf altagypt. Tongefassscherben d. Mittl. Reiches (APAW 1926, Nr. 5), Zur Geschichte der Einbalsamierung b. d. alten Agyptern (1934).
Simons, J.: Opgravingen in Palestina (1935).
Soden, W. v.: Leistung und Grenze sumerischer u. babylon. Wissenschaft, Welt als Geschichte II (1936), Das altbabylon. Briefarchiv v. Mari, Die Welt des Orients (1948).
Speiser, E. A.: Introduction to Hurrian (1941).
Starkey, J. L.: Excavations at Tell ed-Duweir 1933/34 (1934).

p 398 -- Starr, R. F. S.: Nuzi, Report on the Excavations at Yorgan Tepe near Kirkuk, Iraq, I-II (1937/39), Nuzi I (1939).
Steindorf, G., K. C. Seele: When Egypt Ruled the East (1942).
Strabo: Geography.
Sukenik, E. L.: Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece (1934), The Third Wall of Jerusalem (1930) (with L. A. Mayer).
Svenskt Bibliskt Uppslagsverk (ed. I. Engnell and A. Fridrichsen, 1948).

Thompson, Th. L.: The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives. The Quest for the Historical Abraham (1974)
Torczyner, H.: Lakish I, The Lakish Letters (1938).
Tzaferis, V.: Jewish Tombs at and near Givat ha-Mivtar (1970).

Unger, E.: Babylon, die heilige Stadt (1931).
Ungnad, A.: Reallexikon der Assyriologie (1938), Die neue Grundlage f.d. alt-oriental. Chronologie (1940).

Vaux, R. de: Histoire ancienne d'Israel (1971).
Vincent, L. H.: Canaan d'aprEs l'exploration recente (1914), Jericho et sa chronologie (1935), L'Archeologie et la Bible (1945).

Watzinger, C.: Denkmaler Palastinas I-II (1933/35).
Weimar, P. und Zenger, E.: Exodus, Geschichten und Geschichte der Befreiung Israels (1975)
Weissbach, F. H.: Die Keilschriften der Archameniden (1911).
Wolff, H. W,: Eine Handbreit Erde (1955).
Wood, J. T.: Modern Discoveries on the Site of Ancient Ephesus (1890).
Woolley, C. L.: Abraham, Recent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins (1936), Ur Excavations. V, The Ziggurat and its Surroundings (1939), Ur of the Chaldees (1954).
Wreszinski, Atlas zur agyptischen Kulturgeschichte I-III (1923/40).
Wright, G. E.: Biblical Archaeology (1962).
Wright, S. E. and Fl. V. Filson: The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (1953).
Wurthwein, E.: Die Konigsbucher (1976).

Yadin, Yigael: Masada. Der letzte Kampf ... (1967). Hazor (1976).

Journals: Annual of American Schools of Oriental Research (AASOR), Der Alte Orient (AO), American Journal of Archaeology (AJA), Biblical Archaeologist (BA), Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), Beitrage zur Wissenschaft vom Alten u. Neuen Testament (BWANT), Illustrated London News, Israel Exploration Journal, Journal of the Society of Oriental Research (JSOR), Picture Post, London, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palastinavereins (ZDPV), Revue Biblique (RB), Syria, Zeitschrift fuir alttestament. Wissen (ZAW).

p. 399-413 -- GENERAL INDEX -- Webmaster note: This index is not printed out here because the whole document can be word-searched.

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