interpreted it in his incomparable parables, which point from nature to nature’s God and from visible
symbols to eternal truths.^166
Jesus was inaugurated into his public ministry by his baptism in the fast-flowing river
Jordan, which connects the Old and New Covenant. The traditional spot, a few miles from Jericho,
is still visited by thousands of Christian pilgrims from all parts of the world at the Easter season,
who repeat the spectacle of the multitudinous baptisms of John, when the people came "from
Jerusalem and all Judaea and all the region round about the Jordan" to confess their sins and to
receive his water-baptism of repentance.
The ruins of Jacob’s well still mark the spot where Jesus sat down weary of travel, but not
of his work of mercy and opened to the poor woman of Samaria the well of the water of life and
instructed her in the true spiritual worship of God; and the surrounding landscape, Mount Gerizim,
and Mount Ebal, the town of Shechem, the grain-fields whitening to the harvest, all illustrate and
confirm the narrative in the fourth chapter of John; while the fossil remnant of the Samaritans at
Nablous (the modern Shechem) still perpetuates the memory of the paschal sacrifice according to
the Mosaic prescription, and their traditional hatred of the Jews.
We proceed northward to Galilee where Jesus spent the most popular part of his public
ministry and spoke so many of his undying words of wisdom and love to the astonished multitudes.
That province was once thickly covered with forests, cultivated fields, plants and trees of different
climes, prosperous villages and an industrious population.^167 The rejection of the Messiah and the
Moslem invasion have long since turned that paradise of nature into a desolate wilderness, yet could
not efface the holy memories and the illustrations of the gospel history. There is the lake with its
clear blue waters, once whitened with ships sailing from shore to shore, and the scene of a naval
battle between the Romans and the Jews, now utterly forsaken, but still abounding in fish, and
subject to sudden violent storms, such as the one which Jesus commanded to cease; there are the(^166) We add the vivid description of Renan (Vie de Jésus, Ch. II. p. 25) from personal observation: "Nazareth was a small town,
situated in a fold of land broadly open at the summit of the group of mountains which closes on the north the plain of Esdraëlon.
The population is now from three to four [probably five to six] thousand, and it cannot have changed very much. It is quite cold
in winter and the climate is very healthy. The town, like all the Jewish villages of the time, was a mass of dwellings built without
style, and must have presented the same poor and uninteresting appearance as the villages in Semitic countries. The houses,
from all that appears, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without interior or exterior elegance, which now cover the
richest portion of the Lebanon, and which, in the midst of vines and fig-trees, are nevertheless very pleasant. The environs,
moreover, are charming, and no place in the world was so well adapted to dreams of absolute happiness (nul endroit du monde
ne fut si bien fait pour les rêves de l’absolu bonheur). Even in our days, Nazareth is a delightful sojourn, the only place perhaps
in Palestine where the soul feels a little relieved of the burden which weighs upon it in the midst of this unequalled desolation.
The people are friendly and good-natured; the gardens are fresh and green. Antonius Martyr, at the end of the sixth century,
draws an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares to paradise. Some valleys on the western side
fully justify his description. The fountain about which the life and gayety of the little town formerly centered, has been destroyed;
its broken channels now give but a turbid water. But the beauty of the women who gathered there at night, this beauty which
was already remarked in the sixth century, and in which was seen the gift of the Virgin Mary, has been surprisingly well preserved.
It is the Syrian type in all its languishing grace. There is no doubt that Mary was there nearly every day and took her place, with
her urn upon her shoulder, in the same line with her unremembered countrywomen. Antonius Martyr remarks that the Jewish
women, elsewhere disdainful to Christians, are here full of affability. Even at this day religious animosities are less intense at
Nazareth than elsewhere." Comp. also the more elaborate description in Keim, I. 318 sqq., and Tobler’s monograph on Nazareth,
Berlin, 1868.
(^167) Josephus no doubt greatly exaggerates when he states that there were no less than two hundred and four towns and villages
in Galilee (Vita, c. 45, διακόσιαι καὶ τέσσαρες κατὰ τὴν Γαλιλαίαν εἰσὶ πόλεις καὶ κῶμαι), and that the smallest of those villages
contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants (Bell. Jud. III. 3, 2). This would give us a population of over three millions for that
province alone, while the present population of all Palestine and Syria scarcely amounts to two millions, or forty persons to the
square mile (according to Bädeker, Pal. and Syria, 1876, p. 86).
A.D. 1-100.