CHAPTER XXI.

THE GALILEANS AND THE BORDER LANDS.

GALILEE got its name as the circle or region of the heathen nations, and hence, to the southern Jews of Isaiah's days, it was "the heathen country." It included the districts assigned to Asher, Naphtali, Zebulon, and Issachar. But these tribes never obtained entire possession of their territories, and contented themselves with settling among the Canaanite population, whom they, in some cases, made tributary, the Jewish colonies remaining centres of Judaism in places which retained their old heathen names. Kedesh in Naphtali, near Lake Merom, the birthplace of Barak, with twenty small cities lying round it, was, originally, "the land of Galilee" in Joshua's time, and in the days of the kings, from the population mainly belonging to the neighbouring Phenicia, but the mixed character of the people, which was a necessary consequence of Galilee being a border-land, extended the name, in the end, to the whole of the Prov ince. Even in Solomon's time the population was mixed. The hilly district, called Cabul-"dry, sandy, unfruitful"-which he gave to Hiram, king of Tyre, as a niggardly return for service rendered in the building of the Temple, contained twenty towns, inhabited chiefly by Phenicians, but was so worthless that Hiram, in contemptuous ridicule, playing on the name of the district, called it, in Phenician, Chabalon- good for nothing." The separation from the House of David, and from Jerusalem, under the king of Israel, and the Assyrian captivity at a later date, further affected the northern population. To the prophet Isaiah they were the people "that walked in darkness and dwelt in the land of the shadow of death," alike from their separation from Jerusalem, their living among the heathen, and their national calamities, though he anticipates a bright future for them in the light of the Messiah. After the exile two great changes took place. Jewish colonists gradually spread over the land once more, and the name Galilee was extended to the whole north on this side of the Jordan, so that the territory of the tribe of Issachar, with the plain of Esdraelon; Zebulon, with the southern part of the Sea of Gennesareth; and Naphtali, and Asher, were included in it. The new Jewish settlers had no longer any political jealousy of Jerusalem, and once more frequented the Temple, while the fact that they were surrounded by heathen races made them, perhaps, more loyal to Judaism than they otherwise would have been; just as the Protestants of Ireland are more intensely Protestant because surrounded by Romanism. Still, though faithful, their land was defiled" by heathen citizens and neighbours, and the narrow bigotry of Judea looked askance at it from this cause. Besides Jews, it had not a few Phenicians, Syrians,

Arabs, and Greeks settled over it. Carmel had become almost a Syrian colony, and Kedesh retained the mixed population it had had for ages, while the eastern end of the Esdraelon valley was barred to the Jew by the heathen town of Scythopolis, the ancient Bethshean. Moreover, the great caravan road, from Damascus to Ptolemais, which ran over the hills from Capernaum, through the heart of Galilee, brought many heathen into the country. The great transport of goods employed such numbers of heathen, as camel drivers, hostlers, labourers, conductors, and the like, that the towns facing the sea were little different from those of Phenicia. Thus Zebulon is described as "a town with many very fine houses, as good as those of Tyre, or Sidon, or Berytus." The places created or beautified by the Herods, in Roman style, could hardly have been so if the population had been strict Jews. The attempt to build heathen cities like Tiberias, or the restored Sepphoris, would have excited an insurrection in Judea, but the less narrow people of Galilee let Antipas please his fancy; nor was there ever, apparently, such a state of feeling caused by all his Roman innovations as was roused by the amphitheatre at Jerusalem alone. Separated by Samaria from the desolate hills of Judea, the home of the priests and Rabbis, the Galilæans were less soured by the sectarian spirit paramount there, and less hardened in Jewish orthodoxy, while, in many respects, they had caught the outside influences round them at home. Hence their Judaism was less exclusive and narrow than that of, perhaps, any other section of the Jewish world.

But though less bigoted than their southern brethren, the Galilæan Jews were none the less faithful to the Law. They frequented the feasts at Jerusalem in great numbers, and were true to their synagogues, and to the hopes of Israel. Pharisees, and "doctors of the Law" were settled in every town, and their presence implies an equally wide existence of synagogues. In the south, tradition was held in supreme honour, but in Galilee the people kept by the law. In Jerusalem the Rabbis introduced refinements and changes, but the Galilæans would not tolerate novelties. Our Lord's wide knowledge of Scripture, His reverence for the law, and His scorn of tradition, were traits of His countrymen as a race.

Nor did their forbearance, in the presence of heathen fashions and ways of thought, affect their morals for evil, any more than their religion. In many respects these were stricter than those of Judea: much, for example, was forbidden in Galilee, in the intercourse of the sexes, which was allowed at Jerusalem. Their religion was freer, but it was also deeper; they had less of the form, but more of the life.

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Cowardice," says Josephus, was never the fault of the Galilæans. They are inured to war from their infancy, nor has the country ever been wanting in great numbers of brave men. "The mountain air they breathed made them patriots, but their patriotism was guided by zeal

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for their faith. While warmly loyal to Herod, in gratitude for his subduing the lawless bands who had wasted their country, after the civil wars, and quiet and well-disposed to Antipas, during the fortythree years of his reign, they were none the less fixed in their abhorrence of Rome, the heathen tyrant of their race. In revolt after revolt they were the first to breast the Roman armies, and they were the last to defend the ruins of Jerusalem, stone by stone, like worthy sons of those ancestors who “jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.' There were families like that of the Zealot, Hezekiah, and Judas, the Galilæan, in whom the hatred of Rome was handed down from generation to generation, and which, in each generation, furnished martyrs to the national cause. A hundred and fifty thousand of the youth of Galilee fell in the last struggle with Rome, and few narratives are more stirring than the defence of the Galilæan fortresses, one after another, in the face of all odds. Even Titus appealed to the magnificent heroism of these defenders of their freedom and their country, to rouse the ardour of his own army. Nor was their devotion to their leaders less admirable. Josephus boasts of the heartiness and trust the Galilæans reposed in him. Though their towns were destroyed in the war, and their wives and children carried off, they were more concerned for the safety of their general than for their own troubles.

The Jew of the south, wrapped in self-importance, as living in or near the holy city, amidst the schools of the Rabbis, and under the shadow of the Temple, and full of religious pride in his assumed superior knowledge of the Law, and greater purity as a member of a community nearly wholly Jewish, looked down on his Galilæan brethren. The very ground he trod was more holy than the soil of Galilee, and the repugnance of the North to adopt the prescriptions of the Rabbis was, itself, a ground of estrangement and self-exaltation. He could not believe that the Messiah could come from a part so inferior, for "the Law was to go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." Jesus found willing hearers and many disciples in the cities and towns of Galilee, but He made little impression on Judea.

Yet, Galilee, from the earliest times, had vindicated its claims to honour for the intellectual vigour of its people. Not only physically and morally, but even in mental freshness and force, it was before the narrow and morbid south, which had given itself up to the childish trifling of Rabbinism. The earliest poetry of Israel rose among the Galilæan hills, when Barak of Naphtali had triumphed over the Canaanites. The Song of Songs was composed in Galilee by a poet of nature, whose heart and eyes drank in the inspiration of the bright sky and the opening flowers, and who could tell how the fig-tree put forth its leaves, and the vine sprouted, and the pomegranate opened its blossoms. Hosea, the prophet, belonged to Issachar; Jonah to Zebulon, Nahum came from Elkosh in Galilee, and in the Gospels a noble band of Galilæans group themselves round the central

figure, Peter, the brave and tender-hearted-James and John-Andrew and Philip-and Nathanacl, of Cana, not to speak of others, or of the women of Galilee, who honoured themselves by ministering to Christ of their substance. It was from Galilee, moreover, that the family of the great Apostle of the heathen emigrated to Tarsus, ia Cilicia, for they belonged to Gischala, a Galilæan town, though their stock originally was of the tribe of Benjamin.

The Talmud sketches, in a few words, the contrast between the two provinces-"The Galilæan loves honour, and the Jew money.' The Rabbis admit that the Galilæans, in their comparative poverty, were temperate, pure, and religious. Their fidelity to their faith was shown by their fond and constant visits to the Temple, in spite of the hostile Samaritan territory between, and it was through their zeal that the Passover was celebrated for eight days instead of seven. When Christ appeared, they threw the same ardour and fidelity into Ilis service. In their midst the Saviour, persecuted elsewhere, took constant refuge. They threw open their land to Him, as a safe shelter from the rage of the Jews, almost to the last. He went forth from among them, and gathered the first-fruits of His kingdom from them, and it was to a band of Galilæans that He delivered the commission to spread the Gospel, after His death, through the world.

The district of Perea, on the cast of the Jordan, was included, with Galilee, in the section ruled over by Herod Antipas, and was the scene, in part, of the ministry, first of John the Baptist, and then of Jesus. It was larger than Galilee, extending, north and south, from the city of Pella, to the fortress of Machaerus-that is, from opposite Scythopolis, half-way down the Dead Sea, and, cast and west, from the Jordan to Philadelphia, the ancient Rabbath Ammon. It was, thus, about seventy-five miles in length, by, perhaps, thirty in breadth, though the boundaries seem to have varied at different times. It was much less fruitful than Galilee. The greater part of it," says Josephus, "is a desert, rough, and much less suitable for the finer kinds of fruits than Galilce. In other parts, however, it has a moist soil, and produces all kinds of fruits, and its plains are planted with trees of all sorts, though the olive, the vine, and the palm-tree are cultiva ted most. It is well watered in these parts with torrents, which flow from the mountains, and are never dry, even in summer. Towards the deserts, which hemmed it in along its eastern edge, lay the hill fortress and town Gerasa, 1,800 feet above the sea-level. It was on the caravan road through the mountains, from Bozra, a place of considerable trade; while its magnificent ruins still show that, in Christ's day, it was the finest city of the Decapolis. Two hundred and thirty pillars, still standing, and the wreck of its public buildings, -baths, theatres, temples, circus, and forum, and of a triumphal arch, make it easy to recall its former splendour. The line of the outer walls can be easily traced. From the triumphal arch, outside the city, a long street passos through the city gate to the forum, still

skirted by fifty-seven Ionic columns. Colonnades adorned mile after mile of the streets, which crossed, at right angles, like those of an American town.

It must have been a gay, as well as a busy and splendid, scene, when Jesus passed through the country on His Perean journeys. But the tide of civilized life has ebbed, and left Gerasa without an inhabitant for many centuries.

About twenty-five miles south of Gerasa, and, like it, between twenty and thirty miles east of the Jordan, lay Philadelphia. It was the old capital of Ammon, and in Christ's day, the southern frontier post against the Arabs. Though two thousand five hundred feet above the sea, it sheltered itself in two narrow valleys, each brightened by flowing streams; the upland "city of the waters," with hills rising on all sides round it. The main stream, faced with a long stone quay; terraces rising above it, lined with rows of pillars; the citadel, seen far and near, on a height between the two valleys, give us a glimpse of it. The old city which Joab besieged, and where Uriah fell, had given place to a Roman one. Fine temples, theatres, and public and private buildings, long ruined, were then alive with motley throngs, but the whole scene has been utterly deserted, now, for ages, and rank vegetation rises in its long silent streets, and in the courts of its temples and mansions.

Hesbon, about fifteen miles nearly south of Ammon, on the Roman road which ran from Damascus, through Bozra and Ammon,branching from Hesbon, west, to Jericho, and south, to Edom, was the third and last frontier town of Perea. It lay among the Pisgah mountains, three thousand feet above the level of the sea, amidst brown hills, fretted with bright green lines along the course of numerous streamlets, oozing from the limestone rocks. Its ruins lie in great confusion, and serve only to tell of wealth and prosperity long since passed away. In the valley below, a great volume of water gushing from the rock, once filled the famous pools of Hesbon, -to the writer of the Song of Songs, like the laughing eyes of his beloved. From Hesbon, the eye ranges over a wide table-land of undulating downs, bright with flowers, or rough with prickly shrubs, seamed with gorges sinking abruptly towards the Jordan, and noisy with foaming streams which leap from ledge to ledge in their swift descent, between banks hidden by rank vegetation.

These three towns lie on the outer edge of the lofty plateau, east of the Jordan, where the long wall of the limestone hills of Gilead and Ammon begins to sink towards the desert. On the western edge of the plateau itself, nearer the Jordan, and at the north of the district, lay Pella, on a low fiat hill, only 250 feet above the sea-level, rich in living waters, and embosomed in other higher hills. Built as a military post, by veterans of Alexander's army, it bore the name of their own Macedonian capital. It was afterwards famous as the retreat of the Christians before the fall of Jerusalem; among others, of the