A Trip Abroad: An Account of a Journey to the Earthly Canaan and the Land of the Ancient Pharaohs; To Which Are Appended a Brief Consideration of the Geography and History of Palestine, and a Chapter on Churches of Christ in Great BritainJanes, Don Carlos
Religion
A Trip Abroad: An Account of a Journey to the Earthly Canaan and the Land of the Ancient Pharaohs; To Which Are Appended a Brief Consideration of the Geography and History of Palestine, and a Chapter on Churches of Christ in Great Britain
Janes, Don Carlos
Churches of Christ -- Great Britain; Palestine -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
The Eastern Table-Land has a mountain wall four thousand feet high
facing the river. This table-land, which is mostly fertile, extends
eastward about twenty miles, and terminates in the Arabian Desert, which
is still higher. Here the mountains are higher and steeper than those
west of the Jordan. Mt. Hermon, in the north, is nine thousand two
hundred feet high. South of the Jarmuk River is Mt. Gilead, three
thousand feet high, and Mt. Nebo, lying east of the northern end of the
Dead Sea, reaches an elevation of two thousand six hundred and seventy
feet. Besides the Jarmuk, another stream, the Jabbok, flows into the
Jordan from this side. The Arnon empties into the Dead Sea. The northern
section was called Bashan, the middle, Gilead, and the southern part,
Moab. Bashan anciently had many cities, and numerous ruins yet remain.
In the campaign of Israel against Og, king of Bashan, sixty cities
were captured. Many events occurred in Gilead, where were situated
Jabesh-Gilead, Ramoth-Gilead, and the ten cities of the Decapolis, with
the exception of Beth-shean, which was west of the Jordan. From the
summit of Mt. Pisgah, a peak of Mt. Nebo, Moses viewed the Land
of Promise, and from these same heights Balaam looked down on the
Israelites and undertook to curse them, Moab lies south of the Arnon
and east of the Dead Sea. In the time of a famine, an Israelite, named
Elimelech, with his wife and sons, sojourned in this land. After the
death of Elimelech and both of his sons, who had married in the land,
Naomi returned to Bethlehem, accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Ruth,
the Moabitess, who came into the line of ancestry of David and of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Once, when the kings of Judah, Israel, and Edom
invaded the land, the king of Moab (when they came to Kir-hareseth,
the capital) took his oldest son, who would have succeeded him on the
throne, "and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall." At this
the invaders "departed from him and returned to their own land."
The political geography of Palestine is so complicated that it can not
be handled in the space here available. Only a few words, applicable
to the country in New Testament times, can be said. The provinces of
Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea were on the west side of the Jordan, while
the Decapolis and Perea lay east of that river. The northern province
of Galilee, which saw most of the ministry of Jesus, extended from the
Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, and a much greater distance from
the north to the south. It was peopled with Jews, and was probably a
much better country than is generally supposed, as it contained a large
number of cities and villages, and produced fish, oil, wheat, wine,
figs, and flax. "It was in Christ's time one of the gardens of the
world--well watered, exceedingly fertile, thoroughly cultivated, and
covered with a dense population."--_Merrill_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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