At the beginning of the week of his passion, Jesus Christ came up the steep ascent from Jericho, the road bringing him at last to Bethany. One night he halted in the village, as of old; the village and the desert were then all alive, as they still are once every year at the Greek Easter, with the crowd of Paschal pilgrims moving to and fro between Bethany and Jerusalem. In the morning he set forth on his journey. Three pathways lead, and probably always led, from Bethany to Jerusalem; one, a long circuit over the northern shoulder of Mount Olivet, down the valley which parts it from Scopus; another, a steep foot-path over the summit; the third, the natural continuation of the road by which mounted travellers always approach the city from Jericho, over the southern shoulder, between the summit which contains the Tombs of the Prophets and that called the Mount of Offence. “There can be no doubt” (says Dean Stanley) “that this last is the road of the entry of Christ, not only because, as just stated, it is, and must always have been, the usual approach for horsemen and for large caravans, such as then were concerned, but also because this is the only one of the three approaches which meets the requirements of the narrative which follows. “Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, and as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palm rose on the south-eastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the Feast of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards Bethany, with shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there on the previous night, and who came testifying to the great event at the sepulchre of Lazarus. The road soon loses sight of Bethany.... Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge, where first begins ‘the descent of the Mount of Olives towards Jerusalem.’ At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the city.... It was at this precise point that the shout of triumph burst forth from the multitude, Hosanna to the Son of David!... Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again, it climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an instant the whole city bursts into view.... Immediately below is the valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great peculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side--its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the road, this rocky ledge, was the exact point where the multitude paused again, and ‘He, when he beheld the city, wept over it.’ Nowhere else on the Mount of Olives is there a view like this.”[46]