Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and AdventureConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Palestine -- Description and travel
A third place of importance is the Spring of Harod, where Gideon divided
his troops. This appears, according to Josephus, to have been near
Jordan, while from the Bible we gather it to have been in the
neighbourhood of Gilboa, being towards the south of the Valley of
Jezreel, and opposite the Midianite host (Judg. vi. 33; vii. 1). The
Mount Gilead of the passage is very possibly the name of part of the
chain above the river now called Jalûd (see Judg. vii. 3). It is very
striking to find in this position a large spring with the name ’Ain el
Jem’aîn, or “fountain of the two troops,” and there seems no valid
objection to the view that this is the Spring of Harod.
Beisân itself, where we were now encamped, is a miserable hamlet of mud
hovels, amid the ruins of the important town of Scythopolis, which was a
bishopric, from the fifth century, until the change of the see to
Nazareth, in the twelfth century. In the Bible it is famous as the place
where the body of Saul was fastened to the wall (1 Sam. xxxi. 10), but
the remains of a theatre, hippodrome, and temple, of fine structural
tombs, and baths, with a Crusading fortress and bridge, are among the
best preserved antiquities of western Palestine. Christian martyrs, in
the fourth century, here fought wild beasts in the theatre, and the
cages with the sockets of the iron bars, and the narrow passages from
the outside, are still intact in the ruined theatre of black basalt.
On the 14th of April Sergeant Black accompanied me on a flying
expedition, to carry the work farther north, camping in the old
Crusading castle of Belvoir, six miles nearer the Sea of Galilee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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