Nazareth is probably not a very ancient place, for it is not noticed in the Old Testament, though situated very near the boundary of Zebulun; nor was it probably ever a very large town, for it has but one spring. Its name is most likely derived from the colour of the hills around, and may mean “white,” though the early fathers loved to render it “flower,” and others make it to mean “watchtower.” Ancient Nazareth probably stood rather higher on the slope than modern Nazareth; the place, in fact, has slid down the hill, as is indicated by the position of the old cisterns and tombs. Thus the “brow of the hill” is more probably one of the cliffs now above the town, or perhaps another hidden beneath the houses, and there is no necessity to seek it at so great a distance as that of the Saltus Domini precipice. It is curious that Jerome scarcely seems ever to have been in Nazareth, though travelling far and wide over Palestine. In 700 A.D. Bishop Arculph found it an open village, with two churches--one over the grotto, one over the spring, both very large; but soon after troubles began, and it was not till the time of the Crusades that Nazareth became a bishopric. In 1102 Sæwulf found it entirely wasted, only a few columns remaining at the fountain, and though enjoying a temporary prosperity under the Christian monarchy, it was again devastated by the Moslems, and in 1322 Sir John Maundeville writes of it that it was “formerly a great and fair city, but now there is but a small village;” whilst of its inhabitants he says, “they are very wicked and cruel Saracens, and more spiteful than in any other place, and have destroyed all the churches.” It is not only Sir John, unfortunately, who can attest this fact: the zealous missionaries who have seen Moslem and Christian, Latin and Greek, shedding one another’s blood, Captain Burton who there nearly lost his life, and my own party who fared but ill in the neighbourhood, will alike bear witness to the turbulence of the Nazarenes--an evil character for which they seem to have been notorious ever since the days when they sought to stone our Lord, and gave cause yet earlier for the Jewish proverb, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”