The Holy Land and SyriaCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Religion
The Holy Land and Syria
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Palestine -- Description and travel; Syria -- Description and travel
Nazareth by moonlight is wonderfully peaceful. At sunset all business
stops, and within an hour or so afterward everyone is in bed. There
are few places that seem so far from the strife of the world. Business
is swallowed up in the beauties of nature. The scenery is that of old
Greece, and the stars shine gloriously out of skies which are perfectly
clear.
The sunsets are surpassingly beautiful. The other night the golden beams
of the sinking sun seemed to form a halo over this the home of our
Saviour. There were many white clouds in the sky, which changed, first to
rose and then to gold, the colour growing stronger and stronger, until
the whole west was one blaze of fire and molten copper.
Coming down into the town, after watching one of these sunsets, I met
many Nazarene children. As I stopped a few minutes, the little ones
gathered around me, and it was not hard to imagine similar groups playing
in these streets nineteen hundred years ago with the boy Jesus. The
little Nazarenes wore gowns of brown, red, or yellow. Most of them were
in their bare feet; the boys had caps of red felt, while the girls wore
handkerchiefs or shawls tied around their heads. All were running and
dancing and laughing and playing. Some of the girls were quite pretty. I
remember a rosy-cheeked baby carried by a roguish, bright-eyed maid of
eighteen. I admired the baby and chucked it under the chin, telling the
girl I would like to take it home with me to America. She promptly said I
could have it and thrust it out toward me. My face fell and I ran.
There is no doubt that this is the Nazareth of Jesus, and that the hills
and valleys about here were hallowed by His footsteps. It was here that
the Angel Gabriel appeared unto Mary when she was engaged but not yet
married to Joseph and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus,
and it was here that she came with Joseph after the flight into Egypt.
She waited only until King Herod was dead, and then came to Nazareth,
the child Jesus being still an infant in arms. It was from Nazareth that
Jesus went to the Jordan to be baptized by John, and it was here that
after He had begun His work our Lord came and preached in the synagogue.
Whereupon the Nazarenes cried out:
Is not this Joseph’s son?... And ... they ... were filled with
wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city and led Him
unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built that
they might cast Him down headlong. But He passing through the
midst of them went His way.
The Roman Catholics now own what is said to be the site of the shop where
Joseph worked as a carpenter. The place is in the Mohammedan quarter,
not far from a bazaar where the Moslem merchants sit cross-legged and
sell to the Christians. When I visited it I met Father Kersting, who came
here to superintend excavations on the site of an old church built by the
Crusaders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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