In The Levant 22

In The Levant 22

Within a mile of Bethlehem gate we came to the tomb of Rachel, standing

close by the highway. "And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to

Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that

is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." This is the testimony of

the author of Genesis, who had not seen the pillar which remained to his

day, but repeated the tradition of the sons of Jacob. What remained of

this pillar, after the absence of the Israelites for some five centuries

from Bethlehem, is uncertain; but it may be supposed that some spot near

Bethlehem was identified as the tomb of Rachel upon their return, and

that the present site is the one then selected. It is possible, of

course, that the tradition of the pagan Canaanites may have preserved

the recollection of the precise spot. At any rate, Christians seem

to agree that this is one of the few ancient sites in Judæa which

are authentic, and the Moslems pay it equal veneration. The square,

unpretentious building erected over it is of modern construction, and

the pilgrim has to content himself with looking at a sort of Moslem tomb

inside, and reflecting, if he can, upon the pathetic story of the death

of the mother of Joseph.

 

There is, alas! everywhere in Judæa something to drive away sentiment as

well as pious feeling. The tomb of Rachel is now surrounded by a Moslem

cemetery, and as we happened to be there on Thursday we found ourselves

in the midst of a great gathering of women, who had come there,

according to their weekly custom, to weep and to wail. .

 

You would not see in farthest Nubia a more barbarous assemblage, and

not so fierce an one. In the presence of these wild mourners the term

"gentler sex" has a ludicrous sound. Yet we ought not to forget that we

were intruders upon their periodic grief, attracted to their religious

demonstration merely by curiosity, and fairly entitled to nothing but

scowls and signs of aversion. I am sure that we should give bold Moslem

intruders upon our hours of sorrow at home no better reception. The

women were in the usual Syrian costume; their loose gowns gaped open at

the bosom, and they were without veils, and made no pretence of drawing

a shawl before their faces; all wore necklaces of coins, and many of

them had circlets of coins on the head, with strips depending from them,

also stiff with silver pieces. A woman's worth was thus easily to be

reckoned, for her entire fortune was on her head. A pretty face was

here and there to be seen, but most of them were flaringly ugly, and--to

liken them to what they most resembled--physically and mentally the

type of the North American squaws. They were accompanied by all their

children, and the little brats were tumbling about the tombs, and

learning the language of woe.

 

Among the hundreds of women present, the __EXPRESSION__ of grief took two

forms,--one active, the other more resigned. A group seated itself about

a tomb, and the members swayed their bodies to and fro, howled at the

top of their voices, and pretended to weep. I had the infidel curiosity

to go from group to group in search of a tear, but I did not see one.

Occasionally some interruption, like the arrival of a new mourner, would

cause the swaying and howling to cease for a moment, or it would now

and then be temporarily left to the woman at the head of the grave, but

presently all would fall to again and abandon themselves to the luxury

of agony. It was perhaps unreasonable to expect tears from creatures so

withered as most of these were; but they worked themselves into a frenzy

of excitement, they rolled up their blue checked cotton handkerchiefs,

drew them across their eyes, and then wrung them out with gestures of

despair. It was the dryest grief I ever saw.

 

The more active mourners formed a ring in a clear spot. Some thirty

women standing with their faces toward the centre, their hands on each

other's shoulders, circled round with unrhythmic steps, crying and

singing, and occasionally jumping up and down with all their energy,

like the dancers of Horace, "striking the ground with equal feet,"

coming down upon the earth with a heavy thud, at the same time slapping

their faces with their hands; then circling around again with faster

steps, and shriller cries, and more prolonged ululations, and anon

pausing to jump and beat the ground with a violence sufficient to

shatter their frames. The loose flowing robes, the clinking of the

silver ornaments, the wild gleam of their eyes, the Bacchantic madness

of their saltations, the shrill shrieking and wailing, conspired to give

their demonstration an indescribable barbarity. This scene has recurred

every Thursday for, I suppose, hundreds of years, within a mile of the

birthplace of Jesus.

 

Bethlehem at a little distance presents an appearance that its interior

does not maintain; but it is so much better than most Syrian villages of

its size (it has a population of about three thousand), and is so much

cleaner than Jerusalem, that we are content with its ancient though

commonplace aspect. But the atmosphere of the town is thoroughly

commercial, or perhaps I should say industrial; you do not find in it

that rural and reposeful air which you associate with the birthplace of

our Lord. The people are sharp, to a woman, and have a keen eye for the

purse of the stranger. Every other house is a shop for the manufacture

or sale of some of the Bethlehem specialties,--carvings in olive-wood

and ivory and mother-of-pearl, crosses and crucifixes, and models of the

Holy Sepulchre, and every sort of sacred trinket, and beads in endless

variety; a little is done also in silver-work, especially in rings. One

may chance upon a Mecca ring there; but the ring peculiar to Bethlehem

is a silver wedding-ring; it is a broad and singular band of silver with

pendants, and is worn upon the thumb. As soon as we come into the town,

we are beset with sellers of various wares, and we never escape them

except when we are in the convent.

 

The Latin convent opens its doors to tourists; it is a hospitable house,

and the monks are very civil; they let us sit in a _salle-à-manger_,

while waiting for dinner, that was as damp and chill as a dungeon, and

they gave us a well-intended but uneatable meal, and the most peculiar

wine, all at a good price. The wine, white and red, was made by the

monks, they said with some pride; we tried both kinds, and I can

recommend it to the American Temperance Union: if it can be introduced

to the public, the public will embrace total abstinence with enthusiasm.

 

While we were waiting for the proper hour to visit the crypt of the

Nativity, we went out upon the esplanade before the convent, and looked

down into the terraced ravines which are endeared to us by so many

associations. Somewhere down there is the patch of ground that the

mighty man of wealth, Boaz, owned, in which sweet Ruth went gleaning

in the barley-harvest. What a picture of a primitive time it is,--the

noonday meal of Boaz and his handmaidens, Ruth invited to join them,

and dip her morsel in the vinegar with the rest, and the hospitable Boaz

handing her parched corn. We can understand why Ruth had good gleaning

over this stony ground, after the rakes of the handmaidens. We know that

her dress did not differ from that worn by Oriental women now; for

her "veil," which Boaz filled with six measures of barley, was

the head-shawl still almost universally worn,--though not by the

Bethlehemite women. Their head-dress is peculiar; there seems to be on

top of the head a square frame, and over this is thrown and folded a

piece of white doth. The women are thus in a manner crowned, and the

dress is as becoming as the somewhat similar head-covering of the Roman

peasants. We learn also in the story of Ruth that the mother-in-law in

her day was as wise in the ways of men as she is now. "Sit still, my

daughter," she counselled her after she returned with the veil full of

barley, "until thou know how the matter will fall, for the man will not

be in rest until he have finished the thing this day."

 

Down there, somewhere in that wilderness of ravines, David, the

great-grandson of Ruth, kept his father's sheep before he went to the

combat with Goliath. It was there--the grotto is shown a little more

than a mile from this convent--that the shepherds watched their flocks

by night when the angel appeared and announced the birth of the Messiah,

the Son of David. We have here within the grasp of the eye almost the

beginning and the end of the old dispensation, from the burial of Rachel

to the birth of our Lord, from the passing of the wandering sheykh,

Jacob, with his family, to the end put to the exclusive pretensions of

his descendants by the coming of a Saviour to all the world.

 

The cave called the Grotto of the Nativity has great antiquity. The

hand-book says it had this repute as early as the second century. In

the year 327 the mother of Constantine built a church over it, and

this basilica still stands, and is the oldest specimen of Christian

architecture in existence, except perhaps the lower church of St.

Clement at Rome. It is the oldest basilica above ground retaining its

perfect ancient form. The main part of the church consists of a nave

and four aisles, separated by four rows of Corinthian marble columns,

tradition says, taken from the temple of Solomon. The walls were once

adorned with mosaics, but only fragments of them remain; the roof is

decayed and leaky, the pavement is broken. This part of the church is

wholly neglected, because it belongs to the several sects in common, and

is merely the arena for an occasional fight. The choir is separated from

the nave by a wall, and is divided into two chapels, one of the Greeks,

the other of the Armenians. The Grotto of the Nativity is underneath

these chapels, and each sect has a separate staircase of descent to it.

The Latin chapel is on the north side of this choir, and it also has a

stairway to the subterranean apartments.

 

Making an effort to believe that the stable of the inn in which Christ

was born was a small subterranean cave cut in the solid rock, we

descended a winding flight of stairs from the Latin chapel, with a monk

for our guide, and entered a labyrinth from which we did not emerge

until we reached the place of the nativity, and ascended into the Greek

chapel above it. We walked between glistening walls of rock, illuminated

by oil-lamps here and there, and in our exploration of the gloomy

passages and chambers, encountered shrines, pictures, and tombs of the

sainted. We saw, or were told that we saw, the spot to which St. Joseph

retired at the moment of the nativity, and also the place where the

twenty thousand children who were murdered by the order of Herod--a

ghastly subject so well improved by the painters of the Renaissance--are

buried. But there was one chamber, or rather vault, that we entered with

genuine emotion. This was the cell of Jerome, hermit and scholar, whose

writings have gained him the title of Father of the Church.

 

At the close of the fourth century Bethlehem was chiefly famous as the

retreat of this holy student, and the fame of his learning and sanctity

drew to it from distant lands many faithful women, who renounced the

world and its pleasures, and were content to sit at his feet and learn

the way of life. Among those who resigned, and, for his sake and the

cross, despised, the allurements and honors of the Roman world, was the

devout Paula, a Roman matron who traced her origin from Agamemnon, and

numbered the Scipios and Gracchi among her ancestors, while her husband,

Joxotius, deduced a no less royal lineage from Æneas. Her wealth

was sufficient to support the dignity of such a descent; among her

possessions, an item in her rent-roll, was the city of Nicopolis, which