I.

Introductory.

THE land of Palestine, over which we have followed the tread of each great empire of the East in its turn, was divided, at the time of the Roman rule, into the provinces of Galilee, Samaria, and Judæa.

In the rough outline of its features given at page 54, I spoke of the more favoured parts as lying to the north, and the histories of the time we have reached witness to their fertility and beauty. The rabbis, in their fanciful way, said that in Galilee men "waded in oil," and that it easier to rear a forest of olive trees there than one child in Judæa."

was

From the historic

heights, crowned with Jewish villages and farmsteads, the eye rested on a garden-like land of

dales and hills, on towns built both in the Greek and Roman style, on the gleaming sea dotted with the sails of the "ships of Tarshish," on the sandy coast along which ran one of the busy highways of trade, the "via maris" or "sea road;" and, among other ports, on ancient Tyre, famous for its glass and dye works, while inland was the lake of Tiberias, covered with boats catching the fish with which it swarmed.

Galilee, from "galil," a "circle," was the name formerly given to a small part of Palestine occupied by strangers, but at the Roman period it was applied to the province I am now describing, for not only were there remnants of the older Canaanites (still, so M. Ganneau affirms,1 surviving in the fellahîn or peasants) scattered among the Jews, but a large population of Phoenician, Syrian, Arab, Greek, and other settlers.

The intercourse which could not fail to arise between these and the "chosen" people enlarged the ideas of the latter and freed them from that narrowness which their traditions fostered.

But

1 Cf. Palest. Explor. Fund Quarterly Report, Sept. 1875. Unknown Palestine, pp. 9-12.

their separation from the sacred city and temple deepened rather than lessened devotion to their faith and eagerness to defend it unto death. "Cowardice was never their failing," Josephus tells us, and they who had given to Israel in the past many prophets and patriots, whose frontier land, bearing the brunt of attacks, had called forth their courage and made them brave defenders, were the more frequent rebels against the Romans, and the ringleaders in the tumults which arose at the great festivals in Jerusalem, which they failed not to attend. Their stricter brethren of the south, boastful of untainted descent and a purer creed, laughed and scoffed at their boorish manners and the rustic brogue by which they were at once known;1 but their ignorance of the nicer subtleties of the law was well atoned for by a wider knowledge of "the best book, the world," and their surroundings nourished a piety of more manly type.

Between Galilee and Judæa lay the country

I Matt. xxvi. 73.

of the detested Samaritans, or Cutheans, as the Jews called them, from Cuthah, whence many of them were brought by the Assyrian king.1 The causes which led to bitter hatred between the two races have been stated, and the bad feeling was increased under the Romans, whose conquest the Samaritans welcomed for the gain it brought them in trade, and for the revenge which it seemed to them, as they looked on their ruined temple, to inflict on the Jews. To these a Samaritan was more hateful than a heathen, for a Gentile might be a friend, and of such an one there was hope, but of a Cuthean, never; “he who takes bread of him is like unto him who eats swine's flesh." And the hatred was returned. The Samaritans did their best to annoy the Jews, confusing their moon-signals, even defiling, it is said, their temple courts with dead men's bones, and plotting to murder them as they passed on their way to the feasts. To avoid the " Cuthite strip," as the Talmud called it, the Galileans took a roundabout route to Jerusalem, and would 1 2 Kings xvii. 24.

often on their return, with hatred inflamed by excitement, attack the Samaritans and think they did Jehovah service by spilling their blood.

The interest awakened by Judæa centres in Jerusalem, city of the "Great King," the home of the priesthood and rival parties, the headquarters of Rabbinism and all else that, wilfully shutting out light from the world around, made Jewish life unlovely as the Judæan landscape, and stunted as the desert shrubs. But any account of this and of its renowned temple will more fitly follow in connection with the public life of Jesus; here it is of greater moment to learn what was the general feeling among the Jews on the loss of their independence.

The conquests of the Romans, by which they had gained mastery over the world from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, and from the Rhine and Danube to the deserts of Africa, were not unmixed with good, for the advance of races was quickened in many ways by their being brought under one powerful rule.