Early Explorers of Bible Lands

By Jack P. Lewis

Acclaimed scholar and professor Jack Lewis narrates the lives and contributions of a number of nineteenth-century explorers of Bible lands whose work set the stage for modern biblical archaeology. Here are the stories of John Lewis Burckhardt, William Francis Lynch, James T. Barclay, Selah Merrill, and other explorers of Bible lands from the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Most of these men did not engage in archaeology as we commonly define it today, but their contributions set the stage for modern archaeology. They were not excavators, but students of geography, nature, languages, customs, traditions, and the Bible--all of which are vital to a more refined understanding of the Bible.As they traversed Palestine, these explorers encountered inscriptions and even previously unidentified languages (e.g., Hittite). Lewis's accounts reveal their interests, almost presciently, in the categories of anthropology as currently defined--cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. These pursuits laid the groundwork for the more comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies that have eventually become the trademark of both biblical studies and the archaeology of the biblical world. As Lewis shows, we owe explorers a great debt of gratitude for their pioneering work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abilene Christian University Press
• Release date: Sep 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9780891127239

Jack P. Lewis

JACK P. LEWIS holds PhD degrees from Harvard University and Hebrew Union College. He was Thayer Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archeological research, Jerusalem, in 1967-68 and a Senior Fellow in 1983-84. Now retired, Lewis taught Bible at Harding University and Harding School of Theology for fifty years. He has authored more than a dozen books, including The English Bible from KJV to NIV, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature, Archaeology of the Bible Archaeological Backgrounds of Bible History, and Archaeological Insights into the Interpretation of the Minor Prophets. He has made over thirty trips to the Holy Land. He served churches in Texas, Rhode Island, and Kentucky, and continues to serve as an elder of the White Station Church of Christ in Memphis, Tennessee.

Book preview

Foreword

Dale W. Manor

Remember the stones, death and when of that the you king the were Bible of Ai young declared who were and that read both those the buried death stones under of were Achan heaps there or of to this day (Josh 7:26; 8:29)? Imagination soared with the prospect of going to Palestine to discover those monuments. Of course, we eventually learned this day only referred to when the text was composed. Believers, however, have long been drawn to the lands where the biblical events unfolded—whether for emotional and intellectual stimulation, or for the spiritual dimension of the trek as well.

Keith Schoville¹ has divided the exploration of Palestine into four major periods. The first is the period of the pious pilgrims (ca. third century AD to 1799). The dominant characteristic of the period consisted of people making pilgrimages to the holy sites associated with events surrounding the people and events of the Old and New Testaments, and especially those associated with Jesus and the apostles. When Constantine’s mother, Helena, converted to Christianity and made her sojourn into Palestine (ca. AD 325), not only did she identify many of the locations where New Testament events occurred, she blazed the trail for others to follow with relative ease, especially since Christianity ostensibly had become recognized and legal.

Perhaps more useful than Helena’s identifications were the itineraries and geographic details recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. AD 260-340) in his Onomasticon, which still provides valuable insights for historical geography. The eventual Islamic expansion into Palestine negatively impacted the flow of pilgrims, but pilgrimages nonetheless continued. With the advent of the Crusades, European interest in the Holy Places blossomed, especially with the desire to obtain relics. While many pilgrims wrote of their trips, they provided little more than diaries and their geographical reliability and the viability of their historical interpretations remain dubious.

While these forays laid the groundwork for eventual archaeological work, the travel accounts and remarks of these pilgrims cannot be called archaeology in any modern sense of the term. Even the term archaeology has morphed from antiquity. Early Greek authors used the word archaios to refer to ancient history as opposed to their more recent history. It is in this way that Thucydides narrated the history of Athens from the earlier generations (archaios in History of the Peloponnesian War 2.16) as opposed to the war about which he primarily wrote. Similarly, the title Jewish Antiquities appropriately translates Josephus’ Ioudaik s Archaiologias ).

Through time, the term archaeology has shifted from the idea simply of ancient history to refer to a subdiscipline of anthropology which includes cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. Significantly oversimplified definitions state that cultural anthropology studies living cultural systems and attempts to identify patterns of social behavior. Physical anthropology studies the physical development of humanity and is often the domain of evolutionary studies, although it is important in many other areas as well. Linguistics studies the similarities and differences and connections that characterize human language developments. Archaeology studies "past societies primarily through their material remains—the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies" (italics theirs DWM).²

With the Renaissance, a revived interest in Greek and Roman art emerged and the European elite began to decorate their estates with the material remains of Classical vases, statuary, and architectural remains. The countries of Italy and Greece became storehouses to plunder to fill their estates. The discovery of the towns of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) fueled the pursuit of antiquities as well as provoking curiosity about the lives of the Classical world. Eventually more noble interests began to emerge and one may arguably state that the threshold for the development of refined archaeological interests in the eastern Mediterranean began to emerge with Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon’s ventures into the Middle East had multiple goals, one of which was to disrupt Britain’s world trade connections. With his military venture into Egypt (1798-1799), Napoleon took a cadre of scholars whose goal was to measure, record, and draw the various monuments and especially those in Egypt. The results of this expedition were eventually published in over twenty volumes entitled La description de l’Egypte (1809-1813). Within the context of Napoleon’s campaign, the Rosetta Stone was discovered which served as the eventual key to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Schoville’s second stage in the development of biblical archaeology was in the 1800s which is often characterized as a period of Treasure Hunting.³ One may certainly cite examples of such. The British acquisition of the so-called Elgin Marbles—the statuary that had graced Athens’ Parthenon—occurred early in this period and was partially the result of the political tug-of-war between Britain and France when the Ottoman Turks retaliated against Napoleon who had invaded Egypt which they had ruled.⁴ An additional example of merchandising may be found with the major European museums, in particular the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Berlin museum, which were essentially competing to increase their holdings. Schoville notes that Henry Austen Layard was given two thousand pounds to excavate at Nimrud with the proviso that he obtain the largest possible number of well-preserved objects of art at the least possible outlay of time and money.⁵

Able to cite such examples, Neil Asher Silberman⁶ places a heavy and explicit emphasis on ideologically driven political maneuvering and posturing on the pursuit to study and investigate the eastern Mediterranean. While egregious examples of such ideologically and nationalistically driven motives exist, a host of explorers sought to serve the academy and to pursue a more refined understanding of the world in which the events of the Bible unfolded. Silberman, however, seems sometimes to miss the point that few things in history are unicausally driven. Most people tend to view their own beliefs and behaviors as superior to others (otherwise we would quickly shift to the competing views); most early explorers (and even modern ones) offer reflections on their observations that demonstrate their view of what they think are better lifestyles.

It is in the framework of this latter category of explorer that Jack Lewis narrates the lives and contributions of a number of explorers from the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Most of these did not engage in archaeology even as we commonly define it today; but change is the nature of any discipline, and their contributions fueled the changes. A proper understanding of the world of the Bible demanded a careful study of the geography and lay of the land. The scholars about whom Professor Lewis writes were not excavators, but students of geography, nature, languages, customs, traditions, and the Bible—all of which are vital to a more refined understanding of the Bible. As they traversed Palestine, they naturally encountered inscriptions and even other previously unidentified languages (e.g., Hittite). Lewis’s accounts reveal their interests, almost presciently, in the categories of anthropology as it is currently defined—cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology. These pursuits laid the groundwork for the more comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies that have eventually become the trademark of both Biblical Studies and the Archaeology of the Biblical World. We owe these explorers a great debt of gratitude for their pioneering work—and we owe Professor Lewis a debt of gratitude for introducing us to them.

Endnotes

¹Keith N. Schoville, Biblical Archaeology in Focus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 80.

²Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 11.

³Schoville, Biblical Archaeology in Focus, 80.

⁴Jacob Rothenberg, Lord Elgin’s Marbles: How Sculptures from the Parthenon Got to the British Museum, Archaeology Odyssey 1/2 (1998): 18-25, 66.

⁵Schoville, Biblical Archaeology in Focus, 85.

⁶ Neil Asher Silberman, Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land 1799-1917 (New York: Knopf, 1982) and Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East (New York: Anchor Books, 1990).

Preface

Longfellow taught us that the Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, ¹ a lesson we can forget with our jet plane transportation, latest scientifi c equipment, paved roads, and comfortable housing. We can forget the privations of those who brought knowledge of the treasures of the Middle East to the attention of the Western world.

These papers were first presented one a year in the archaeology section of the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. The paper on Belzoni has not been published before, though there are biographies of him on which this study is dependent.

The paper on William Turner Barclay was printed in the Biblical Archaeologist to which I am indebted for permission to include in this series of studies. I am also indebted to Barclay’s own book, The City of the Great King. I found that the staff of Monticello in Virginia did not have him listed as one of the early owners in their display of owners, and the store seemed hazy in information about him.

The remainder of the papers have previously appeared in the Near East Archaeology Society Bulletin. My gratitude goes to that publication for permission to reprint them here.

As is true of several of my recent books, I am indebted to my niece Mrs. Jean Saunders for computerizing and editing the studies. Any surviving errors are mine and not hers. She and her husband collected and computerized the various pictures that are included. Some of the pictures are my own.

Biblical Archaeology in the time of the early explorers had not developed to the level of technologies that are now standard, but we are indebted to each of these men. We stand on their shoulders.

Jack P. Lewis

June 22, 2013

Endnote

¹Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Psalm of Life, stanza 7.

List of Figures

Figure 1: Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817)

Figure 2: The Treasury at Petra

Figure 3: The Small Temple at Abu Simbel

Figure 4: Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823)

Figure 5: The Colossi of Memnon

Figure 6: The Ruins of the Ramesseum

Figure 7: The Great Temple of Ramesses II

Figure 8: Entrance to the Valley of the Kings

Figure 9: Conrad Schick (1822-1902)

Figure 10: The Dome of the Rock

Figure 11: The Talitha Kumi Memorial

Figure 12: Model of Herod’s Temple

Figure 13: William Francis Lynch (1801-1865)

Figure 14: The Caravan of the Expedition

Figure 15: The Town of Tiberias

Figure 16: The Shore of the Dead Sea

Figure 17: The Garden of Gethsemane

Figure 18: James Turner Barclay (1807-1874)

Figure 19: The Great Cavern Quarry

Figure 20: The Haram

Figure 21: The Lintel of Barclay’s Gate

Figure 22: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre .

Figure 23: Sir Charles William Wilson (1836-1905)

Figure 24: Map of the Peninsula of Sinai

Figure 25: The Excavation of Wilson’s Arch

Figure 26: Wilson’s Arch Today

Figure 27: Charles Clermont-Ganneau (1846-1923)

Figure 28: The Moabite Stone

Figure 29: The First Words on the Moabite Stone

Figure 30: Excavation of Gezer

Figure 31: The Text of the Siloam Inscription

Figure 32: Selah Merrill (1837-1909)

Figure 33: Tell Hum, the Location of Capernaum

Figure 34: Agrippa’s Wall

Figure 35: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Figure 36: Claude R. Conder (1848-1910)

Figure 37: Map of Palestine

Figure 38: Altaic and Cuneiform Hieroglyphs

Figure 39: Archibald Henry Sayce (1846-1933)

Figure 40: Fragment Showing Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform

Figure 41: Slabs with Hittite Sculpture

Figure 42: Babylonian Cylindrical Seals

Figure 43: Assyrian Sculpture

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

My dream of traveling in the Middle East goes back to grade school chapel when a speaker sang The Holy City while he drew a stylized picture of Jerusalem in pastel colors on his easel. I did not get the picture as I wished. The only one was for the whole chapel.

A distant cousin, who with her husband operated a boys’ school, gave us her collection of back issues of the National Geographic Magazine. I spent hours looking, reading, and dreaming about distant lands.

When I married, I discovered that my father-in-law earlier had been on a trip to the Holy Land with a friend, and he liked to talk about it. In his day, ships were the only transportation to the Middle East. It took longer to get there than a tour now lasts.

In Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Robert Pfeiffer whetted my interest further with tales of his experiences as an excavator. At Hebrew Union College, tales by Dr. Nelson Glueck, who had spent eighteen years in exploration, only sharpened interest in what seemed to be the impossible for me with a young family.

My day of dreams awakened into reality when New York University offered a summer seminar in Israel directed by Professor Abraham Katsch and funded by the government. A lawyer friend gave me a supplement from the Kress Foundation, and a student friend gave two hundred dollars for incidental expenses.

The seminar covered Israel in a wonderful way. I could extend my time by crossing one way into Jordan through the Mandelbaum Gate. I was then on my own. During the first night at the YMCA in East Jerusalem, bombardment of the Jordan area avenged an afternoon incident. My room was on the border just above the gate. I lay on the bed as flat as possible for safety. When the bombardment ceased, the dogs stopped barking and the roosters began to crow.

A trip through Hezekiah’s Tunnel was a necessity, so I gathered others to go with me, including fourteen-year-old Evertt Huffard, who with his missionary father was new in Jerusalem. A rental car took me to Hebron; to the site of ancient Tekoa, home of Amos; to sites north of Jerusalem, the location of which Evertt had learned; and to ancient Jericho. The ancient stone tower there, the oldest in the world, had been uncovered by Kathleen Kenyon, and I had to try its interior circular stairway, permitted then but later forbidden.

East of the River Jordan was Mount Nebo before its church had been restored. The road was unpaved, but Madeba with its ancient map had to be seen, though an extended funeral greatly delayed its viewing. From there, I set out alone over unpaved roads to reach Petra. I had little concept of the time involved to cover the distance, and the gas gage lowered as did the sun. A few minutes at the site of ancient Dibon, where the Moabite Stone had been found in 1868, gathered an annoying escort of idle children, all of whom wanted baksheesh (a gift). Once Petra was reached, no eating places were visible. A bunk at the police post was the night accommodation. It was already occupied by bedbugs. A high-school-aged boy named Mohammed was available as a guide. His English was too sparse to learn much, but he could climb even to the upper sites not seen by tourist groups. Late in the day, I set out the fifteen miles to reach the new highway with its gas station and to get back to Amman in the darkness.

A brief flight from Jerusalem took me to Beirut, center for northern investigation. Here, I tried local transportation—servees (service taxies) that picked up a load and then took off when full to Tyre, Sidon, and Baalbeck. I had to see the cedars of Lebanon. From the last village to the cedars had to be by private taxi, and a taxi from Beirut was also necessary to reach Damascus to see the Damascus museum, the street Straight, and the gate alleged to be the one from which Paul was let down. A trip to Palmyra out in the desert required first a taxi to a town on the north-south road and then a crowded bus ride of several hours. No one had told me that one was assigned a seat with the ticket; foreigners took what they could find at the rear. At a rest stop, I never found the facilities. The ancient ruins at Palmyra were most impressive. A return by bus and a further taxi ride brought me to Aleppo. Noise at a cheap hotel at the transportation center limited sleep. Food could be had in a shop just by pointing. The museum and castle there were quite rewarding.

After an early morning taxi ride to the airport ending at the seaport and a plane flight of several hours, we landed at Baghdad. The summer temperature was quite oppressive. The customs looked at my book on history and archaeology until it looked like I might not be admitted. A taxi, rather than losing a fare, agreed to take me to the YMCA at a price I was willing to pay. In the late afternoon, I inquired at a tourist office without encouragement about getting to the ruins of Babylon. A taxi driver volunteered to take me. First, a permit had to be acquired at a government office to travel in a police state. Much time