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 GEOGRAPHY

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GEOGRAPHY

the Bible, thej- realized that much of the book would remain sealed to them unless they were acquainted with the Holy Land. To this deeply-felt need Hibh- cal geography, as a help to the study of the .Scriptures, owes its birth (cf. St. Aug., De Doctr.Chr., II, .\\i,24; Cassiod.,Deinstitut.div. litt.,xxv; St. Jer., AdDomn. et Rogat. in I Paralip., Pra?f.). Its necessity has never since been questioned, and its growth has kept abreast of the stri\ings after a better knowledge of the Uteral and historical sense of the Scriptures. The study of Biblical geography is pursued more than ever in our time, and it may not be amiss to mention here the principal sources and means at its disposal.

First of all, of course, stantls the Bible, some parts of which, however, must be singled out, owing to their importance from the present point of view. The ethnographical list in Gen., x, is a valuable contri- bution to the knowledge of the old general geography of the East, and its importance can scarcely be over- estimated. The catalogues of stations of the Hebrew people in their journej-ings from Kgypt to the bank of the Jordan supply us with ample information con- cerning the topography of the Sinaitic Peninsula, the southern and eastern borders of the Dead Sea. In the Book of Josue is to be foimd a well-nigh complete sur- vey of Palestine (especially of Southern Palestine) and the territory allotted to Juda in particular. Later books add Uttle to the wealth of topographical details given there, but rather give a casual ghmpse of an ever-growing acquaintance with places abroad — in Egj'pt, Assyria, and Bab^'lonia. The centuries fol- lowing the Exile were for the adventurous Israel- ites a period of expansion. Colonies of thrifty mer- chants multiplied wonderfuUj' East and West, above all throughout the Greek and Roman world, and Palestinian folks had to train their ears to many new, "barbarous" names of places where their kinsmen had settled. The Church at Jerusalem, therefore, was well prepared to listen with interest to the accounts of Barnabas's and Paul's missions abroad (Acts, xv, 12; xxi, 19).

While the authors of the English Authorized Ver- sion (A.V.) have made efforts to preserve proper names in their old Hebrew mould, our Douay Version (D.V.) adheres, as a rule, to the Latin transliteration. This imperfection is, however, by no means to be com- pared mth that which arises from the astounding transcriptions of the Codex Vaticanus from which the Greek textus receptus was printed. To cite at random a few instances, Bahurim has become Bapa/cf/x: Deb- baseth,Heb. Dabbasheth .BatOdpa^a; Eglon, 'OSoXXd^ior AlXd/i.; Gethremnion, 'Ie/3aSd, etc.. not to speak of the frequent confusion of the sounds d and r or of the proper names wronglj- translated, as 'En Shemesh by V ^vy^ '■o'' v^io", etc. Thanks to a systematic correc- tion of the whole text, such divergences are not to be found in theCodex Alexandrinus. Biblical information is in a good many instances paralleled, and not unfre- quently supplemented, liy the indications gathered from the documents unearthed in Egypt and Assyria. No fewer than 1 19 tomis of Palestine are mentioned in the lists of Thothmes III (about IGOO B.C.); the names of some 70 Canaanite cities occurin the famous Tell-el- Amarna letters (about 1 4.50 B.C.); on the walls of Karnak the boastfid records of the conquests of Sheshonk I (Sesac) exhibit a list of 1.56 names of places, all in Central and Southern Palestine (93.5 B.C.); the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings Tukalti Pal-Esarra III (Teglath- phalasar, 745-27), Sarru-kinu (Sargon, 722-05), and Sin-akhi-erba (Sennacherib, 705-681) add a few new names. From the comparison of all these lists, it appears that some hundred of the Palestinian cities mentioned in the Bible are also recorded in docimients ranging from the .sixteenth to the eighth centuries B.C.

"Tlie immovable East" still preserves under the present Arabic garb a goodly proportion (three- fourths, according to Col. C. R. Conder) of the old

geographical vocables of the Bible; in most instances the name still cleaves either to the modern city which has supplanted the old one (e.g. Beit-Liihm for Bethle- hem), or to the ruins of the latter (e.g. Kliirhet'Atmith), or the site it occupied (e.g. 7'f// Jczir for Jazer; Tell Ta 'anmik forTaanacli); sometimes it has shifted to the neighbouring dale, spring, well, or hill (as Wady YabU). The history of the Palestinian cities and of the change.s which some local names have undergone in the in- tervening centuries is traced, and the identification helped, by the information supplied by geographers, historians, and travellers. In this regard, parts of the works of classical geograpliei's, such as Strabo and Ptolemy, are consulted with profit; but they cannot compete with Eusebius's "Onomasticon", the worth of which was already recognized by St. Jerome, any more than the Peutinger Table, however useful, can rival the Madaba Mosaic Map (dating probably from Justinian's time) discovered in the autumn of 1897. The " Peregrinatio Silvia?" (whatever the true name of the authoress), the descriptions of the Bordeaux pil- grim, the accounts of those whom the piety of the Middle Ages brought to the Holy Land, the histories of the Crusades and of the Latin Kingdom of Jeru- salem, and, last!}', the Arab geographers afford valu- able material to the student of Bibhcal geography.

The topography, as well as the histor>% of Palestine is a favourite study of the present day. Governments commission to the East diplomatic agents who are masters of archeology; schools have been founded at Jerusalem and elsewhere to enable Bibhcal students, as St. Jerome recommended (in Ub. ParaHp., Praef.), to acquire a personal acquaintance with the sites and the natural conditions of the country; and all — diplo- mats, scholars, masters, and students — scour the land, survey it, search its innermost recesses, copy inscrip- tions, make excavations, sift on the spot the evidences furnished by the Bible and all available authorities. The results of their labours are pubUshed in periodi- cals founded for that particular purpose (such as the "Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement", the " Zeitschrift", and the " Mittheilungen und Xach- richten des deutschen Palastina-Vereins", the " Palas- tinajahrbuch") or appear as important contributions in reviews of a wider scope (Hke the " Revue Bibhque", the " Melanges d'ArchcoIogieorientale" orthe "Ameri- can Journal of Archa?ology"). In the bibhography given at the end of this article the reader will find a list of the works of scholars who, especially in the last fifty years, have earned fame in the field of Biblical geography, and a right to the gratitude of all students of Sacred Scripture.

The name Palestine, first used to designate the territory of the Phihstines, was. after the Roman period, gradually extended to the whole southern portion of Syria. It applies to the country stretching from the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon to the Sinaitic Desert, and from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Desert. Pohtically, the hmits varied in the course of Bibhcal times. The old Land of Canaan was relatively small: it included the region west of the Jordan be- tween a fine running from the foot of the Hermon Range to Sidon. and another fine from the southern end of the Dead Sea to Gaza. Da\'id's and Solomon's possessions were considerably larger; they probably extended north-eastward to the Syrian, and eastward to the Arabian Desert. Two classical expressions occur frequently in the Bible to designate the whole length of the land in historical times: "from the entrance of Emath [i.e., probably, the Merj Aijun] to the river of Egypt [Wady el-Arish]", or "to the Sea of the Wilderness [Dead Sea]" and "from Dan to Bersabee". This represents, in the estimate of St. Jerome, about 160 Roman miles (141 Engl. m.). As to the breadth of the country, the same Father de- clared himself ashamed to state it. lest heathens might take occasion from his assertions to blaspheme (Ep.