Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/26

14 doubtful traditions, many writers have followed in his steps, and in quoting what is stated by pilgrims daring past centuries, do this in such a way that one seems to contradict the other, or that it at least appears that these sites were shown in various ages at different spots, and hence no reliance is to be placed in what is shown to-day. For instance, the writer of "The Land and the Book" gives the Jaffa sites in the following words (p. 520). On the self-uttered question, "Did you find Tabitha's house?" he answers, "No!" and adds: "Well, our Consul discovered her grave in one of his gardens, and gave it to the Armenian Convent of Jerusalem. I examined the sarcophagus in its original bed, and there was the negative evidence in favour of Tabitha that there was no counter claim whatever. If not Tabitha's, whose tomb was it, pray?" And with regard to the house of the tanner, "it is certainly by the sea-side, and that is something, but, then, so is all Jaffa." Other writers speak similarly, but one may remark that the author of "The Land and the Book" asks for the house, and answers with a tomb, as if Tabitha had been buried in her own house. Tradition speaks of three different points.

Antoninus, A.D. 600, mentions the tomb of Tabitha, and, A.D. 728, Willibald says: "Joppa is a maritime town of Palestine where St. Peter raised the Widow Dorcas," and again, when coming from Lydda to Jaffa, "one comes to the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, and there he raised the widow," at the time in the suburbs.

Sæwolf, A.D. 1103, speaks of the larger Church of St. Peter as being near Jaffa, and hence outside the walls; and to speak of the larger implies that there was also a smaller one, which was very naturally erected on or near the house of Simon the tanner. We have therefore the three places. The smaller Church of St. Peter, probably in the town, at the tanner's house; the larger St. Peter's Church, in the suburb, at Tabitha's house; and the third was her tomb.

The Greek Patriarch gave the larger St. Peter's Church with the neighbouring cemetery to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, where then the Latins (or Franks) were ruling in the year 1114 A.D., under King Baldwin II. Here is the "Cemetery" mentioned, in which we may fairly conclude was also Tabitha's tomb. This cemetery, as is reported in the Quarterly Statement, 1874, p. 3, et seq., was found by M. Clermont-Ganneau, and has since been proved to have been the general cemetery of Jaffa, at the time of the beginning of the Christian era. Here are rock-cut tombs in great number, with epitaphs, so that the whole hill seems to be undermined with them. The city of Jaffa has a long and eventful history. It has been often destroyed and rebuilt; sometimes it was a small walled city; at other times, especially in the more ancient period, large and extensive, as walls and ruins, found occasionally under the surface, show. 1280 A.D. Alexander speaks of a rock near the sea, below which was the church and Simon the tanner's house. Troilo and Ladoire, and also Quaretinius, a few hundred years later, declare "that the house of the charitable Tabitha