With a single exception, Christian tradition regarding sacred places cannot be traced back earlier than the fourth century--the exception is the Grotto of Bethlehem. But Christian sites appear often to be fixed by Jewish tradition: and when such is the case, their reliability is evidently increased, their history being carried back to an earlier source. This latter really reliable class of traditions is distinguished by the fact that the Jewish or Samaritan, and generally the Moslem traditions point, in such cases, to the same spots venerated by the Christians. The sites of the Temple, and of Jacob's well, with Joseph's tomb, the sepulchres of the Patriarchs, and of Joshua, Phinehas, and Eleazar, are pointed out at the same spots by Jew, Christian, and Moslem; and there is every reason to suppose these to be authentic traditions.
It is, therefore, by _consent of evidence_ that the true and indigenous origin of a tradition may be tested. Where this consent does not exist, it is to the Jewish and indigenous, rather than to the later Christian tradition, that we should turn, as the latter must evidently be in such cases of foreign origin.
This distinction will be carefully observed in the following pages; and, by pointing out the cases in which there is a general consent of the Jewish, Moslem, and Christian traditions, it is hoped that everything of real value preserved by tradition will be finally selected.
The morning of Monday the 8th of July, 1872, brought us in sight of the coast of Palestine, near Jaffa. The town rose from the shore on a brown hillock; the dark, flat-roofed houses climbing the hill one above another, but no prominent building breaking the sky outline. The yellow gleaming beach, with its low cliffs and sand-dunes, stretched away north and south, and in the distance the dim blue Judean hills were visible in shadow.
Jaffa is called the Port of Jerusalem, but has no proper harbour at present. In ancient times the "Moon Pool,â south of the town, now silted up, was perhaps the landing-place for Hiram's rafts of cedar-wood; but the traveller passes through a narrow opening in a dangerous reef running parallel with the shore, or, if the weather is bad, he is obliged to make a long detour round the northern end of the same reef. By ten in the morning the land breeze rises, and a considerable swell is therefore always to be expected. The entrance through the reef is only sufficient for one boat, and thus every year boats are wrecked on the rocks and lives lost. It is said also that each year at least one person is killed by the sharks close to land.