A very unpleasant adventure occurred to me in connection with the exploration of the group of tombs where this inscription was found. As before said, the region was lawless. I have been stalked by the “club-bearing” brigand Arabs in the plains to the west, and in many of the tombs we found skulls of recent date, often with marks of violence. The rock cemetery near Umm ez Zeinât, to which I now refer, was remarkable, because the tomb-doors were roughly closed with piled-up stones. I did not pay much attention to this, or to a skeleton which I found in one tomb, but I retreated somewhat rapidly from another when, striking a light, I found myself kneeling in a large chamber, and surrounded with quite fresh corpses of both sexes. As Moslems are buried east and west, with the face to Mecca, whereas these bodies lay in various directions on the floor, it seemed probable that they were those of murdered persons, or of the victims of some epidemic disease.
The Galilean synagogues are among the most interesting ruins in Palestine. They were known before the Survey, many having being visited, and even excavated, by Sir Charles Wilson. The Carmel example was the only one added to the list, and was much less perfect than some examples in Upper Galilee. Synagogues are indeed mentioned in the New Testament, but in Palestine they seem to have become important chiefly after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. Synagogues are noted in one of the Psalms (lxxiv. 8) in the English version, but the Hebrew word in this passage (properly “meeting-places”) is not the same usually applied to the buildings of a later age in the Talmud. The architectural style of the synagogues is a curious imitation of Roman architecture of the Antonine period, and it is to this age that Jewish tradition refers the building of the Galilean synagogues. It appears to me very doubtful if any one of these structures was in existence in the time of Christ. The Hebrew text which occurs on the gateway of the Kefr Bir’im synagogue is ascribed by competent authority (from the forms of the letters) to the second or third century of our era. The text runs in a single line under the semi-classic mouldings of the lintel stone, consisting, as read by Renan, of the words, “Peace be to this place, and upon all the places of God. Joseph the Levite, the son of Levi, put up this lintel. A blessing rest upon his work.”