from “The Life and Epistles of
St. Paul”
by Conybeare and Howson.
No journey was ever taken on which
so much interest is concentrated as this of
St. Paul
from
Jerusalem to
Damascus.
It is so critical a passage in the history of God’s dealings with man, and
we feel it to be so closely bound up with all our best knowledge and best
happiness in this life, and with all our hopes for the world to come, that
the mind is delighted to dwell upon it, and we are eager to learn or imagine
all its details. The conversion of Saul was like the call of a second
Abraham.
But we know almost more of the
Patriarch’s journey through this same district, from the north to the south,
than we do of the Apostle’s in the opposite direction. It is easy to
conceive of Abraham traveling with his flocks and herds and camels. The
primitive features of the East continue still unaltered in the desert, and
the Arabian sheik still remains to us a living picture of the patriarch of
Genesis. But before the first century of the Christian era, the patriarchal
life in
Palestine
had been modified, not only by the invasions and settlements of Babylonia
and Persia,
but by large influxes of Greek and Roman civilization. It is difficult to
guess what was the appearance of Saul’s company on that memorable occasion.
We neither know how he traveled nor who his associates were, nor where he
rested on his way nor what road he followed from the Judean to the Syrian
capital.
His journey must have brought him
somewhere into the vicinity of the
Sea of
Tiberias.
But where he approached the nearest to the shores of this sacred lake,
whether he crossed the Jordan where, in its lower courses, it flows
southwards to the Dead Sea, or where its upper windings enrich the valley at
the base of Mount Hermon, we do not know. And there is one thought which
makes us glad that it should be so. It is remarkable that
Galilee, where
Jesus worked so many of His miracles, is the scene of none of those
transactions which are related in the Acts. The blue waters of Tiberias,
with their fishing boats and towns on the brink of the shore, are
consecrated in the Gospels. A greater than Paul was here. When we come to
the travels of the Apostles, the scenery is no longer limited and Jewish,
but catholic and widely extended, like the Gospel which they preached; and
the Sea, which will be so often spread before us in the life of St. Paul, is
not the little Lake of Gennesareth, but the great Mediterranean, which
washed the shores and carried the ships of the historical nations of
antiquity.
Two principal roads can be
mentioned, one of which probably conducted the travelers from
Jerusalem
to
Damascus. The track of
the caravans, in ancient and modern times, from Egypt to the Syrian capital,
has always led through Gaza and Ramleh, and then, turning eastwards about
the borders of Galilee and Samaria, has descended near Mount Tabor towards
the Sea of Tiberias; and so, crossing the Jordan a little to the north of
the Lake by Jacob’s Bridge, proceeds through the desert country which
stretches to the base of Antilibanus. A similar track from Jerusalem
falls into this Egyptian road in the neighborhood of Djenin, at the entrance
of Galilee;
and Saul and his company may have traveled by this route, performing the
journey of one hundred and thirty-six miles, like the modern caravans, in
about six days.
But at this period, that great
work of Roman road making, which was actively going on in all parts of the
empire, must have extended, in some degree, to
Syria
and Judea;
and, if the Roman roads were already constructed here, there is little doubt
that they followed the direction indicated by the later itineraries. This
direction is from Jerusalem to Neapolis (the ancient Shechem), and thence
over the Jordan to the south of the Lake, near Scythopolis, where the
soldiers of Pompey crossed the river, and where the Galilean pilgrims used
to cross it, at the time of the festivals, to avoid Samaria. From
Scythopolis it led to
Gadara,
a Roman city, the ruins of which are still remaining, and so to Damascus.
Whatever road was followed in
Saul’s journey to Damascus,
it is almost certain that the earlier portion of it brought him to Neapolis,
the Shechem of the Old Testament, and the
Nablus
of the modern Samaritans. This city was one of the stages in the
Itineraries. Dr. Robinson followed a Roman pavement for some considerable
distance in the neighborhood of
Bethel.
This northern road went over the elevated ridges which intervene between the
valley of the
Jordan
and the plain on the Mediterranean coast. As the travelers gained the high
ground, the young Pharisee may have looked back, and when he saw the city in
the midst of its hills, with the mountains of Moab in the distance,
confident in the righteousness of his cause, he may have though proudly of
the 125th Psalm: “The hills stand about Jerusalem, even so standeth the Lord
round about His people, from this time forth for evermore.” His present
enterprise was undertaken for the honor of
Zion.
He was blindly fulfilling the words of One who said; “Whosoever killeth you
will think that he does God service.” (John 16:2)
Passing through the hills of
Samaria,
from which he might occasionally obtain a glimpse of the
Mediterranean
on the left, he would come to Jacob’s Well, at the opening of that beautiful
valley which lies between Ebal and Gerizim. This, too, is the scene of a
Gospel history. The same woman with whom Jesus spoke might be again at the
well as the Inquisitor passed. But as yet he knew nothing of the breaking
down of the “middle wall of partition.” (Eph. 2:14) He could, indeed, have
said to the Samaritans, “Ye worship ye know not what, we know what we
worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:22) But he could not have
understood the meaning of those other words, “The hour cometh, when ye shall
neither in Jerusalem,
nor yet in this mountain, worship the Father, the true worshippers shall
worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:21,23)
His was not yet the Spirit of
Christ. The zeal which burnt in him was that of James and John, before their
illumination, when they wished (in this same district) to call down fire
from heaven, even as Elias did, on the inhospitable Samaritan village. (Luke
9:51-56) Philip had already been preaching to the poor Samaritans, and John
had revisited them, in company with Peter, with feelings wonderfully
changed. But Saul knew nothing of he little Church
of Samaritan Christians,
or, if he heard of them and delayed among them, de delayed only to injure
and oppress. The Syrian city was still the great object before him. And now,
when he had passed through
Samaria
and was entering Galilee,
the snowy peak
of Mount Hermon,
the highest point of Antilibanus, almost as far to the north as Damascus,
would come into view. This is that tower of “Lebanon
which looketh towards
Damascus.”
(Cant. 7:4) It is already the great landmark of his journey, as he passes
through Galilee
towards the sea
of Tiberias,
and the valley of the
Jordan.
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