Palestine

96:2.2Again and again the Ara­bian Semites fought their way into the north­ern Prom­ised Land, the land that “flowed with milk and honey,” but just as of­ten were they ejected by the bet­ter-or­ga­nized and more highly civ­i­lized north­ern Semites and Hit­tites. Later, dur­ing an un­usu­ally se­vere famine, these rov­ing Bed­ou­ins en­tered Egypt in large num­bers as con­tract la­bor­ers on the Egyp­tian pub­lic works, only to find them­selves un­der­go­ing the bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence of en­slave­ment at the hard daily toil of the com­mon and down­trod­den la­bor­ers of the Nile val­ley.

121:6.2In the days of Je­sus three lan­guages pre­vailed in Pales­tine: The com­mon peo­ple spoke some di­alect of Ara­maic; the priests and rab­bis spoke He­brew; the ed­u­cated classes and the bet­ter strata of Jews in gen­eral spoke Greek. The early trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at Alexan­dria was re­spon­si­ble in no small mea­sure for the sub­se­quent pre­dom­i­nance of the Greek wing of Jew­ish cul­ture and the­ol­ogy. And the writ­ings of the Chris­tian teach­ers were soon to ap­pear in the same lan­guage. The re­nais­sance of Ju­daism dates from the Greek trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures. This was a vi­tal in­flu­ence which later de­ter­mined the drift of Paul’s Chris­tian cult to­ward the West in­stead of to­ward the East.

134:0.1Dur­ing the Med­i­ter­ra­nean jour­ney Je­sus had care­fully stud­ied the peo­ple he met and the coun­tries through which he passed, and at about this time he reached his fi­nal de­ci­sion as to the re­main­der of his life on earth. He had fully con­sid­ered and now fi­nally ap­proved the plan which pro­vided that he be born of Jew­ish par­ents in Pales­tine, and he there­fore de­lib­er­ately re­turned to Gal­i­lee to await the be­gin­ning of his life­work as a pub­lic teacher of truth; he be­gan to lay plans for a pub­lic ca­reer in the land of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple, and he did this of his own free will.

134:0.2Je­sus had found out through per­sonal and hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence that Pales­tine was the best place in all the Ro­man world wherein to set forth the clos­ing chap­ters, and to en­act the fi­nal scenes, of his life on earth. For the first time he be­came fully sat­is­fied with the pro­gram of openly man­i­fest­ing his true na­ture and of re­veal­ing his di­vine iden­tity among the Jews and gen­tiles of his na­tive Pales­tine. He def­i­nitely de­cided to fin­ish his life on earth and to com­plete his ca­reer of mor­tal ex­is­tence in the same land in which he en­tered the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence as a help­less babe. His Uran­tia ca­reer be­gan among the Jews in Pales­tine, and he chose to ter­mi­nate his life in Pales­tine and among the Jews.

123:4.5The only real ac­ci­dent Je­sus had up to this time was a fall down the back-yard stone stairs which led up to the can­vas-roofed bed­room. It hap­pened dur­ing an un­ex­pected July sand­storm from the east. The hot winds, car­ry­ing blasts of fine sand, usu­ally blew dur­ing the rainy sea­son, es­pe­cially in March and April. It was ex­traor­di­nary to have such a storm in July. When the storm came up, Je­sus was on the house­top play­ing, as was his habit, for dur­ing much of the dry sea­son this was his ac­cus­tomed play­room. He was blinded by the sand when de­scend­ing the stairs and fell. Af­ter this ac­ci­dent Joseph built a balustrade up both sides of the stair­way.

124:1.9The cli­mate of Naz­a­reth was not se­vere. Jan­uary was the cold­est month, the tem­per­a­ture av­er­ag­ing around 50° F. Dur­ing July and Au­gust, the hottest months, the tem­per­a­ture would vary from 75° to 90° F. From the moun­tains to the Jor­dan and the Dead Sea val­ley the cli­mate of Pales­tine ranged from the frigid to the tor­rid. And so, in a way, the Jews were pre­pared to live in about any and all of the world’s vary­ing cli­mates.

124:1.10Even dur­ing the warmest sum­mer months a cool sea breeze usu­ally blew from the west from 10:00 A.M. un­til about 10:00 P.M. But ev­ery now and then ter­rific hot winds from the east­ern desert would blow across all Pales­tine. These hot blasts usu­ally came in Febru­ary and March, near the end of the rainy sea­son. In those days the rain fell in re­fresh­ing show­ers from Novem­ber to April, but it did not rain steadily. There were only two sea­sons in Pales­tine, sum­mer and win­ter, the dry and rainy sea­sons. In Jan­uary the flow­ers be­gan to bloom, and by the end of April the whole land was one vast flower gar­den.

163:5.2Af­ter the break­ing up of the Ma­g­a­dan Camp, David Zeb­e­dee re­turned to Beth­saida and be­gan im­me­di­ately to cur­tail the mes­sen­ger ser­vice. The king­dom was tak­ing on a new phase. Daily, pil­grims ar­rived from all parts of Pales­tine and even from re­mote re­gions of the Ro­man Em­pire. Be­liev­ers oc­ca­sion­ally came from Mes­o­po­ta­mia and from the lands east of the Tigris. Ac­cord­ingly, on Sun­day, De­cem­ber 18, David, with the help of his mes­sen­ger corps, loaded on to the pack an­i­mals the camp equipage, then stored in his fa­ther’s house, with which he had for­merly con­ducted the camp of Beth­saida by the lake. Bid­ding farewell to Beth­saida for the time be­ing, he pro­ceeded down the lake shore and along the Jor­dan to a point about one-half mile north of the apos­tolic camp; and in less than a week he was pre­pared to of­fer hos­pi­tal­ity to al­most fif­teen hun­dred pil­grim vis­i­tors. The apos­tolic camp could ac­com­mo­date about five hun­dred. This was the rainy sea­son in Pales­tine, and these ac­com­mo­da­tions were re­quired to take care of the ever-in­creas­ing num­ber of in­quir­ers, mostly earnest, who came into Perea to see Je­sus and to hear his teach­ing.

121:2.2Many of the great high­ways join­ing the na­tions of an­tiq­uity passed through Pales­tine, which thus be­came the meet­ing place, or cross­roads, of three con­ti­nents. The travel, trade, and armies of Baby­lo­nia, As­syria, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Parthia, and Rome suc­ces­sively swept over Pales­tine. From time im­memo­rial, many car­a­van routes from the Ori­ent passed through some part of this re­gion to the few good sea­ports of the east­ern end of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, whence ships car­ried their car­goes to all the mar­itime Oc­ci­dent. And more than half of this car­a­van traf­fic passed through or near the lit­tle town of Naz­a­reth in Gal­i­lee.

121:1.9The first strug­gles be­tween the ex­pand­ing Ro­man and Parthian states had been con­cluded in the then re­cent past, leav­ing Syria in the hands of the Ro­mans. In the times of Je­sus, Pales­tine and Syria were en­joy­ing a pe­riod of pros­per­ity, rel­a­tive peace, and ex­ten­sive com­mer­cial in­ter­course with the lands to both the East and the West.

93:5.2The choice of Pales­tine as the site for Ma­chi­venta’s ac­tiv­i­ties was in part pred­i­cated upon the de­sire to es­tab­lish con­tact with some hu­man fam­ily em­body­ing the po­ten­tials of lead­er­ship. At the time of the in­car­na­tion of Mel­chiz­e­dek there were many fam­i­lies on earth just as well pre­pared to re­ceive the doc­trine of Salem as was that of Abra­ham. There were equally en­dowed fam­i­lies among the red men, the yel­low men, and the de­scen­dants of the And­ites to the west and north. But, again, none of these lo­cal­i­ties were so fa­vor­ably sit­u­ated for Mi­chael’s sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance on earth as was the east­ern shore of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean Sea. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion in Pales­tine and the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Mi­chael among the He­brew peo­ple were in no small mea­sure de­ter­mined by ge­og­ra­phy, by the fact that Pales­tine was cen­trally lo­cated with ref­er­ence to the then ex­is­tent trade, travel, and civ­i­liza­tion of the world.

97:9.21But the north­ern king­dom did not van­ish from his­tory un­til the king of Is­rael con­spired with the king of Egypt and re­fused to pay fur­ther trib­ute to As­syria. Then be­gan the three years’ siege fol­lowed by the to­tal dis­per­sion of the north­ern king­dom. Ephraim (Is­rael) thus van­ished. Ju­dah—the Jews, the “rem­nant of Is­rael”—had be­gun the con­cen­tra­tion of land in the hands of the few, as Isa­iah said, “Adding house to house and field to field.” Pres­ently there was in Je­ru­sa­lem a tem­ple of Baal along­side the tem­ple of Yah­weh. This reign of ter­ror was ended by a mono­the­is­tic re­volt led by the boy king Joash, who cru­saded for Yah­weh for thirty-five years.

80:2.2The purer in­digo el­e­ments moved south­ward to the forests of cen­tral Africa, where they have ever since re­mained. The more mixed groups spread out in three di­rec­tions: The su­pe­rior tribes to the west mi­grated to Spain and thence to ad­ja­cent parts of Eu­rope, form­ing the nu­cleus of the later Med­i­ter­ra­nean long-headed brunet races. The least pro­gres­sive di­vi­sion to the east of the Sa­hara pla­teau mi­grated to Ara­bia and thence through north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia and In­dia to far­away Cey­lon. The cen­tral group moved north and east to the Nile val­ley and into Pales­tine.