The Syrian Christ Part 15

Sleeping on the housetop in the summer season is an Oriental custom the advantage of which the Occident has just "discovered." To use the roofs of high buildings in American cities as sleeping quarters is a "new" suggestion of {273} that genius known as the "social reformer."

To the ancient East, "there is nothing new under the sun." However, to dwell on the housetop is an expression which symbolizes desolation.

Nevertheless the writer of Proverbs says:[2] "It is better to _dwell_ in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house."

From the housetop the muleteer merchant shouts his wares; from the housetop men call one another for various purposes; from the housetop the _nowateer_ (men appointed by the munic.i.p.ality to watch the vineyards) proclaim the names of trespa.s.sers; and from that elevation the special orders of the governor of the district are proclaimed to the populace. By night or by day, whenever we heard a voice calling from a housetop, we instinctively listened most intently in order to catch the message. The voice of the crier is so much like a distant, prolonged railway whistle that in my first few years in America, whenever I heard {274} such a sound, especially in the night, I listened involuntarily, expecting to hear a message.

How often must Jesus have heard the free and full voice of the crier from the housetop! How it must have appealed to him as the very ant.i.thesis of the whisperings of fear, cowardice, and doubt, may be realized from his command to his disciples. In the tenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel we read Christianity's declaration of independence. Here the antagonism of the world is portrayed with complete fullness. "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." "Fear them not ... for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known." In the face of all hatred and danger and death the Master's command to those who carried the world-transcending message, the supreme treasure of time and eternity, was, "What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetop."

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In the rainless Syrian summer the housetop is used for various household purposes. The gra.s.s which grows on the earthen roof, especially on its thick edges, withers early in the season. To this the Scripture alludes in several places where it speaks of the enemies of Israel as being "like the gra.s.s upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up." In some cases the whole roof is plastered with clay mortar and used for drying grain, fruits, and vegetables. Also in the summer season the housetop is used for holding wedding festivities and funeral gatherings, which almost all the adult inhabitants of the town are supposed to attend. With solemn brevity does the prophet Jeremiah refer to this custom in the forty-eighth chapter, and the thirty-eighth verse. The more accurate rendering of the Revised Version is: "_On all the housetops_ of Moab and in the streets thereof there is lamentation every where."

The custom of praying on the housetop, which has come down from the time when the Syrians worshiped the "hosts of heaven," still {276} survives in the East. In the first chapter of the Book which bears his name, the prophet Zephaniah threatens with the awful retribution of Jehovah those who indulged in this practice. "I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place ... and _them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops_." This custom survives in Syria, although much less extensively than in the past, and it is "the G.o.d of the whole earth" that is worshiped, and not the host of heaven. With much reverential regard I still remember an old neighbor of ours, a devout Maronite, a man who really feared G.o.d and worked righteousness, whose habit was to say his evening prayer upon the housetop.

Of all the rich treasures of our Scriptures, few perhaps are more precious and dearer to Christian hearts than the record of Peter's vision while in the city of Joppa, and which is so intimately a.s.sociated with that low, flat, earthen Syrian roof. The tenth chapter of the Book of {277} Acts hints at the broader and more profound spirit which had begun to agitate the inner life of the "very small remnant"

of expectant souls in Israel. The wider horizon which the Christ of G.o.d had revealed to his Jewish disciples had engendered serious doubts in their minds with regard to the exclusive claims of Judaism to the blessings of the Messianic kingdom. The spirit of the Beat.i.tudes and the Parables was resistlessly pressing the claims of all the eager Gentiles to a share in those blessings. No doubt the soul of Peter, the ultra-conservative disciple, was rent in twain and wavered in its allegiance between the old claims of a "chosen people" and the new vision of a universal kingdom founded on purity of heart and hunger and thirst after righteousness.

It would seem that while in such a state of mind, and after the Oriental custom, "Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour;[3] and he became very hungry, and {278} would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth; wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him the second time, What G.o.d hath cleansed, that call not thou common."

Peter obeyed. That Oriental, who was not afraid of the mystic revelations of G.o.d's designs took the lesson to heart. Presently we see this conservative Jew again at the home of Cornelius, the Roman, and hear him interpret his own vision. "Of a truth," he said to the Roman soldier, "I perceive that G.o.d is no {279} respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." Here we have the sure basis of Christian unity and the unshaken foundation of a human commonwealth. "Other foundation can no man lay." When all the sects and nations who profess to be the followers of Jesus Christ respond to this Scriptural summons, and give decent burial to their divisive creeds, however "authoritative" they might think them to be, then will the world have valid reason to expect swords to be beaten into ploughshares, and to hope for the coming of G.o.d's kingdom upon the earth.

[1] Luke v: 19.,

[2] Prov. xxi: 9.

[3] The noon hour, according to Oriental calculation: Timepieces are set at twelve, at sunset. Six o'clock is the hour of midnight and midday. The time kept by Western peoples is known in Syria as _affrenje_. So the laborers who came to work at "the eleventh hour,"

as it is mentioned in Matthew, the twentieth chapter, and the ninth verse, came one hour before sunset.

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CHAPTER V

THE VINEYARDS AND THE FIELDS

From time immemorial the vine and the fig tree have been the Oriental's chief joy. Together with their actual value they possessed for him a sacred symbolic value, especially the vine. The fullness and sweetness of their fruits symbolized the joys of the kingdom of heaven. The mystery of the wine cup, which the world has so sadly vulgarized, remains very sacred to the Oriental. Christ used "the fruit of the vine," or, as the Arabic version has it, the _yield_ of the vine,--meaning the wine, and not grapes,--as the visible means of spiritual communion. In the fifteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel the Master says, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." This usage was no doubt extant in the East before Christ. The vine, as a symbol of spiritual as well as physical family unity, is spoken of in the Old Testament. Israel's was Jehovah's vine. "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt" is the {281} plaintive cry of the writer of the eightieth Psalm: "thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparest room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.... Return, we beseech thee, O G.o.d of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted."

We always thought and spoke of the Church as "the vine which G.o.d has planted." The chanting of the foregoing words of the Psalmist by our priest of the Greek Orthodox Church, with his hand uplifted over the solemnly silent congregation, remains one of the most beautiful memories of my youth. We spoke also of the family as a vine. One of the tenderest pa.s.sages in the whole Bible is the third verse of the one hundred and twenty-eighth Psalm: "Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table."

"They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them {282} afraid,"[1] is Micah's vision of peace and security. To a Syrian in America the reading of this pa.s.sage is strongly conducive to homesickness. To sit in the luxuriant shade of the fig tree was a daily blessing to us in the summer season. It must have been in that season of the year that Jesus first met Nathanael.

In the first chapter of St. John's Gospel we read: "Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, _when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee_."

I have no doubt that Nathanael's habit of sitting under the fig tree was one of the characteristics which made him "an Israelite indeed."

The wine press is an ancient landmark in Syrian life, and one of the most picturesque features of the Scriptures. The word "press" is likely to be misleading in this mechanical age. The grapes are not _pressed_ by any mechanical {283} contrivance, but are trodden with the feet. Therefore, to the Orientals the wine press is _ma'sara_ (squeezing place). The grapes are thrown in a heap in a stone-flagged enclosure about the size of an ordinary room, and trodden by the men in their bare feet. Much gayety characterizes the _ma'sara_ season. The work is carried on day and night until all the grapes which had been gathered by the various families for the _ma'sara_ are converted into wine and mola.s.ses. The quaint songs and stories which I always loved to hear the "treaders" exchange, as they walked back and forth over the grapes, come to me now like the echoes of a remote past. And as I recall how at the end of a long "treading" those men came out with their garments spattered with the rich juice of the grapes of Lebanon, the words of Isaiah--"Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments _like him that treadeth the wine fat_?"[2]--breathe real life for me.

But in this age of rampant microbiology I {284} introduce this subject with at least an implied apology. The picture of men treading grapes in this manner and under such circ.u.mstances will not, I fear, appeal strongly to the aesthetic sense of my readers. Nevertheless, all the Scriptural wine, including the cup of the Last Supper, was produced in this way. To the Orientals the mystic fermentation and the fire purify the juice of the vine. The precious juice runs from the wide, stone-flagged enclosure into deep wells, where it is allowed to become _rawook_ (clear juice). The fresh _rawook_ is considered a delicious drink. One of Job's bitter complaints against those who oppressed the poor was that those unfortunates were made to "tread the wine presses, and _suffer thirst_."[3] Having been allowed thoroughly to settle, the juice is then heated according as to whether the wine is to be "sweet"

or "bitter." The longer the juice is boiled the sweeter the wine.

Sweet wine is called _khemer niswani_ (woman wine); the men, as a rule, preferring the "bitter" wine. In {285} making mola.s.ses of the grape juice, fine white clay is scattered over the grapes before they are trodden, in order to hasten and insure a perfect settling of all the coa.r.s.e organic matter while the juice is in the "clearing wells."

I often wonder whether it is because the memories of youth grow more romantic with the pa.s.sing of the years, that the agricultural life of the Orient seems to me more poetical than that of the Occident, or whether it really is more enchanting. It seems to me that tools possess more charms than machinery does, and handwork of the more instinctive type is much more interesting than the carefully studied and designed task. The life of the American farmer is too intelligent to be romantic. There is so much in him of the agricultural college and the farm journal. No awful mysteries haunt his scientifically treated fields. Insect powders and the daily weather report and the market "quotations" arm him with forethought, and make of him a speculating merchant. The constant {286} improvements of agricultural implements place a wide and ever-widening gulf between the American farmer and his forefathers.

Not so with the Syrian farmer. To this man life is not an evolution, but an inheritance. If the men who tilled Abraham's fields in Hebron should rise from the dead to-day, they would find that the four thousand years of their absence from the earth had effected no essential changes in the methods and means of farming in the "land of promise." They would lay their hand to the plough and proceed to perform their daily tasks, as though nothing had happened. A very few European ploughs are being tried in certain sections of Syria, but that is all.

The Syrian sower goes forth to sow with his long, primitive plough on his right shoulder, the yoke hanging from the left shoulder and the leather bag of seed strapped to his back. In his left hand he carries his long, hard, strong goad--the same as the one with which "Shamgar, son of Anath, slew of the Philistines six hundred men." Through this simple instrument he keeps {287} in touch with his pair of oxen, or cows, which pace leisurely before him. The plough, which consists of two wooden beams joined together, measures about twelve feet in length.

The quant.i.ty of wood in the Syrian plough makes plain the meaning of the pa.s.sage in the story of the prophet Elisha, son of Shaphat. In the nineteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings, the nineteenth verse, we have the account of Elijah's first meeting with his successor Elisha, when he was ploughing in the field, "with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he with the twelfth." So, when Elijah cast his mantle upon him, the son of Shaphat "took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, _and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen_, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him."

At the forward end the long plough is hooked to the yoke, and at the rear end joined to a cross-piece, whose upper extremity forms the _cabousa_ (handle); and the lower holds the iron ploughshare. When he puts "his hand to the {288} plough," he simply grasps the _cabousa_ with his right hand while he wields the goad with his left. The uneven, stony ground and the lightness of the plough compel him to maintain a firm hold on it, and to look ever _forward_. In the ninth chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, the sixty-second verse, Jesus makes excellent use of this point when he says, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and _looking back_, is fit for the kingdom of G.o.d."

The parable of the sower, in the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, is a faithful picture of the environment of the farmer in the region of Galilee and Mount Lebanon. That primitive farmer does not sow his seed by means of "drills" in symmetrical rows. Out of his leathern seed bag he takes generous handfuls of grain and, "in the name of the bounteous G.o.d," he casts the blessed seed into the soil, and then "covers it" by ploughing. The bridle paths which wind through the fields, and the still narrower footpaths which the wayfarers make through those fields every season in {289} taking "short cuts" on their weary journeys, provide ample chance for "some seeds" to fall "by the wayside," and be devoured by the fowls of the air. In certain sections of the country where I was brought up the "stony places" are the rule and the "good ground" the exception. So the seeds which "fell upon stony places" came up quickly "because they had no deepness of earth; and when the sun was up, they were scorched." There is another reason for this than the shallowness of the soil. The almost utter lack of rain in that country from April to October leaves no chance for seed cast into shallow soil to live long.

"And some fell among the thorns; and the thorns sprang up, and choked them." For this the Syrian farmer himself is largely to blame. He preserves the thorns for cattle feed and for fuel. Certain kinds of thorns, especially _bellan_, are used as fuel for summer cooking, which is done out of doors, and for baking at the _tennr_.[4] Other thorns are harvested, after the barley and {290} wheat harvests, threshed, and stored for winter feed. In the sixth verse of the seventh chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes the writer says, "For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool." The threshing of thorns is referred to in the Book of Judges,[5] where it says, "When the Lord hath delivered Zabah and Zalmunna into mine hand, then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers."

But here again the English translation fails to give an exact rendering of the text, although the marginal note replaces the word "tears" by the word "thresh." The Arabic version says, "I will _thresh_ your flesh with the thorns and briers of the wilderness _with the threshing boards_," which is an exact picture of the treading of the oxen as they drag the threshing board over the thorns upon the threshing floor.

When a boy it was a great delight to me to wander in the wheatfields when the grain had just pa.s.sed the "milk stage" and had begun to {291} mature and harden. It is then called _fereek_, and is delicious to eat, either raw or roasted. I could subsist a whole day by plucking the heads of wheat, rubbing them in my hand and eating the fat, soft, fragrant grain. From time immemorial wayfarers in the East have been allowed to trespa.s.s in this manner, provided they carried no more grain away than that which they ate. In the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy the reading of the Revised Version is, "When thou comest into thy neighbor's standing corn, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing corn." It was the indulgence in this practice by the disciples, on the Sabbath, which formed the basis of the Pharisees' protest to Jesus to the effect that his followers dishonored the sacred day. In the sixth chapter of St.

Luke's Gospel, the first verse, the Revised Version rendering of the text is, "Now it came to pa.s.s on a sabbath, that he was going through the grainfields and his disciples plucked the {292} ears, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands." The protest of the guardians of Israel's law, and Jesus' answer in the verses which follow, give us another revelation of the Master's central thought and motive as a religious teacher; namely, that man's legitimate needs take precedence of all ecclesiastical formalities.

I do not believe any account of agricultural life in Syria should omit mentioning the plague which above all others strikes terror into the heart of the Eastern tiller of the soil. In his prayer at the dedication of the temple, Solomon mentions "blasting, mildew, locust, and caterpillar."[6] Of all those unwelcome visitors, the locusts are the most abhorred. I will give my impression of this pest in a quotation from my autobiography:[7]

One of the never-to-be-forgotten phenomena of my early years, a spectacle which the most extravagantly imaginative American mind cannot picture, was the coming of the locusts into our part of the country.

If my memory serves me well, I was about twelve years old when my father {293} and all his men, together with all the male population over fifteen, were impressed by the governor of our district to fight the devastating hosts of Oriental locusts. No one who has not seen such a spectacle and the desolation those winged creatures leave behind them can appreciate in the least degree the force of the saying of "The Lord G.o.d of the Hebrews" to Pharaoh, "If thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to-morrow I will bring the locusts into thy coasts."[8]

For a few weeks before they deluged our district the news came with the caravans that the locusts were sweeping toward our region from the "land of the south." We youngsters did not know why our elders were so terror-stricken when they heard of it, until the scourge had come and gone.

It was a few weeks before the time of the harvest when the clouds of locusts enveloped our community. They hid the sun with their greenish-yellow wings, covered the trees and the ground, the walls and roofs of the houses, and dashed in our faces like flakes of snow driven by the wind. The utter hopelessness of the task which confronted our people and seemed to unite all cla.s.ses in despair, a.s.sumed in my sight a very comic aspect, and converted the calamity into a holiday. It was so amusing to me to see our sedate aristocrats and old men and women join the youth {294} and the common laborers in shouting, beating on tin cans, firing muskets, setting brush on fire, striking at the cursed insects with their hands, stamping them with their feet, and praying G.o.d to send "a strong wind" to drive the enemy of man away. Every _mutekellif_ (payer of the toll-tax) had to fight the locusts for so many days or hire a subst.i.tute,

I do not clearly remember whether it was the beating on tin cans and howling of the people or the prayed-for "strong wind" that drove the merry locusts away. What I do remember is that when they did go away they left the land almost stripped clean of every green thing.

It was no vain threatening when the writer of Deuteronomy warned Israel, saying, "If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy G.o.d,, to observe to do all his commandments.... All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume."[9]

[1] Mic. iv: 4.

[2] Is. lxiii: 2.

[3] Job xxiv: 11.

[4] See page 201.

[5] Judges viii: 7.

[6] 1 Kings viii: 37.

[7] _A Far Journey_, page 109, etc.