PALESTINE păl’ ə stīn (פְּלָֽשֶׁת, perhaps migrant). A commonly used name for the Holy Land.
I. Name
The name Pal. appears four times in the KJV (Exod 15:14 and Isa 14:29, 31 as PALESTINA; Joel 3:4). The ASV and RSV, acknowledging the origins of the name, have preferred Philistia in each case, for its primary application was to the Philistine homeland, i.e, the coastlands of the E Mediterranean from Gaza N to Joppa. Application of the name to the wider region lying inland from this coastline was the work of classical writers, so that by the time of the Rom. occupation it could be understood in its modern sense, embodied in the Rom. province of Palestina. Josephus used the name Syria (reserving Palestina for Philistia), and this usage held good for virtually the entire period of the region’s history thereafter, until 1919-1920. Under the rule of Arab and Ottoman, Pal. was but a part of a larger, Syrian, unit of government, and it was really only with the breakup of the Turkish empire at the end of the first world war that the name Pal. again took on any precise significance. Under the agreements and treaties of 1916-1920, Britain assumed a mandate over parts of the empire that became known as Iraq, Trans-Jordan, and Pal., with the French occupying Syria and Lebanon. Boundaries of these territories were partly arbitrary and partly based on the old Turkish vilayets, or administrative divisions. Britain held the Palestinian mandate through increasingly troubled times, until the modern states of Israel and Jordan were born out of the upheavals following the second world war. The new international boundary (or, more properly, cease-fire line) of the period 1948-1967 cut postwar Pal. in two. Consequently the name seems, over the centuries (with the exception of the period 1920-1948), to have covered either too little or too much to have precise meaning; either it described a part of the larger whole that was Syria, or it covered parts of the political unities formed by adjoining states. In popular thought, however, it is prob. most common to equate the name Pal. with the “Holy Land,” i.e., the land occupied by the Twelve Tribes and later identified as sacred—as “The Land”—in Jewish religious thought; and the land where Jesus carried out His ministry and lived His life. There can be little objection to the popular usage, in view of the checkered career of the name from the days of the Exodus onward.
II. Situation
The crossroads position of this land bridge between Eurasia and Africa in the Middle E is sufficiently obvious to justify the 13th-cent. map makers in their decision to show Jerusalem as the center of the world—a world which to them was made up of a T-shaped land area with the encircling ocean forming an “O” around it, and Jerusalem at the intersection of the “T.” Attempts have repeatedly been made—those of George Adam Smith (HGHL) are prob. the most scholarly and vivid—to express the geographical situation of Pal. in a way that will best bring out its unique character. No one statement can do justice to this situation, but the following points taken together will serve to explain something of the uniqueness of Palestine.
A. Palestine and the Mediterranean world. It forms part of the ring of Mediterranean coastlands, a ring whose unity has formed the theme of works by numerous geographers and historians, e.g., Semple, Newbiggin, Ogilvie, Siegfried. Not only in terms of vegetation and forms of agriculture, but judged also by the less tangible indices, such as quality of light, the Mediterranean borderlands have a common quality from Spain to the Levant. The sea has united, rather than separated, the peoples on its shores; being enclosed and relatively narrow, it has encouraged exploration and contact by a number of coastal peoples who have carried on its commerce and established its cross-routes. However early and however strong Palestine’s land connections with the E may have been, its frontage on the Mediterranean gave it, for better or worse, an identity with the coastlands, and so with Europe and Africa, which could not be overlooked, once sea travel became established.
But it would be quite insufficient to think of Pal. as only Mediterranean in character, because everywhere around its shores the influence of the sea is limited inland by relief and modification of climate. In fact, the Mediterranean influence in Pal. does not penetrate far enough inland to claim the whole even of this narrow land as its preserve. Other influences must be taken into account.
B. Palestine and the desert. Palestine lies on the outer margin of one of the world’s great deserts. In numerous ways that desert makes its influence felt within the land—by the hot, dustladen winds that blow out from it; by the fingers of desert that encroach upon southern Judea and the Jordan Rift; most of all, however, by the repeated excursions of desert tribes from Arabia, reaching out to the more fertile lands beyond the desert rim. Over much of the Middle E, the desert continues down to the seashore. Here in Pal., there is a humid littoral some fifty to eighty m. wide, in which the ancient rivalries between the inhabitants of the desert and the sown land could be fought out. Thus George Adam Smith writes of Syria (HGHL, p. 30) as “the north end of the Arabian world,” and “the most common receptacle of the Arabian drift.”
C. Palestine and the ancient trade routes. In Smith’s words is an implicit challenge to the normal “western” view of Pal. as a terminus of routes from the W; that is, as the eastern end of the Mediterranean world (which, in turn, was the world of Southern Europe). Since the desert lay behind the narrow Levant coastlands, there was no question of European trade routes continuing due E; it was necessary either to establish interchange points on the coast, or to avoid the area by diverting to N or S (i.e., along the lines which, in a much later period, became the Suez Canal route and the “Berlin-Baghdad” railway.) Quite apart, therefore, from the religious motivation that inspired the Crusades and produced their “foothold” kingdoms in the 12th and 13th centuries, there was excellent economic reason for European presence at the “end of the line” on the Levant coast, and excellent natural reason for Europeans penetrating no further. At the same time, and in the long run prob. more importantly, Pal. served as the “end of the line” in quite another sense for the inhabitants of the Arabian world, whether moving seasonally or permanently into its richer lands from their own arid territories.
D. Palestine and the Fertile Crescent. This northern end of the Arabian world is bordered by a belt of better watered lands that, roughly semicircular in shape, is well-known as the Fertile Crescent. It stretches from Egypt, through Pal. and northern Syria, to the Mesopotamian plain and the Persian Gulf. Its fertility is not due to a single cause—in the center of the arc it is largely attributable to rainfall, whereas at the two ends it is a result of irrigation waters from the Nile and Euphrates—but fertility of any kind has been attractive when bordered by desert and rugged mountains. Here in the Crescent grew up the early riverine civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and communication between them made of Pal. a land of passage, the great routes of the ancient world following the narrow fertile belt between desert and sea (see Roads). With such a tantalizing zone of fertility forming the northern rim of their horizon, it is not difficult to explain the eruption of the desert tribes into the settled lands of the Crescent, or, for that matter, the rivalry between its two ends.
It has therefore become commonplace to speak of Pal. as a narrow bridge between N and S, at a point where the Fertile Crescent is curving in that direction, parallel with the Mediterranean coast. The list of invasions that has moved across this bridge, in both directions, is a long one (Smith, HGHL, pp. 32, 33). Today, however, this function is largely in abeyance, and it is safe to say that, if normal relations are ever restored in the Middle E, it is as a bridge between E and W rather than N and S that Pal. will be viewed, the oil pipelines of the 20th cent. replacing the Venetian trade links of the 13th. What is certain, however, is that the revelation of Himself made by God was set in lands whose situation has assured them, in successive periods, of focal importance in world affairs.
III. Landscapes and regions
Strategic though its position may be at the Middle Eastern crossroads, the land of Pal. is remarkable for its small size in contrast to such neighboring entities as Egypt, Arabia, or Syria. Its dimensions should be realized: from Dan to Beer-sheba, the historic limits of the land, is 145 m.; from the nearest point on the Mediterranean coast Jerusalem lies, as the crow flies, thirty-two m. inland, with Jericho fifteen m. further on. From Nazareth to Jerusalem, the straight-line distance is less than sixty-five m. (although the journey made by the boy Jesus and His parents would, admittedly, have involved greater distance and considerable detour). Lastly, the distance between Jerusalem and the city that was for so long its rival, if not its enemy—Samaria—is thirty-six m., or well within the everyday range of the modern commuter. On this small stage almost the whole of the Biblical drama, from Joshua to the early chs. of Acts, was played out.
Smallness does not mean in this instance, however, lack of variety. Within the confines of the land there are a coastal plain, two ranges of mountains, the world’s deepest surface gash, and an inland sea fifty m. in length. At least seven distinctive regions can be identified, whereas a refined version of this regional subdivision involves no less than forty-two units (Kallner and Rosenau [1939]).
A. The heartland (central highlands). The heartland of Israel, in the centuries following occupation of Pal., lay in the hills that run between the coastline and the Jordan, and is roughly parallel to both. This “hill country” rises to a little over 3,000 ft.; it is at its broadest and highest in the latitude of Hebron, and both declines and becomes more broken as one goes either N or S from there. On the W, the slope of the hills toward the Mediterranean is relatively gentle: on the E, the descent to the Jordan valley is much more abrupt. None of this upland is genuinely fertile; cultivation is possible only where springs or wells of water are available, and much of it is true desert. The general impression is one of a bare and stony land, for the forests that once covered its moister parts have long since given way to axe or animal. In places, the horizontal limestone strata (see below) create the illusion that the hill slopes have been terraced, protruding as they do in a series of benches; terracing has indeed sometimes taken place, but in the main this is a country for pastoralists, rather than for cultivators.
The hills of Judea—the “mountains...round about Jerusalem” (Ps 125:2)—form a sufficiently compact mass to afford some military advantage to the nation occupying them, and this undoubtedly helped the southern kingdom by contrast to the northern, whereas the Philistines, the long-time enemies of Israel within the land, do not seem ever to have penetrated the massif. Northward from Jerusalem, in the “hill country of Ephraim,” lay the strongpoint of the northern kingdom after the separation. Here the upland becomes more broken and less defensible; it is more of a dissected plateau, with isolated summits such as Mounts Gerizim and Ebal, and it terminates northward in the broad block of Mount Gilboa. Where it does so, the “heartland” terminates also, for as the hills open out northward they give access to the central lowland of Pal.—the Plain of Esdraelon; that is to say, these northern hills are open to one of the great routeways of the ancient world. The heartland is essentially mountainous—the enemies of Israel reasonably concluded that Israel’s God was a god of the hills (1 Kings 20:23). In its fertile pockets, the most powerful of the twelve tribes made their homes, very much as the Scottish clans occupied the fertile glens among the barren hills, the strength of the tribe or clan depending upon the extent of the fertile area under its control.
The northern end of the upland includes the region of Samaria, an intermediate zone of scattered hills, where movement is easier (Smith points out [HGHL, p. 220] that most of the references to chariot driving in the OT apply to this area; such a vehicle could have made little headway over the hills of Judea) and where attack was more likely. The main range, although interrupted by the descent to the Plain of Esdraelon, sends out an arm in a NW direction that reaches the sea coast in the blunt promontory of Mount Carmel.
Carmel rises to less than 2,000 ft., but it does so directly from the seashore, and therefore forms a more impressive feature than its altitude figure would suggest. Projecting westward as it does, the Carmel range receives a somewhat higher rainfall than the area to the E of it, and its vegetation is different in consequence; the cover is denser and included, in the past, a good deal of woodland.
The Carmel range is only four to five m. broad, but it effectively cuts off the coastal plains of Philistia and Sharon to the S from the narrower coastlands of Phoenicia. It also acts as a low but definite barrier between Sharon and the Plain of Esdraelon, and so lies across the historic route between Egypt and Mesopotamia (see Roads). This has given to the passes through the range a particular importance, out of all proportion to the difficulty of crossing it: an importance that has in the past extended to the towns that stood at the northern end of the gaps, esp. Megiddo, and which persisted at least up to the time of Napoleon’s campaign of 1797.
B. The Plain of Esdraelon. The mountains that form a rugged backbone for Pal., from Judea N to the Lebanon, are interrupted for a short distance N of Samaria by a downfaulted basin that affords a lowland passage from the seacoast N of Carmel to the Jordan valley. Nowhere along this E-W line does the altitude rise above 300 ft.: the basin itself is linked with the coast by the valley of the Kishon and with the Jordan by the narrow vale of Jezreel. The central plain itself is roughly triangular in shape, with a side of some fifteen miles. It has a floor of alluvium that, when drained, yields excellent soil, given peaceful conditions in which to cultivate it. Formerly it was marshy, and Sisera’s chariots came to grief there (Judg 4:15; 5:21).
From the surrounding hills, the plain must have appeared a tempting goal, and the Israelites duly occupied it. As Baly remarks (Baly, 1957, p. 148), if it was Jewish territory, it was “a possession for which they paid very dearly.” For if Judea has been the heartland, Esdraelon has been the cockpit—the crossroads where armies converged and battles were fought. Seldom has the potential fertility of the plain been available for peaceful exploitation: its location is too vital to the broader purposes of peace and war. (For a list of the battles fought here, see Smith, HGHL, pp. 253-268. Rev 16:16 would seem to indicate that the list is not yet complete: Armageddon-Mount Megiddo.)
C. Galilee. Beyond the transverse break in the mountain chain created by the Plain of Esdraelon, the land rises again, abruptly, to the hills of Galilee. A series of scarp edges overlook the plain on the N, rising as much as 1,000 ft. above it, and forming the rim of Lower Galilee. This northern edge of the plain is dominated by the isolated summit of Mount Tabor. The region is normally divided into two—an upper and a lower section—for descriptive purposes; Lower Galilee has summits averaging 2,000 ft. in elevation, whereas Upper Galilee beyond it rises to 3,000 ft. and more. Similar in structure, the two parts of the region are very different in landscape. Lower Galilee, a land of limestone hills and fertile basins, was one of the garden spots of the ancient world, well populated, and supporting a considerable number of cities. It received the accolade from Josephus as “universally rich and fruitful,” and certainly from the gospel narratives there emerges the picture of a region throbbing with life. The settlements and cultivated lands lay in a series of basins in the hills, separated from each other by low and often barren divides. The ministry of Jesus would have taken Him out of the Nazareth basin, which lies just N of the scarp above Esdraelon, and over the surrounding hills, from settlement to settlement, through the olive groves that spread over the lower slopes and the fields of grain that covered the basin floors.
Upper Galilee, by contrast, is in Baly’s phrase “aloof and windswept.” It is higher, wetter, and more exposed, and it forms a kind of transition zone between Pal. proper and the mountains of Lebanon. Its population has always been sparse, and Smith (HGHL), ever alert to the military or strategic situation, saw a parallel with the mountain rim of Britain’s Indian Empire on the NW Frontier. The “step up” from Lower to Upper Galilee occurs on a line level with the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, N of which summit levels increase to 3,000 ft. and above.
These Galilean hills fall away eastward to the shores of the lake; from 2,000 or 3,000 ft. above sea level they drop to 680 ft. below. Level by level during the descent, the climate and vegetation change—from cheerless moorland and woods to tropical heat and vegetation at the lakeside. Formerly, these eastward-facing slopes of the Galilean hills, with their fruit and grain crops, supported a whole string of lakeshore towns; not only did the lake itself provide employment in fishing and transport, but this western shore of the lake carried a section of the main N-S trade route, a route that crossed the lowland just N of the lake and headed for Damascus. Lower Galilee then lay across the commercial axes of the land favored both by climate and by situation, and its population grew dense. At the time of the Jewish war it is estimated that its population was 400,000 (Reifenberg [1955]) and that it possessed at least nine towns with a population of more than 15,000.
These three regions, the heartland, the central plain, and Galilee, together make up the N-S spine of Pal. Parallel with this spine, to E and W, runs a line of lowland.
D. The coastal plain. On the W, between the mountains and the sea, is the coastal plain, comprising the plain of Philistia in the S (the Philistine homeland that contained their five cities of Gaza, Gath, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron); the plain of Sharon to the N of this, up to the point where the Carmel promontory (see above) reduces the coastal lowland to a few hundred ft. in width, and the plain of Asher N of Carmel. The last of these three areas of plain is linked by the Kishon valley with the Plain of Esdraelon. At its northern end, the coastal lowland is finally squeezed out by the mountains and N of here, in Phoenicia, it is present only in a few isolated areas.
As the Israelites first knew it, in the 13th cent. b.c. or thereabout, the plain that bordered their Great Sea was of little value to a nation of cultivators; although it possessed alluvial soils of high quality, much of it was covered with either drifting sand, forest, or marsh. Along the coast a dune barrier made sheltered landing points rare, and diverted the outflowing rivers into lagoons and swamps, which had to be drained. The forest of Sharon was gradually reduced by cutting, and the drifting sands have now to some extent been halted by planting trees.
With all these natural drawbacks, it was still an area that had much to offer to a people subsisting in the Judean hills. It was also a part of the land of promise. This being the case, the Israelites made constant attempts to occupy it. Their wars with its inhabitants, the Philistines, are a prominent feature of the record of Judges and Samuel, but their successes were rare. It was not until the reign of David that decisive victories were registered against the Philistines, and it prob. would be fair to say that, in modern terms, Israel had a thorough-going inferiority complex about them before David showed the way by killing their champion, Goliath (1 Sam 17). It was prob. in consequence both of the natural hosility of the coastline and the military hostility of its inhabitants that Israel developed no attachment to the sea (see Sea). Most of the important harbor cities of the Levant lie N of Carmel—esp. in Phoenicia—and it was not until a Herod constructed Caesarea that a significant port was created S of Carmel, and then it was a wholly artificial harbor.
E. The Shephelah. With its northern tip under the shadow of Mt. Carmel, the coastal plain broadens steadily southward between the sea and the hills. As it does so, an intermediate or piedmont zone appears, breaking the descent from the mountains to the sea. This piedmont zone was given by the Hebrews the paradoxical name of “valley” (shephelah q.v.), although in reality it is a belt of gently rolling, low hills between 500 and 1,000 ft. in height (Smith [HGHL] describes them as “downs” in the English sense), separated from the mountain chain by a narrow valley. The name Shephelah is now commonly used in regional descriptions of the area.
The main significance of this region was military. Because the Shephelah lay between the coastal plain and the mountains of Judea, it could act as a kind of “outwork” to the defenses of the heartland. As Baly puts it (Baly [1957], p. 144), “Whereas conquest of the Shephelah was always a necessary preliminary to the conquest of the mountains, it was only a preliminary.” These wooded hills (they formerly had a covering of sycamores) would serve to slow an attack from the W, which would thus lose its momentum before it confronted the main mountain defenses of Judea. In all their campaigns against Israel, the Philistines do not seem to have breached the outwork; their decisive victory against Saul was gained far to the N, at Mt. Gilboa (1 Sam 31), whereas a number of Israel’s successful actions against the Philistines took place precisely in the area protected by the Shephelah (cf. 1 Sam 14:13; 2 Sam 5:25, etc.).
The Shephelah, however, protected Judah only and not that part of the central spine lying further N. These piedmont hills, of Eocene limestone (see IV below), do not extend much further N than the latitude of Jerusalem—one more military disadvantage for the northern kingdom after its separation from Judah. They terminate, in fact, immediately N of the famous valley of Aijalon, up and down which so many of the invaders of Judah either marched or fled.
F. The Jordan Rift Valley. To the E of the central spine, the hills drop precipitously to what is not so much a plain as a hole in the earth’s surface. Nowhere else does that surface sink to such levels: -1,274 ft. at the shore of the Dead Sea, and -2,600 ft. at the sea’s deepest point. This hole, occupied in turn by the upper Jordan, the Sea of Galilee (600 ft. below sea level), the main stem of the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and the broad valley of the Arabah is the result of crustal faulting of the surface and forms part of a much larger system of faults crossing the Middle East into Africa.
It begins in the N, where the headstreams of the Jordan drop down from Lebanon, and reach the small Lake Huleh (now largely drained and reclaimed) as a normal valley. South of here, however, the Jordan enters a gorge, and cuts its way down to the Sea of Galilee. There is nothing in the appearance of the rolling, grass-covered slopes of this once busy region to betray the fact that it is below sea level; the lake is some twelve m. by five, and its shores are steep though not precipitous. South of the lake, the Jordan enters a trench known as the Ghor, and continues to fall, entering an environment on the trench floor that is largely desert. In this floor, the river has incised itself to a depth of as much as 150 ft. Within the incision, there is a dense, jungle-like vegetation of tamarisk and willow, but this ends abruptly where steep, bare cliffs mark the rise to the main floor of the trench; stained with minerals, these cliffs give “the impression of a chemical slagheap in an industrial area” (Fisher [1961], p. 403).
Crossing the Ghor would have been a laborious undertaking in OT times, and Joshua’s monument at Gilgal (Josh 4:20) marked an important milestone in Israel’s journeys. To recross the Jordan, starting from the hills of Judah, involves a 4,000 ft. descent into the cauldron of the Ghor (where the temperature may reach 100oF. every day for three months in the summer), and then the problem of crossing the Jordan bed itself before starting up the 4,000 ft. climb into the hills of Moab.
The Jordan emerges eventually into the Dead Sea basin, with the mountains of Judea towering in huge cliffs above the western shore (one of them crowned by Herod’s great stronghold of Masada) and the eastern wall of the valley rising more smoothly, but to an equal height, across the eight to nine m. wide sea. South of here the trench bears the name of Arabah; it is virtually waterless, and rises to some 650 ft. above sea level before falling away to the Gulf of Akaba.
G. Trans-Jordan. Beyond the Jordan to the E, the mountains rise in another N-S chain to form what is, in many ways, a different world from that W of the river. Although the two are separated in space only by the width of the Ghor, “it is necessary to insist upon the ‘otherness’ of the country E of the Jordan, because it goes a long way to explain the constant tendency of the Trans-Jordanians to feel that they are a separate people” (Baly [1957], p. 218). Yet owing to the original settlement of two and a half tribes E of Jordan (Num 31:1-27), part at least of this area must be—and by the Jews was—regarded as belonging to “the land.”
The mountains E of the river increase generally in height from N to S; in Bashan, E of Galilee, they are around 2,000 ft., and they rise southward, through Gilead and Moab, to reach over 5,000 ft. in Edom (where they form the Biblical Mt. Seir). This rise in height runs counter to a general decline in rainfall going from N to S (see V below), so that the mountains represent a narrow belt of well-watered land, thirty to fifty m. wide, between the tongue of desert in the Ghor to their W, and the main Arabian desert to their E. The highest summits are on the W, overlooking the Jordan valley, and both the surface and the amount of rainfall drop away to the E toward the margin of the true desert. The Mediterranean influences and specifically Mediterranean crops such as the olive and vine do not penetrate so far inland as to cross this second range of mountains, but the region is fertile and attractive enough to have diverted the two and a half tribes from any ambition to settle W of Jordan, whereas the resources of the region enabled Moab and Edom to develop sufficient strength to be quite formidable rivals of Israel. They also served as a constant temptation to desert tribes from further E.
This N-S strip of fertility and heathy upland is divided by nature into several sections by the valleys of Jordan tributaries cutting deep gorges where they plunge down to reach the floor of the Jordan Trench. These gorges form major obstacles even today, and the ancient highway that ran along the chain (see Roads) wound round their heads. From N to S the rivers are the Yarmuk, which divides Bashan from Gilead, the Jabbok, the Arnon, and the Zered, the latter forming the historic boundary between Moab and Edom.
Since the rivers divide the terrain into sections, it is possible to distinguish several subregions from N to S. The northern end of the range (lower in altitude), known both as Bashan and Hauran, receives plentiful rainfall from across Lower Galilee and possesses fertile volcanic soils. Consequently, it became an important cereal growing area, and served as one of the granaries of Rome. Its surface is that of an irregular plateau.
To the S lies Gilead, more mountainous and formerly almost as well known for its trees as was Lebanon. It produced its famous balm and it yielded excellent pasture which was what originally attracted the tribes of Reuben and Gad (Num 32:1), and which still attracts desert tribes to it in summer. To the S of Gilead lies Moab, whose king was a “sheep breeder” (2 Kings 3:4), able to deliver 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams to the king of Israel, although his country was subsequently devastated. Still further S lies Edom, among the highest mountains of the range (up to 5,700 ft.). The Edomites appear constantly in the Biblical narrative, but seldom in the role for which they were best known in the contemporary world—as traders, operating across the deserts from their rock hewn base at Petra. Their territory lay, on the whole, S of Pal., their northern boundary, the Zered River, entering the Dead Sea at its southern tip.
Thus this narrow strip of well watered land on the desert boundary, all of which fell for, some period at least, under Israel’s control, displays a wide variety of surface and produce, and added considerably to the resources of Pal. proper.
H. Regions bordering Palestine. These seven regions (above) comprise the land of Pal., but it is necessary also to place them in their larger setting by noticing how they relate to bordering regions on the N, E and S.
1. Lebanon. Reference already has been made to the transitional character of Upper Galilee. Going N from the land, the traveler finds himself climbing steadily toward higher mountains—the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. The former, to the W, rise directly from the coast, and are separated from the latter by a valley some ten to fifteen m. wide. The Anti-Lebanon, lying twenty-five to thirty m. inland, terminate at their southern end in the great mass of Mt. Hermon, “the majestic newel post of Israel” (Baly), rising to over 9,000 ft., and capped with permanent snows. The Lebanon mountains themselves rise above 10,000 ft., and with their abundant rainfall carry a forest cover that once included the famous cedars (only a few groups of these remain). High up on their limestone slopes, spring lines occur, and the most important role played by these northern mountains is undoubtedly to provide water, not only for the Jordan, but, in larger quantities, for the rivers flowing N and W through Syria.
Between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon lies the N-S valley known as the Bekaa which is followed by parts of the Orontes and Litani rivers and contains the “entrance to Hamath” (Num 34:8), or northern gateway to Palestine.
The Anti-Lebanon, although its snows supply the rivers Abana and Pharpar (2 Kings 5:12) with water as they flow E past Damascus, generally lacks the springs, like those that occur on the slopes of the Lebanon, and is a dry, barren range for the most part. To the E of it lie a series of lesser ranges of the same character, which fade off into the desert and are the home of nomads who pasture animals on their sparse vegetation.
In the desert, however, E of the mountains, lies the oasis of Damascus, and this has given to the NE corner of Pal. a much greater importance than its resources might lead one to expect. This has been a gateway into the land over which countless invaders have traveled, and through which the Apostle Paul passed to his encounter on the road (Acts 9:3)—the road along the foot of the Anti-Lebanon and skirting the hills of Bashan. By this route, the influence of civilizations and lands further E has penetrated into northern Palestine.
2. The desert to the east. The desert everywhere touches, of course, the eastern border of the land. The higher rainfalls produced by the Trans-Jordan mountains quickly fade out in the “rain-shadow” to the E, and the steppe becomes desert. Much of what lies beyond the margin is volcanic in character; lava flows of basalt form ragged outcrops or isolated hills, and these reach their highest elevation in the Jebel Druse (almost 5,000 ft.), a wild region of rocks and caves, which has historically served as a refuge for outlaws and minority groups. The northeastern edge of the land was not always so desolate as it today appears: the Decapolis (q.v.), the league of Gr. cities E of the Jordan, extended far out into the desert, supported by elaborate aqueducts and irrigation works, and carrying on a flourishing trade between E and W.
3. The desert to the south. There remains the southern border of the land. It was on this side that Pal. lay most open to attack by desert tribes. There is no topographic barrier like the Jordan Valley on the E; the land rises in gentle undulations to the Judean mountains. Nor is there a counterpart of the Shephelah to provide an outpost line. On the contrary, here in the S, the desert penetrates deep into the land, embracing southern and southeastern Judea, which thus formed a natural part of the territory over which the desert tribes ranged. It was a troublesome frontier, therefore. Its barren character (see South) gave the Hebrews their word for the S—נֶגֶב, parched. Israel’s hold on the desert was never long maintained S of Beer-sheba; Baly (1957) states that only three times in their history did the Jewish kingdoms overcome the natural obstacles sufficiently to hold the Negev for a short time. The Negev in any case did not belong to the land of promise: the border of the land promised to Abraham was to extend from the “river of Egypt” to the Euphrates (Gen 15:18) and the former, now the Habesor, reaches the sea at Gaza, having risen SE of Beer-sheba. On this frontier at least, then, Judah maintained its position in the God-given land up to the time of the captivity.
IV. Geology and structure
The general position of Pal. in relation to Middle Eastern structures can be likened to a building. The principal feature is the basement complex or stable shield area, formed of very ancient crystalline materials, against which pressure from the N has forced younger materials. The effect of this pressure (which appears to be still continuing) has been to cause cracks in the basement rocks—since they tend to fault rather than fold—and some of the major faults determining structures are shown on the relief map. To this pressure, in particular, are attributable the form of the Red Sea, the separation of Arabia from Africa, and the existence of the Rift Valley occupied by the Jordan and Dead Sea.
North of the Arabian and Egyp. shield areas, the main zone of folding is to be found in Asia Minor and Iran, whereas between these two major belts is an intermediate zone of moderate folding—less pronounced than that of the Anatolian or Persian mountains, but sufficient to raise the Lebanon Mountains as an anticlinal chain reaching 10,000 ft.
As is often the case in a zone of pressure against a stable mass, the Palestinian borderland has for long periods been submerged beneath seas forming in a downfold at the margin of the shield. Consequently, marine deposits are abundant, and whereas the early geological history of the land was dominated by the deposition of Nubian sandstone (which seems to have continued over a very long period of Paleozoic and Mesozoic time), the later stages were marked by deposition of limestone, chalk, and chalky marls.
These materials have been gently folded, mainly on a N-S axis, so that the Lebanon, the Anti-Lebanon and the Judean mountains all represent anticlinal features. Much more prominent, however, are the results of the faulting. These are concentrated in two areas: (1) Galilee, where a large number of step faults occur, mostly running E-W, giving the region its basin structure and the general form of the “staircase” descending from Upper to Lower Galilee; (2) the main Rift Valley. The latter must rank as one of the outstanding tectonic features of the earth’s crust, a feature to rank with the erosional wonders of the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. The line of the rift can be traced S from Pal., through the Arabah and the Gulf of Akaba to the Red Sea, and thence through Ethiopia into E Africa. As the map shows, the rift becomes pronounced only where it reaches its lowest point at the Dead Sea, but from there S, the faults on either side are almost continuous and remarkably parallel. The floor of the rift has been let down and then filled with a considerable depth of recent deposits among which the most prominent are the white Lisan beds on the shores of the Dead Sea. Elsewhere, by contrast, there is little evidence of faulting, and the geological map does not indicate the presence of any faults, e.g., in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. (There has in the past been speculation regarding a connection between tectonic activity and possible fulfillment of apocalyptic statements set in this area.)
With the long continued marine deposition and the lack of severe folding, most of the rocks exposed in Pal. are of secondary age or later. The oldest formation covering any substantial area is the Nubian sandstone, the main spread of which lies S of Pal. (It is in this rosecolored sandstone that the desert city of Petra is carved.) The dating of this formation seems difficult to establish, but its deposition appears to have stretched from Paleozoic into Mesozoic time, and to represent tribal conditions beyond the marine transgressions occurring further W. It overlies the granites of the basement complex, so that the latter are not exposed anywhere within the borders of Pal., although they are close to the surface in the Negev.
To a remarkable degree, the spine of Pal. is the province of two, and only two, formations, both of them of Cretaceous age. These are the Cenomanian limestones and the Senonian chalk, both of them named for comparable formations occurring in the Paris Basin in France. They were laid down in a series of marine transgressions, beginning in the Jurassic period (and attested by the presence of limestones of that age), and reaching their climax in the Cretaceous period that succeeded it. Deposition of limestone or chalky sediments continued through the Senonian (or Upper Chalk) period into the Eocene, and these Eocene limestones also cover considerable expanses within the land.
The oldest of these formations, the Cenomanian, is the limestone that underlies W Judea, much of Galilee, and the Carmel range; in area, it is the most extensive in Pal. It is folded only gently, if at all, and on the bare hillsides the individual strata often protrude in such horizontal bedding that they create the impression of being artificial terraces. As in most limestone country, caves are common; surface water is scanty, and karstic features are found everywhere, so that in this climate the resulting landscape is often rock strewn and uneven in appearance. Water supply occurs in the form of springs and spring lines, and the population that these can support is necessarily clustered around them and limited in numbers. The Cenomanian yields little soil, and in general produces at best a grassland and shrub vegetation.
The Senonian, or Upper Chalk, is rather less extensive. It can, however, easily be distinguished from the limestone above and below it by the landscape it creates. It is softer than either the Cenomanian or Eocene limestone, and forms smoothly rounded or rolling hills, quite different in outline from those carved from the more massive limestones. In Judea, this transition from smooth slopes to abrupt ones with cliffs, crags, and gorges is best seen on the eastern side of the mountains, where they fall toward the Dead Sea.
Chalky marls (or chalk with an admixture of clay) often are found in association with the chalk, and in the desert these form a truly depressing landscape, “a series of greyish white or yellow hillocks” (Fisher, 1961).
The Senonian formations, being less resistant, also can be distinguished from the Cenomanian because they normally form lower features or valleys. Thus the valley, e.g., which separates the Shephelah from the main upland of Judea, is developed on the Senonian.
The Eocene period, at the beginning of the Tertiary, saw the continued deposition of limestones, and these remain intact in Upper Galilee, Samaria, and the Shephelah, although most of the cover has been removed from the main mountain areas. In the case of the Shephelah, the Eocene forms rolling hills on the flank of the main upland.
To these basic Palestinian structures and formations, a great variety of more recent materials has been added in the form of a drift cover. One of the main sources of these materials has been vulcanicity. Basalt flows of various dates have spread over the land, mainly from the much larger lava fields to the E, e.g., the Jebel Druse. Galilee is the region of the land most affected, for to the lava it owes not only the existence of the Sea of Galilee (ponded back behind a basaltic barrier) but also the fertility of its soils. There is indeed a striking contrast between the limestone and the lava in this respect.
Most of this volcanic activity is recent, and some of it is still going on, as witness the hot springs at Tiberias on the shore of Galilee and at other points in the Rift Valley, where the reaction of heat with mineral substances produces rock colors that remind one of the comparable area of Yellowstone Park.
Others of the recent surface materials are produced by wind action. There are patches of loess, the fine wind-borne dust that settles in thick blankets around desert areas and produces soils of fine structure and fertility, if they can be watered. There are also, esp. on the borders of the Negev, areas blown clear of all finer materials, and which therefore possess a surface of stones and pebbles; in some cases the wind has blown out considerable hollows or depressions, with stony floors. These features are known as hamadas. Along the coast, too, are wind-blown sand dunes stretching, in some cases, several m. inland, a permanent threat to the cultivated lands.
The remainder of the drift cover is composed of alluvia; that is, of water-borne materials, which in some cases date back to the Tertiary period and in others represent the product of the last winter’s rainfall. The dry summers of Pal. and the centuries of soil erosion that have stripped the land (as discussed in sections V and VIII below) have produced between them a huge volume of loose, eroded material to be washed either to the sea or to the Jordan, and in the case of the latter it must be borne in mind that the great depth of the Rift Valley gives the rivers flowing—or rather falling—into it an immense cutting power. Changes in level of the Mediterranean Sea have insured the existence of a broad alluvial plain S of Carmel, whereas in the Rift Valley it is necessary to imagine the Dead Sea, or some predecessor of it, as occupying the whole valley floor as far N as Galilee and well S of its present terminus. Likewise the Plain of Esdraelon is floored with recent materials; like the Lake Huleh basin further N it was, until reclaimed in the 20th cent., swampy and of little agricultural use.
V. Climate
The marginal character of Pal. is first and foremost a fact of climate. It is a product of the interplay between continental and maritime influences, in a small but mountainous area bordered on three sides by landmasses and on the fourth by the sea. This situation is then rendered more complex by the interlocking of sea and land in the Middle E; the Persian Gulf, for example, considerably affects the pressure systems, esp. in summer, and the Mediterranean itself acts in some climatic senses more like a large lake than an ocean. As a result, the main source areas of the air masses that affect Pal. are the Indian Ocean and Asia Minor, but air from these regions reaches Pal. along circuitous routes and is considerably changed in character by the time it arrives.
A. Summer conditions. In summer, a trough of low pressure lies over the Persian Gulf and a smaller low is to be found in a direct E-W line with this, over Cyprus. These lows draw in from the Indian Ocean monsoon air; it flows over Mesopotamia, and tends to circle round Cyprus, arriving back over the Pal. coast from the W. Such moisture as it had at its source is long since shed, and it is this air that dominates over Pal. in summer, yielding a little cloud and dew but virtually not a drop of rain between June and September. Rarely does cooler air from northern latitudes succeed in reaching the area in these summer months; the only variations occur when continental air from Africa and Arabia is drawn northwards, intensifying the heat. These inflows of desert air are common occurrences all along the outer margins of tropical deserts; they may be known by the name of sirocco applied to the hot desert wind, or in Egypt as khamsin, and in the Levant sometimes as shlouq. They make life almost intolerable while they last, with relative humidity very low and clouds of dust and grit filling the stifling air.
B. Winter conditions. In winter, although the Eurasian and African landmasses are dominated by high pressure conditions, the Middle E and esp. the Levant experience much more variable conditions than in summer. Between the two highs there is an irregular succession of lows—that is, of depressions—that form and reform during the winter months. Most of these have their origins over the Mediterranean, whose indented coastline and irregular mountain border offer plenty of atmospheric “backwaters” in which depressions can form. Some of them are prob. the survivors of the Atlantic depressions that cross southern France from the Bay of Biscay. All of them tend to strike the Levant coast, with its obstructing mountains, and some of them survive and even intensify as they veer northward toward Iraq and Iran. As they pass, they draw in continental air from both N and S, and this may be of varied character, wet or dry, cold or relatively warm, by the time it reaches the Levant coast. Consequently, winter weather in Pal. is considerably less predictable than summer heat and droughts; Eurasia, Africa, and the sea all in turn influence temperature and rainfall.
C. Temperatures. Palestine lies between 30o and 33o N Latitude. Summer temperatures are therefore likely to be high, but modified locally by elevation and distance from the sea. In fact, the relief of the country is broken enough to provide some striking local variations in temperature. Along the coastal plain, the summer winds blow steadily onshore, and tend to hold down temperatures from reaching oppressive levels. The daily range in summer is small, but the relative humidity is high. Further from the coast in summer, the effect of the sea breezes is lost (they may arrive, but too late in the day to moderate the heat), and while relative humidity falls to very low levels (less than twenty percent at noon in Jericho) the daily range of temperature is somewhat greater, making the heat slightly more bearable. In the mountains, temperatures fall off with increasing elevation, but at Jerusalem the average daily temperature in August is still over 74oF, despite the 2,500-ft. elevation.
In winter, as might be expected, the coastal plain possesses a mild climate, and frost is virtually unknown. In the mountains, however, temperatures fall off markedly with height, to produce a long lying snow cover in Lebanon and the mountains of Trans-Jordan. The effect of relief is, in fact, rather complex; Jerusalem, at 2,500 ft., has a January mean of 47oF., whereas Jericho, at -840 ft., has 59o, not simply because of low elevation, but because, down in the Rift Valley, winter nights are bitterly cold although winter day temperatures will rise high. The mean is misleading in giving the impression that Jericho in January has the same temperature conditions as Florida; it certainly does not.
The annual range of temperatures for stations on the coast, in the Judean hills and in the Rift Valley, is as set out in the following table:
The fierce summer heat of the desert, intensified by the sunken nature of the Rift, shows in the high summer figures for Jericho. With a mean of 88oF. for two months, and daily range of 25-27o, the daytime temperature exceeds 100o regularly between June and September. Although such maxima do not occur at higher elevations within the land, the rest of Pal. does experience, from time to time in summer, desert-like conditions, when air from Arabia is drawn N by a period of lowered pressures in that direction. Strong winds blow from the S (Luke 12:55; see also South), the temperature may rise by as much as 30oF., and the relative humidity falls to ten percent or less.
D. Rainfall. Rain is the most important factor in Palestine’s climate; not only in amount, but in season of occurrence, its regime dominates life in the land (see also Rain).
Rain-bearing winds reach the Levant from the SW. They are charged with moisture by their passage across the Mediterranean, and those reaching the northern Levant have had a longer fetch over the sea than those that merely “cut the corner” from Egypt to Philistia. Consequently, it is generally true that rainfall declines from N to S throughout the Levant. Equally, it follows that the amount diminishes as one leaves the coast behind, so that there would be, over a level surface, a regular transition from, for example, forty inches of rainfall annually on the coast, through a steppe region with twenty or fifteen inches, to desert where the rainfall in a given year may be two inches or zero.
Rainfall, however, is not the result simply of distance from the sea but of relief. The mountains of the Levant lie across the path of the rain bearing southwesterlies, obliging them to rise and to precipitate their moisture. Especially during the second half of the rainy season (i.e., the spring), this relief or orographic factor is important in determining the amount of rain that falls, at least on the windward slopes of the hills. On the E, or leeward, side in consequence, there is likely to be a “rain shadow”; the winds have deposited their moisture on the W facing slopes, and are drying out as they descend the E side of the mountains. This situation accounts for the tongue of desert that protrudes N up the Jordan Rift, and it intensifies the change to desert conditions that takes place on the E side of the mountains of Edom, which themselves receive fifteen to twenty inches. It equally works to the advantage of a few areas: Bashan (or Hauran), lying E of Galilee, receives a rainfall high enough to have made it fertile and prosperous as a granary of the Rom. empire because between it and the sea lies the Plain of Esdraelon and the relatively low region of Lower Galilee, and the rain-bearing winds from the sea can pass over these low elevations without losing all their moisture.
There are thus two possible generalizations about rainfall: (1) it diminishes from N to S, and (2) it diminishes from W to E across Pal. Both of these must be qualified by a third: (3) it depends on elevation and aspect. The resultant pattern is shown on the map.
The amounts shown on the map, however, are by no means dependable. Records kept in Jerusalem since 1846 show that whereas the long term average is in the region of twenty-five inches, only ten inches were received in 1932/3 and 1950/1, but in 1877/8, forty-three inches fell. In Nazareth, the figures for maximum and minimum annual totals are fifty-five and fifteen inches. It is axiomatic that, the lower the rainfall, the more unreliable it tends to be, and the more serious the fluctuations become. Famine plays a prominent part in the Biblical record from its first pages onward: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all experienced privations in the land, and Elijah warned Ahab (1 Kings 17:1) of famine conditions which lasted for three years. Although the tribes of the desert expected drought, and led a nomadic, pastoralist life, to the settled cultivators of Pal. it came as a periodic disaster, unpredictable and ruinous. As farmers and ranchers on the Great Plains of America have cause to know, it is the tendency of dry years to occur in rows that is the most devastating part of their effect: the farmer can withstand one, or perhaps even two, and still tide himself over but Elijah and Israel lived through three and Joseph saved the Middle E when no less than seven subnormal years of rainfall occurred in succession.
In the absence of rain, the dew (q.v.) plays an important part in the water supply of Pal., producing as much as one-quarter of the total amount of moisture in some areas. Dew is produced by cooling overnight of moisture-bearing air, and the source of this is, of course, the Mediterranean. Consequently, dews are heaviest on the coast, where they may occur on over 200 nights in the year, and diminish inland.
Undoubtedly the most significant factor in Palestine’s rainfall is its concentration in the winter season. This is a characteristic of all Mediterranean climates, and it is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Falling in winter, the precipitation is not immediately claimed by evaporation under a hot summer sun; it has a chance to soak into the earth and to charge springs and wells. The fact that it falls in winter also means that there is no precipitation in the growing season, when it is most needed. Mediterranean farmers historically, therefore, either have had to rely on snow-melt from the mountains (e.g., the Alps) for their summer moisture, or else must resort to storage of winter rain water and irrigation in summer.
The dry season in Pal. is clearly defined. Between mid-June and mid-September, it is virtually certain that no rain will fall. The blocking effect of a generally high pressure area in the western Mediterranean insures the undisturbed dominance in this period of dry and stable air that has crossed from the Persian Gulf and remained well warmed over the landlocked Mediterranean. Consequently, summer conditions are highly predictable. The longterm means for Jerusalem shows negligible rainfall recorded in June, July, August, and September; Tel Aviv over the period 1931-1960 recorded zero precipitation for June, July, and August, and only one-third to half a percent of the annual total falling in May and September.
For the farmer everything depends on the rains falling in the other seven or eight months of the year. The replacement of the dry monsoon air of summer by moister air from the W starts, rather hesitantly, in September, when a few showers may fall. It is not until October that thunderstorms generally herald the inward movement of maritime air from the W, nor does this moist air achieve anything like the same dominance over Pal. as does the summer air mass. Indeed, the “take-over” may be considerably delayed, which is disastrous when it occurs. Delay holds up farm work, esp. plowing, and reduces the period during which the rains can recharge the springs and wells from which the population has drawn its summer water supply. It is therefore not surprising (see Rain) that the Bible pictures the farmer as waiting for the “early” rain (James 5:7, etc.); that is, for the onset of the rainy season to relieve the drought of summer. He is almost certain (Baly, 1957) that the later the start of the rains, the smaller his harvest will be the following year.
After the onset of the rains in October, there may be another pause, and then the winter months are all wet. Eighty-four percent of the annual precipitation at Tel Aviv occurs in the months November through February; in the mountains of Judea the figure is seventy-seven to eighty percent. On the coast, December is the wettest month. In the mountains of the central “spine” it is usually January, and in the northern Negev the maximum—though scanty in total—occurs in March. March is also often the wettest month in Trans-Jordan. The rains come in with the depressions from the W; they are irregular in occurrence, and normally last for a day or two, after which there is a dry and finer period. This sequence is repeated at weekly or ten-day intervals throughout the rainy period. Rains usually are heavy and brief, rather than gentle and prolonged; they are produced by the movement of unstable air over a highly differentiated land surface.
By March, on the coast, and April, further inland, the rains begin to taper off. As this is the season of intense activity on the land, and the only part of the rainy season with rising temperatures and consequent plant growth, the importance of these late (or latter) rains is very great. A dry spring will reduce the volume of the harvest (the barley crop will be harvested in April or early May) and perhaps increase the danger of late frosts. Since the following months, as the farmer knows, are going to be completely dry, the longer the rains continue, the better he is likely to be pleased.
As, therefore, the rains between November and February are assured, even though their total may be uncertain, the incidence of rainfall in October and March is highly uncertain, and consequently becomes a matter for prayer to God and patient acceptance of what He is pleased to send.
E. Climatic regions. It will now be possible, following Baly (1957), to give a brief regional description of the climates of Pal.
1. Coastal plains. On the coastal plains, the proximity of the Mediterranean is felt in the cooling sea breezes that moderate daytime heat, and in the greater amounts of moisture received here, either as rainfall or as dew, compared with points inland. The summer weather is not particularly pleasant, however, as considerable heat often combines with high humidity in a way known to those who live on the Middle Atlantic seaboard of the USA; and although daytime maxima are depressed by sea breezes, night temperatures are uncomfortably high. Rainfall diminishes from N to S, and beyond Gaza the desert reaches the coast. The rainfall maximum occurs here early in December rather than in January.
2. Central highlands. In the mountains of the central spine, elevation tends to compensate for distance from the sea to maintain rainfall at constant amounts; thus Tel Aviv at sea level and Jerusalem at 2,500 ft. have virtually the same totals. In the mountains, the N receives more precipitation than the S, height for height. The increasing elevation reduces maximum temperatures and widens the daily range so that frost, unknown on the southern coast, is a common occurrence on the Judean hills, and snow falls from time to time. At higher levels, e.g., on Mt. Hermon or across the Rift Valley in Edom, snow lies long in winter. The mountain climate is generally invigorating and pleasant, apart from occasional very low temperatures in winter and injections of hot desert air in summer.
3. Rift Valley. In the Rift Valley E of the mountains, the influence of the Mediterranean is seldom felt. The valley lies in a profound rain shadow, and the desert margin swings N to include the floor of the Rift almost as far as the Sea of Galilee. The valley S of Jericho receives a very uncertain two inches of rain a year; the rain-bearing winds blow over this great gash and deposit their moisture on Edom or Gilead. In the N, however, where Lower Galilee offers little barrier to the passage of these winds, the latter retain some part of their moisture and arrive over the depression around the lake to encounter conditions that cause instability, and violent storms can occur over the lake.
The absence of maritime influence is also felt in the intense summer heat; the only possible comparison is with Death Valley in California. Temperatures at the southern end of the Dead Sea (Sodom) may be expected to exceed 100oF. almost daily for three months, and although the Galilee lakeshore does not heat up quite so fiercely, the August mean at Tiberias, beside the lake, is 87oF., only 1o lower than that of Jericho. At the same time, night temperatures in winter may fall quite low in the Rift, and the Dead Sea region possesses all the characteristics of an arid continental type of climate.
4. Trans-Jordan. East of the Jordan, the climate in the mountains resembles that of Judea, but with increasing distance from the sea the range of temperature becomes greater and the effect of the cooling sea breezes less. Rainfall increases, here also, with height, so that a narrow belt of well-watered hill country runs parallel with the Rift. Since the rainfall is diminishing southward, this belt becomes narrower in Edom (see map), but is still emphatically marked out from the desert to the S and E of it, for the mountains of Edom rise over 5,000 ft. and attract a rainfall of fifteen inches or more. On this E side of the Jordan, as on the southern fringe of Pal. around Beer-sheba, there is a narrow belt of what, technically, would be classified as steppe (or semi-arid continental) type climate, intermediate between the desert and the sub-humid zones, and having a rainfall of 8-12 inches.
There are thus three climatic types