Reading Robert Payne Without Embarrassment

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Let me relieve your embarrassment at reading and enjoying Robert Payne’s “The Splendor of the Holy Land—Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon”^a True, it is far below the level of most BAR readers. The author deals with four countries and a host of civilizations in a bare 190 pages printed in easy-to-read (i.e. large) type. And the cost per page is terribly expensive.

But it is a good read. And all but the most knowledgeable readers will pick up tidbits of information he or she will file away or consciously try to remember.

Payne is a travel writer. He enjoys the kind of trips we all wish we could take. Not that everything goes well for Payne, but what goes wrong only adds to the excitement and romance. He travels alone and at his own pace—except when his driver Abdul Razak careens at break-neck speed through desert canyons or decides that they will go to Jerash tomorrow because he has a girl friend there.

Payne knows that modernity will soon take the sense of discovery, adventure and accomplishment out of travelling. “Nevertheless, for a few more years, we can still travel in the Holy Land [he includes Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon] with a sense of its strangeness … We are still strangers travelling through a legendary land, aware that we are seeing everything through the veil of legends; and this veil, instead of obstructing our vision, unaccountably makes everything brighter.”

It helps to write well. And Payne does write well. Listen to his description of the Sea of Galilee.

“I can remember no day when the lake was not entirely pleasing. It was very feminine, diaphanous, trembling. It changed color every twenty minutes, and moved easily and carelessly from an intensely deep blue to a soft emerald to violet, but mostly it was a kind of emerald-blue. It changes color according to the wind or the clouds or the humidity of the air, and this constant change of color gives it a curious evanescence, so that you have the feeling that it exists on the very edge of things and at any moment will vanish into nothingness. Perhaps because the lake is below sea level colors seem to be brighter and voices louder, and the ordinary world is far away. Jerusalem is of the earth, all stone and rock, hard enough to test the spirits of the sternest prophets, and the lake is all grace and beauty, a place for dreams and visions.”

Payne has also done his homework. Not that the book is without its errors. He still has the Phoenicians inventing the alphabet, he tells us that Joshua’s arrival outside Jericho coincided with an earthquake that destroyed double walls nearly 30 feet thick, he confuses the city of Samaria with the region of the same name, and he tells us that Caliph Hakim leveled to the ground the rotunda built by Constantine over the tomb of Jesus. But there aren’t many more errors like this—at least that I caught—and in the overall picture, this is mere caviling. To compensate for the few errors, Payne gives us history, quotations from ancient records like the Bible and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, accounts of medieval travelers, reports from archaeologists, discussions with the natives and his own lovely descriptions.

Sometimes Payne will cover a site in but a few pages—a quick shaft of light, taking no chance that his readers will become bored. At other times, he delves more deeply. An example of the latter is the tomb of Abraham at Hebron. He describes the successive 042buildings constructed over the legendary cave of Machpelah and then he turns to the few extant accounts of explorations of the actual cave beneath the basically Herodian structure that still survives. Here is the perhaps somewhat imaginative account of the 8th century Arab traveler, Abu Bekr el Eskagy, of his exploration of the Machpelah cave:

“Because I was a well-known benefactor of the sanctuary, the guardian of the place agreed to let me enter the cave. He accordingly chose a day when there was a heavy downfall of snow and the cold weather prevented the pilgrims from coming. We stole into the sanctuary—myself, the guardian, and several workmen. The workmen lifted up the flagstone which covered the entrance to the cave. With a lamp in his hand, the guardian led me down a staircase with seventy-two steps. There I beheld a huge black slab on which there lay the body of Isaac, face upward. A full green cloth covered the body, and his long white beard was spread over the cloth. On two other slabs lay the bodies of Abraham and Jacob, their hair and beards spread out above the cloths. The guardian approached a wall in the cave, and I too drew near to look over his shoulder. At that moment a voice cried: Go from the haram! We fell down unconscious, and when we revived, we made our way back to the sanctuary.”

More than 350 years pass before we hear of another journey into the cave—this time by a monk who came to the Holy Land with the Crusaders. In an inner cave, he found at first only “earth dyed the color of blood”, but when he dug up the earth, “he came upon the bones of the saintly Jacob”, to quote from a contemporaneous Latin description of the monk’s descent into the cave. Then the monk cleared a passage in which he discovered the remains of Abraham himself, and, at his feet, the bones of Isaac:

“Arnulf had found a marvelous treasure beyond price. He hurried out of the cavern and told the prior and the monks that he had indeed discovered the remains of the venerable patriarchs. Thereupon they all praised God for what He had done. Arnulf washed the sacred relics in water and wine, and then set them on separate wooden boards prepared for the occasion, and went away.

The Latin account does not tell us what happened to the relics. Payne tells us:

“If the prior followed the normal custom of his time, they would have been enclosed in reliquaries and kept in church treasuries and shown to the faithful on high feast days. Small portions of the bones would be given to the Pope and to great princes of the West: so it happened that until recently one could see in a crystal reliquary in the Museum of the Duomo in Florence a sliver of brown bone, no larger and no thicker than a finger-nail, with the accompanying inscription: S. Abraham.”

All this may not be scholarship, but that it is entertaining, engrossing and informative cannot be denied.

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Near East Periodical Published

A Preliminary Near East Periodical Index has been published by the Near East Archaeological Society and is now available at a cost of $5.00 per copy.

The Index includes articles from the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, The Biblical Archaeologist, The Israel Exploration Journal, The Journal of Near Eastern Studies, and Levant. The Index lists articles in five sections: Author; Regional Studies; Biblical Studies; Languages and Literature; and General Studies. The Index was compiled by John M. Elliott.

Orders for the Index should be sent with checks for $5.00 per copy (includes postage) to Dr. Samuel Schultz, NEAS Secretary, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.

Let me relieve your embarrassment at reading and enjoying Robert Payne’s “The Splendor of the Holy Land—Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon”a True, it is far below the level of most BAR readers. The author deals with four countries and a host of civilizations in a bare 190 pages printed in easy-to-read (i.e. large) type. And the cost per page is terribly expensive. But it is a good read. And all but the most knowledgeable readers will pick up tidbits of information he or she will file away or consciously try to remember. Payne is a travel writer. He enjoys the […]