19th-Century Americans in the Holy Land

When the first American missionaries arrived in the Holy Land in 1819, it took three days to travel from their port of disembarkation in Jaffa to Jerusalem. When Mark Twain arrived nearly half a century later, he still found the roads “infernal” and the place as a whole “desolate and unlovely.” Jerusalem, he said, was “a pauper’s village … The glory of Jerusalem has indeed parted.” Americans’ engagement with the Holy Land in the 19th century is a multifold story. Following the missionaries in the early part of the century came the scholars, most notably Edward Robinson, the “father […]