Nadene Goldfoot
Yes, Mark Twain is the guy who wrote "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn," our childhood favorite. He went to Palestine at age 32 on a fun-time cruise for a holiday, just like people today go to Alaska on a cruise ship. It was a big deal, talked about in newspapers for months before the sailing date, and all knew about this great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land in the USA. It was to experience a picnic on a gigantic scale. Evidently, Arabs were hired when they were on land to take care of these passengers. Twain stepped aboard the steamship Quaker City on June 8, 1867, his fare of $1,250 (comparable to around $20,700 today) paid for by the San Francisco newspaper Alta California in return for twice-weekly dispatches about the trip for the paper; it was these columns that he subsequently reworked into the book published in 1869. After that trip he wrote his book, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.
It was advertised as the Excursion to the Holy Land, Egypt, the Crimea, Greece and intermediate points of interest, leaving from Brooklyn on February 1, 1867. The cruise ship of those days was a 1st class steamer and holding 150 cabin passengers so that the ship would hold 3/4 of its capacity only. They would have every necessary comfort, including a library and musical instruments with an experienced physician on board as well.
The trip would go from Smyrna (Smyrna was a Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. ) towards the Holy Land and go through the Grecian Archipelago. From Beirut it will go to Joppa. From Joppa to Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem and other points of interest in the Holy Land can be visited. They planned on after leaving Joppy to visit Alexandria in Egypt, a 24 hr trip. Mark Twain was such a good writer, and a great reader as well. He had read the Bible and used that knowledge when visiting the Holy Land.
"If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little- not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a diving-rod or a diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic. Last year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience--but this year they have been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven them in times of famine in former years. ...p. 187.
He wrote, "when the Prodigal traveled to "a far country," it is not likely that he went more than 80 or 90 miles. Palestine is only from 40 to 60 miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for part of another-possibly a whole one."
Remember this when talking about taking land from the Jews of today to make a state for the Palestinian Arabs. p. 203.
"The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history."
"We traversed some miles of desolate country hose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only 3 persons-Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds they were, and they charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe- a reed instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal as these same Arabs create when they sing. " p. 297.
Evidently Mark Twain came down with the Cholera while on the trip for he wrote," When one of them (passenger Pilgrims) in Damascus, (Syria) when I had the cholera, he had no real idea of doing it--I know is passionate nature and the good impulses that underlie it. We had left Capernaum (Capernaum ) was a fishing village established during the time of the Hasmoneans, located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1,500. Archaeological excavations have revealed two ancient synagogues built one over the other. A house turned into a church by the Byzantines is believed to have been the home of Saint Peter) behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It bore no semblance to a town, and had nothing about it to suggest that it had ever been a town. But all desolate and unpeopled as it was, it was illustrious ground. From it sprang that tree of Christianity.... "
Twain came down with Cholera: A bacterial disease causing severe diarrhea and dehydration, usually spread in water. Cholera is fatal if not treated right away. Key symptoms are diarrhea and dehydration. Rarely, shock and seizures may occur in severe cases. Treatment includes rehydration, IV fluids, and antibiotics.
So being a ship full of Christians, they would be interested in seeing Christian sites. As we see today, Capernaum. is in the Galilee of northern Israel is a Biblical village, located not far from other important Christian sites in Israel such as Bethsaida, the Mount of Beatitudes, and Tabgha, as well as the Jordan River and Tiberias on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
"We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls of Tiberias. We went into the town before nightfall and looked at its people-we cared nothing about its houses. Its people are best examined at a distance. They are particularly uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes. Squalor and poverty are the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear their dower strung on a strong wire that curves downward from the top of the head to the jaw-Turkish silver coins which they have raked together or inherited. Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some few had been very kindly dealt with by fortune. " This modern town-Tiberias-is only mentioned in the New Testament; never in the Old. "
Well, here's the skinny on this city: It's a town in Israel on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee founded probably in 18 CE by Herod Antipas and named in honor of the emperor Tiberius. It soon became the principal Jewish city on the lake. It's inhabitants took part in the war with Rome but without enthusiasm; surrendering to Vespasian at the first opportunity. (Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE so that is yet to come, and would be noted in the Old Testament.) Tiberias did become the seat of the patriarchate in the 3rd century and the town was a center of talmudic scholarship and a capital of Jewish Palestine until the transfer of the academy to Jerusalem in the 7th century. Josephus wrote about the Destruction of Jerusalem and 2nd Temple when it happened in 70 CE. Tiberias was a Roman Emperor reigning from 14 to 37 CE. In the year 19 he expelled the Jews from Rome and 4,000 young Jews were sent to Sardinia to fight the brigands.
Then he goes on to say: "The Sanhedrim (proper spelling is Sanhedrin) met here last, and for 300 years, Tiberias was the metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is one of the 4 holy cities of the Israelites, and is to them what Mecca is to the Mohammedan and Jerusalem to the Christian."
Oy vey! Even Twain is quite ill advised about Jews and their history as you can see. It is Jerusalem, the city of King David, that is our special city. In 1837, the city of Safed, where I lived for 4 years, had a big earthquake and part of the population moved to Tiberias as homes were covered with soil, which thereafter had a Jewish majority. Development of Jewish towns around the Sea of Galilee and of the hot springs south of the city enhanced its importance. Population in 1990 was 31,200. p. 215. When I lived in Safed from 1980-85, a few people had dug out their home and brought it up to date; a beautiful home. I was invited. I also was there during an earthquake and was in a tall skyscraper of an apartment building while it swayed back and forth, and I was on the top floor. Yikes!
"They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers, with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of in the Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness was their specialty. (I can see by this paragraph how easily a Christian is affected by what he reads in his bible about Jews.) Christendom...."p. 216. Twain had no idea what this Jew had to go through to arrive there. And his description sounds like a Nazi propaganda cartoon to me. We can read about Jews in the Ottoman Empire's Palestine in Meyer Levin's historic novel, THE SETTLERS. They had a rough time of it.
"The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe....it is just about 2/3 as large. ...this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its 6 funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this solemn, sailess, tintless lake, reposing within its rim of yellow hill and low, steep banks, and looking just as expressionless and unpoetical ...as any metropolitan reservoir.
On the NE shore of the sea was a single tree, and this is the only palms in the city of Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more attention than would a forest." "There were no fish to be had in the village of Tiberias. True, we saw 2 or 3 vagabonds mending their nets, but never trying to catch anything with them." p. 219.
In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird apparition marched forth at the head of the procession--a pirate, I thought, if ever a pirate dwent upon land. It was a tall Arab, as swarthy as an Indian; young-say 30 years of age. On his head he had closely bound a gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly fringed with tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the wind....."Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Savior, the country is infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is, in this life, to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians. Allah be with us!" P.220.
Mark Twain wrote as he saw life in 1867. He couldn't mess up descriptions of the land, as he had the wonderful land of the USA to compare it with. He showed his feeling as he described the people, though, who he made in his descriptions a picture to fit his ideas. He was hard on both the Arabs and the Jews. He may have been one of the first of demanding American ugly Americans abroad.
My use for these descriptions were to show that there was no country of Palestine, that the land was bare with weeds and swamps with mosquitoes. There was no population of Palestinians in mass but nomadic Bedouins, instead.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/6214/not-so-innocent-abroad/
Yes, Mark Twain is the guy who wrote "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn," our childhood favorite. He went to Palestine at age 32 on a fun-time cruise for a holiday, just like people today go to Alaska on a cruise ship. It was a big deal, talked about in newspapers for months before the sailing date, and all knew about this great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land in the USA. It was to experience a picnic on a gigantic scale. Evidently, Arabs were hired when they were on land to take care of these passengers. Twain stepped aboard the steamship Quaker City on June 8, 1867, his fare of $1,250 (comparable to around $20,700 today) paid for by the San Francisco newspaper Alta California in return for twice-weekly dispatches about the trip for the paper; it was these columns that he subsequently reworked into the book published in 1869. After that trip he wrote his book, THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.
It was advertised as the Excursion to the Holy Land, Egypt, the Crimea, Greece and intermediate points of interest, leaving from Brooklyn on February 1, 1867. The cruise ship of those days was a 1st class steamer and holding 150 cabin passengers so that the ship would hold 3/4 of its capacity only. They would have every necessary comfort, including a library and musical instruments with an experienced physician on board as well.
The trip would go from Smyrna (Smyrna was a Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. ) towards the Holy Land and go through the Grecian Archipelago. From Beirut it will go to Joppa. From Joppa to Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem and other points of interest in the Holy Land can be visited. They planned on after leaving Joppy to visit Alexandria in Egypt, a 24 hr trip. Mark Twain was such a good writer, and a great reader as well. He had read the Bible and used that knowledge when visiting the Holy Land.
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| Steamer off coast of Syria |
He wrote, "when the Prodigal traveled to "a far country," it is not likely that he went more than 80 or 90 miles. Palestine is only from 40 to 60 miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for part of another-possibly a whole one."
Remember this when talking about taking land from the Jews of today to make a state for the Palestinian Arabs. p. 203.
"The word Palestine always brought to my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States. I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I could not conceive of a small country having so large a history."
"We traversed some miles of desolate country hose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only 3 persons-Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds they were, and they charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe- a reed instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal as these same Arabs create when they sing. " p. 297.
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| Capernum The Greek Orthodox church of the Twelve Apostles, located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee on the site of ancient Capernaum. opened in 1931. Twain didn't see it. |
Twain came down with Cholera: A bacterial disease causing severe diarrhea and dehydration, usually spread in water. Cholera is fatal if not treated right away. Key symptoms are diarrhea and dehydration. Rarely, shock and seizures may occur in severe cases. Treatment includes rehydration, IV fluids, and antibiotics.
So being a ship full of Christians, they would be interested in seeing Christian sites. As we see today, Capernaum. is in the Galilee of northern Israel is a Biblical village, located not far from other important Christian sites in Israel such as Bethsaida, the Mount of Beatitudes, and Tabgha, as well as the Jordan River and Tiberias on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
 |
| Tiberias Today |
Well, here's the skinny on this city: It's a town in Israel on the Western shore of the Sea of Galilee founded probably in 18 CE by Herod Antipas and named in honor of the emperor Tiberius. It soon became the principal Jewish city on the lake. It's inhabitants took part in the war with Rome but without enthusiasm; surrendering to Vespasian at the first opportunity. (Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE so that is yet to come, and would be noted in the Old Testament.) Tiberias did become the seat of the patriarchate in the 3rd century and the town was a center of talmudic scholarship and a capital of Jewish Palestine until the transfer of the academy to Jerusalem in the 7th century. Josephus wrote about the Destruction of Jerusalem and 2nd Temple when it happened in 70 CE. Tiberias was a Roman Emperor reigning from 14 to 37 CE. In the year 19 he expelled the Jews from Rome and 4,000 young Jews were sent to Sardinia to fight the brigands.
 |
| This was the Jewish Court System , made up of 71 ordained scholars, probably rabbis which functioned as Supreme Court and as legislature. The head person who led it was called the Nasi, usually a descendant of Hillel. Before 70 CE it met in the Temple chamber-The Hall. The Sanhedrin ended before end of 4th century CE. |
Oy vey! Even Twain is quite ill advised about Jews and their history as you can see. It is Jerusalem, the city of King David, that is our special city. In 1837, the city of Safed, where I lived for 4 years, had a big earthquake and part of the population moved to Tiberias as homes were covered with soil, which thereafter had a Jewish majority. Development of Jewish towns around the Sea of Galilee and of the hot springs south of the city enhanced its importance. Population in 1990 was 31,200. p. 215. When I lived in Safed from 1980-85, a few people had dug out their home and brought it up to date; a beautiful home. I was invited. I also was there during an earthquake and was in a tall skyscraper of an apartment building while it swayed back and forth, and I was on the top floor. Yikes!
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| Orthodox Hassidic Jew of Today |
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| Post Card of 1870; Orthodox Jew of Palestine |
"The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe....it is just about 2/3 as large. ...this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its 6 funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this solemn, sailess, tintless lake, reposing within its rim of yellow hill and low, steep banks, and looking just as expressionless and unpoetical ...as any metropolitan reservoir.
On the NE shore of the sea was a single tree, and this is the only palms in the city of Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more attention than would a forest." "There were no fish to be had in the village of Tiberias. True, we saw 2 or 3 vagabonds mending their nets, but never trying to catch anything with them." p. 219.
 |
| Bedouins |
In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird apparition marched forth at the head of the procession--a pirate, I thought, if ever a pirate dwent upon land. It was a tall Arab, as swarthy as an Indian; young-say 30 years of age. On his head he had closely bound a gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly fringed with tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the wind....."Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Savior, the country is infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is, in this life, to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians. Allah be with us!" P.220.
Mark Twain wrote as he saw life in 1867. He couldn't mess up descriptions of the land, as he had the wonderful land of the USA to compare it with. He showed his feeling as he described the people, though, who he made in his descriptions a picture to fit his ideas. He was hard on both the Arabs and the Jews. He may have been one of the first of demanding American ugly Americans abroad.
My use for these descriptions were to show that there was no country of Palestine, that the land was bare with weeds and swamps with mosquitoes. There was no population of Palestinians in mass but nomadic Bedouins, instead.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/6214/not-so-innocent-abroad/
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