Chapter II: Missionaries as cultural brokers
II. 1. “Here may my last days be spent”: Eli Smith (1801–1857)
6. Biblical Researches in Palestine
Already during his first years abroad, Smith communicated regularly with scholars in the United States and Europe – another sign of his extraordinary work ethic.
When he traveled back to the United States in 1832, he visited his former teacher and friend Edward Robinson, professor of Biblical literature at Union Theologi-cal College in New York. Robinson’s scholarly knowledge, and Smith’s personal experience traveling with Dwight through Armenia and Persia, inspired the men to travel together from Sinai to Jerusalem. “The particular department of Biblical Geo graphy is one in which I have long felt a deeper interest than almost any other brand of biblical literature,” Smith wrote to Robinson in 1837.182 With Smith by his side as a knowledgeable guide and an expert in languages, Robinson could move
176 Many Christian periodicals in the nineteenth-century United States were very short-lived, pre-sumably related because the media landscape was still in the early stages of its development.
See EBSCO Information Services, Thematic Collection from AAS Historical Periodicals: Gen-eral Interests Christian Periodicals, 1743–1889, accessed June 2014, http://www.ebscohost.
com/titleLists/gic-coverage.pdf.
177 More in chapter II, section 2.5.
178 See chapter I, section 2.5.
179 Naufal to Smith (London, August 1, 1851): ABC 50 (HHL). (TA) 180 Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 170.
181 Naufal to Smith (London, August 1, 1851): ABC 50 (HHL): “The foreign version’s economic section would include news on the economy in Syria while the Arabic version would include economic news from around the world. The literary section would present the detailed history of Arabs, while the political section would include the Istanbul periodical, entitled ‘Splendor of the East.’” (TA)
182 Smith to Robinson (Smyrna, November 10, 1837): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 1 (109).
forward with Biblical Researches in Palestine.183 On March 12, 1838, they departed from Cairo and made their way towards the Arabian Peninsula. In the United States and Germany, Robinson had read and studied nearly everything that had been writ-ten about the Holy Land. Now he wanted to follow the paths that earlier explorers and travelers had taken.184 Robinson and Smith sought “to lay open the treasures of Biblical Geography and History still remaining in the Holy Land; treasures which have lain for ages unexplored, and had become so covered with the dust and rubbish of many centuries, that their very existence was forgotten.”185
Every Biblical site was to be historically illuminated, in order to establish its earlier significance.186 With this undertaking, Robinson became the founder of modern Palestinology. The maps of ancient Palestine that the two men prepared turned out to be denser and more precise than they had expected.187 In the end, Smith provided the details “that made the book so outstanding.”188 Even before the trip, he compiled a list of place names from the writings of educated natives. During the trip, he corrected and expanded the list by surveying residents. Smith’s work also proved helpful to the ABCFM, facilitating a uniform spelling for the names of Arabic villages and cities in the publications of the American Board, with Eng-lish transliterations that were very close to the original Arabic.189 The two-volume first edition of Biblical Researches held considerable archaeological significance as well, as the Biblical archaeologist JameS b. PritChard wrote in 1958: “Leaving the beaten paths of former travelers, Robinson and Smith discovered many formerly unknown sites and made scores of identifications of ancient places which have stood up under the more controlled methods of the archaeologist.”190
Smith and Robinson each kept a journal during their trip, carefully recording the times and places of their departures, temperatures, precise descriptions of the views from different lookout points, the cost of their lodgings, as well as the char-acteristics and behavior of the people they met.191 In their descriptions, they rarely
183 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, 1–2. One year earlier, it seemed as if their plans might not be realized. In 1837, Smith wrote to Robinson that his heavy work-load and responsibilities with the press would not allow him to go. After the ABCFM granted permission for the trip, he changed his response. See the correspondence between Robinson and Smith (1837): ABC 16.8.1., Vol. 1 (10). Anderson approved the trip because it did not have to be subsidized by the financially burdened ABCFM. See Anderson to the Syria Mission (Bos-ton, April 23, 1836): ABC 2.1.1., Vol. 1 (HHL).
184 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, xii, 178: “This whole region [ʿArabah], up to the present time, has been a complete terra incognita to geographers. Not that travellers had not already crossed it in various directions; for Seetzen in 1807 had gone from Hebron to the convent of Sinai; and Henniker in 1821 … had passed from the convent to Gaza.”
185 Ibid., xi.
186 Ibid., ix.
187 Pritchard, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 57.
188 From a letter written by Norman Lewis to David Finnie (October 9, 1964), in: Finnie, Pioneers East, 202 (note).
189 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, ix–x.
190 Pritchard, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 59.
191 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, 32; Pritchard, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 59, 61.
missed an opportunity to emphasize the regrettable contrast between the past glo-ries of ancient sites and their current state of decline.
It is impossible to wander around these scenes and behold these hoary yet magnificent ruins, without emotions of astonishment and deep solemnity. Every thing around testifies of vastness, and of utter desolation. Here lay once that mighty city, whose power and splendour were pro-verbial throughout the ancient world.192
While Smith firmly believed that religion and culture in the Levant were in a deso-late state, Robinson’s motives were more purely historical than Christian.193 The Biblical Researches became a widely read work. Robinson’s and Smith’s fasci-nation with the richness of the sites’ history, the diversity of the landscapes, and the adventure of traveling in a foreign world made for compelling reading.194 The 1,214 pages of the two volumes were filled with detailed travel descriptions that brought the natural landscape to life before readers’ eyes:
The village [ʿAnata] lies where the broad ridge slopes off gradually towards the southeast.
On this side are tilled fields, and we had passed several others on our way. The grain was still standing; the time of harvest not having yet come. … Thus er-Râm (Ramah) bore N. N. W. on its conical hill; and Jebaʾ (Geba) was before us, bearing N. 10º E. …195
As noted by the journal of the German Oriental Society in 1847, Biblical Researches in Palestine was at the forefront of Oriental studies in North America, where the field was still in its infancy.196 In 1842, Robinson received the gold medal of the Royal Geographic Society in London for his topographical portrait of the Arabian Peninsula and the Holy Land. He was highly respected by experts in ancient Orien-tal studies, in the nineteenth century and after: “The works of Robinson and Smith alone surpass the total of all previous contributions to Palestinian geography from the time of Eusebius and Jerome to the early nineteenth century,” wrote the Ameri-can archaeologist W. F. Albright.197 Smith’s contribution was just as highly valued, even into the twentieth century. A British scholar wrote in 1964 that Smith’s list of place names was “unique. … No one else (to my knowledge) did anything similar for several decades. … As material to be used in building up a picture of the human and economic geography of the country in the 1830’s they are first rate.”198
192 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, 20.
193 Ibid., 31: “As is the case of most of my countrymen, especially in New England, the scenes of the Bible had made a deep impression upon my mind from the earliest childhood; and after in riper years this feeling had grown into a strong desire to visit in person the places so remarkable in the history of the human race. … With all this, in my own case, there had subsequently be-come connected a scientific motive.”
194 DMG, Jahresbericht der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft für das Jahr 1846, 150.
195 Robinson and Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. 1, 438.
196 “Die orientalischen Studien in Nord-Amerika,” ZDMG 1 (1847): 87.
197 From W. F. Albright, Archaeology of Palestine, 1956, 25, cited in: Finnie, Pioneers East, 181.
See also Pritchard, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 57.
198 Finnie, Pioneers East, 202 (note).
In 1851, Rufus Anderson encouraged his friend Edward Robinson – who had in the meantime become president of the American Oriental Society199 – to con-tinue his investigations of the topography of the Holy Land, resigning from his position at the university, if necessary, if he needed more time. Anderson promised assistance in planning Robinson’s journey to Syria.200 Robinson arrived in Syria in 1852, where he and Smith began to revise the Biblical Researches, particularly the place names and maps. Since the first edition from 1841 was already sold out, there was additional incentive for bringing a new edition to print. In 1856, the Biblical Researches was published in two volumes.201 As an additional resource for scholars in East and West, Robinson had Eli Smith print a separate list of Arabic names and places that was added as an appendix to the new edition.