*

drew the sacred fire, may be a trace of an old outlet of naphtha. Ritterf notes in the limestone mountains, a short day south of Jerusalem, caverns with large mouths decreasing as they receded, probably owing to the former emission of pent-up gas. Besides the supply of naphtha drawn by Nehemiah from the old storepit of sacred fire, mention is made in Jerusalem history of the supply of water drawn from a pit or well in the city by Narcissus, Christian Bishop of Alia or Jerusalem, at the close of the third century, which, by his divine power, he so enriched with the fatness of oil that it lighted lamps. These details seem to support the correctness of the account of Nehemiah's use of naphtha in Second Maccabees, and uphold the view that the fire which prevented Julian's rebuilding the Temple was the work of Jews expending vapour of naphtha in a cave or pit under the Temple. If naphtha was the sacred fire of the Jews it seems to follow:

1. That the use of naphtha as sacred fire may explain several of the more difficult passages in the early history of the Jews; and

2. That the use of naphtha as sacred fire may have passed from the Jews to the Christians of Jerusalem, and may explain the famous miracle of the birth of the sacred Easter Fire at the Holy Sepulchre.

(1.) If, as it seems reasonable to believe, Nehemiah cleansed the altar and the great stone near the altar with naphtha, and also that this use of naphtha was not an importation by Nehemiah from Persia, but was, as is stated in the Maccabees, the continued use of what was known to the Jews

* Williams' The Holy City, Vol. II., 490, and Note 3; Underground Jerusalem, p. 51.

+ Geography of Palestine, Vol. III., p. 12.

Warren's

Williams' The Holy City, Vol. I., p. 226. Another proof of stores of bitumen in Jerusalem is given by Josephus (Besant and Palmer, p. 36). During the siege of Titus (A.D. 70), the Jews undermined the ground on which the Roman battering rams stood, and then brought into the mine materials daubed with pitch and bitumen, and set them on fire.

as sacred fire, it seems fair to suppose that in earlier passages, where sacred fire, or fire of the Lord plays a part, the agent was naphtha.* As regards the sacred altar fire it would seem that the writer of Second Maccabees held that the fire of the Lord which consumed the sacrifice of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple (II. Chron., chap. vii.), and of Aaron's first offerings (Leviticus, ix. 24), was the same as Nehemiah's sacred fire which turned the thick water of the pit into flame. Besides these examples there is the case of the water poured over the altar at Carmel by Elijah being kindled by fire from the Lord; and of the smoking furnace and burning lamp (Genesis xv. 17) which passed between the pieces of Abraham's sacrifice.† To make the naphtha become sacred fire from heaven some special means of lighting was required. That Elijah did not pour on the water till the sun was low, and that Nehemiah's naphtha did not kindle till the sun shone upon it, suggest the use of a lens, a means of kindling sacred fire known to many of the early priesthoods.‡

* That the account of the discovery of the old sacred fire given in the Maccabees was not accepted by all Jews appears from the saying that the second temple was inferior to the first temple in five respects, one of which was the want of sacred altar fire. Compare Encyclopædia Britannica, Fourth Edit. Articles 'Fire' and 'Temple.' It is also to be noted that according to Second Maccabees, x. 3, when (B.c. 163) Judas Maccabæus cleansed the sanctuary, he kindled fire for the altar by striking stones.

+ The case of Elijah (I. Kings, chap. xviii.) is carefully worked by Mr. Woodgate (A Modern Layman's Faith, p. 352 and pp. 412-414). In another passage (p. 380) he says: 'The evidence of the use of naphtha by Elijah is almost conclusive.' Other examples of the appearance of sacred fire are (I. Chron., xxi.) at the staying of the plague when the Lord answered David from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering; and the fire from the rock that consumed Gideon's offering (Judges, vi. 21).

Compare A Modern Layman's Faith, p. 210. The Greeks and Romans re-kindled the sacred fire by a lens formed of concave vessels of brass: Plutarch's Numa, Langhorne's Translation, I., 183. In Peru the fire of the sun was kindled by a concave cup set in a bracelet (Woodgate, 411). The use of the burning glass is common in China (Encylopædia Britannica, article 'Fire'). It was common in Greece during the time of Aristophanes (B. c. 430). Compare Nubes, line 744.

(2). As regards the second point, namely, the connection between the Jewish and the Christian sacred fires in Jerusalem, their early fire worship seems to have been one of the elements brought by the Jewish converts into the religion of Christ, the Light of the World. At the close of the second century Narcissus, Bishop of Jerusalem (A.D. 180-222), on the vigils of the feast of Easter, lighted the lamps in the church by pouring in water taken from a well which, by a miraculous and divine power, he turned into the fatness of oil.* During the ninth century (A.D. 870), Bernard the Monk, and, at the close of that century, an unnamed Greek writer, bear witness to the miracle of the Easter Fire at the Holy Sepulchre.† Two hundred years later the practice of drawing fire from heaven into the Sepulchre by rubbing the chain of the chandelier with balsam oil (balsam being apparently used in its general sense of mild oil, and so including naphtha), was one of the causes of the destruction of the Sepulchre by Biamzallah, the Fatemite ruler of Egypt. The Sepulchre was soon restored, the fire-birth again celebrated, and the miracle established to the satisfaction of one of Biamz-allah's successors, the iron wicks of whose test-lamps the strength of the new-born fire melted. At the close of the eleventh century, the time of the First Crusade, the birth of the Sacred Easter Fire at the Sepulchre was one of the chief wonders of Jerusalem. The keen disappointment caused by the failure of the miracle for three days at the beginning of the first Easter of Baldwin's reign (A.D. 1096) was removed by a barefoot procession. On the arrival of the procession at the Sepulchre a flame flew from lamp to lamp, and afterwards a flame miraculously lighted the lamps at Baldwin's table.§ During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (until, apparently, 1291, when Latin rule came to an end) the Latin priests shared with Greeks, Armenians, Copts, and Abyssinians, the glory of kindling the Easter Fire. Since the withdrawal of the Latins,

* Williams' Holy City, Vol. I., p. 226.

+ Ibid., Vol. I., 348; II., 533, note 3.

Ibid., Vol. I., p. 847.

§ Besant and Palmer, The History of Jerusalem, pp. 339-340.

Greeks, Armenians, Copts, and Abyssinians still join in collecting and distributing the new-born fire.*

Accounts vary regarding the means employed to use the creature of naphtha for the honour of the Light of the World. Different means seem to have been employed at different times. Since the time of the Crusades the use of a naphthasmeared wire or chain to bring the fire from above seems to have been discontinued. In the early years of the present century, in answer to prayer, the Patriarch was believed to receive tongues of fire in a Veronica napkin. In 1833, Thomsont describes how a procession passed thrice round the tomb. An aged bishop, the last of the procession, went alone inside of the sepulchre. After a few moments a light shone in an aperture in the wall, and a bundle of tapers were thrust in and drawn back ablaze. The fire was thought to be a divine light which did not burn. About 1850, Kinglake‡ describes how on Easter Saturday the Chief Priest of the Greeks, accompanied by the Turkish Governor, entered the tomb. After a long pause, from out the small apertures on either side of the sepulchre issued long shining flames. The pilgrims rushed forward madly striving to light their tapers. The present practice is thus described by Sir Charles Warren in 1876.§ The Holy Easter Fire does not descend from heaven; it appears or emanates from the stone couch in the inner chamber of the Sepulchre. The Patriarch is shut into the inner chamber and prays that the fire may appear. As the Patriarch prays the fire springs up in a soft flame about half an inch high. He collects the flames with both hands and drops them into a goblet till the goblet is filled to the brim with flame. The Patriarch hands the flaming goblet out of the Sepulchre into the vestibule. A Greek, an Armenian, and a Syrian receive a share of the flame into their goblets, and hand the fire through the holes to the assembled people. These details Sir Charles Warren obtained himself from the

* The Land and the Book, pp. 480-482. Kinglake's Eothen, p. 196.

§ Warren's Underground Jerusalem, p. 437.

+ Ibid., pp. 480-482.

Patriarch who collected the fire. The description of the birth of the flames suggests that they were produced by dropping naphtha on the stone couch which had been prepared by heat. The process recalls the description of Nehemiah's use of naphtha to cleanse a great stone near the Temple Altar.* The passage in Second Maccabees (Chap. i., 31-32) is said to be corrupt, and is difficult. After, by pouring naphtha over it, a great fire had been kindled on the altar, and the sacrifice was consumed, Nehemiah commanded to pour on great stones the water that was left. When this was done a flame was kindled (on the stone); but when the light from the altar shone over against it, all was consumed.' The sense seems to be that the altar flame was so intensely bright that the flames from the stone paled before it. In this case, as perhaps by previous heating in the case of the stone couch of the Sepulchre, the great stone being close to the blazing altar fire, had become so baked that when poured over its hot surface the naphtha burst into flame.†

After his account of the birth of the Easter Fire, Sir C. Warren says-In Sion, the holy place of David, in the

* This great stone is apparently the stone which the Jews believed to be Jacob's pillow, and which in the second or Zerubbabel Temple (B.C. 520-515) took the place of the lost Ark. It seems also to be the stone which the Bordeaux pilgrims in A.D. 333, thirty years before Julian's disaster, described as the bored stone which the Jews were allowed to visit once a year, and which they oiled and bewailed (compare Fergusson, The Holy Sepulchre, pp. 117-119). The weight of authority is fairly balanced in the long-fought fight whether the bored stone was at the Domed Rock (or Mosque of Omar) in the centre of, or near the Aksa Mosque in the south-west corner of the sacred enclosure. On the whole the opinion of the writer of the Article on the Temple in the Encyclopædia Britannica, namely, that the bored stone was in the Mosque Aksa, and has been either broken or buried, is most in accord with the evidence.

+ Compare Woodgate, A Modern Layman's Faith, p. 409. That the use of heated stones to kindle fire was familiar to the Jewish priests is shown by the Temple practice of kindling incense by dropping it on heated stones on the Altar of Incense. Compare Isaiah, vi. 6, where 'live coal' should be 'hot stone.' See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, I. 55, and I. 339. + Underground Jerusalem, p. 82 and 435.