Line upon Line

I love maps.  I don’t like to travel without a map, even in this miraculous day of GPS (Global Positioning System) software. I realize, of course, that it can deliver me from my own driveway to that of a friend 2,000 miles away without my ever needing to consult a map. But I still want to know where I am, and where I’m going. I want the overall bird’s-eye view, not just the micro-details of where next to turn left and then where to turn right.

I’m also firmly convinced that having a map in mind can sometimes help us to better understand the scriptures. So, if you’ll indulge me, I want to do a map exercise, like back in our school days.  lease open your copy of the Bible to its map section.  (In a note at the end, I suggest which maps to look at, and also suggest a pair of helpful online sites.)

The Fertile Crescent

First, let’s consider the idea of the “Fertile Crescent,” because it’s fundamental to understanding the overall geography of the Near East—or of the Middle East. (The two terms are used pretty much interchangeably these days.)

The Fertile Crescent stretches up from modern-day northern Kuwait, western Iran, and Iraq through a portion of southeastern Turkey, and then down through Syria, Israel/Palestine, and western Jordan. In other words, it runs up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (the region known “Mesopotamia,” which means “between rivers”) and then down the relatively fertile, rain-watered coast of the eastern Mediterranean. By doing so, it arches over the arid Arabian Desert, enclosing it on its east, north, and south.

Some writers put the western end of the Fertile Crescent at the southern border of Israel or Palestine. Others, though—and, to me, this makes much more sense—continue it over to the well-watered delta of the Nile River and, from there, up the Nile.

The Fertile Crescent derives its name from its shape, of course.  And that shape, in its turn, results from its exclusion of the forbidding deserts that separate Mesopotamia from the Mediterranean coast and that surround the Nile Valley on either side.

How It Sheds Light

How does the concept of the Fertile Crescent shed light on the history of the ancient Near East? I’ll mention just a couple of areas:

Throughout much of the region’s most ancient history, its oldest and greatest civilizations were based either in Egypt or in Mesopotamia (e.g., the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians).

Why? In 1957, the German-American historian Karl Wittfogel proposed what he called the “hydraulic theory of state formation.”  (I confess that I’ve always found that name amusing.) Wittfogel suggested that the earliest centralized states, in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Yellow River, and the Indus River—he called them “hydraulic civilizations”—emerged from the organizational measures that were required to coordinate labor and to create large-scale irrigation systems and flood-control projects.  

Executing such enterprises was far beyond the ability of individual farmers or small villages. Thereafter, better control of water resources, especially in dry regions, led to both greater agricultural production and substantial population growth—which, in turn, supported political structures and bureaucracies and encouraged ever-stronger governments.

No Fighting on Your Own Territory

Egypt and (essentially in modern-day Iraq) the various Mesopotamian states eventually became the Great Powers, and the great imperial rivals, of their day. But they never wanted to fight on their own territory if they could avoid it. They wanted to go out and attack their enemy on the enemy’s territory. And, obviously, that enemy wanted to meet the attack as far away from its own home territory as possible.

Unfortunately for those who lived there, Palestine was the highway that nearly every Near Eastern conqueror traveled in order to reach his next trophy. (President Gordon B. Hinckley once called it, quite appropriately, “the bloody doormat of the eastern world.”) That’s why, from the perspective of the biblical Israelites, foreign invasions so frequently came from either the north or the south. They were traveling through the Fertile Crescent because a direct attack across the forbidding Arabian Desert would probably have been lethal to their soldiers, horses, and even camels.

Assyria

Example 1: The Assyrians sacked Damascus and destroyed the Kingdom of Syria in 733 BC. Next, the Kingdom of Israel fell in 721 BC.  According to the Bible (see 1 Chronicles 5:26; 2 Kings 15:29; 17:3-6; 18:11-12), tens of thousands of people from the northern Kingdom of Israel were forcibly relocated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire under the kings Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V. This was what is often called the “Assyrian captivity” or “Assyrian exile,” and those who were removed are remembered as the “Ten Lost Tribes.” Those who remained behind became the “Samaritans.”

Later, following the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in BC 701, Sargon II and Sennacherib subjugated the neighboring southern Kingdom of Judah, but they were never actually able to annex it. Thus, Judah was left as the sole surviving Hebrew kingdom—to which some northern kingdom refugees fled. These likely included the family of Lehi, who was a member of the northern Israelite tribe of Manasseh.

But Judah was only a temporary refuge. When the Babylonian Empire replaced the Assyrians, the southern kingdom fell in the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, in 587 BC. Forewarned by the Lord, of course, Lehi and his followers had already escaped to the southeast, into the Arabian Desert, and ultimately to the Americas. Many of those who remained behind were either killed or carried away in the famous “Babylonian captivity.”

Note how the Assyrian forces moved from north to south; they had come up from Mesopotamia and then moved downward toward their ultimate goal, Egypt, which they conquered between 673 and 663 BC. Their Babylonian successors followed them afterwards, invading Egypt in roughly 568 BC under the famous Nebuchadnezzar.

Babylon

Example 2:  At the end of the seventh century BC, Egypt’s Pharaoh Necho was advancing northwards in a bid to help the weakening Assyrians against the rising (and more aggressive) Babylonian Empire. According to the accounts given in 2 Kings 23:29 and 2 Chronicles 35:20-27, the pharaoh promised the young and righteous Judahite King Josiah that he had no aggressive designs against Judah. Unfortunately, and against counsel, Josiah went out to the Jezreel Valley, a broad, flat area that is well suited to chariot warfare, to contest the passage of the Egyptian army through his territory. And there, in 609 BC near Megiddo, Josiah lost his life. He was only thirty-nine years old, a contemporary of Lehi and Jeremiah. (The area is also well-suited to modern tank warfare. Think of the famous apocalyptic battle of “Armageddon,” from the Hebrew “Har Megiddo” or “Mount Megiddo,” that is prophesied for the last days at Revelation 16:16.)

East Wind

Example 3:  At least twenty references to a powerful and destructive “east wind” occur in the Old Testament (e.g., at Genesis 41:6, Exodus 10:13, Jeremiah 18:17, Ezekiel 17:10, and Hosea 13:15). Such references reflect conditions in the Palestinian home of the biblical authors. Unlike the moisture-laden west wind from the Mediterranean Sea, the east wind, originating outside the Fertile Crescent in the Arabian Desert, is dry and desiccating.

Strikingly, the east wind also shows up twice in the Book of Mormon, with exactly the same negative connotation:

“If my people shall sow filthiness they shall reap the east wind, which bringeth immediate destruction.” (Mosiah 7:31)

“And it shall come to pass that I will send forth hail among them, and it shall smite them; and they shall also be smitten with the east wind; and insects shall pester their land also, and devour their grain.” (Mosiah 12:6)

Thousands of miles and more than four centuries removed from their ancestral Near Eastern home, the Nephites seem still to have remembered a specifically Palestinian weather pattern—at least as a kind of proverb.  (However, see the bibliographical notes at the end of this column for suggestions that people living in Mesoamerica actually had good reasons to retain the idea of a baneful “east wind.”)

The Topography of Israel

Now, though, let’s look more specifically at the topography of the land of Israel itself.  (See below for map suggestions.)

A striking feature of the geography of Palestine is its relatively fertile coastal plain, running north-south along the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. This is often called the “shephelah” (Hebrew for “lowland”) and it is bordered to the east by a central mountain range that also runs from north to south. (The city of Jerusalem sits high on that ridge, roughly thirty-seven miles inland, at about 2500 to 2600 feet above sea level.)

The ancient Israelites of the Old Testament were primarily a “hill people” who inhabited the rugged and rocky central highlands of Canaan (e.g., Judah, Ephraim, and Galilee). In order to survive, they developed small rural settlements, herded sheep and goats, and cultivated small terraced farms. In the warfare that was pretty much a constant in the ancient world, they were mostly foot soldiers, effectively using the uneven, mountainous terrain of their homeland as a kind of natural fortification.

By contrast, the plains—along the coast and in the Jezreel Valley—were flat and fertile and, thus, suited for large-scale agriculture (e.g., of wheat), as well as for wagons and chariots (the superior military technology of the day)—and, thus, for both major international trade routes and military corridors. (Remember Pharaoh Necho.) Especially in early Israelite times, these coastal plains and fertile valleys were largely occupied by the relatively urbanized “people of the plains” (Philistines, Amorites, and Canaanites), whose iron weapons and war chariots enabled them to dominate their flat terrain.

Geography Played Its Role

Such distinctions are evident in Old Testament history. Consider, for example, when Benhadad of Syria was planning war against the northern Kingdom of Israel in around 900 BC:

“And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.” (1 Kings 20:23; compare verse 28)

Let’s return now, though, to our cross section of the land of Israel. On the west is the coast plain, running north to south. In the middle is a central mountain range, also running north to south. To the east of that range is the Jordan River Valley, likewise running north-south. It’s a portion of the much larger Great Rift Valley, a gash in the earth’s surface that extends from northern Syria through the Red Sea to Mozambique in the south, and that contains the lowest places on the face of the earth. The Dead Sea, nearly fifteen hundred feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, is approximately twenty-two miles east of Jerusalem.

Jericho is down in the Jordan River Valley, at about 846 feet below sea level.  Thus, when Jesus opens his parable of the Good Samaritan by saying that “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho” (Luke 10:30), he isn’t exaggerating. It was a route that he knew well, and the descent is severe.

And Nephi understood the elevated location of Jerusalem well, too. Thus, in 1 Nephi, after Lehi and his followers have fled from Jerusalem on their way down to the Red Sea (2:4-5), Nephi and members of his family consistently go up to “the land of Jerusalem” (3:9, 10, 29; 4:1, 3-4; 5:6) and down into the wilderness (2:5; 3:15; 4:34-35; 5:1, 5)

**

In one of the Latter-day Saint editions of the Bible that I consulted while writing this column, Map 1 (“Physical Map of Palestine”) served my purpose and the two-page Map 2 (“The Ancient World at the Time of the Patriarchs”) gives a reasonably good idea of the shape of the Fertile Crescent.  In another Bible edition, Map 1 is titled “Physical Map of the Holy Land,” and Map 9 (“The World of the Old Testament”) is comparable to the first edition’s Map 2. In this second Bible edition, Map 14 offers an extremely helpful view, in two images, of “Holy Land Elevations in Bible Times.”

For a good cross-section map of the Holy Land, click here.

On the “east wind,” see my 27 December 2018 article for LDS Living, “Why Does the Book of Mormon Reference an Ominous “East Wind”? Or, even better, see Kerry Hull, “An ‘East Wind’: Old and New World Perspectives,” in Abinadi: He Came Among Them in Disguise, edited by Shon D. Hopkin (BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2018), page 169-208.