Jewish gardensIn the same fashion the garden was used by the Israelites, and
Abraham bought himself a double grave, that was in a tree-garden.
Such was the custom among Jewish kings, who were at first buried at
Jerusalem, where the gardens lay in the City of David, but from
Manasseh onward they found their resting-place at Ussae, also in a
garden close to the royal house, But even in later times this
custom was carried on, and the body of Jesus was buried in a
private garden belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. The Jews took as the beginning of all things the
creation of the Garden of Eden; and this garden of Genesis is
exactly like the oriental tree-park. For Jehovah makes all kinds of
trees to grow forth from the earth, the fruit good to eat and fair
to look upon, and in the middle of the garden the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. Later accounts
have added the water that would be needed, the stream which had its
source in Eden, and from which four other rivers flowed. In this
garden the beasts lived together, just as in the pictures of an
Assyrian park the lions lie peacefully under the palm-trees and
have their place among the lilies. This garden gave much
refreshment both with its fruits and with its cooling shade; and
God Himself, says the naïve anthropomorphic narrative, walked
in the garden in the cool of the evening.
The Jews, who from patriarchal times had found a
home in these parks, set up many sanctuaries and altars as well as
graves, and it seems as though they adopted the custom from the
heathen people around them. Abraham certainly planted a park, in
which he sacrificed to God, but later on there was much opposition
to the practice, especially by the zealous prophets, for it was
feared that the Jews might be led further into superstition by the
heathenish custom of sacrifices in the open air.
The sessions of justice were held out of doors, in
rich men’s parks. Joakim, the man of property, whose wife was
the lovely and chaste Susannah, lived at Babylon, at the time of
the Dispersion, and owned a fine park beside his house, and there
the two justices held their court. Every day after the people left,
they saw the fair woman walking in the garden and were inflamed
with love for her, There was a large bath out in the open, just as
in the Babylonian royal park where Alexander died, an ornament to
the garden. Oaks and mastic-trees grew there, for the false judges
betrayed themselves when they said they had witnessed wrong-doing,
since each mentioned a different tree, one the oak and the other
the mastic. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The mastic-tree of Southern
Europe is Pistacia Lentiscus, an evergreen.]
Strabo talks about a palm grove in the plain of
Jericho, saying it was well watered and contained many buildings,
and also of a royal palace as well as a famous garden of balsams,
from which precious spices were extracted. Josephus describes
Solomon’s palace elaborately enough, but says little about
his gardens, except that they were fair to look upon. One of the
chambers was decorated as a garden-room. The ornament was all
regularly set out, the first three rooms in priceless stonework. In
the’ fourth was a wondrous show: here one beheld trees and
many kinds of plants, their branches and leaves hanging down and
throwing their shade below. The trees and plants covered the stone,
which was below, and their leaves were delineated with such
marvellous delicacy that they almost seemed to be moving. It was
clearly plastic art with naturalistic painting most impressively
carried out, with the trees overhanging the walls and casting their
shadow. The scheme of decoration must have arisen from the same
desire that prompted Sennofri in Egypt to make his grave like a
vine arbour. What they wanted was to enjoy the beauty of a garden
in a private room.
At Jerusalem itself there were great gardens round
the walls outside, both for trees and for vegetables, but they
could not be put inside the holy city, for no manure, nothing
unclean, might be brought within her sacred walls, and only
rose-gardens were permitted. We may assume that the Jews loved and
tended flowers, because their poetry, e.g., the Song of Solomon (see the Song of Solomon on
the CD) so often used flowers in
similes. There has been very little change in the main either in
their religious or their daily use. The gardens outside the town
were enclosed by walls with small turrets, in which guards were
placed. From all we can learn of them, it seems that Jews’
gardens were very like those of their neighbours.
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