The Holy Land [antikvár]

THE HOLY LAND The Geographic Aspect The Holy Land is a strip of land situated between Mt. Hermon and the end of the Dead Sea in the south, from the Jordan to the east and from the Mediterranean Sea to the west. This country must be considered from a double point of view, political and religious, which often intermingle. Because of its position, the Holy Land constituted a natural geographic bridge between the two great powers of antiquity: Egypt to the south and Mesopotamia to the nord, and later Greece and Rome. It continued to play that role during more recent times under the Byzantine domination, then under the Arabs, except during the Latin reign of the Crusaders. The Holy Land is a very small country, smaller than Sicily which is 254.461 square kilometres. The geo-physica! variety which characterizes this country is very pleasant, after all. From the heights of the snow-covered Ht. Hermon (2814 metres on the sea-level), from the proverbial fertility of Galilee and the mediterranean coast, to the dry areas of Judea; from the mediterranean coast with the plains of Sharon and Philisty to the depths of the Jordanic Pit and the Dead Sea (396 metres under the level of the Mediterranean Sea) with its various geological aspects, our eyes go through an extraordinary and pleasant gamut of lands and colours. Even where there is no flora, one feels attracted by the variety of the contours of the soil itself. Jts Name The historical names which indicate this land are many and often reflect the various people who settled there. Of all these names, the most common is that of HOLY LAND, a prophetic name In the book of Zacchariah, whose meaning goes beyond any political question and event. It is a name which nullifies any frontier, because it concerns the events not according their istorical and political value, but according their religious meaning both in the Old and New Testaments, and, more recently, in the history of the Islamic religion. They are three aspects of one religious event converging towards a unity, the monotheism, and which todays is generally called "The History of Salvation". Thus the Holy Land is the land of all people, where men meet to know and get what the human spirit thinks to find there. This sort of universal gathering which takes place in the Holy Land, has been foreseen in the Old Testament, in Isaiah (see on pg. 99). Even the names of the main towns have no political references: Jericho seems to reflect a cult to the Moon; Bethlehem, once the "Temple of the god of the war" became later the "House of Food"; Jerusalem, the