Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home MICHAEL MARTEN Tauris Academic Studies RUNNING HEAD i Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home ii RUNNING HEAD RUNNING HEAD iii Attempting to Bring the Gospel Home Scottish Missions to Palestine, 1839-1917 MICHAEL MARTEN Tauris Academic Studies LONDON • NEW YORK Published in 2006 by Tauris Academic Studies. An imprint of I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Michael Marten 2006 The right of Michael Marten to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 85043 983 4 EAN 978 1 85043 983 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall from camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author Contents Referencing and Abbreviations vii 1 Introduction 1 PART I: THE MISSIONS 2 The beginnings: exploration, and the first missions in the Levant 25 3 The later missions: establishing a long-term presence 63 PART II: THE MISSIONARIES 4 The missionaries’ context and background 119 5 Missionary methods and interaction with the local population 145 PART III: CONCLUSIONS 6 Using reculturation and missionary identification to assess the missions 179 APPENDIX AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Appendix 187 Notes 197 Bibliography 243 Index 257 Figures Figure 1-1 McCarthy, Shaw, Courbage/Fargues: Jewish population statistics 21 Figure 2-1 Young and Nicolayson: population estimates 27 Figure 3-1 Hospital and mission buildings as seen from lake 74 Figure 3-2 Tiberias: the mission is to the left, north of the town 80 Figure 3-3 The Safad mission properties 85 Figure 3-4 Torrance walking ‘where the 5000 are supposed to have been fed’ 90 Figure 3-5 ‘Dr. Torrance in Arab Dress’ 93 Figure 3-6 Torrance during World War I 96 Figure 3-7 Paterson’s original hospital 103 Figure 3-8 Archibald Dickie’s design for the Hebron hospital 105 Figure 3-9 The Hebron hospital after WWI, as handed over to the CMS 107 Figure 3-10 St. Luke’s, Hebron – the hospital in the 1950s 108 Figure 5-1 Tiberias Hospital staff 1906 167 Figure 5-2 Sea of Galilee salaries – budget for 1901 171 Figure 7-1 Divisions and unions – Scottish Presbyterian churches 1840-1930 187 Figure 7-2 Free Church of Scotland, 1844-1885 income 188 Figure 7-3 David Watt Torrance family tree 189 REFERENCING & ABBREVIATIONS vii Referencing and Abbreviations Scottish ecclesiastical sources References are generally in two parts: a source identifier, and a date. If no date is available an estimation based on the previous and subsequent items is given. CS-Accounts yyyy: pp Church of Scotland General Assembly accounts CS-GA yyyy: pp Church of Scotland General Assembly minutes/proceedings CS-GA-JMC yyyy: pp Church of Scotland General Assembly Jewish Mission Committee report CS-JMC dd.mm.yyyy Church of Scotland Jewish Mission Committee minutes CS-LW mm.yyyy: pp Church of Scotland Life and Work (magazine) CS-WAJM dd.mm.yyyy Church of Scotland Women’s Association for Jewish Mission minutes FC-GA yyyy: pp Free Church of Scotland General Assembly minutes/ proceedings FC-GA-JMC yyyy Free Church of Scotland General Assembly Jewish Mission Committee report FC-GA-WJMA yyyy: pp Free Church of Scotland General Assembly Women’s Jewish Missionary Association report FC-JMC dd.mm.yyyy Free Church of Scotland Jewish Mission Committee minutes FC-MMR mm.yyyy: pp Free Church of Scotland Monthly and Missionary Record (magazine) FC-WJMA dd.mm.yyyy Free Church of Scotland Women’s Jewish Missions Association minutes UFC-CCJ dd.mm.yyyy United Free Church of Scotland Colonial, Continental and Jewish Committee minutes UFC-GA yyyy: pp United Free Church of Scotland General Assembly proceedings UFC-JMC dd.mm.yyyy United Free Church of Scotland Jewish Mission Committee Minutes UFC-MR mm.yyyy: pp United Free Church of Scotland Missionary Record (magazine) UFC-WJMA dd.mm.yyyy United Free Church of Scotland Women’s Jewish Missionary Association minutes UPC-GMBM dd.mm.yyyy United Presbyterian Church General Minute Book – Missions UPC-Synod yyyy: pp United Presbyterian Church Synod proceedings Jewish Mission Committee minutes are referenced as Church of Scotland minutes until 31.5.1843 and from then as Church of Scotland or Free Church of Scotland minutes. From 1900, when the Free Church of Scotland and United Presbyterian Church united, the minutes are referred to as the United Free Church of Scotland minutes. viii ATTEMPTING TO BRING THE GOSPEL HOME National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland (manuscript sources) Manuscripts sourced from the NLS are identified with NLS. Examples: NLS Acc 10139(i) or NLS Acc 4499(9): Paterson diary 20.10.1900 Biblical references Biblical references or quotations, unless reproduced from other sources, are from the New Revised Standard Version published by Collins, London, 1989 (abbreviated as NRSV). Abbreviations of biblical books follow generally accepted norms. Abbreviations AIU Alliance Israélite Universelle CCJ Colonial, Continental and Jewish Committee CS Church of Scotland (also known as the Auld Kirk) EMMS Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society FC Free Church of Scotland (also known as the Free Kirk) FMC Foreign Missions Committee GA General Assembly JMC Jewish Mission Committee LJS London Jews Society (London Society for the Conversion of the Jews) LW Life and Work (Church of Scotland magazine) MMR Monthly and Missionary Record of the Free Church of Scotland MR Missionary Record of the United Free Church of Scotland PCI Presbyterian Church of Ireland SSCI Scottish Society for the Conversion of Israel UFC United Free Church of Scotland (also known as the United Free Kirk) UPC United Presbyterian Church of Scotland Note that Jewish Mission Committees were sometimes described in other terms, such as the ‘Committee for Conversion of the Jews’. For simplicity, ‘Jewish Mission Committee’ is always used here except for the period 1910-1913, when the United Free Church amalgamated it with the Colonial and Continental Committees. Names; transliteration; population statistics; money Names of individuals commonly found in western literature appear in their familiar Latin form, where applicable using the form most often used by the individuals themselves; sometimes this will result in more than one form of a name being used for the same person when referring to different sources. Place names follow two patterns: when using names quoted in source documents that are obvious even if the spelling is not in use today (such as Beyrout), no further explanation is given, but when a place name is not immediately apparent because the name now in use is different or the name used is perhaps slightly obscure, I have tried, where possible, to provide a modern equivalent (e.g. Smyrna/Izmir). The use of a particular name or spelling does not convey any political REFERENCING & ABBREVIATIONS ix meaning related to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East. This applies in particular to the use of the term ‘Israel’ which when used in the 19th century missionary context was always a descriptor for Jews and was not used to denote a political or geographic entity; equally, ‘Israelite’ is used as it usually is in Christian Biblical studies, to refer to the ‘people of the kingdom of Israel’ or ‘Jews’, as given in various English translations of the Biblical texts. For place names, where relevant, I have generally used the transliterations in Khalidi’s survey of destroyed Palestinian towns and villages.1 For transliteration of other Arabic names or words, I have used a simplified system based upon that of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Arabic and other foreign language terms in common use for which no translation is necessary in this context are italicised (e.g. tanzimat). Referring to churches, the term ‘Eastern’ is used to refer to all ancient Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches of the Middle East. The missionaries themselves usually omitted to define which ecclesiastical group they were writing about, regularly using generic terms such as ‘Eastern churches’. Although it may occasionally be possible to work out the grouping being discussed on the basis of traditions or geography, on the whole, for the purposes of analysis of the missionaries’ work, it is not necessary to pursue this. Indeed, their generalisations about ‘Eastern churches’ say much about their understanding of the context they were in, a topic that is developed further in the text. Population statistics for the 19th century Ottoman Empire are notoriously difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty. In many regions regular statistics were not kept, estimates from foreigners often varied widely rendering most of them of limited use, and figures given by religious communities were anything but unbiased: many groups would have sought to give as high or low a figure for their population grouping as they thought would suit their purposes. I have tended to rely mostly, but not exclusively, on Courbage and Fargues’ work.2 The money used in the Levant varied from one region to the next, as well as changing over various periods.