William Mcclure Thomson's the Land and the Book (1859)

WILLIAM MCCLURE THOMSON’S THE LAND AND THE BOOK (1859): PILGRIMAGE AND MISSION IN PALESTINE Heleen Murre-van den Berg Introduction Twenty-five years after William McClure Thomson arrived in Beirut as a young missionary, he finished writing The Land and the Book, Biblical illustrations drawn from the manners and customs, the scenes and scenery of the Holy Land. The two-volume book, consisting of more than eleven hundred pages and over two hundred illustrations, was first pub- lished in New York in 1859. During the latter half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, it found a wide reader- ship on both sides of the Atlantic, as attested by numerous reprints and its ubiquitous presence in Sunday School libraries.1 Recent studies such as those of Lester Vogel, Hilton Obenzinger, and John Davis pay due attention to Thomson’s work in the context of nineteenth- century American interests in the Holy Land, and his influence upon other travelers and authors is duly noted.2 It seems to me, however, that The Land and the Book deserves a more extensive treatment than it has received so far. What I intend to do is to read this book in 1 Some of the more important are those of New York 1868, London 1872, 1874, 1879, New York 1881 and 1882, London, New York 1910, London 1905 and 1954 (reprint London 1879). A recent reprint (Piscataway, NJ, 2004) was based on an edition of 1911. Although its popularity seems undisputed, references to it, like “more than 200,000 copies, more—it is said—than any other American book of its time except Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (cf. Finnie), seem to have been copied from each other, although curious variations on this phrase occur. The earliest references I came across were in David H. Finnie, Pioneers East, The Early American Experience in the Middle East (Cambridge MA, 1967), 187 and Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, The Rediscovery of the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century ( Jerusalem, 1979), 167. 2 Lester I. Vogel, To see a Promised Land. Americans and the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century (Pennsylvania, 1993); Hilton Obenzinger, American Palestine. Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania (Princeton NJ, 1999), 162, 234 and John Davis, The Landscape of Belief. Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-century American Art and Culture (Princeton, 1996). These three studies, from the different perspectives of general culture, liter- ature and landscape painting, respectively, are particularly concerned with the American aspect of the “Holy Land mania,” especially in connection with American “colonial” self-understanding. 44 heleen murre-van den berg the context of the American missionary activities in the Middle East in the first half of the nineteenth century. The question that has occupied me since reading Thomson’s book for the first time is to what extent his book, which is of an entirely different nature than most other missionary publications of the time, can be seen as a characteristic example of missionary orientalist discourse of the middle of the nineteenth century. Is it possible that The Land and the Book, by almost completely ignoring concrete missionary aims and experiences, is the prime example of American Protestant missionary discourse on the Middle East? Dr. William M. Thomson, born in 1806 and educated at Miami University and Princeton Theological Seminary, arrived in Beirut early in 1833, as part of a group of missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Earlier initiatives of the ABCFM in Syria and Palestine had been discontinued, and it was in 1833 that after long deliberations the mission was started again.3 After a short stay in Palestine, during which his first wife died but his first-born, William Hanna, survived, Thomson returned to Beirut and for most of his missionary career was based in this city. He later remarried and remained in Beirut till 1876. He died in America in 1894.4 The ABCFM, the largest Protestant interdenominational mission agency in North America, considered mission work in the Middle East one of its top priorities. Around 1860 it had established a chain of mission posts, ranging from Beirut via Constantinople and Aintab, to Mosul in the Ottoman Empire and to Urmia in Qajar Persia. By that time, the funds for the Middle-Eastern missions ran to almost 45% of the total budget.5 As authors such as Vogel, Obenzinger and 3 On the ABCFM mission in Syria, see Habib Badr, “Mission to ‘Nominal Christians:’ The Policy and Practice of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and its Missionaries concerning Eastern Churches which led to the Organization of a Protestant Church in Beirut (1819–1848)” (Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary, 1992), A. L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901. A Study of Educational, Literary and Religious Work (Oxford, 1966), as well as Habib and Fleischmann in this volume. 4 For the main facts see Tibawi, American Interests, 73, 198, and Yehoshua Ben- Arieh, Painting the Holy Land in the Nineteenth Century ( Jerusalem, 1997), 210–11. 5 Allan F. Perry, “The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the London Missionary Society in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Ideas” (Ph.D. Washington University, 1974), 275. See also Murre-van den Berg, “The Middle East: Western Missions and the Eastern Churches, Islam and Judaism,” in.

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