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The death of character perspectives on theater after
modernism Drama Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Drama;Experimentelles Theater;Fuchs, Elinor
ISBN(s): 9780253330383, 0253330386
Edition: Nachdr.
File Details: PDF, 13.28 MB
Year: 2010
Language: english
THE DEATH OF CHARACTER
 DRAMA AND P E R F O R M A N C E STUDIES
Timothy Wiles, general editor

Nora M. Alter. Vietnam Protest Theatre: Staging the Television War.

Johannes Birringer. Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism.
Katherine H. Burkman and John L. Kundert-Gibbs,
editors. Pinter at Sixty.
Ejner J. Jensen. Shakespeare and the Ends of Comedy.
Jeffrey D. Mason. Melodrama and the Myth of America.
Eugene van Erven. The Playful Revolution:
Theatre and Liberation in Asia.
 THE DEATH OF
CHARACTER
Perspectives on Theater after Modernism

Elinor Fuchs

Indiana, University Press

Bloomington and Indianapolis
 © 1996 by Elinor Fuchs

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. The Association of American University Presses'
Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to
this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum

requirements of American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI 739.48-1984.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fuchs, Elinor.
The death of character : perspectives on theater after modernism /
Elinor Fuchs.
p. cm. — (Drama and performance studies)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-253-33038-6 (cl : alk. paper). — ISBN 978-0-253-21008-1 (pa : alk. paper)
i. Experimental theater. 2. Theater—United States—Reviews.
3. Experimental drama—History and criticism. I. Title.
II. Series.
PN2I93.E86F83 1996
792'.022—dc20 95-22915

2 3 4 5 01 oo 99 98 97
 To the memory of my daring mother
Lillian Ruth Kessler
1908-1993

and ofKeza Abdoh, theatrical visionary

1963-1995
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Acknowledgments IX

Introduction 1

PART I
Modern after Modernism

1
The Rise and Fall of the Character Named Character 21

2
Pattern over Character: The Modern Mysterium 36

3
Counter-Stagings: Ibsen against the Grain 52

PART II
Theater after Modernism

4
Signaling through the Signs 69

5
Another Version of Pastoral 92

6
When Bad Girls Play Good Theaters 108

7
Theater as Shopping 128

8
Postmodernism and the Scene of Theater 144

Vll
viii Contents

REVIEWS AND ARTICLES 1979–1993

Reports from an Emerging Culture

1979 Des McAnuff's Leave It to Beaver Is Dead 161

1979 Richard Schechner's The Balcony 164

1982 Andrei Serban's The Marriage of Figaro 165

1983 The Death of Character 169

1985 Peter Sellars's The Count of Monte Cristo 176

1986 Robert Wilson's Alcestis 178

1988 Elizabeth LeCompte and the Wooster Group's

The Road to Immortality (Part Three):
Frank Dell’s The Temptation of Saint Antony 183

1989 JoAnne Akalaitis's Cymbeline 185

1993 On the AIDS Quilt: The Performance of Mourning 194

Notes 199
Index 218
 Acknowledgments

I AM BEHOLDEN to many generous friends, colleagues, and institutions. I

thank the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe
College for their support and encouragement at an early stage of this project.
As drafts of chapters emerged, I have benefited from the readings and com-
ments of Gayle Austin of Georgia State University, Ava Baron and Richard
Butsch of Ryder College, Alice Benston, Michael Evenden and James W. Flan-
nery of Emory University, Kathleen Hulley of New York University, James
Leverett of the Yale School of Drama, Nina da Vinci Nichols of Rutgers, and
Rebecca Schneider in her capacity as editor of TDR. I am grateful also to editors
Erika Munk, then of the Village Voice, and James O'Quinn of American The-
atre, whose contributions both substantive and stylistic are reflected in the "ar-
ticles and reviews" section of the book, and to Erika's attention to two draft
chapters that appeared under her later editorship of Theater. I am indebted as
well to Rolf Fjelde for our many happy discussions about Ibsen bibliography,
and to Herbert Blau for early guidance and valuable advice.
I have learned much from discussions with artists. Elizabeth LeCompte,
Richard Foreman, Ruth Maleczech, and Robert Wilson have illuminated my
thinking even where interviews with them are not formally reflected in the text.
Once-mentors and now collegial friends at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York have given generously of their time and knowledge:
Daniel C. Gerould, whose understanding of symbolism and successive avant-
gardes lies at the root of all my work; Harry Carlson, whose interest in Strind-
berg deeply informs my own; and Albert Bermel and Marvin Carlson, whose
encouragement has meant much to me. My gratitude also to Diane White, pro-
ducer of the works of Reza Abdoh, for opening her photo archive to me, and
to students, long since gone on to other things, who provided research assis-
tance over the years: Ernest Kerns at Harvard; Peter Collins, Daniel Damkoel-
her, and Wayne Heller at Columbia; and Steven Frank and the indefatigable
Melissa Leonard at New York University. I am also grateful to Karla Oeff for
her careful reading of the manuscript.
Finally, I thank my two daughters, Claire Oakes Finkelstein and Katherine
Eban Finkelstein, college students at the beginning of this project, and now
admirable professional women, for their loving support. I thank Dr. John
Ryan for his steadiness and affirmation through much of this writing. Above
all, I thank David Cole and Susan Letzler Cole, whose passion for ideas often

IX
x Acknowledgments

summoned my own into existence. Their steadfast interest and confidence

beckoned this book through many stations to completion.

Several chapters have appeared in earlier versions in Annals of Scholarship,

Theater Three, Modern Drama, Performing Arts Journal, Theater, and TDK.
Draft chapters appear in Sacred Theater, edited by Bettina Knapp and Daniel
Gerould, and in Signs of Change: Premodern-Modern-Postmodern, edited by
Stephen Barker. Permission has been granted by American Theatre and the Vil-
lage Voice to reprint articles that originally appeared in their pages.
THE DEATH OF CHARACTER
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

M Y THINKING ON theater after modernism originated in the practical con-

text of seeing new work in the theater and writing accounts of it for
weekly newspapers in New York City. It clarified as I began to teach students
of theater, and deepened as I read "theory." But its abiding approach has been
that of a theater critic in search of language in which to describe new forms,
forms that have appeared both in actual theaters and in the theatricalized sur-
round of our contemporary public life and discourse.
Its precise beginning came with an experience in the theater in 1979.1 was
assigned to review a play being presented in a workshop production at the Pub-
lic Theater. This was Leave It to Beaver Is Dead, of interest because the same
26-year-old artist had written and directed it, composed the music, and was
performing in the band that appeared in—or instead of—the third act. It was
considered a difficult work, and the producer Joseph Papp was sending it up to
the press as a trial balloon. If it "flew," a full production might follow. The New
Tork Times effectively killed it the next day. My excited review some days later
in the Soho News came too late to help. The unknowability of the characters,
the strangely synthetic language, the truncated structure, the abrupt shift from
play to rock concert, and most of all the frightening relativism of the work's
projected universe, seemed almost to suggest the outlines of a new culture or
a new way of being. The "new culture" was suggested in the layers of the title,
which, in the logic of a world twice-removed, stages real mourning for a false
image. My evening in this neorealist world without external referent left me in
a prolonged uneasiness, as if my basic ontological security had suddenly become
a false memory or the latest disposable product. I had fallen into the mental
swoon of postmodernism.
For this vertiginous new perspective, at once artistic and broadly cultural,
I lacked at the time a name, much less an adequate vocabulary and grammar.
The older categories of fantastic, theatricalist, and the "absurd," whose effects
realism underwrites through contrast, had little explanatory power. However,
browsing in a bookstore the day after seeing this production, I stumbled upon
the "Schizo-Culture" issue of the journal Semiotexte. Presently I discovered
the(then, to me) fiercely difficult October. In this way I began to familiarize
m yself with a set of related ideas derived from the world of French critical,
psychoanalytic, and feminist theory: Lacan's insight into the symbolic construc-
tion of subjectivity, Foucault's announcement of the "end of man," Derrida's
attack on the "metaphysics of Presence," Roland Barthes's "death of the

i
2 The Death of Character

Author," Baudrillard's shattering "precession of the simulacra," Deleuze and

Guatarri's "schizoanalysis," Lyotard's collapse of the "grands recitf of mod-
ernism, and the exposures by Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva of masculinist
philosophical and psychoanalytic constructions, often in the foregoing theore-
ticians themselves. This poststructuralist theory, in the aggregate, was the chief
articulator of the "crisis of representation," by which one field after another,
not only literature but law, sociology, anthropology, history, was sent reeling in
the past twenty years. At the point at which I began to discover these theoreti-
cal "discourses" they were also providing an intellectual framework for the ar-
tistic and cultural phenomena that, especially in the United States, were coming
to be understood under the heading of postmodernism.
The mental swoon of postmodernism. It is useful to recall the generally
shared sense, circa 1980, by those who suddenly "got" it, that Western culture,
led by American culture, was moving into a new, dizzying spiral of Marx's "All
that is solid melts into air."1 Those of us in the arts and the academic world
saw it there, in the breakdown of formerly distinct styles and disciplines, and
in the vanishing boundaries between high and popular culture. In architecture
the severe linearity of the International Style was being supplanted by a ram-
pant eclecticism and what Charles Jencks calls the "double coding" of highbrow
and vernacular, classical and industrial, to him "the essential definition of Post-
Modernism."2 In dance such traits could show up in the disconcertingly choice-
less mixture of ballet and rock dancing in Twyla Tharp's Deuce Coupef in fic-
tion in the "graffiti" doubling of Kathy Acker's Don Quixote-^ and in theater
in the freewheeling pastiche that began to replace unified "concept" produc-
tions, especially of the plays of Shakespeare. Instead of, for instance, Hamlet
on a Caribbean island under a dictatorship, a director might now set Shake-
speare in many periods simultaneously, each character carrying his own theat-
rical world on his back. An example of such multiple-track interpretation was
JoAnne Akalaitis's 1991 production of the two parts of Henry /Fat the Public
Theater, in which the court was given a historical setting while the tavern group
was edged into the contemporary world of rock 'n roll. Her Cymbeline was an
even more venturesome instance of this method.
In the university, disciplines and methodologies were losing their tradi-
tional boundaries. A startling new equality appeared between "primary" and
"secondary" literature. The specificity of literature itself was dissolving in a
transtextuality that brought historical documents, philosophical tracts, and law
cases under scrutiny in humanities departments, alongside poetry and fiction.
In politics, Reagan's theatrical ascendancy brought a hitherto unimagined con-
flation of the imagery of serious governance and entertainment, a development
paralleled by the rise of the notorious "infotainment" programs and other me-
dia entanglements of the factual and the fictional.
The blurrings of seemingly firm boundaries were for the most part greeted
 Introduction 3

by the press as stylistic bubbles rather than as tremors from a seismic shift. Yet
to those of us who had lived within the modern long enough for its governing
assumptions to be absorbed as the way of nature itself, the sense of entering a
new and newly unstable culture was acute. The new culture did not seem to us
fundamentally nostalgic, as the "style" press often knowingly concluded on the
basis of eclecticism and pastiche in architecture and design; if anything it rawly
exposed our old nostalgias for "progress," "man," the transparency of "truth,"
and other modern faiths. The issue of truth was perhaps the most troubling as
well as the most difficult to describe, as the culture seemed simultaneously
to have entered a period of both legitimate and spurious perspectivism. As
Debord said in the 19608, "The true is a moment of the false."5 In this new
culture, whether or not one had read Lyotard, Habermas, and Andreas Huyssen,
and years before the global crisis of political authority became manifest, almost
every institution—the presidency, Congress, the military, the clergy, law, medi-
cine, the university and its "core curriculum," marriage, the family—seemed
to be entering a "legitimation crisis." On this view, the postmodern might have
its stylistic attributes, but did not mark a style so much as a cultural condition,
perhaps a particularly uncomfortable and sustained transition.
The deeper postmodern analysis of the late I97os and 19805 searched out
the material and ontological roots of this new condition. In retrospect one can
see that its great unifying trait was not so much nihilism or even relativism,
as postmodernism's most vehement critics have charged, but a theme more
subtle (yet also more observed) that could be thought of as "desubstantiation."
To Baudrillard, a circulating charade of imagery—a " 'disembodied' semiotic
power"—was replacing the concrete use value of commodities produced by
physical labor that in Marx underwrote the production cycle.6 To Fredric
Jameson, rational space was disappearing in the new cultural formation, which
reflected the "unimaginable decentering of global capital itself. Not even Ein-
steinian relativity . . . is capable of giving any kind of adequate figuration to
this process. . . . "7
Nothing "out there," no one "in here." The interior space known as "the
subject" was no longer an essence, an in-dwelling human endowment, but
flattened into a social construction or marker in language, the unoccupied oc-
cupant of the subject position. "Yet today," (Barthes)
the subject apprehends himself elsewhere, and "subjectivity" can return at an-
other place on the spiral: deconstructed, taken apart, shifted without anchor-
age: why should I not speak of "myself" since this "my" is no longer "the
self"?8
The debate on subjectivity has been one of the most fraught of the past
twenty years, especially in the early 19808, when feminists were vociferous in
pointing out that just as women were beginning to achieve the status of sub-
4 The Death of Character

jects—the power to wield the "I"—male theorists were declaring the position
vacant. Craig Owens's groundbreaking 1983 article describing feminism as a
postmodern discourse initially met with a cool reception from feminists.9 By
the late 19808, however, feminists and queer theorists were generally finding
poststructuralist theories of subjectivity politically valuable.
Desubstantiation was the theme of a meditative 1985 Pompidou Center
exhibition, Les immateriaux, designed in part by the philosopher of the post-
modern, Jean-Francois Lyotard. It was intended to convey to the visitor an
experience of the invisible—the new world of information technology and
subatomic particle physics, and what were presented as corresponding cultural
processes such as nonlinearity, flux, multichannel perception, and simulation.
The exhibit intentionally had no defined order; different paths might be taken
through its many spaces, paths that could be tracked by an electronic card
distributed to each patron. Even the show's catalogue, consisting of a series of
unnumbered and unattached pages, was without fixed sequence. The press re-
lease publicizing the exhibit stressed that the visitor was not to be contained in
"linear time," as she is by radio and film, the media of modernism. Interest-
ingly, the show implied a new ascendancy of theater in the postmodern age.
Under the heading "moi au theatre" the catalogue was introduced by a quo-
tation from Beckett's The Unnamable, and the largest space at the exhibit was
devoted to a Theatre du non-corps, where voices played over a shifting light and
hologram performance.10
The sense of an emptiness at the heart of matter can be traced in much of
the new theater. The Wooster Group performs Brace-Up\, their version of The
Three Sisters. But instead of staging a material representation of characters suf-
fering loss, departure, and exile from a distant center, they convert these expe-
riences into a negative space or absence in the staging of the play itself. Irina,
fearful of growing old without experiencing life, is played by a 75-year-old
woman in a wheelchair. An invisible centrifugal force seems to glue the actors
to the periphery of the playing area. From this position they speak into micro-
phones, sometimes with their backs to the audience while video monitors bring
us their faces; often live actors will communicate with absent partners on video
monitors.11
The central image of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play, the
Great Hole of History, is also an absence, the archeological remains of a theme
park in which are buried simulations and imitations, such as a replica of George
Washington's wooden teeth and false Abe Lincoln beards. In 2 Samuel uy etc.,
David Greenspan compresses broken fragments of telephone conversations and
luncheon chatter spanning friendships and families over three generations into
an act-length speech spoken by a single male figure. The representation of the
community that is theater's special province has not been lost, but the commu-
nity now floats behind the play through multiple absences—of the speakers, of
 Introduction 5 5

the full sense of their speech, of the locations where such speech might take
place. The community has dissolved into the electronic ether.
Des McAnuff's Leave It to Beaver Is Dead, actually written in 1974 and first
performed in Toronto in 1975, was one of the earlier plays to reflect this sense
of groundlessness. Both nostalgically and prophetically, it pointed to a cultural
transition whose outward symptoms later became increasingly visible.12 With
only ten performances in New York and an appearance in an anthology pub-
lished by a fringe California press, this play might be surprised to find itself
solemnized as a cultural icon poised between epistemes. Nevertheless, I want
to give an account of it here, not least because it illuminates the somewhat
delicate approach of this study, which treats theater as a crucial mediating term
between the heterogenous fullness of life and the clarifying abstractions of
theory.
After his absence as an unsuccessful premed student, during which time he
has made one or more suicide attempts, a young man named Dennis returns
to his commune in a large American city. In the sixties the commune operated
a free drug clinic that survived on government grants. Now it's the seventies,
and the group has taken to running a nocturnal profit-making project called
"The Show." Their process is deliberately clouded, but it seems they service
clients' fantasies with a mind-bending combination of interrogation, mockery,
kindness, menace, and seduction, all simulated through games, play, play within
play, plays on words. They flirt with danger, simulating "accidents" that they
document in photographs.
In the clinic days, Dennis, an advocate of authority, order, and cleanliness,
had been the group's undisputed leader. But now the group has been taken over
by a powerful woman named Lizzard, who may or may not be Loretta, a drug
addict once treated at the former clinic. Lizzard and her two male cohorts,
Dennis's old school chums, no longer practice cleanliness and order. The place
is a junkyard of props from The Show, a "contemporary laboratory . . . as well
as a museum of the Fifties and Sixties complete with hub caps, juke box, malt
shop stools, water pipes and traces of glitter."13 Setting out to "save" Dennis
by introducing him to the new ethos, the group counters his increasingly des-
perate efforts to take control with what we can only assume must be the pro-
cedures of The Show. With escalating menace, Lizzard hammers at Dennis's
normative values and hierarchic ways of thinking as symptoms of false con-
sciousness. Eventually, Dennis slips across a boundary. He suddenly begs to try
out the new ideas on a feckless client who wanders in off the street. Dennis is
exhilarated, but there is trouble, danger, a struggle in the bathroom, blood,
the client collapses, Dennis staggers out, and . . . blackout. There are murmurs
of "It's all right, it's all right," the mantra left over from the drug clinic days.14
The audience is expecting a third act, in part to find out what happened
(Was anyone hurt? Will we see, or have we seen, The Show?), and also because
6 The Death of Character

we have been told that a band called "Terry and the Afghans" will be arriving
at midnight: Instead, conventional expectations of clarification and reconcilia-
tion are frustrated. Returning from a second intermission, we become audience
to an act-length rock concert. Is this final show part of The Show in the play,
or just a show after the play? The characters, or the performers—we don't know
which "frame" we are in—sing, play, and dance along with the musicians. The
lyrics stir a mood of impending apocalypse, one song repeating over and over,
"Save the children! Save the children!"15
I have said that postmodernism may prove to be a painful transition be-
tween systems of value, and Leave It to Beaver Is Dead is nothing if not a play
about transition. Its returning hero finds a new world where public values have
dematerialized into private fantasies, just as the "Love Striparama All Nude
Show" now occupies the site of an old-time neighborhood tavern. In the new
world people's real names are dismissed as "strictly conceptual," as one charac-
ter shrugs. In the new world of dramatic form, the play's indifference to its
own interruption is its most disturbing quality. But the longing for completion
is "strictly conceptual" too.16
The problem of subjectivity is central to the play, but in most un-Pirandel-
lian fashion it is not a problem to itself, only to the spectator, who feels as if
she is falling through space. The play asks: What is a person? Can one "have"
an identity, "own" one, achieve "self-mastery," the highest evolution of subjec-
tivity under the old paradigm? Or does identity consist of continuously chang-
ing personae with no inherent self? And if the latter, is the role-playing subject
a new adaptation to a world in accelerating mutation, as the play in part sug-
gests? Or is its appearance merely the truth that "always already," as Derrida
likes to say, lay beneath the mask of self-sameness that (as the play also in part
suggests) was destined to be stripped away? Issues of cultural transition and
subjectivity are joined in the play's sexual politics. The old order is presided
over by the Beaverish boy scout Dennis, believer in a law-and-order masculine
authority and its unitary self. In the course of the play, this identity paradigm
collapses in unequal contest with a rising female power practicing a multiform
self and its new ways of improvisation and masquerade. This gendering of the
epistemes in McAnuff's play is a double-edged vision, however: a new feminine
order is seen as inevitable, but it is rendered in the fearful terms of the reptile
(lizard) as cold-blooded, subtle, and dangerous.
Thus, while the play brilliantly summons a vision of cultural transition, it
is itself a transitional work, lodged in traditional representation (both dramatic
and cultural) even while it brings that very attribute into question; and alter-
natively in the rupture of traditional form, coupling play and rock concert in
uneasy harness. In this and other respects, the play evinced the aesthetic claimed
for postmodern works even before it was fully articulated: an aesthetic of breaks
and gaps, surfaces and masks, objectless in its irony, without closure, speaking
 Introduction 7 7

a strange synthetic language packed with sly quotations and a myriad of refer-
ences to pop culture. The transition the play enacts at many levels—in its story,
its characters, its very gesture of transit between performance media—is the
story of a disappearance: the movement from governance by rules and ground-
ing principles to governance by an unstable if vital theatricality. (The attempt
of the New York Times to stabilize the action in the earlier, more recognizable
paradigm of modernism with the headline "Of TV Survivors, Clinics and Drug
Addicts" was amusingly representative of the cultural confusion the play de-
picts and enacts.)17 Its fluid and mysterious theatricality is key to the play's post-
modern sensibility, and touches my concluding theme in chapter 8: the intrinsic
connection between postmodernism and theatricality.
I could wish that of the two terms—postmodernism and theater—the
latter at least would summon up firm and undisputed definition as a comple-
ment to the unavoidable slippage of the former. But in the past twenty-five years
the term "theater," floating far from its old associate "drama," has itself become
a proliferating source of meanings. New terms have sprung up in efforts to
distance new performance modes from dramatic theater or to associate for-
merly distinct performance modes with theater. Performance, performance art,
art performance, solo performance, the "performance piece," even performance
theater have arisen, all with different shades of meaning intended to edge them
differently away from association with the more closed and traditional forms
of a dramatic theater; paradoxically, the terms music theater and dance theater
have come into currency to edge traditional opera and dance back toward what
in the contexts of these arts becomes the more heterodox, open, and welcoming
performance mode that is also "theater." Some have claimed for performance
art, particularly, the spark of le vrai postmoderne, though it has never been clear
to me why performance art, with its collapse of real and theatrical time and
space, is not in fact the heir to or at least the echo of the modernist avant-garde
performance tradition. But here again one would have to make discriminating
judgments between art performance as practiced in the 19708 in galleries and
in the 19805 in theaters and clubs. In any event, none of these contemporary
theatrical and performance variants is the exclusive locus of a postmodern the-
atrical genre, practice, or style. Rather, evidence of the new epistemological and
ontological currents circulates through all of them.
How then to limit the terrain on which I link theater and postmodernism?
The following chapters are the result of a decision (perhaps attraction is the
better term) to stay close to that practice in the theater that is itself most in-
terested in defining itself by measuring its distance from the long practice of
traditional, dramatic theater. Thus the Wooster Group, whose performers are
actors and whose deconstructed material is often drawn from classic theatrical
texts, would fall within my sphere of interests here, while the no less interesting,
no less postmodern, and highly theatrical performance style of, say, a Frankfurt
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Shimei. The occasion seized by Sheba was the emulation, as if from
loyalty, between the northern and southern tribes on David’s return.
Through the ancient custom, he summoned all the tribes “to their
tents ;” and then, and afterwards, Judah alone remained faithful to
the house of David (2 Sam. xx. 1, 2). The king might well say, “
Sheba the son of Bichri shall do us more harm than did Absalom ”
(2b. 6). What he feared was Sheba’s occupation of the fortified
cities. This fear was justified by the result. Sheba traversed the
whole of Palestine, apparently rousing the population, Joab following
him in full pursuit, and so deeply impressed with the gravity of the
occasion, that the murder even of the great Amasa was but a
passing incident in the campaign. He stayed but for the moment of
the deed, and ‘* pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri.” The mass of
the army halted for an instant by the bloody corpse, and then they
also “ went on after Joab to pursue after Sheba the son of Bichri.” It
seems to have been his intentior to establish himself in the fortress
of Abel-Bethmaacah—in the northmost, extremity 01 Palestine—
possibly allied to the cause of Absalom through his mother Maacah,
and famous for the prudence of its inhabitants (2 Sam. xx. 18). ‘That
prudence was put to the test on the present occasion. Joab’s terms
were—the head of the insurgent chief. A woman of the place
undertook the mission to her city, and propesed the execution to her
fellowcitizens. The head of Sheba was thrown over the wall, and’ the
insurrection ended, 2. (SeBeé; Alex. SoBabé: Scbe.) A Gadite,
 SHEBA one of the Ge of his tribe, who dwelt in Bashan (1
Chr. v. 13). fA. P. 8.] SHE'BA (Naw: SaBd: Saba). The name of three
fathers of tribes in the early genealogies of Genesis, often referred
to in the sacred books. They are :— i Ν son of Raamah, son of Cush
(Gen, x. 7; 1 Chr. i. 9). 2. (aes Σαβεύ, SaBdv.) Asonof Joktan (Gen.
x. 28; 1 Chr. i.22); the tenth in order of his sons. 3) (SaBd, ΞΕ ΠΩΣ ;
Alex. Σαβάν, Σαβά.) A son of Jokshan, son of Keturah (Gen. xxv. 3; 1
Chr. i. 32). We shall consider, first, the history of the Joktanite Sheba
; and, secondly, the Cushite Sheba and the Keturahite Sheba
together. I. It has been shown, in ARABIA and other articles, that
the Joktanites were among the early colonists of southern Arabia,
and that the kingdom which they there founded was, for many
centuries, talled the kingdom of Sheba, after one of the sons of
Joktan. They appear to have been preceded by an aboriginal race,
which the Arabian historians describe as a people of gigantic stature,
who cultivated the land and peopled the deserts alike, living with the
Jinn in the ‘deserted quarter,” or, AE the tribe of Thamood, dwelling
in caves. This people correspond, in their traditions, to the aboriginal
races of whom remains are found wherever a civilized nation has
supplanted and dispossessed the ruder race. But besides these
extinct tribes, there are the evidences of Cushite settlers, who
appear to have passed along the sonth coast from west to east, and
who probably preceded the Joktanites, and mixed with them when
they arrived in the country. Sheba seems to have been the name of
the great south Arabian kingdom and the peoples which composed
it, until that of Himyer took its place in later times. On this point
much obscurity remains ; but the Sabaeans are mentioned by Diod.
Sic., who refers to the historical books of the kings of Egypt in the
Alexandrian Library, and by Eratosthenes, as well as Artemidorus, or
Agatharchides (iii. 38, 46), who is Strabo’s chief authority ; and the
Homeritae or Himyerites are first mentioned by Strabo, in the
expedition of Aelius Gallus (B.c. 24). Nowhere earlier, in sacred or
profane records, are the latter people mentioned. except by the
Arabian historians themselves, who place Himyer very high in their
list, and ascribe importance to his family from that early date. We
have endeavoured, in other articles, to show reasons for supposing
that in this very name of Himyer we have the Red Man, and the
origin of Erythrus, Erythraean Sea, Phoenicians, ἕο. [See ARABIA;
RED SEA.] The apparent difficulties of the case are reconciled by
supposing, as M. Caussin de Perceval (Hssai, i. 54-5) has done, that
the kingdom and its people received the name of Sheba (Arabic,
Seba), but that its chief and sometimes reigning family or tribe was
that of Himyer; and that an old name was thus preserved until the
foundation of the modern kingdom of Himyer or the Tubbaas, which
M. Caussin is inclined to place (but there is much uncertainty about
this date) about a century before our era, when the two great rival
families of Himyer and Kahlan, together with smaller tribes, were
united under the former. In support of the view that the name of
Sheba applied to the kingdom and its people as a generic or national
name, we find in the Aamoos * the name of Seba comprises the
tribes of the Yemen in common” SHEBA 1231 (s.v, Seba); and this
was written long after the later kingdom of Himyer had flourished
and fallen. And further, as Himyer meant the ‘ Red Man,’ so probably
did Seba. In Arabic, the verb Seba, ies Law, said of the sun, or of a
journey, or of a fever, means “ it altered” a man, 7. 6. by turning him
red; the noun seba, as well as sib& and sebee-ah, signifies ‘‘ wine”
(Td el-’ Aroos MS.). The Arabian wine was red; for we read “"
kumeyt is a name of wine, because there is in it blackness and
redness” (Sihah MS.). It appears, then, that in Seba we very possibly
have the oldest name of the Red Man, whence came φοῖνιξ, Himyer,
and Erythrus. We haye assumed the identity of the Arabic Seba, -
Law, with Sheba (SI). The pl. form DN corresponds with the Greek
Σαβαῖος and the Latin Sabaei. Gesenius* compares the Heb. with
Eth. aa ater “man.” The Hebrew shin is, in by far the greater number
of instances, sin in Arabic (see G esenitus) ; and the historical,
ethnological, and geographical circumstances of the case, all require
the identification. In the Bible, the Joktanite Sheba, mentioned
genealogically in Gen. x. 28, recurs, as a kingdom, in the account of
the visit of the queen of Sheba to king Solomon, when she heard of
his fame concerning the name of the Lord, and came to prove him
with hard questions (1 K. x. 1); “and she came to Jerusalem with a
very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold,
and precious stones” (2). And, again, “she gave the king an hundred
and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and
precious stones: there came no more such’ abundance of spices as
these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon” (10). She
was attracted by the fame of Solomon’s wisdom, which she had
heard in her own land ; but the dedication of the Temple had
recently been solemnized, and, no doubt, the people of Arabia were
desirous to see this famous house. That the queen was of Sheba in
Arabia, and not of Seba the Cushite kingdom of Ethiopia, is
unquestionable ; Josephus and some of the rabbinical writers *
perversely, as usual, refer her to the latter; and the Ethiopian (or
Abyssinian) church has a convenient tradition to the same effect
(comp. Joseph. Aut. viii. 6, §5; Ludolf, Hist. Aethiop. ii. 3; Harris’
Abyssinia, iil. J05). The Arabs call her Bilkees (or Yelkamah or
Balkamah; Ibn Khaldoon), a queen of the later Himyerites, who, if
M. Caussin’s chronological adjustments of the early history of the
Yemen be correct, reigned in the first century of our era (Essai, i. 75,
&c.); and an edifice at Ma-rib (Mariaba) still bears her name, while
M. Fresnel read the name of ‘ Almacah” or ** Balmacah,’ in many of
the Himyeritic inscriptions. The Arab story of this queen is, in the
present state of our knowledge, altogether unhistorical and
unworthy of credit; but the attempt to make her Solomon’s queen of
Sheba probably arose (as M. Caussin conjectures) from the latter
being mentioned in the Kur-dn without any name, and the
commentators adopting Bilkees as the most ancient queen of Sheba
in the lists of the Yemen. The Wur-dn, as usual, contains a very poor
version of queen of Sheba came from the Yemen, for she spoke an
Ishmaelite (or rather a Shemitic) language.
 1232 SHEBA the Biblical narrative, diluted with nonsense
and encumbered with fables (ch. xxvii. ver. 24, &c.). The other
passages in the Bible which seem to refer to the Joktanite Sheba
occur in Is. lx. 6, where we read, “all they from Sheba shall come:
they shall bring gold and incense,” in conjunction with Midian,
Ephab, Kedar, and Nebaioth. Here reference is made to the
commerce that took the road from Sheba along the western borders
of Arabia (unless, as is possible, the Cushite or Keturahite Sheba be
meant); and again in Jer. vi. 20, it is written, “ΤῸ what purpose
cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a
far country ?”” (but compare Ezek. xxvii. 22, 23, and see below). On
the other hand, in Ps. lxxii. 10, the Joktanite Sheba is undoubtedly
meant ; for the kingdoms of Sheba and Seba are named together,
and in ver. 15 the gold of Sheba is mentioned. The kingdom of
Sheba embraced the greater part of the Yemen, or Arabia Felix. Its
chief cities, and probably successive capitals, were Seba, San’&
(UzaL), and Zafiir (SEPHAR). Seba was probably the name of the
city, and generally of the country and nation; but the statements of
the Arabian writers are conflicting on this point, and they are not
made clearer by the accounts of the classical geographers. Ma-rib
was another name of the city, or of the fortress or royal palace in it :
—‘‘ Seba is a city known by the name of Ma-rib, three nights’
journey from San’&” (Ez-Zejjaj, in the Zaj-el’Aroos MS.). Again, ‘Seba
was the city of Marib (Mushtarak, s.v.), or the country in the Yemen,
of which the city was Ma-rib” (Mardsid, in voc.). Near Seba was the
famous Dyke of El-’Arim, said by tradition to have been built by
Lukman the _’Adite, to store water for the inhabitants of the place,
and to avert the descent of the mountain torrents. The catastrophe
of the rupture of this dyke is an important point in Arab history, and
marks the.dispersion in the 2nd century of the Joktanite tribes. This,
like all we know of Seba, points irresistibly to the great importance
of the city as the ancient centre of Joktanite power. Although Uzal
(which is said to be the existing San’a) has been supposed to be of
earlier foundation, and Zafar (SEPHAR) was a royal residence, we
cannot doubt that Seb’ was the most important of these chief towns
of the Yemen. Its value in the eyes of the old dynasties is shown by
their struggles to obtain and hold it ; and it is narrated that it passed
several times into the hands alternately of the so-called Himyerites
and the people of Hadramawt (HAZARMAVETH). Eratosthenes,
Artemidorus, Strabo, and Pliny, speak of Mariaba ; Diodorus,
Agatharchides, Steph. Byzant., of Saba. SaBat (Steph. Byzant.).
Σαβᾶς (Agath.). Ptol. (vi. 7, 850, 42), and Plin. (vi. 23, §34) mention
3¢8n. But the former all say that Mariaba was the metropolis of the
Sabaei ; and we may conclude that both names applied to the same
place, one the city, the other its palace or fortress (though probably
these writers were not aware of this fact): unless indeed the form
Sabota (with the variants Sabatha, Sobatale, &c.) of Pliny (NV. ΗΠ.
vi. 28, §32), have reference to Shibam, capital of Hadramawt, and
the name also of another celebrated city, of which the Arabian
writers (Marasid, 5. v.) give curious accounts. The classics are
generally agreed in ascribing to the Sabaei the chiet’ riches, the best
territory, and the greatest numbers, of the four principal peoples of
the Arabs which they name: the Sabaei, Atramitae (= Hadramiwt,
Katabeni (= Kahtan=Joktan), and Mixix. 2). SHEBA naei (for which
see DikLAI)., See Bochart (Phaleg, xxvi.), and Miiller’s Geog. Min. p.
186, sqq. The history of the Sabaeans has been examined by M.
Caussin de Perceval (Lssai sur [ Hist. des Arabes), but much remains
to be adjusted before its details can be received as trustworthy, the
earliest safe chronological point being about the commencement of
our era. An examination of the existing remains of Sabaean and
Himyerite cities and buildings will, it cannot be doubted, add more
facts to our present knowledge; and a further acquaintance with the
language, from inscriptions, aided as M. Fresnel believes, by an
existing dialect, will probably give us some safe grounds for placing
the Building, or Era, of the Dyke. In the art. ARABIA, (vol. i. 966), it
is stated that there are dates on the ruins of the dyke, and the
conclusions which De Sacy and Caussin have drawn from those
dates and other indications respecting the date of the Rupture of the
Dyke, which forms then an important point in Arabian history; but it
must be placed in the 2nd century of our era, and the older era of
the Building is altogether unfixed, or indeed any date before the
expedition of Aelius Gallus. The ancient buildings are of massive
masonry, and evidently of Cushite workmanship, or origin. Later
temples, and palace-temples, of which the Arabs give us
descriptions, were probably of less massive character ; but Sabaean
art is an almost unknown and interesting subject of inquiry. The
religion celebrated in those temples was cosmic ; but this subject is
too obscure and too little known to admit of discussion in this place.
It may be necessary to observe that whatever connexion there was
in religion between the Sabeaus and the Sabians, there was none in
name or in race. Respecting the latter, the reader may consult
Chwolson’s Ssabier, a work that may be recommended with more
confidence than the same author’s Nabathaean Agriculture. [See
NEBAIOTH.| Some curious papers have also appeared in the Journal
of the German Oriental Society of Leipsic, by Dr. Osiander. Il. Sheba,
son of Raamah son of Cush, settled somewhere on the shores of the
Persian Gulf, In the Mardsid (s. v.) the writer has found an
identification which appears to be satisfactory—that on the island of
Awal (one of the “ Bahreyn Islands ’’), are the ruins of an ancient
city called Seba. Viewed in connexion with RAAMAH, and the other
facts which we know respecting Sheba, traces of his settlements
ought to be found on or near the shores of the gulf. It was this
Sheba that carried on the great Indian traffic with Palestine, in
conjunction with, as we hold, the other Sheba, son of Jokshan son
of Keturah, who like DEDAN, appears to have formed with the
Cushite of the same name, one tribe: the Cushites dwelling on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, and carrying on the desert trade thence
to Palestine in conjunction with the nomade Keturahite tribes, whose
pasturages were mostly on the western frontier. The trade is
mentioned by Ezek. xxvii. 22, 23, in an unmistakeable manner ; and
possibly by Isa. Ix. 6, and Jer. vi. 20, but these latter, we think,
rather refer to the Joktanite Sheba. The predatory bands of the
Keturahites are mentioned in Job i. 15, and vi. 19, in a manner that
recalls the forays of modern Bedawees. [Comp. ARABIA, DEDAN, &c.
| [E. S: Ps] SHE'BA (pay : Σαμαα; Alex. SuBee: Sabee). One of the
towns of the allotment of Simeon (Josh. It occurs between
Beersheba and Moladah.
 SHEBAH In the list of the cities of the south of Judah, out
of which those of Simeon were selected, no Sheba appears apart
from Beersheba; but there is a Shema (αν. 26) which stands next to
Moladah, and which is probably the Sheba in question. This
suggestion is supported by the reading of the Vatican LXX. The
change from 6 to m is an easy one both in speaking and in writing,
and in their other letters the words are identical. Some have
supposed that the name Sheba is a mere repetition of the latter
portion of the preceding name, Beersheba,—by the common error
called homoioteleuton,—and this is supported by the facts that the:
number of names given in xix. 2-6 is, including Sheba, fourteen,
though the number stated is thirteen, and that in the list of Simeon
of 1 Chron, (iv. 28) Sheba is entirely omitted, Gesenius suggests that
the words in xix. 2 may be rendered ‘“‘ Beersheba, the town, with
Sheba, the well;” but this seems forced, and is besides inconsistent
with the fact that the list is a list of “cities.” 7705. 1355 a, where
other suggestions are cited. [G.] SHE'BAH (Aya, Shibeth : ὅρκος :
Abundantia). The ‘famous well which gave its name to the city of
Beersheba (Gen. xxvi. 33). According to this version of the
occurrence, Shebah, or more accurately Shibeah, was the fourth of
the series of wells dug by Isaac’s people, and received its name from
him, apparently in allusion to the oaths (31, saws, yisshdbe’t) which
had passed between himself and the Philistine chieftains the day
before. It should not be overlooked that according to the narrative of
an earlier chapter the well owed its existence and its name to Isaac’s
father (xxi. 32). Indeed its previous existence may be said to be
implied in the narrative now directly under consideration (xxvi. 23).
The two transactions are, curiously identical in many of their
cireumstances—the rank and names of the Philistine chieftains, the
strife between the subordinates on either side, the covenant, the
adjurations, the city that took its name from the well. They differ
alone in the fact that the chief figure in the one case is Abraham, in
the other Isaac. Some commentators, as Kalisch (Gen. 500), looking
to the fact that there are two large wells at Bir es Seba, propose to
consider the two transactions as distinct, and as belonging the one
to the one well, the other to the other. Others see in the two
narratives merely two versions of the circumstances under which this
renowned well was first dug. And certainly in the analogy of the
early history of other nations, and in the very close correspondence
between the details of the two accounts, there is much to support
this. The various plays on the meaning of the name YY, interpreting
it as ‘ seven as an * oath”? —as “ abundance ” —as ‘a lion” b— are
all so many direct testimonies to the remote date and archaic form
of this most venerable of names, and to the fact that the narratives
of the early history of the Hebrews are under the control of the
same laws which regulate the early history of other nations. [G. ]
SHEBA'M ( nav Y, 1.6. Sebim: Ξεβαμά: Saban). One of the towns in
the pastoral district on the east Ce a This is Jerome’s (Quaest. in
Genesim and Vulgate); as if the word was nyay, as in Ez. xvi. 49. Ὁ
The modern Lene Bir es-Seba’. VOL. 11. SHEBNA 1233 of Jordan—
the “land of Jazer and the land of Gilead ” —demanded, and finally
ceded to the tribes of Reuben and Gad (Num. xxxii. 3, only). It is
named between Etealeh and Nebo, and is probably the same which
in a subsequent verse of the chapter, and on later occasions,
appears in the altered forms of SHIBMAH and SismaH, The change
from Sebam to Sibmah, is perhaps due to the difference between
the Amorite or Moabite and Hebrew languages. [G. ] SHEBANT’AH
(MIA : Σεχενία; Alex. Saxavia in Neh. ix., Safavia in Neh. x.: Sebnia
in Neh. ix., Sebenia in Neh. x.). 1. A Levite in the time of Ezra, one
of those who stood upon the steps of the Levites and sang the
psalm of thanksgiving and confession, which is one of the last efforts
of Hebrew psalmody (Neh. ix. 4, 5). He sealed the covenant with
Nehemiah (Neh. x. 10). In the LXX. of Neh. ix. 4 he is made the son
of Sherebiah. 2. (Σεβανί in Neh. x., Σεχενία in.Neh. xii. 14: Sebenia.)
A priest, or priestly family, who sealed the covenant with Nehemiah
(Neh. x. 4, xii, 14). Called SHECHANTAH in Neh. xii. 3. 8. (SeBavid:
Sabania.) Another Levite who sealed the covenant with Nehemiah
(Neh. x. 12). 4. παν: Souvia; Alex. SwBevia: Sebenias.) One of the
priests appointed by David to blow with the trumpets before the ark
of God (1 Chr. xv. 24). [W. A. W.] SHEB'ARIM (oa, with the def.
article: συνέτριψαν : Sabarim). A place named in Josh. vii. 5 only, as
one of the points in the flight from Ai. The root of the word has the
force of “ dividing” or “breaking,” and it is therefore suggested that
the name was attached to a spot where there were fissures or rents
in the soil, gradually deepening till they ended in a sheer descent or
precipice to the ravine by which the Israelites had come trom Gilgal
—“ the going down”’ ( THAT ; see verse 5 ad the margin of the A. V
a The ground around the site of Ai, on any hypothesis cf its locality,
was very much of this character. No trace of the name has, however
, been yet remarked, Keil (Josua, ad loc.) interprets Shebarim by
“stone quarries ;” but this does not appear to be supported by other
commentators or by lexicographers. The ancient inter preters usually
discard it as a pr oper name, and render it “ till they were broken
up,” &c. [G.] SHEB’'ER Qa: Σαβέρ; Alex. Σεβέρ: Saber). Son of Caleb
ben-Hezron by his concubine Maachah (1 Chr. ii. 48). SHEB NA
(Naw: Zouvds: Sobnas). A person of high position ‘in Hezekiah’s
court, holding at one time the office of prefect of the palace (15.
xxii. 15), but subsequently the subordinate office of secretary (Is.
xxxvi. 3; 2 K. xix. 2). This change appears to have been effected by
Isaiah’s inter position ; for Shebna had incurred the prophet’s
extreme displeasure, partly on account of his pride (Is. xxii. 16), his
luxury (ver. 18), and his tyranny (as implied in the title of “ father? ”
bestowed on his successor, ver. 21), and partly (as appears from his
successor being termed a ‘‘ servant of Jehovah,” ver. 20) on account
of his belonging to the political party which was opposed to the
theocracy, and in 4k Sabania,
 1234 SHEBUEL favour of the Egyptian alliance. From the
omission, of the usual notice of his father’s name, it has been
conjectured that he was a novus homo. [W. L. B.] SHEB'UEL Oxia:
SovBahrA: Subuel, Subaél). 1, A descendant of Gershom (1 Chr. xxiii.
xxvi. 24), who was ruler of the treasures of the house of God; called
also SHUBAEL (1 Chr. xxiv. 20), The Targum of 1 Chr. xxvi. 24 has a
strange piece of confusion: ‘¢ And Shebuel, that is, Jonathan the son
of Gershom the son of Moses, returned to the fear of Jehovah, and
when David saw that he was skilful in money matters he appointed
him chief over the treasures.’ He is the last descendant of Moses of
whom there is any trace. 2. One of the fourteen sons of Heman the
minstrel (1 Chr. xxv. 4) ; called also SHUBAEL (1 Chr. xxv. 20), which
was the reading of the LXX. and Vulgate. He was chief of the
thirteenth band of twelve in the Temple choir. SHECANT'AH (47°30:
Σεχενίας : Sechenia). 1. The tenth in order of the priests who were
appointed by lot in the reign of David (1 Chr. ΧΧΙ 11). 2. (Sexovias:
Sechenias.) A priest in the reign of Hezekiah, one of those appointed
in the cities of the priests to distribute to their brethren their daily
portion for their service (2 Chr. xxxi. 15). SHECHANT’AH (MI2:
Σεχενίας : Sechenias). 1. A descendant of Zerubbabel of the line
royal of Judah (1 Chr. iii. 21, 22). ? 2. (Saxavias.) Some descendants
of Shechaniah appear to have returned with ἔνα (Εν. viii. 3). He is
called SECHENTAS in 1 Esd. viii. 29. 3. (Sexevias.) The sons of
Shechaniah were another family who returned with Ezra, three
hundred strong, with the son of Jahaziel at their head (Ezr, viii. 5).
In this verse some name appears to have been omitted. The LXX.
has “ of- the sons of Zathoe, Sechenias the son of Aziel,’’ and in this
it is followed by 1 Esd. viii. 32, “of the sons of Zathoe, Sechenias the
son of Jezelus.” Perhaps the reading should be: “ of the sons of
Zattu, Shechaniah, the son of Jahaziel.” 4. The son of Jehiel of the
sons of Elam, who proposed to Iizra to put an end to the foreign
marriages which had been contracted after the return from Babylon
(Ezr. x. 2). 5. The father of Shemaiah the keeper of the east gate of
Jerusalem (Neh, iii. 29). 6. The son of Arah, and father-in-law to
Tobiah the Ammonite (Neh. vi. 18). ; 7. (Sexevia: Sebenias.) The
head of a priestly family who returned with Zerubbabel (Neh. xii. 3).
He is also called SHEBANIAH, and SHECANIAH, and was tenth in
order of the priests in the reign of David. SHECH'EM (O3 _,
“shoulder,” * ridge,” like dorsum in Latin: Συχέμ. in most passages,
but also ἡ Σίκιμα in 1 K. xii, 25, and τὰ Σίκιμα, as in Josh. xxiy. 32,
the form used by Josephus and Eusebius, with still other variations:
Sichem). ‘There may be some doubt respecting the origin of the
name. It has been made a question whether the place was so called
from Shechem, the son of Hamor, κι From the foot of the mountains
on either side of the town can be discerned on the one hand the
range beyond Jordan Vailey, and on the other the blue waters of the
SHECHEM head of their tribe in the time of Jacob (Gen. xxxiii, 18,
sq.), or whether he received his name from the city. The import. of
the name favours, certainly, the latter supposition, since the position
of the place on the “saddle” or * shoulder” of the heights which
divide the waters there that flow to the Mediterranean on the west
and the Jordan on the *east, would naturally originate such a name
; and the name, having been thus introduced, would be likely to
appear again and again in the family of the hereditary rulers of the
ctiy or region. The name, too, if first given to the city in the time of
Hamor, would have been taken, according to historical analogy, from
the father rather than the son. Some interpret Gen. xxii. 18, 19 as
showing that Shechem in that passage may have been called also
Shalem. But this opinion has no support except from that passage;
and the meaning even there more naturally is, that Jacob came in
safety to Shechem (ney, as an adjective, safe; comp. Gen. xviii. 21);
or (as recognised in the Eng. Bible) that Shalem belonged to
Shechem as a dependent tributary village. [SHALEM.] The name is
also given in the Auth. Version in the form of SICHEM, and SYCHEM,
to which, as well as SycHAR, the reader is referred.” The etymology
of the Hebrew word shecém indicates, at the outset, that the place
was situated on some mountain or hill-side; and that presumption
agrees with Josh. xx. 7, which places it in Mount Ephraim (see, also,
1 K. xii. 25), and with Judg. ix. 9, which represents it as under the
summit of Gerizim, which belonged to the Ephraim range. The other
Biblical intimations in regard to its situation are only indirect. They
are worth noticing, though no great stress be laid on them. Thus, for
example, Shechem must have been not far from Shiloh, since Shiloh
is said (Judg. xxi. 1) to be a little to the east of “the highway ” which
led from Bethel to Shechem. Again, if Shalem in Gen. xxxiii. 18 be a
proper name, as our version assumes, and identical with the present
Salim on the left of the plain of the Mukkna, then Shechem, which is
said to be east of Shalim, must have been among the hills on the
opposite side. Further, Shechem, as we learn from Joseph’s history
(Gen. xxxvii. 12, &c.), must have been near Dothan ; and, assuming
Dothan to be the place of that name a few miles north-east of
Nabulus, Shechem must have been among the same mountains, not
far distant. So, too, as the Sychar in John iv. 5 was probably the
ancient Shechem, that town must have been near Mount Gerizim, to
which the Samaritan woman pointed or glanced as she stood by the
well at its foot. But the historical and traditional data which exist
outside of the Bible are abundant and decisive. Josephus (Ant. iv. 8,
§44) describes Shechem as between Gerizim and Ebal: τῆς Σικίμων
πόλεως μεταξὺ δυοῖν ὀροῖν, Tapi(atov μὲν τοῦ ἐκ δεξιῶν κειμένου,
τοῦ δ᾽ ἐκ λαιῷῶν Γιβάλου προσαγορευομένους The present
Ndabulus is a corruption merely of Neapolis; and Neapolis succeeded
the more ancient Shechem. All the early writers who touch on the
topography of Palestine, testify to this identity of the two. Josephus
usually retains the old name, but has Neapolis in B. J. iy. 8, §1.
Mediterranean. The latter appears in the illustration to this article.
 SHECH EM The Valley and Town of Nablus, the ancient
Shechem, from the South-western flank of Mount Ebal, looking
Westward. The Mediterranean is discernible in the distance. on the
left is Gerizim Epiphbanius says (Adv. Haer. iii. 1055): ἐν Σικίfois,
τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν, ἐν TH νυνὶ Νεάπολει. Jerome says in the Epit. Paulae: “
Tyransivit Sichem, quae nune Neapolis appellatur.” The city received
its new name (Νεάπολις -- Nabulus) from Vespasian, and on coins
still extant (Eckhel, Doctr. Numm. iii. 433) is called Flavia Neapolis. It
had been laid waste, in all probability, ete the Jewish war; and the
overthrow had been so ‘complete that, contrary to what is generally
true in such instances, of the substitution of a foreign name for the
native one, the original appellation of Shechem never regained its
currency among the people of the country. Its situation accounts for
another name which it bore among the natives, while it was known
chiefly as Neapolis to foreigners. It is nearly midway between
Judaea and Galilee; and, it being customary to make four stages of
the journey between those provinces, the second day’s halt occurs
most conveniently at this place. Being thus a ‘ thoroughfare”
(=NAIAYID) on this im-~ portant route, it was called> also Μαβορθά
or Μαβαρθά, as Josephus states (B. J. iv. 8, 81). He says there that
Vespasian marched from Ammatis, διὰ τῆς Σαμαρείτιδος καὶ mapa
τὴν Nedπολιν καλουμένην, Μαβορθὰ δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐπιχωρίων. Pliny
(H. N. ν. 15) writes the same name “ Mamortha.’’ Others would
restrict the term somewhat, aad understand it rather of the “pass” or
“ gorge” through the mountains where the town was situated
(Ritter’s Erdkunde, Pal. 646). The ancient town, in its most
flourishing age, Ὁ This happy conjecture, in explanation of a name
which baffled even the ingenious Reland, is due to Olshausen (Ritter,
as above). The mountain From a sketch by W. Tipping, Esq. may
have filled a wider circuit than its modern representative. It could
easily have extended further up the side of Gerizim, and eastward
nearer to the opening into the valley from the plain. But any great
change in this respect, certainly the idea of an altogether different
position, the natural conditions of the locality render doubtful. That
the suburbs of the town, in the age of Christ, approached nearer
than at present to the entrance into the valley between Gerizim and
Ebal, may be inferred from the implied vicinity of Jacob's well to
Sychar, in John’s narrative (iv. 1, sq.). The impression made there on
the reader is, that the people could he readily seen as they came
forth from the town to repair to Jesus at the well; whereas Nabulus
is more than a mile distant, and not visible from that point. The
present inhabitants have a belief or tradition that Shechem occupied
a portion of the valley on the east beyond the limits of the modern
town; and certain travellers speak of ruins there, which they regard
as evidence of the same fact. The statement of Eusebius that Sychar
lay east of Neapolis, may be explained by the circumstance, that the
part of Neapolis in that quarter had fallen into such a state of ruin
when he lived, as to be mistaken for the site of a separate town (see
Reland’s Palaest. 1004). The portion of the town on the edge of the
plain was more exposed than that in the recess of the valley, and, in
the natural course of things, would be destroyed first, or be left to
desertion ‘and decay. Josephus says that more than ten thousand
Samaritans (inhabitants of Shechem are meant) were destroyed by
the Romans on one occasion (5. J. iii. 7, §32). The population,
therefore, must have been much greater than Nabulus with its
present dimensions w ala contain, «Κι
 1236 SHECHEM The situation of the town is one of
surpassing beauty. “The land of Syria,” said Mohammed, “is beloved
by Allah beyond all lands, and the part of Syria which He loveth most
is the district of Jerusalem, and the place which He loveth most in
the district of Jerusalem is the mountain of Nablus” (Fundgr.. des
Orients, ii. 139). Its appearance has called forth the admiration of all
travellers who have any sensibility to the charms of nature. It lies in
a sheltered valley, protected by Gerizim on the south, and Ebal on
the north. The feet of these mountains, where they rise from the
town, are not more than five hundred yards apart. The bottom of
the valley is about 1800 feet above the level of the sea, and the top
of Gerizim 800 feet higher still. Those who have been at Heidelberg
will assent to O. von Richter’s remark, that the scenery, as viewed
from the foot of the hills, is not unlike that of the beautiful German
town. The site of the present city, which we believe to have been
also that of the Hebrew city, occurs exactly on the water-summit;
and streams issuing from the numerous springs there, flow down the
opposite slopes of the valley, spreading verdure and fertility in every
direction. Travellers vie with each other in the language which they
employ to describe the scene that bursts here so suddenly upon
them on arriving in spring or early summer at this paradise of the
Holy Land. The somewhat sterile aspect of the adjacent mountains
becomes itself a foil, as it were, to set off the effect of the verdant
fields and orchards which fill up the valley. ‘* There is nothing finer
in all Palestine,” says Dr. Clarke, “ than a view of Vabulus from the
heights around it. As the traveller descends towards it from the hills,
it appears luxuriantly embosomed in the most delightful and fragrant
bowers, half concealed by rich gardens and by stately trees collected
into groves, all around the bold and beautiful valley in which it
stands.” “The whole valley,” says Dr. Robinson, “ was filled with
gardens of vegetables, and orchards of all kinds of fruits, watered by
fountains, which burst forth in various parts and flow westwards in
refreshing streams. It came upon us suddenly like a scene of fairy
enchantment. We saw nothing to compare with it in all Palestine.
Here, beneath the shadow of an immense mulberry-tree, by the side
of a purling rill, we pitched our tent for the remainder of the day and
the night. . . . We rose early, awakened by the songs of nightingales
and other birds, of which the gardens around us were full.” ‘There is
no wilderness here,” says Van de Velde (i. 386), “there are no wild
thickets, yet there is always verdure, always shade, not of the oak,
the terebinth, and the caroub-tree, but of the olive-grove, so soft in
colour, so picturesque in form, that, for its sake, we can willingly
dispense with all other wood. There is a singularity about the vale of
Shechem, and that is the peculiar colouring which objects assume in
it. You know that wherever there is water the air becomes charged
with watery particles, and that distant objects beheld through that
medium seem to be enveloped in a pale blue or gray mist, such as
contributes not a little to give a charm to the landscape. But it is
precisely those atmospheric tints SHECHEM that we miss so much in
Palestine. Fiery tints are to be seen both in the morning and the
evening, and glittering violet or purple coloured hues where the light
falls next to the long, deep shadows; but there is an absence of
colouring, and of that charming dusky hue in which objects assume
such softly blended forms, and in which also the transition in colour
from the foreground to the farthest distance loses the hardness of
outline peculiar to the perfect transparency of an eastern sky. It is
otherwise in the vale of Shechem, at least in the morning and the
evening. Here the exhalations remain hovering among the branches
and leaves of the olive-trees, and hence that lovely bluish haze. The
valley is far from broad, not exceeding in some places a few hundred
feet. This you find generally enclosed on all sides; here, likewise, the
vapours are condensed. And so you advance under the shade of the
foliage, along the living waters, and charmed by the melody ofa host
of singing birds—for they, too, know where to find their best
quarters—while the perspective fades away and is lost in the damp,
vapoury atmosphere.” Apart entirely from the historic interest of the
place, such are the natural attractions of this favourite resort of the
patriarchs of old, such the beauty of the scenery, and the
indescribable air of tranquillity and repose which hangs over the
scene, that the traveller, anxious as he may be to hasten forward in
his journey, feels that he would gladly linger, and could pass here
days and weeks without impatience. The allusions to Shechem in the
Bible are numerous, and show how important the place was in
Jewish history. Abraham, on his first migvation to the Land of
Promise, pitched his tent and built an altar under the ¢Oak (or
Terebinth) of Moreh at Shechem. “The Canaanite was then in the
land :᾿ and it is evident. that the region, if not the city, was already
in possession of the aboriginal race (see Gen. xii. 6). Some have
inferred from the expression, “ place of Shechem,” (DD? Dip), that it
was not inhabited as a city in the time of Abraham. But we have the
same expression used of cities or towns in other instances (Gen.
xviii. 24, xix. 12, xxix. 22); and it may have been interchanged here,
without any difference of meaning, with the phrase, “ city of
Shechem,” which occurs in xxxiii. 18. A position affording such
natural advantages would hardly fail to be occupied, as soon as any
population existed in the country. The narrative shows incontestably
that at the time of Jacob’s arrival here, after his sojourn in
Mesopotamia (Gen. xxxiii. 18, xxxiv.), Shechem was a Hivite city, of
which Hamor, the father of Shechem, was the head-man. It was at
this time that the patriarch purchased from that chieftain “the parcel
of the field,’ which he subsequently bequeathed, as a special
patrimony, to his son Joseph (Gen. xliii. 22; Josh. xxiv, 32; John iv.
5). The field lay undoubtedly on the rich plain of the Muthna, and its
value was the greater on account of the well which Jacob had dug
there, so as not to be dependent on his neighbours for a supply of
water. The defilement of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, and the capture of
Shechem and massacre of all e The rendering ‘ plains of Moreh” in
the Auth. Vers. t is incorrect. The Samaritan Pentateuch translates
TN in Gen. xxxv. 4 “bow” or “arch;” and on the basis of that error
the Samaritans at Vdabulus show a structure of that sort under an
acclivity of Gerizim, which they say was the spot where Jacob buried
the Mesopotamian idols.
 SHECHEM the male inhabitants by Simeon and Levi, are
events that belong to this period (Gen. xxxiv. 1 sq.). As this bloody
act, which Jacob so entirely condemned (Gen. xxxiv, 950) and
reprobated with his dying breath (Gen. xlix. 5-7), is ascribed to two
persons, some urge that as evidence of the very insignificant
character of the town at the time of that transaction. But the
argument is by no means decisive. Those sons of Jacob were
already at the head of households of their own, and may have had
the support, in that achievement, of their numerous slaves and
retainers. We speak, in like manner, of a commander as taking this
or that city, when we mean that it was done under his leadership.
‘The oak under which Abraham had worshipped, survived to Jacob’s
time; and the latter, as he was about to remove to Bethel, collected
the images and amulets which some of his family had brought with
them from Padan-aram, and buried them ‘under the oak which was
by Shechem ” (Gen. xxxv. 1-4). The “oak of the monument” (if we
adopt that rendering of tis a3) in Judg. ix. 6), where the
Shechemites made Abimelech king, marked, perhaps, the veneration
with which the Hebrews looked back to these earliest footsteps (the
imcunabula gentis) of the patriarchs in the Holy Land.4 During
Jacob’s sojourn at Hebron, his sons, in the course of their pastoral
wanderings, drove their flocks to Shechem, and at Dothan, in that
neighbourhood, Joseph, who had been sent to look after their
welfare, was seized and sold to the Ishmaelites (Gen. xxxvii. 12, 28).
In the distribution of the land after its conquest by the Hebrews,
Shechem fell to the lot of Ephraim (Josh. xx. 7), but was assigned to
the Levites, and became a city of refuge (Josh. xxi. 20, 21). It
acquired new importance as the scene of the renewed promulgation
of the Law, when its blessings were heard from Gerizim and its
curses from Ebal, and the people bowed their heads and
acknowledged Jehovah as their king and ruler (Deut. xxvii. 11; and
Josh. ix. 33-35). It was here Joshua assembled the people, shortly
before his death, and delivered to them his last counsels (Josh. xxiv.
1, 25). After the death of Gideon, Abimelech, his bastard son,
induced the Shechemites to revolt from the Hebrew commonwealth
and elect him as king (Judge. ix.). It was to denounce this act of
usurpation and treason that Jotham delivered his pavable of the
trees to the men of Shechem from the top of Gerizim, as recorded at
length in Judg. ix. 22 sq. The picturesque traits of the allegory, as
Prof. Stanley suggests (S. & P. 236; Jewish Church, 348), are
strikingly appropriate to the diversified foliage of the region. In
revenge for his expulsion, after a reign of three years, Abimelech
destroyed the city, and, as an emblem of the fate to which he would
consign it, sowed the ground with salt (Jude. ix. 34-45). It was soon
restored, however, for we are told in 1 K. xii. that all Israel
assembled at Shechem, and Rehoboam, Solomon’s successor, went
thither to be inaugurated as king. Its central position made it
convenient for such assemblies ; its history was fraught with
recollections which SHECHEM 1237 would give the sanctions of
religion as well as of patriotism to the vows of sovereign and people.
The new king’s obstinacy made him insensible to such influences.
Here, at this same place, the ten tribes renounced the house of
David, and transferred their allegiance to Jeroboam (1 K. xii. 16),
under whom Shechem became for a time the capital of his kingdom.
We come next to the epoch of the exile. The people of Shechem
doubtless shared the fute of the other inhabitants, and were, most
of them at least, carried into captivity (2 K. xvii. 5, 6, xviii. 9 sq.).
But Shalmaneser, the conqueror, sent colonies from Babylonia to
occupy the place of the exiles (2 K. xvii. 24). It would seem that
there was another influx of strangers, at a later period, under Esar-
haddon (Ezr. iv. 2). The “6 certain men from Shechem,” mentioned in
Jer. xli. 5, who were slain on their way to Jerusalem, were possibly
Cuthites, 1. 6. Babylonian immigrants who had become proselytes or
worshippers of Jehovah (see Hitzig, Der Proph. Jer. p- 331). These
Babylonian settlers in the land, intermixed no doubt to some extent
with the old inhabitants, were the Samaritans, who erected at length
a rival temple on Gerizim (8.6. 300), and between whom and the
Jews a bitter hostility existed for so many ages (Jos. Ant. xii. 1, 81,
xiii. 3, $4). The Son-of Sirach (1. 26) says, that ‘a foolish people,” ¢.
6. the Samaritans, “dwelt at Shechem” (τὰ Σίκιμα). From its vicinity
to their place of worship, it became the principal city of the
Samaritans, a rank which it maintained at least till the destruction of
their temple, about B.c. 129, a period of nearly two hundred years
(Jos. Ant. xiii, 9, §1; B.J. i. 2, 6). It is unnecessary to pursue this
sketch further. From the time of the origin of the Samaritans, the
history of Shechem blends itself with that of this people and of their
sacred mount, Gerizim; and the reader will find the proper
information on this part of the subject under those heads (see
Herzog, Reul-Encyk, xiii. 362.) [SAMARIA, SAMARITAN PENT. | As
intimated already, Shechem reappears in the New Testament. It is
the Sychar of John iv. 5, near which the Saviour conversed with the
Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well. Suxap, as the place is termed
there (Sixdp in Rec. Text is incorrect), found only in that passage,
was, no doubt, current among the Jews in the age of Christ, and
was either a term of reproach (Ape, ‘a lie”) with reference to the
Samaritan faith and worship, or, possibly, a provincial
mispronunciation of that period (see Liicke’s Comm. tb. Johan. i.
577). The Saviour, with His disciples, remained two days at Sychar
on His journey from Judaea to Galilee. He preached the Word there,
and many of the people believed on Him (John iy. 39, 40). In. Acts
vii. 16, Stephen reminds his hearers that certain of the patriarchs
(meaning Joseph, as we see in Josh, xxiv. 32, and following,
perhaps, some tradition as to Jacob’s other sons) were buried at
Sychem. Jerome, who lived so long hardly more than a day’s journey
from Shechem, says that the tombs of the twelve 4 Here again the
Auth. Vers., which renders “ the plain of the pillar,’ is certainly wrong.
It will not answer to insist on the explanation suggested in the text
of the article. The Hebrew expression may refer to “ the stone”
which Joshua erected at Shechem as a witness of the covenant
between God and His people (Josh. xxiv, 26) ; or may mean “ the
oak of the garrison,” ἵ, 6. the one where a military post was
established. (See Gesen, Heb. Lex.s.v.) [Prutar, Pray OF THE, p. 877
α.}
 1238 SHECHEM patriarchs were to be seen® there in his
day. The anonymous city in Acts viii. 5, where Philip preached with
such effect, may have been Sychem, though many would refer that
narrative to Samaria, the capital of the province. It is interesting to
remember that Justin Martyr, who follows so soon after the age of
the Apostles, was born at Shechem. It only remains to add a few
words relating more especially to MNdbulus, the heir, under a
different name, of the site and honours of the ancient Shechem. It
would be inexcusable not to avail ourselves here of some recent
observations of Dr. Rosen, in the Zeitschr. der D. M. Gesellschaft for
1860 (pp. 622-639). He has inserted in that journal a careful plan of
Nabulus and the environs, with various accompanying remarks. The
population consists of about five thousand, among whom are five
hundred Greek Christians, one hundred and fifty Samaritans, and a
few Jews. The enmity between the Samaritans and Jews is as
inveterate still, as it was in the days of Christ. The Mohammedans,
of course, make up the bulk of the population. The main street
follows the line of the valley from east to west, and contains a
wellstocked bazaar. Most of the other streets cross this: here are the
smaller shops and the workstands of the artisans. Most of the
streets are narrow and dark, as the houses hang over them on
arches, very much as in the closest parts of Cairo. The houses are of
stone, and of the most ordinary style, with the exception of those of
the wealthy sheikhs of Samaria who. live here. There are no public
buildings of any note. The Keniseh or synagocue of the Samaritans
is a small edifice, in the interior of which there is nothing
remarkable, unless it be an alcove, screened by a curtain, in which
their sacred writings are kept. The structure may be three or four
centuries old. A description and sketch plan of it is given in Mr.
Grove’s paper On the modern Samaritans in Vacation Tourists for
1861. Na@bulus has five mosks, two of which, according to a
tradition in which Mohammedans, Christians, and Samaritans agree,
were originally churches. One of them, it is said, was dedicated to
John the Baptist ; its eastern portal, still well preserved, shows the
European taste of its founders. The domes of the houses and the
minarets, as they show themselves above the sea of luxuriant
vegetation which surrounds them, present a striking view to the
traveller approaching from the east or the west. Dr. Rosen says that
the inhabitants boast of the existence of not less than eighty springs
of water within and around the city. He gives the names of twenty-
seven of the principal of them. One of the most remarkable among
them is Aim el-Kerun, which rises in the town under a vaulted dome,
to which a long flight of steps Jeads down, from which the abundant
water is conveyed by canals-to two of the mosks and many of the
private houses, and after that serves to water the gardens on the
north side of the city. The various streams derived from this and
other fountains, after being distributed thus amony the gardens, fall
at length into a single channel and turn a mill, kept going summer
and winter. Of the fountains out of the city, three SHECHEM only
belong to the eastern water-shed. One of them, ’Ain Baldta, close to
the hamlet of that name, rises in a partly subterranean chamber
supported by three pillars, hardly a stone’s throw from Jacob's Well,
and is so large, that Dr. Rosen observed small fish in it. Another, ’Ain
’ Askar, issues from an arched passage which leads into the base of
Ebal, and flows thence into a tank enclosed by hewn stone, the
workmanship of which, as well as the archway, indicates an ancient
origin. The third, ’ Ain Defna, which comes from the same mountain,
reminds us, by its name (Δάφνη), of the time when Shechem was
called Neapolis. Some of the gardens are watered from the
fountains, while others have a soil so moist as not to need such
irrigation. The olive, as in the days when Jotham delivered his
famous parable, is still the principal tree. Figs, almonds, walnuts,
mulberries, grapes, oranges, apricots, pomegranates, are abundant.
‘The valley of the Nile itself hardly surpasses Vabulus in the
production of vegetables of every sort. Being, as it is, the gateway of
the trade between Jaffa and Beirit on the one side, and the
transJordanic districts on the other, and the centre also of a province
so rich in wool, grain, and oil, Nabulus becomes, necessarily, the
seat of an active commerce, and of a comparative luxtiry to he found
in very few of the inland Oriental cities. It produces, in its own
manutactories, many of the coarser woollen fabrics, delicate silk
goods, cloth of camel’s hair, and especially soap, of which last
commodity large quantities, after supplying the immediate country,
are sent to Egypt and other parts of the East. The ashes and other
sediments thrown out of the city, as the result of the soap
manufacture, have grown to the size of hills, and give to the
environs of the town a peculiar aspect. Rosen, during his stay at
Nabulus, examined anew the Samaritan inscriptions found there,
supposed to be among the oldest written monuments in Palestine.
He has furnished, as Professor Rédiger admits, the best copy of
them that has been taken (see a fac-simile in Zeitschrift, as above,
p. 621). The inscriptions on stone-tablets, distinguished in his
account as No. 1 and No. 2, belonged originally to a Samaritan
synagogue which stood just out of the city, near the Samaritan
quarter, of which synagogcue a few remains only are now left. They
are thought to be as old at least as the age of Justinian, who (A.D.
529) destroyed so many of the Samaritan places of worship. Some,
with less reason, think they may have been saved from the temple
on Gerizim, having been transferred afterwards to a later synagozue.
One of the tablets is now inserted in the wall of a minaret; the other
was discovered not long ago in a heap of rubbish not far from it. The
inscriptions consist of brief extracts from the Samaritan Pentateuch,
probably valuable as palaeographic documents. Similar slabs are to
be found built into the walls of several of the sanctuaries in the
neighbourhood of Nabulus ; as at the tombs of Eleazar, Phinehas,
and Ithamar at Awertah. This account would be incomplete without
some mention of the two spots in the neighbourhood of e Probably
at the Rejel el Amid, a wely at the foot of Gerizim, east of the city,
which is still believed to contain the remains of forty eminent Jewish
saints (Rosen, as above). Dr. Stanley appears to bave been the first
to notice the possible connexion between the name Amid, “pillar,”
attached to this wely, as well as to one on the west end of Ebal, and
the old Hebrew locality the “ oak of the Pillar.” f The Auth. Vers.
inaccurately adds the article. It is simply “a city of Samaria.”
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