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James Turner Barclay

December 31, 2022

James Turner Barclay (born May 22, 1807 in King William County, Virginia, † October 20, 1874 in Wheeler, Alabama)[1] was an American missionary and explorer of Palestine.

James Turner Barclay
BornMay 22, 1807
King William County, Virginia
DiedOctober 20, 1874 (1874-10-21) (aged 67)
Wheeler, Alabama

Life

James Turner Barclay was one of four children of Robert Barclay and Sarah Coleman Turner, and grandson of Thomas Barclay, first US consul to France and, later, consul to Morocco.[2] In 1809, James' father, Robert Barclay, drowned in the Rappahannock River, and the widow married John Harris, a wealthy cotton merchant and owner of large estates in Albemarle County.

He enabled his stepson James Turner Barclay to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which he completed in 1828 with a PhD. In 1830 he married Julia Ann Sowers. The couple settled in Charlottesville, where James Turner Barclay ran a pharmacy and devoted himself to drug development.

After Thomas Jefferson's death in 1826, Barclay purchased Jefferson's Monticello country estate in 1831,[2] and carried out much criticized changes there in order to start a sericulture. As early as 1836, for financial reasons, he was forced to sell the country estate to Uriah Levy.

Barclay had turned to Presbyterianism since his marriage . He became increasingly religious, joined the Disciples of Christ Church, which emerged from Presbyterianism, and became a preacher of this church in Scottsville. The rapidly growing Disciples of Christ Church sent Barclay to Jerusalem as their first foreign missionary in 1851, at the age of 44, where he stayed and worked as a medical and evangelistic missionary until the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. During Barclay's first year in Jerusalem, he treated more than 2,000 malaria cases.[2] Upon his return to the United States, he began making earnest efforts to publish his book.

By 1858, Barclay had returned with his family to Jerusalem, which stint lasted another three years, when he returned to the United States in 1861.[2] In 1861, at the eve of the US Civil War, he published a series of articles for the Disciples' journal, The Millennial Harbinger, entitled "The Welfare of the World Bound Up with the Destiny of Israel," in which he began to encourage the immigration of Jews to the Holy Land.[1]

Barclay saw the immigration of Jews to Palestine as a sign of the end times and wanted to participate in salvation history by winning these religious Jews over to Christianity (millenarianism ).[3] To his disappointment, he met with rejection and was only able to baptize a few people. As a means of making a livelihood he worked as a physician, treating primarily malaria cases. While in Jerusalem, he conducted various geographical and archaeological studies, and also supported Edward Robinson in his research.

One of his patients was Nazir Effendi, a Turkish architect who was doing repair work on the Dome of the Rock.[4] Barclay was given the opportunity to roam around the Haram esh-Sharif as his assistant, making drawings and measurements. Financial reasons led to the abandonment of the first Palestine mission.

Back in the United States, Barclay found a job with the Philadelphia Mint for his metallurgical skills.

In 1857 Barclay published his seminal work, The City of the Great King. The illustrations in the book are based on Barclay's photographs and drawings. In the same year, Barclay and his family returned to Jerusalem for another eight years. From 1868 he taught science at Bethany College in West Virginia, an institution of the Disciples of Christ Church. He spent his twilight years as a preacher in Wheeler, Alabama, where he died.

In 1906, Barclay's remains were exhumed and interred at Campbell Cemetery in Bethany, Brooke County, West Virginia.

Research in Jerusalem

 
Al-Buraq Mosque, drawn by Barclay after a brief visit (1851–4). The back wall closes off the passage to "Barclay's Gate".

Barclay is known as an explorer of the Barclay Gate, an ancient gateway to the Jerusalem Temple which was sealed-off in his day,[5] and which has since been named after him.[6] The lintel of this gate is directly below the Maghrabi gate used by the tourists today to enter the Temple Mount from the west. Barclay discovered the Herodian-period gate while surveying the Temple precincts (Arabic: Ḥaram) in 1848. It is located slightly north of the ramp leading up to the Mugrabin Gate (Moors' Gate),[7] and only part of it is still visible.[8][9] After the original gate had been filled-in, the corridor into which it led had been made into a cistern.[8] Barclay, describing the Gate, wrote: "It is directly below what is now Mugrabin Gate, and most of it is currently hidden by the house of the town clerk Abu Seul Effendi. Twenty feet and two inches of the lintel are visible today, and six feet and nine inches is its width; that's probably only half the original width. This lintel is only about four feet above the current floor level..."[10] A complete description of Barclay's Gate is had in Sir Charles Warren's and Claude R. Conder's book Jerusalem, published by the Palestine Exploration Fund of London.[11] Other features of the Temple Mount enclosure (Ḥaram esh-Sharif) were also described by Barclay.[12]

During the time in which he had access to the Haram, Barclay continues, he discovered part of a closed gate system in the Buraq mosque in the direct vicinity of this ancient lintel; but the guards of the holy place had been so restless about his presence there that it seemed advisable to him to make a hasty sketch and never come back.[13] Indeed, in ancient times, one could ascend through a gallery with stairs from the Barclay Gate to the height of the Herodian temple platform. In the early 14th century, this gallery was walled up in the west and converted into the small Buraq mosque.[14]

In the winter of 1854, Barclay examined Zedekiah's Cave which he called the Great Cavern Quarry in the north of the old city of Jerusalem and was the first in modern history to describe in great detail its interior recess.[15] Barclay also explored a subterranean passageway leading from the Virgin's Fount (now called Gihon Spring), which channel led to a point within a short distance from the Mugrabin Gate, where it turned abruptly to the west, and where he could proceed no further because of it being blocked by stones and fallen debris.[16] According to his hypothesis, the channel was made "to discharge surplus water into the Ophel channel, in order that it might be reservoired in the Pool of Siloam."[16]

 
Interior view of the Dome of the Rock (Barclay - 1858)

Barclay's research, while pioneering in many respects, often lacked qualified, scientific data. As a result, some of his identifications of historic sites have been refuted by late biblical scholars,[17] such as his identification of the Tower of David (Phasael's Tower) with the Hippicus Tower.[18] Barclay, however, supplemented his work by providing many illustrations of Jerusalem in his day, as well as of plans and maps, which greatly enhanced the contemporary knowledge of Jerusalem.[2] He also provided measurements of several buildings and sites, including the Dome of the Rock, and a description of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Barclay was avant-garde in tracing the remains of a Roman-era built aqueduct, which led from Artas (in southwestern Judea) to the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem.[19][20]

In the years spent in Jerusalem, Barclay notes that there were fourteen synagogues, with a Jewish population of about 10,249, a Christian population of about 4,515, and the rest (presumably Muslim) numbering some 15,000, many of whom resident Turks, for a total population of 30,000.[2]

Publication

  • The City of the Great King, or Jerusalem as It Was, and It Is, and as It Is To Be. Philadelphia 1857 (Reprint New York 1977)

Further reading

  • Paul M. Blowers (2004), "James Turner Barclay". In: Douglas A. Foster, Anthony L. Dunnavant, Paul M. Blowers (eds.): The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Eerdmans, ISBN 0-8028-3898-7, pp. 69–70.
  • Max Küchler (2007), Jerusalem. Ein Handbuch und Studienreiseführer zur Heiligen Stadt, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, ISBN 3-525-50170-6.

References

  1. ^ a b Evelyn Edson, "James Turner Barclay: Resident of Scottville, Citizen of the World", in: Scottsville Museum Newsletter, p. 4
  2. ^ a b c d e f Lewis (1988), p. 164
  3. ^ Blowers, Paul M. (1993). ""Living in a Land of Prophets": James T. Barclay and an Early Disciples of Christ Mission to Jews in the Holy Land". Church History. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History. 62 (4): 497. doi:10.2307/3168074. JSTOR 3168074.
  4. ^ Lewis (1988), p. 165
  5. ^ Lewis (1988), p. 166
  6. ^ Cf. Lewis (1988), p. 166, who writes that Barclay's discovery of the gate was confirmed by Charles William Wilson (1880: 39, 41, 52, 79, 80), and later by George Adam Smith (1907: 1, 211).
  7. ^ Max Küchler, Jerusalem, pp. 172-173
  8. ^ a b Lewis (1988), p. 166
  9. ^ Elad, Amikam (1995). Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage. BRILL. pp. 101–102. ISBN 978-90-04-10010-7.
  10. ^ Barclay (1857), p. 489
  11. ^ Warren, C.; Conder, C.R. (1884). Jerusalem. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. pp. 187–193. OCLC 5785377.
  12. ^ Lewis (1988), p. 164, citing Barclay (1858), pp. 483–484.
  13. ^ Barclay (1857), pp. 489-490
  14. ^ Max Küchler, Jerusalem, p. 266
  15. ^ Barclay (1857), pp. 458-469
  16. ^ a b Barclay (1857), p. 458
  17. ^ Lewis (1988), p. 163
  18. ^ Barclay (1857), Illustration, p. 42
  19. ^ Barclay (1857), pp. 315–320
  20. ^ Aqueduct mentioned by Josephus, The Jewish War (2.9.4.). Cf. Bond, Helen K. (1998), Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63114-9, pp. 53, 89

Bibliography

  • Barclay, J.T. (1857). City of the Great King (or, Jerusalem as it Was, as it Is, and as it To Be). Philadelphia: James Challen and Sons. OCLC 1152738303. (reprint: OCLC 980280533)
  • Lewis, J.P. (1988). "James Turner Barclay: Explorer of Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem". The Biblical Archaeologist. The University of Chicago Press. 51 (3): 163–170. doi:10.2307/3210066. JSTOR 3210066.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Turner Barclay.
  • "James Turner Barclay: Adventurer, Author, Missionary, or Madman", in: Eretz Magazine. (Center for Online Judaic Studies)
  • Dr. James Turner Barclay, Minister and Missionary. (Scottsville Museum)
  • Evelyn Edson: James Turner Barclay: Resident of Scottsville, Citizen of the World. (Scottsville Museum Newsletter)
  • OCLC 1102787483, 79181997

December 31, 2022
james, turner, barclay, born, 1807, king, william, county, virginia, october, 1874, wheeler, alabama, american, missionary, explorer, palestine, bornmay, 1807king, william, county, virginiadiedoctober, 1874, 1874, aged, wheeler, alabama, contents, life, resear. James Turner Barclay born May 22 1807 in King William County Virginia October 20 1874 in Wheeler Alabama 1 was an American missionary and explorer of Palestine James Turner BarclayBornMay 22 1807King William County VirginiaDiedOctober 20 1874 1874 10 21 aged 67 Wheeler Alabama Contents 1 Life 2 Research in Jerusalem 3 Publication 4 Further reading 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External linksLife EditJames Turner Barclay was one of four children of Robert Barclay and Sarah Coleman Turner and grandson of Thomas Barclay first US consul to France and later consul to Morocco 2 In 1809 James father Robert Barclay drowned in the Rappahannock River and the widow married John Harris a wealthy cotton merchant and owner of large estates in Albemarle County He enabled his stepson James Turner Barclay to study medicine at the University of Pennsylvania which he completed in 1828 with a PhD In 1830 he married Julia Ann Sowers The couple settled in Charlottesville where James Turner Barclay ran a pharmacy and devoted himself to drug development After Thomas Jefferson s death in 1826 Barclay purchased Jefferson s Monticello country estate in 1831 2 and carried out much criticized changes there in order to start a sericulture As early as 1836 for financial reasons he was forced to sell the country estate to Uriah Levy Barclay had turned to Presbyterianism since his marriage He became increasingly religious joined the Disciples of Christ Church which emerged from Presbyterianism and became a preacher of this church in Scottsville The rapidly growing Disciples of Christ Church sent Barclay to Jerusalem as their first foreign missionary in 1851 at the age of 44 where he stayed and worked as a medical and evangelistic missionary until the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 During Barclay s first year in Jerusalem he treated more than 2 000 malaria cases 2 Upon his return to the United States he began making earnest efforts to publish his book By 1858 Barclay had returned with his family to Jerusalem which stint lasted another three years when he returned to the United States in 1861 2 In 1861 at the eve of the US Civil War he published a series of articles for the Disciples journal The Millennial Harbinger entitled The Welfare of the World Bound Up with the Destiny of Israel in which he began to encourage the immigration of Jews to the Holy Land 1 Barclay saw the immigration of Jews to Palestine as a sign of the end times and wanted to participate in salvation history by winning these religious Jews over to Christianity millenarianism 3 To his disappointment he met with rejection and was only able to baptize a few people As a means of making a livelihood he worked as a physician treating primarily malaria cases While in Jerusalem he conducted various geographical and archaeological studies and also supported Edward Robinson in his research One of his patients was Nazir Effendi a Turkish architect who was doing repair work on the Dome of the Rock 4 Barclay was given the opportunity to roam around the Haram esh Sharif as his assistant making drawings and measurements Financial reasons led to the abandonment of the first Palestine mission Back in the United States Barclay found a job with the Philadelphia Mint for his metallurgical skills In 1857 Barclay published his seminal work The City of the Great King The illustrations in the book are based on Barclay s photographs and drawings In the same year Barclay and his family returned to Jerusalem for another eight years From 1868 he taught science at Bethany College in West Virginia an institution of the Disciples of Christ Church He spent his twilight years as a preacher in Wheeler Alabama where he died In 1906 Barclay s remains were exhumed and interred at Campbell Cemetery in Bethany Brooke County West Virginia Research in Jerusalem Edit Al Buraq Mosque drawn by Barclay after a brief visit 1851 4 The back wall closes off the passage to Barclay s Gate Barclay is known as an explorer of the Barclay Gate an ancient gateway to the Jerusalem Temple which was sealed off in his day 5 and which has since been named after him 6 The lintel of this gate is directly below the Maghrabi gate used by the tourists today to enter the Temple Mount from the west Barclay discovered the Herodian period gate while surveying the Temple precincts Arabic Ḥaram in 1848 It is located slightly north of the ramp leading up to the Mugrabin Gate Moors Gate 7 and only part of it is still visible 8 9 After the original gate had been filled in the corridor into which it led had been made into a cistern 8 Barclay describing the Gate wrote It is directly below what is now Mugrabin Gate and most of it is currently hidden by the house of the town clerk Abu Seul Effendi Twenty feet and two inches of the lintel are visible today and six feet and nine inches is its width that s probably only half the original width This lintel is only about four feet above the current floor level 10 A complete description of Barclay s Gate is had in Sir Charles Warren s and Claude R Conder s book Jerusalem published by the Palestine Exploration Fund of London 11 Other features of the Temple Mount enclosure Ḥaram esh Sharif were also described by Barclay 12 During the time in which he had access to the Haram Barclay continues he discovered part of a closed gate system in the Buraq mosque in the direct vicinity of this ancient lintel but the guards of the holy place had been so restless about his presence there that it seemed advisable to him to make a hasty sketch and never come back 13 Indeed in ancient times one could ascend through a gallery with stairs from the Barclay Gate to the height of the Herodian temple platform In the early 14th century this gallery was walled up in the west and converted into the small Buraq mosque 14 In the winter of 1854 Barclay examined Zedekiah s Cave which he called the Great Cavern Quarry in the north of the old city of Jerusalem and was the first in modern history to describe in great detail its interior recess 15 Barclay also explored a subterranean passageway leading from the Virgin s Fount now called Gihon Spring which channel led to a point within a short distance from the Mugrabin Gate where it turned abruptly to the west and where he could proceed no further because of it being blocked by stones and fallen debris 16 According to his hypothesis the channel was made to discharge surplus water into the Ophel channel in order that it might be reservoired in the Pool of Siloam 16 Interior view of the Dome of the Rock Barclay 1858 Barclay s research while pioneering in many respects often lacked qualified scientific data As a result some of his identifications of historic sites have been refuted by late biblical scholars 17 such as his identification of the Tower of David Phasael s Tower with the Hippicus Tower 18 Barclay however supplemented his work by providing many illustrations of Jerusalem in his day as well as of plans and maps which greatly enhanced the contemporary knowledge of Jerusalem 2 He also provided measurements of several buildings and sites including the Dome of the Rock and a description of the Al Aqsa mosque Barclay was avant garde in tracing the remains of a Roman era built aqueduct which led from Artas in southwestern Judea to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem 19 20 In the years spent in Jerusalem Barclay notes that there were fourteen synagogues with a Jewish population of about 10 249 a Christian population of about 4 515 and the rest presumably Muslim numbering some 15 000 many of whom resident Turks for a total population of 30 000 2 Publication EditThe City of the Great King or Jerusalem as It Was and It Is and as It Is To Be Philadelphia 1857 Reprint New York 1977 Further reading EditPaul M Blowers 2004 James Turner Barclay In Douglas A Foster Anthony L Dunnavant Paul M Blowers eds The Encyclopedia of the Stone Campbell Movement Eerdmans ISBN 0 8028 3898 7 pp 69 70 Max Kuchler 2007 Jerusalem Ein Handbuch und Studienreisefuhrer zur Heiligen Stadt Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht Gottingen ISBN 3 525 50170 6 References Edit a b Evelyn Edson James Turner Barclay Resident of Scottville Citizen of the World in Scottsville Museum Newsletter p 4 a b c d e f Lewis 1988 p 164 Blowers Paul M 1993 Living in a Land of Prophets James T Barclay and an Early Disciples of Christ Mission to Jews in the Holy Land Church History Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History 62 4 497 doi 10 2307 3168074 JSTOR 3168074 Lewis 1988 p 165 Lewis 1988 p 166 Cf Lewis 1988 p 166 who writes that Barclay s discovery of the gate was confirmed by Charles William Wilson 1880 39 41 52 79 80 and later by George Adam Smith 1907 1 211 Max Kuchler Jerusalem pp 172 173 a b Lewis 1988 p 166 Elad Amikam 1995 Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship Holy Places Ceremonies Pilgrimage BRILL pp 101 102 ISBN 978 90 04 10010 7 Barclay 1857 p 489 Warren C Conder C R 1884 Jerusalem London Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund pp 187 193 OCLC 5785377 Lewis 1988 p 164 citing Barclay 1858 pp 483 484 Barclay 1857 pp 489 490 Max Kuchler Jerusalem p 266 Barclay 1857 pp 458 469 a b Barclay 1857 p 458 Lewis 1988 p 163 Barclay 1857 Illustration p 42 Barclay 1857 pp 315 320 Aqueduct mentioned by Josephus The Jewish War 2 9 4 Cf Bond Helen K 1998 Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 63114 9 pp 53 89Bibliography EditBarclay J T 1857 City of the Great King or Jerusalem as it Was as it Is and as it To Be Philadelphia James Challen and Sons OCLC 1152738303 reprint OCLC 980280533 Lewis J P 1988 James Turner Barclay Explorer of Nineteenth Century Jerusalem The Biblical Archaeologist The University of Chicago Press 51 3 163 170 doi 10 2307 3210066 JSTOR 3210066 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to James Turner Barclay James Turner Barclay Adventurer Author Missionary or Madman in Eretz Magazine Center for Online Judaic Studies Dr James Turner Barclay Minister and Missionary Scottsville Museum Evelyn Edson James Turner Barclay Resident of Scottsville Citizen of the World Scottsville Museum Newsletter OCLC 1102787483 79181997 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title James Turner Barclay amp oldid 1101621738, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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