Perhaps you’ve seen the recent story from Smithsonian about the earliest known photographs taken in Jerusalem. The work of French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, they date to 1844…one hundred and seventy years ago.

I find the photographs fascinating.  Seeing them immediately brought to my mind the work of the James T. Barclay, Christian Church missionary to Jerusalem from 1851-1861.  The Barclay mission was not successful (in reality a failure).  The converts were few and the work was difficult.  M. C. Tiers, though, writing in 1864 declared the mission raised awareness of “the Holy Land” among the Restoration Movement in America.  Tiers had in mind Barclay’s massive 627-page volume The City of the Great King.  Jack P. Lewis, in his newly released collection of essays, Early Explorers of Bible Lands, surveys Barclay’s considerable contribution to our knowledge of 19th century Jerusalem.

Here is a photograph of James T. Barclay as it appeared in M. C. Tiers’ 1864 book, The Christian Portrait Gallery.

Shown here is the frontispiece in D. S. Burnet, The Jerusalem Mission: Under the Direction of the American Christian Missionary Society. Cincinnati: American Christian Publication Society, 1853.