Bethlehem

The town of Bethlehem (House of Bread) lies in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem. We find the first mention of Bethlehem of Judea in Genesis 35:19 and 48:7.  In Scripture, it is sometimes also called Ephrathah (Mic 5:2). 

This is where Rachel died and was buried according to Genesis 35:19. Her grave now resides in the town of Bethlehem, guarded by the state of Israel. 

The town is also known as the City of David (Luke 2:4), because of his birth there, and also where Samuel anointed David as king (1 Sam 16:4-13). 

Bethlehem takes on special significance because it is to this Judean town that Joseph and Mary traveled to be registered, since Joseph was a descendant of David, under the decree of Caesar Augustus. This is where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Mic 5:2).  Also, Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to have the child Jesus put to death since he viewed him as a rival to his kingdom.

About a mile east of Bethlehem, near the village of Beit Sahur is the Greek Orthodox church commemorating the place where the angels appeared to the shepherds. An archaeological survey was conducted at the site in 1972 by Vassilios Tzaferis, who identified evidence that the cave over which the church was built was used as early as the second half of the fourth century A.D. In the cave, he found that the natural rock floor had been leveled, and a mosaic floor was put in. The mosaic floor contained an eight pointed star and equilateral crosses. The presence of crosses means the floor was made before 427, when Emperor Theodosius II forbade this practice.

See also Bethlehem

Bibliography. Finegan, Jack, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 40, 42.

Bethlehem resides in the hill country of Judah on the ridge route between Jerusalem and Hebron. To the West of Bethlehem is ample agricultural land and to the east is the Judean Desert – good for shepherding--- which descends down to the Dead Sea. It may be that its location with good farming land brought about the name Beit Lechem – “house of bread,” or the name in Arabic related to shepherding, Beit Lacham, “house of meat.” Both traditions of farming and shepherding play an important place here in the Biblical stories: Boaz had a field which Ruth gleaned from (Ruth 2), David tended Jesse’s sheep (1 Sam 17), and was anointed here by Samuel (1 Sam 16). And, shepherds heard the good news about the Messiah’s birth (Luke 2).

Tel Beit Lehem today is mainly covered by the Nativity Square and the Nativity Church but a small portion of the tel on the east side is still bare and was surveyed in 1969 by Gutman and Berman, confirming both Bronze and Iron Age occupation. While tradition points to a well north of the tel where three of David’s mighty men drew water for David after breaking through the Philistine garrison (2 Sam 23:14,16), the only real water sources came from the southeast in the area of “Solomon’s Pools” or “Artas,” likely biblical Etam (2 Chr 11:6; Greek Apan/Aitan).

Not only was Yeshua (Jesus) born in Bethlehem as Micah 5:2 foretold, but Herod murdered the innocents in the area (Matt 2:8, 16) and Hadrian built a sacred grove to Adonis after pounding the messianic Bar Kochva supporters into submission (Jerome, Ep. ad Paul, lviii.3). Jerome, supported by Paula and her daughter Eustochium, came permanently to Bethlehem in AD 382 to study Hebrew and translate the Hebrew Bible into the common language, Latin. His translation remained the foundation for all Western Scriptural reading for 1600 years.

Multiple excavations by Harvey, Vincent and Abel in the early 1900’s and subsequent studies have revealed three main levels of architectural remains of the Church of the Nativity: an early Roman church represented by floor mosaics from Constantine’s era (about AD 325), a Byzantine Church built by Justinian in the sixth century AD which amazingly still stands today, and Crusader restorations in the twelfth-century AD, as seen in the mosaic decoration on the high walls of the nave. The altar of the Church of the Nativity is built upon a large cave structure that was the venerated place of the Yeshua’s birth already from the second century AD (Justin Martyr and the Protoevangelium of James).

Bethlehem (House of Bread) is a town in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem.  In Scripture, it is sometimes called Ephrathah (Micah 5:2).  Rachel died and was buried near Bethlehem, according to Genesis 35:19.  It is the town to which Naomi returned with Ruth (Ruth 1:1, 19).  Called the City of David (Luke 2:4) because of his birth there, Bethlehem is also where Samuel anointed David King (1 Sam 16:4-13).  Because both Joseph and Mary descended from David, Bethlehem is the town to which they traveled to register for taxation under the decree of Caesar Augustus, and where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Micah 5:2).  When Herod tried to kill Jesus by ordering the deaths of male infants two years old and under, Bethlehem became the grisly scene for what has been called the massacre of innocents (Matt 2:16-18).  Bethlehem’s location on the road south to Egypt facilitated Mary and Joseph’s escape with Jesus when warned by an angel of the Lord (Matt 2:13-15)—DG.