Question for my writing

[Crown_of_Stars]

I was just talking about my writing in another thread, and now I need to ask a question

I’ve begun to write a little collection of stories of a wife and mother, and her husband and two small daughters. The stories are set in the year of Christ’s Birth. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my question.
My question is: What religion would my made-up family probably be? They live in Bethlehem. I don’t know if they would be Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, Pagan, any of those. I will note to say that they believe in the One True God, and live humble, faithful lives, with maybe just small luxuries. They aren’t extremely strict, like I feel the Jews were, so what might have been a lighter religion that they could be, where they believe in One God?

Hope you understand what I’m asking, and thanks in advance for any help. I do try to research things like this myself, but I wasn’t able to find what I was looking for, so thought I’d just ask here.

Kathryn/ Crown of Stars

 

[GEddie]

If they live in Bethlehem, then in all likelihood, they’d be Jewish or pagans. Pagans do not serve the “One God”, so there’s really only one option.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[St_Francis]

Most of what we perceive as their strictness was part of the ordinary flow of their lives. Imagine if they saw us today: women getting up and putting all this stuff on their faces, blow-drying their hair, taking a bunch of vitamins… and all that just to get out the door! They would probably think our lives terrifically complicated!

The Pharisees were strict, bit not all Jews were Phaisees.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

You have a few options. There was a moment of relative monotheism in Ancient Egypt under the reign of Akhenaten…but he died some 1300 years before the era about which you are writing, so having your characters be connected to Akhenaten would be too fantastic to be believed.

The Samaritans will have, in some ways, a more simplified religious observance. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan shows that they did travel, so that holds some prospect for you being able to locate a family in Bethlehem on some reasonable pretext. Typically, however, as the conversation of Jesus with the woman at the well in John 4 exemplifies, there would be a tension in a relationship between these characters and the other dwellers of Bethlehem in your novel.

One of the comments already posted is correct…not everyone in the Jewish community of that era is going to have as strict an observance as you may be envisioning. This is why the preaching of Jesus was so powerful to the ordinary people who could better understand Him than they could the scribes and the pharisees. Matthew, when he was collecting taxes and before he was called by Jesus, or the woman caught in the act of adultery, for example, among others, well indicate that not everyone was perfectly observant of the law by any means.

There is another category to consider. The God-fearers. These were gentiles who were attracted to Judaism and followed it – the morality and the monotheism – but without undergoing circumcision necessary to fully embrace Judaism. This category may hold some promise for you and the characters you would be creating. The characters could have a background in most any part of the Roman empire but be drawn to Judaism from polytheism – perhaps by living in the midst of the people of Bethlehem or their exposure to Jerusalem, which is not far from Bethlehem.

Many God-fearers, incidentally, will be quite attracted by the preaching of Paul and be drawn into the Church of the apostolic era. You can read a very simple essay about them here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-fearer

Finally, if you enjoy research, you may wish to take note of Father Bargil Pixner, OSB, and his writings. He was an archaeologist and scholar in the Holy Land. He focused on the times you are considering for your writings. I have found his insights to be most interesting and informative.

I hope this is helpful. Good luck with your project.

 

[steve53]

They would be Jewish. Of course.

They would not be Samaritans as the Samaritans had their own country where they practiced a variant form of Judaism.

They would be close to Jerusalem so their religion would be dominated by the Second Temple- it is not inconceivable that some of the temple priests had second homes there.

They likely would not be Arabic, as the previous Jewish kings made everyone pretty much convert to Judaism.

So they would be Jewish of the Second Temple stripe, and be very involved in the synagogue which was found in every city of any size and controled the religious and social life of the Jews at that time.

The almost nonstop parade of festivals held in Jerusalem at the Second Temple would also play a dominant role in their lives.

 

[patrick457]

I’ve begun to write a little collection of stories of a wife and mother, and her husband and two small daughters. The stories are set in the year of Christ’s Birth. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my question.
My question is: What religion would my made-up family probably be? They live in Bethlehem. I don’t know if they would be Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, Pagan, any of those. I will note to say that they believe in the One True God, and live humble, faithful lives, with maybe just small luxuries. They aren’t extremely strict, like I feel the Jews were, so what might have been a lighter religion that they could be, where they believe in One God?

Well, if you’re going by the historical route, if this is a Jewish family we’re talking about, they’d be adherents of Judaism, as mentioned. Really, almost everyone at that part of the world at that time was Jewish, the Samaritans* and non-Jews excepted of course. And it was rare for these groups to live right next each other: the non-Jews were mainly concentrated in a number of cities (the Romans themselves don’t show up most of the time; they left government to the local authorities and only stepped in when there was a threat to the peace), and the Samaritans had a small region of their own. Since Bethlehem was really a small village at the time (it wasn’t a big city then), within the Jewish heartland, my idea would be that your imaginary family would be Jewish, both in the ethnic and the religious sense.

As Steve mentioned, it had something to do with the Hasmonean kings (the dynasty Jonathan Maccabee founded) forcing the peoples around them to convert to Judaism: when the Hasmoneans expanded their territory northwards and southwards, they made the non-Jewish inhabitants of the lands they conquered adopt Judaism. That’s why at the time of Jesus, the Idumaeans (the OT Edomites) had become Jews. (Herod the Great was an Idumaean Jew.)

• Note: Samaritanism isn’t a different religion per se, it’s really just one of the sects within Judaism. And the Samaritans aren’t really a distinct people in the ethnic or the genetic sense: they are of the same stock as Jews.

Where it kind of gets confusing is the passage in 2 Kings about the king of Assyria bringing in foreign peoples to Samaria to replace the Israelites he had deported. Many people conflate those OT ‘Samarians’ (to use some distinction) - who are said to worship Yhwh alongside their native gods - with the NT and modern-day ‘Samaritans’ - who are strictly monotheists and adherents to (their interpretation of) the Mosaic Law. (You might say that this was the Jews’ fault themselves; they kind of intentionally conflated the two groups to smear the Samaritans.)

It’s more likely that the Samaritans were a sort of ‘schismatic’ religious sect who broke away from (other) Jews somewhere before the 2nd century BC because of a number of issues (monotheism was not one of them), the main one being the temple that was built on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans were not the only Israelites to have a temple located outside of Jerusalem: there were, for example, two temples in Egypt (Elephantine and Leontopolis) built by Judahite/Jewish communities who lived in those areas. But they were the only such group who survived.

 

[GEddie]

IMS, the Samaritans were not Jewish or Israelite, but were descendants of the folks brought into Northern Israel (capital: Samaria) by the Assyrians some 700 years earlier to supplant those who were dispersed at that time.

They had since intermarried with the survivors of the exiles and formed a “half-blood” community in northern Israel. Along the way, they had picked up belief in YHWH.

The bad vibes between them and Jews were real however, so ISTM locating them in Bethlehem, in sight of the Temple, might be somewhat of a stretch.

ICXC NIKA

 

[patrick457]

IMS, the Samaritans were not Jewish or Israelite, but were descendants of the folks brought into Northern Israel (capital: Samaria) by the Assyrians some 700 years earlier to supplant those who were dispersed at that time.

They had since intermarried with the survivors of the exiles and formed a “half-blood” community in northern Israel. Along the way, they had picked up belief in YHWH.

That’s what I’m talking about: that these OT pagan ‘Samarians’ are conflated with the ‘Jewish’ Samaritans of the NT and the modern day. It was a common tactic in the Jewish-Samaritan feud: the Jews would claim by the authority of 2 Kings that the Samaritans were not Israelite at all. This was an old one - Josephus already used this line of argument.

The problem is, this kind of literal reading of 2 Kings doesn’t jibe very well with what we know from other books of the Bible (2 Chronicles for instance), and also from archaeology and genetics.

The account in 2 Kings presents the pagan settlers brought in by the Assyrians as not acknowledging the law of the God of the land, hence God sent lions to kill them until an Israelite priest was sent back to teach them about Yhwh. The result was that these peoples worshiped Yhwh alongside their former gods (2 Kings 17:25-29, 41). 2 Kings makes it appear as if Samaria was bereft of Israelites and that the people who lived there were all foreigners, which in turn gave rise to the later lore about the ‘Ten Lost Tribes’ and the idea that modern Samaritans were the descendants of these pagan peoples.

Two other books of the OT, however, presents a different picture from 2 Kings. 2 Chronicles for instance tells of King Hezekiah’s (reigned c. 715-686 BC) attempts to draw the northern Ephraimites and Manassites closer to Judah after the destruction of Samaria, including inviting them to Jerusalem for the Passover (2 Chronicles 30:1-11). It then relates that Israelites from the tribes of Issachar and Zebulon were in Jerusalem as well (30:18). The same book claims that the money for the Jerusalem temple repairs collected during Josiah’s reign came from Judah and Benjamin (the two southern tribes), and from Manasseh and Ephraim and from all “the remnant of Israel” (34:9 - interestingly, this detail is absent from 2 Kings). Jeremiah in his prophecies tells of people from northern locations like Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria who brought frankincense and grain offerings to the house of Yhwh (Jeremiah 41:5).

The thing here is, 2 Kings mentions the wave of foreign settlers brought in by the Assyrians but neglects to mention the remaining Israelites, while 2 Chronicles does the opposite by focusing only on the “remnant of Israel” while completely ignoring these foreign settlers.

Scholars think the historical truth is actually a combination of the two: the Assyrians did exile many northern Israelites, but not all of them. A significant remnant would have remained in Samaria (the region); some of these fled southward to Judah (what’s interesting is that just around that time - the 8th-7th century BC - the Judahite population apparently doubled; could this be caused by an influx of refugees from the north?), while the others who stayed in the north survived the conquest. Judahite kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah made steps to draw these surviving northerners closer to Judah; but years later, Judah was also exiled.

The Assyrians did bring foreign peoples to settle in the north (we know that was their general policy), but it seems that if they planned to eradicate Israelite identity by this tactic, they apparently failed; it’s more likely that these foreign settlers were assimilated into the remaining Israelites, rather than the other way around.

 

[patrick457]

(Continued)

Now by the Persian period, there were two provinces in the Holy Land: Samaria, a large, rich area composed by the remaining Israelites and the peoples brought in by the Assyrians (who have probably by this point ‘gone native’), and Judea, aka Yehud, where the small remnant of those who were not exiled to Babylon stayed. These Judeans were soon joined by the descendants of those who were exiled to Babylon, now come back to their native country. Yehud, was compared to Samaria, a small and impoverished country because its southern part was seized by the Idumaeans (the Edomites).

When the Exiles returned (ca. 538 BC), it kind of became clear that the religious and national views of the returning Jews no longer resembled the worldview of the Israelites who remained: it had evolved in such a way that it was no longer exactly the same. In fact, the returnees - who now thought of themselves as a special, holy, chosen people refined by the Exile - looked down on the Israelite remnant for, well, not being ‘one of them’. In other words, no better than pagans. From the perspective of the folks in Judea, the people who remained were not just ‘lesser’ because they didn’t partake in the purifying Exile, they were also suspect because they could have intermarried with the peoples around them. (Which explains why Ezra forbade the returnees to intermarry with the peoples around them and excommunicated those who refused to divorce their ‘foreign’ spouses: such acts, from a returnees’ POV, tainted the ‘holy seed’, which was something the returnees thought the Israelites who remained have done.)

For their part, the northerners could have seen the returnees as a threat to their authority and mini-hegemony: should the returnees decide to restore an autonomous political or religious power down south (which was their intention in the long run), it would jeopardize the status and position they had established in their absence. That’s why the authorities in Samaria tried to prevent the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem: their plan was to keep the returnees poor and dependent on them.

It was in this context - the religious/political feud between the returning Jews in the south vs. the Israelite remnant and assimilated foreign colonists in the north - that a temple was built in Mount Gerizim (though we don’t know the exact reason why it was built*). It was really the building of this sanctuary that marks the birth of the ‘Samaritans’, the people who preferred this sanctuary to that of Jerusalem (which had been rebuilt by the returning Jews), not so much the Assyrian conquest of Samaria two centuries earlier.

• One possible reason is a scriptural one: in Deuteronomy 27, Moses commands the Israelites to build an altar once they have passed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land. In the traditional text, the Israelites build this altar on Mount Ebal. But there’s another textual variant which says that the Israelites are to build it on Mount Gerizim. This is how the text reads in the version of the Torah the Samaritans use. Now it’s easy to dismiss this as a Samaritan modification of the text (we know that they did alter passages here and there to support their doctrinal views), but the thing is, this ‘Gerizim’ variant also occurs in early textual traditions that are not related to Samaritans (for example, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Vetus Latina translations). In fact, some scholars are thinking, maybe the ‘Gerizim’ variant is the original reading, and the ‘Ebal’ reading was the altered version.

In other words, the ‘Samaritans’ may have built their temple on Mount Gerizim under the authority of this passage: to honor the site that was chosen by Moses. Surely Moses’ choice trumps David’s Zion.

 

[patrick457]

One of the comments already posted is correct…not everyone in the Jewish community of that era is going to have as strict an observance as you may be envisioning. This is why the preaching of Jesus was so powerful to the ordinary people who could better understand Him than they could the scribes and the pharisees. Matthew, when he was collecting taxes and before he was called by Jesus, or the woman caught in the act of adultery, for example, among others, well indicate that not everyone was perfectly observant of the law by any means.

Most of what we perceive as their strictness was part of the ordinary flow of their lives. Imagine if they saw us today: women getting up and putting all this stuff on their faces, blow-drying their hair, taking a bunch of vitamins… and all that just to get out the door! They would probably think our lives terrifically complicated!

The Pharisees were strict, bit not all Jews were Phaisees.

I think it’s more accurate to say that just about everyone had their own interpretation of how to observe the Law. Some of course had a laxer interpretation than others, but most Jews took the Torah seriously: it was a part of their life, their culture.

The Pharisees were not really as strict and legalistic as we often imagine them to be. They were ‘strict’, not so much in the sense of ‘most extreme’ (some groups, like the Community at Qumran - who may or may not have been Essenes or a similar sect - had more extreme interpretations of the Mosaic Law), but that the people thought that they had the ‘most accurate’ interpretation of the Law.

In a way the Pharisees are actually more lax about certain things than others: where some people would advocate a hard-line literal interpretation, the Pharisees will sometimes find a way to observe the spirit of the Law but without necessarily following it literally. For example, Jews thought that they were not allowed to carry burdens out of their houses on a Sabbath (Jeremiah 17:19-27). Some people will take this to mean that they’re not allowed to leave their houses.

But the problem is, the Sabbath was often the only day in the week when people would be free to meet with each other and do things like festive dining (each family brought their own dish). What did the Pharisees do? They decided that when several houses were next to each other along an alley or around a court, these houses could be connected with one another using a symbolic enclosure, say a series of doorposts and lintels, thus making all of them into a single ‘house’ ('eruvim). That way, neighbors could carry pots and dishes from one part of the ‘house’ to another and thus meet and eat together on a Sabbath.

Some people will of course find the Pharisaic solution a bit of a stretch (even with an 'eruv, people are still carrying stuff out of what people would call a house!), but that’s the thing about them: while at times they do advocate a strict interpretation, other times they made the Law less restrictive than a literal interpretation would have it. (For the most part, the Pharisees made special rules only for themselves; they didn’t force them on everyone else. Maybe many of ‘the Pharisees’ Jesus met were the noisy radical types? )

In a way, it’s tied in to the Pharisaic concept of the priesthood of the people: they taught that laymen can and should also follow the Law and the statutes in it, not just the priests in the temple - because all the Jews are, according to Scripture, a ‘kingdom of priests’. (Pharisaism was a largely laity-run movement and many Pharisees themselves were laymen.) Hence they took steps to make the Law more accessible to the average joe. And the people respected them in return, to the point Josephus claimed the Temple priests - who traditionally were the interpreters of the Torah - usually followed the Pharisaic interpretation as a concession to the people. (Many of the chief priests, who were aristocratic, were likely Sadducees; there were some priests who were Pharisees, but for the most part, Temple priests, like most Jews, did not belong to either party.)

 

[patrick457]

A few more things:

Bethlehem in the 1st century probably only had a population of more than a hundred (one estimate has it at around three to four hundred people at the most*). In which case, it’s not too different from Nazareth: it was a very small Jewish hamlet. (It was a sort of larger town in the late OT period, then it shrunk into a village by the time of Jesus, then it became bigger again in the centuries that followed.)

• If this is the case, then the number of babies that would have been killed under Herod’s orders wouldn’t be that too many: less than ten, somewhere around six or seven babies.

Many of us assume that there were a lot of people in Bethlehem when Mary and Joseph came there, but that really only rests on the translation of a word in Luke 2: katalyma. It’s common to translate this word as ‘inn’, but a better translation would probably be ‘room’ or ‘guest-room’. (Katalyma is also the word used in the gospels to refer to the upper room where Jesus held the Last Supper.) In other words, Mary and Joseph were staying at a house in Bethlehem when Jesus was born: the Baby was placed on a feeding-trough / the place in the house where the animals were kept (they were kept indoors, either on the lower level of a two-storey house or in a back room) because there was no space in the ‘room’: maybe the guest room of the house they were staying. Either the room was too small or there were other guests, who knows?

In reality, Joseph and Mary did not have no place to stay in Bethlehem, being turned down by innkeepers left and right, as we often imagine; they did have a place to stay, but the place they were staying was not enough to accommodate the Baby.

 

[Crown_of_Stars]

Thank you for your answers on this. I even thought of having my wife and mother character (I’ve named her Rebekah) find Mary in her barn that night, and Rebekah is the midwife to her. I may or may not do this. Rebekah would have helped Mary, even though she’s just a person I made up. You never know. This could have happened. If it could have, I consider writing it if it isn’t too far from a possibility. And it would make for a beautiful story, at that. As for their religion, I’ve decided to just make up a name for what religion they are, and just mention it, but not focus on it. I thought I would just say they are “Bethanian”, from the name “Bethlehem.” I know, this isn’t true at all, but it’s just my fiction, and sometimes I just make things up a little if I feel like it, just to be unique.

 

[steve53]

A few more things:

Bethlehem in the 1st century probably only had a population of more than a hundred (one estimate has it at around three to four hundred people at the most*). In which case, it’s not too different from Nazareth: it was a very small Jewish hamlet. (It was a sort of larger town in the late OT period, then it shrunk into a village by the time of Jesus, then it became bigger again in the centuries that followed.)

• If this is the case, then the number of babies that would have been killed under Herod’s orders wouldn’t be that too many: less than ten, somewhere around six or seven babies.

Many of us assume that there were a lot of people in Bethlehem when Mary and Joseph came there, but that really only rests on the translation of a word in Luke 2: katalyma. It’s common to translate this word as ‘inn’, but a better translation would probably be ‘room’ or ‘guest-room’. (Katalyma is also the word used in the gospels to refer to the upper room where Jesus held the Last Supper.) In other words, Mary and Joseph were staying at a house in Bethlehem when Jesus was born: the Baby was placed on a feeding-trough / the place in the house where the animals were kept (they were kept indoors, either on the lower level of a two-storey house or in a back room) because there was no space in the ‘room’: maybe the guest room of the house they were staying. Either the room was too small or there were other guests, who knows?

In reality, Joseph and Mary did not have no place to stay in Bethlehem, being turned down by innkeepers left and right, as we often imagine; they did have a place to stay, but the place they were staying was not enough to accommodate the Baby.

Josephus says that the area- Samaria/Judea- was filled with people. There were artesian springs a’plenty, and the weather patterns were different making rainfall not as much a problem as it is today. It was a very fertile and productive land, with villages everywhere.

I think that would translate into more than 100 people in Bethlehem, don’t you?

 

[patrick457]

Josephus says that the area- Samaria/Judea- was filled with people. There were artesian springs a’plenty, and the weather patterns were different making rainfall not as much a problem as it is today. It was a very fertile and productive land, with villages everywhere.

I think that would translate into more than 100 people in Bethlehem, don’t you?

He’s talking about the region in general. Obviously the population wouldn’t be evenly distributed. I bet a good deal of those people would be in the cities like Jerusalem anyway.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Kathryn/Crown of Stars: If you are going with a non-historical scenario, you might go and just have a look at Akhenaten. It’s a fascinating phenomenon in the ancient world. You could make your characters Egyptian and have a sort of reverse of the Holy Family a set of characters that they encounter in Bethlehem before themselves having to flee to Egypt.

Father Bargil Pixner has a delightful book, The Glory of Bethlehem, that you might want to see if you can find in a library. He is a wonderful writer and you might pick up some interesting tidbits from his many years as an archaeologist. The photos alone are fantastic. It was wonderful to look through his eyes. He was a monk at the Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem and he was a phenomenal teacher and a splendid person…

Although I am biased by my own background, I think you have picked a fascinating epoch in history as a setting for your story. Your subject is rich with possibilities. The Holy Land of that period was a remarkable crossroads of the Roman Empire. In any event, I wish you much joy and fulfillment in your writing projects. Best wishes to you.

 

[GEddie]

Josephus says that the area- Samaria/Judea- was filled with people. There were artesian springs a’plenty, and the weather patterns were different making rainfall not as much a problem as it is today. It was a very fertile and productive land, with villages everywhere.

I think that would translate into more than 100 people in Bethlehem, don’t you?

The place-name Bethlehem literally means “house of bread.” Ie, this was a prosperous agricultural area. Completely different to the modern town surrounded (except the side abutting Jerusalem) by miles of bare earth (I’ve been there )

But people lived less densely then, so Bethlehem would be far less populous than a modern Israeli or NA farming town. A few hundred citizens, max.

ICXC NIKA

 

[patrick457]

The place-name Bethlehem literally means “house of bread.” Ie, this was a prosperous agricultural area. Completely different to the modern town surrounded (except the side abutting Jerusalem) by miles of bare earth (I’ve been there )

But people lived less densely then, so Bethlehem would be far less populous than a modern Israeli or NA farming town. A few hundred citizens, max.

ICXC NIKA

Bethlehem is one of those towns whose names remained the same, even if the residents changed. The Amarna letters (14th century BC) already mention a place named Bit-Lahmi near Jerusalem: the local governor of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, complained to the Egyptian pharaoh that the 'Apiru people had taken over this town. It’s likely that originally, Bethlehem meant something like ‘house of Lahmu’ (likely a god’s name; maybe related to the Akkadian/Babylonian twin deities Lahmu and Lahamu?) Then when the Israelites took over the site, they interpreted the name as bet leḥem ‘house of bread’; then when the Arabs came, the name was understood as bayt laḥm, ‘house of meat’ or ‘house of flesh’.

 

[Crown_of_Stars]

Kathryn/Crown of Stars: If you are going with a non-historical scenario, you might go and just have a look at Akhenaten. It’s a fascinating phenomenon in the ancient world. You could make your characters Egyptian and have a sort of reverse of the Holy Family a set of characters that they encounter in Bethlehem before themselves having to flee to Egypt.

Father Bargil Pixner has a delightful book, The Glory of Bethlehem, that you might want to see if you can find in a library. He is a wonderful writer and you might pick up some interesting tidbits from his many years as an archaeologist. The photos alone are fantastic. It was wonderful to look through his eyes. He was a monk at the Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem and he was a phenomenal teacher and a splendid person…

Although I am biased by my own background, I think you have picked a fascinating epoch in history as a setting for your story. Your subject is rich with possibilities. The Holy Land of that period was a remarkable crossroads of the Roman Empire. In any event, I wish you much joy and fulfillment in your writing projects. Best wishes to you.

Don,
Thankyou for your well wishes and thoughts!

 

[GEddie]

Bethlehem is one of those towns whose names remained the same, even if the residents changed. The Amarna letters (14th century BC) already mention a place named Bit-Lahmi near Jerusalem: the local governor of Jerusalem, Abdi-Heba, complained to the Egyptian pharaoh that the 'Apiru people had taken over this town. It’s likely that originally, Bethlehem meant something like ‘house of Lahmu’ (likely a god’s name; maybe related to the Akkadian/Babylonian twin deities Lahmu and Lahamu?) Then when the Israelites took over the site, they interpreted the name as bet leḥem ‘house of bread’; then when the Arabs came, the name was understood as bayt laḥm, ‘house of meat’ or ‘house of flesh’.

THX, I <3 historical trivia

House of flesh seems an apt name, particularly after the time of our LORD, given it was there that He acquired His flesh!

ICXC NIKA.

 

[patrick457]

THX, I <3 historical trivia

House of flesh seems an apt name, particularly after the time of our LORD, given it was there that He acquired His flesh!

ICXC NIKA.

For the record, there are actually two Bethlehems. The other one’s in the Galilee, just 10 km northwest of Nazareth. It’s also an old settlement; it’s probably the ‘Bethlehem’ mentioned in Joshua 19:15 as one of the twelve cities of the tribe of Zebulun.

Now there’s a small minority of scholars out there that believe the place Jesus was born in was actually this Bethlehem rather than Bethlehem of Judaea; they think Matthew and Luke may have accidentally confused the two locations or altered it on purpose. After all, the place did exist in Jesus’ time, and compared to Bethlehem of Judaea (a small hamlet by that point), Bethlehem of the Galilee was a more bustling area back then. While it’s a tempting suggestion (due to this Bethlehem’s proximity to Nazareth), their idea never really found any major supporters, mainly because, the Davidic connection which the evangelists are so big about wouldn’t have been as evident if Jesus was born in this Bethlehem.

Pretty much the two standard ideas today is that either Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea (as Matthew and Luke have it) or in Nazareth (with Matthew’s and Luke’s Nativity stories being explained away as theological creations).

At least one guy tried to find a ‘Nazareth’ in Judaea, but unlike the Bethlehem of the Galilee suggestion, this theory is weak: our only source that seems to suggest this is the 3rd century Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus, who speaks of “Nazara” as a village in “Judea” and locates it near “Kochaba.” And even then, it’s highly likely that Julius’ phrase translated as “villages of Judaea,” is actually better translated as “Jewish villages.” In fact, there are two places named ‘Kochaba’ not far from the Nazareth of Galilee (modern Kaukab and Kokhav ha-Yarden / Kaukab al-Hawa / Belvoir).