Bethlehem
Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of. The city's economy is strongly linked to tourism, especially during the Christmas period, when Christians embark on a pilgrimage to the Church of the Nativity, which is revered as the location of the birth of Jesus.
A possible first mention of Bethlehem is in the Amarna correspondence of ancient Egypt, dated to 1350–1330 BCE, although that reading is uncertain. In the Hebrew Bible, the period of the Israelites is described; it identifies Bethlehem as the birthplace of David. In the New Testament, the city is identified as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth. Under the Roman Empire, the city of Bethlehem was destroyed by Hadrian, but later rebuilt by Constantine the Great, who commissioned the Church of the Nativity in 327 CE. In 529, the Church of the Nativity was heavily damaged by Samaritans involved in the Samaritan revolts; following the victory of the Byzantine Empire, it was rebuilt by Justinian I.
Later, during the rule of several Caliphates, Bethlehem became part of Jund Filastin in 637. Muslims continued to rule the city until 1099, when it was conquered by the Crusaders, who replaced the local Christian Greek Orthodox clergy with Catholic ones. In the mid-13th century, Bethlehem's walls were demolished by the Mamluk Sultanate. However, they were rebuilt by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century when it came to control the region. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, Bethlehem was part of Mandatory Palestine until 1948, and later of the West Bank that was annexed by Jordan following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Bethlehem was occupied by Israel along with the rest of the West Bank. Since the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, Bethlehem has been designated as part of Area A of the West Bank, nominally rendering it as being under Palestinian control, but it remains under Israeli occupation. Movement around the city is limited due to the Israeli West Bank barrier.
Historically, it was a city of Arab Christians, who made up about 86% of the population in 1950, but this community has dwindled significantly to 10% as of 2022, and now has a majority of Arab Muslims.
Etymology
"House of bread"
The current name for Bethlehem in local languages is /Bēt laḥm/ in Arabic, literally meaning "house of meat", and in Hebrew, literally "house of bread" or "house of food". The city was called in and in. In Aramaic, the name of Bethlehem was simply the Hebrew name בית לחם, and was pronounced as Beit Lekhem. Evidence for this spelling can be inferred based on the fact that the spelling ܒܝܬܠܚܡ can be found in the Syriac Aramaic version of the bible in Matthew 2 as well as other parts of the book. The letters ܒܝܬܠܚܡ transliterate to ביתלחם. Amarna letter EA290 makes reference to a town bīt-ninurta which has been read as Bit-Lachmi by scholar W. F. Albright, following a proposal by Otto Schroeder in 1815 and making it a potential first historical reference to Bethlehem. This reading is, however, uncertain and has met with objections."House of the god Lahmu"
Canaanite and Israelite toponyms starting with beth are interpreted to mean "house of", with 'house' understood as 'temple' and the second part of the name indicating the deity the local temple was dedicated to. Accordingly, one longstanding suggestion in scholarship is that the name Bethlehem derives from the Mesopotamian or Canaanite fertility god Laḫmu and his consort sister Lahamu, lahmo being the Chaldean word for "fertility". Biblical scholar William F. Albright believed that this hypothesis, first put forth by Otto Schröder, was "certainly accurate". Albright noted that the pronunciation of the name had remained essentially the same for 3,500 years, even if the perceived meaning had shifted over time: "'Temple of the God Lakhmu' in Canaanite, 'House of Bread' in Hebrew and Aramaic, 'House of Meat' in Arabic." While Schröder's theory is not widely accepted, it continues to find favour in academic literature over the later literal translations."House of war"
Another suggestion is an association with the root l-h-m "to fight", leading to the meaning of "house of war" or "house of fighting", but this is thought unlikely.History
Canaanite period
The earliest reference to Bethlehem appears in the Amarna correspondence. In one of his six letters to Pharaoh, Abdi-Heba, the Egyptian-appointed governor of Jerusalem, appeals for aid in retaking Bit-Laḫmi in the wake of disturbances by Apiru mercenaries: "Now even a town near Jerusalem, Bit-Lahmi by name, a village which once belonged to the king, has fallen to the enemy... Let the king hear the words of your servant Abdi-Heba, and send archers to restore the imperial lands of the king!"It is thought that the similarity of this name to its modern forms indicates that it was originally a settlement of Canaanites who shared a Semitic cultural and linguistic heritage with the later arrivals. Laḫmu was the Akkadian god of fertility, worshipped by the Canaanites as Leḥem. Some time in the third millennium BCE, Canaanites erected a temple on the hill now known as the Hill of the Nativity, probably dedicated to Laḫmu. The temple, and subsequently the town that formed around it, was then known as Beit Lahama, "House of Lahmu". By 1200 BC, the area of Bethlehem, as well as much of the region, was conquered by the Philistines, which led the region to be known to the Greeks as "Philistia", later corrupted to "Palestine".
A burial ground discovered in spring 2013, and surveyed in 2015 by a joint Italian–Palestinian team found that the necropolis covered 3 hectares and originally contained more than 100 tombs in use between roughly 2200 BCE and 650 BCE. The archaeologists were able to identify at least 30 tombs.
Israelite and Judean period
Archaeological confirmation of Bethlehem as a city in the Kingdom of Judah was uncovered in 2012 at the archaeological dig at the City of David in the form of a bulla in ancient Hebrew script that reads "From the town of Bethlehem to the King". According to the excavators, it was used to seal the string closing a shipment of grain, wine, or other goods sent as a tax payment in the 8th or 7th century BCE.File:Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_Bibel_in_Bildern_1860_106.png|thumb|David, pouring out water drawn from the well of Bethlehem in this 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, which illustrates 2 Samuel 23:15–17|left
Biblical scholars believe Bethlehem, located in the "hill country" of Judea, may be the same as the Biblical Ephrath, which means "fertile", as there is a reference to it in the Book of Micah as Bethlehem Ephrathah or Bethlehem Ephratah. The Hebrew Bible also calls it Beth-Lehem Judah, and the New Testament describes it as the "City of David". It is first mentioned in the Bible as the place where the matriarch Rachel died and was buried "by the wayside". Rachel's Tomb, the traditional grave site, stands at the entrance to Bethlehem. According to the Book of Ruth, the valley to the east is where Ruth of Moab gleaned the fields and returned to town with Naomi. In the Books of Samuel, Bethlehem is mentioned as the home of Jesse, father of King David of Israel, and the site of David's anointment by the prophet Samuel. It was from the well of Bethlehem that three of his warriors brought him water when he was hiding in the cave of Adullam.
Writing in the 4th century, the Pilgrim of Bordeaux reported that the sepulchers of David, Ezekiel, Asaph, Job, Jesse, and Solomon were located near Bethlehem.
Classical period
The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke represent Jesus as having been born in Bethlehem, known in Aramaic by the Hebrew name בית לחם. However, modern scholars regard the two accounts as contradictory; the Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, mentions nothing about Jesus having been born in Bethlehem, saying only that he came from Nazareth. Current scholars are divided on the actual birthplace of Jesus: some believe he was actually born in Nazareth, while others still hold that he was born in Bethlehem.Nonetheless, the tradition that Jesus was born in Bethlehem was prominent in the early church. Around 155, the apologist Justin Martyr recommended that those who doubted Jesus was really born in Bethlehem could go there and visit the very cave where he was supposed to have been born. The same cave is also referenced by the apocryphal Gospel of James and the fourth-century church historian Eusebius. After the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed, the Roman emperor Hadrian converted the Christian site above the Grotto into a shrine dedicated to the Greek god Adonis, to honour his favourite, the Greek youth Antinous.
Around 395 CE, Jerome wrote in a letter: "Bethlehem... belonging now to us... was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, that is to say, Adonis, and in the cave where once the infant Christ cried, the lover of Venus was lamented." Many scholars have taken this letter as evidence that the cave of the nativity over which the Church of the Nativity was later built had at one point been a shrine to the ancient Near Eastern fertility god Tammuz. Eusebius, however, mentions nothing about the cave having been associated with Tammuz and there are no other Patristic sources that suggest Tammuz had a shrine in Bethlehem. Peter Welten has argued that the cave was never dedicated to Tammuz and that Jerome misinterpreted Christian mourning over the Massacre of the Innocents as a pagan ritual over Tammuz's death. Joan E. Taylor has countered this contention by arguing that Jerome, as an educated man, could not have been so naïve as to mistake Christian mourning over the Massacre of the Innocents as a pagan ritual for Tammuz.
In 326–328, the empress Helena, widowed consort of Emperor Constantius Chlorus and mother of the ruling emperor, Constantine the Great, made a pilgrimage to Syria-Palaestina, in the course of which she visited the ruins of Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity was built at her initiative over the cave where Jesus was purported to have been born. During the Samaritan revolt of 529, Bethlehem was sacked and its walls and the Church of the Nativity destroyed; they were rebuilt on the orders of the Emperor Justinian I. In 614, the Persian Sassanid Empire, supported by Jewish rebels, invaded Palestina Prima and captured Bethlehem. A story recounted in later sources holds that they refrained from destroying the church on seeing the magi depicted in Persian clothing in a mosaic.