Bethlehem lies 10 kilometres south of the city of Jerusalem, in the fertile limestone hill country of the Holy Land. Since at least the 2nd century AD people have believed that the place where
The town of Bethlehem of Judea, about six miles south of Jerusalem, has always been considered the birthplace of Jesus. According to the New Testament, Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem of Judea at the time of Jesus' birth and later moved to Nazareth up north.
The Lodging Space of Jesus's Birth
When Jesus was born, Luke reports that Mary “wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the kataluma” (Luke 2:7). Most English Bibles translate kataluma as “inn,” but that is not the word's usual meaning.
Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.
Why was Jesus born in a manger? Luke 2:7 “and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
A Rich Past of Settlement. Of the two Bethlehems in Israel – one near Jerusalem and the other up north – the former receives most of the fame while the latter maintains relative anonymity.
Jesus, according to some biblical sources, was born in this town some two millennia ago. Yet the New Testament Gospels do not agree about the details of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. Some do not mention Bethlehem or Jesus' birth at all. The Gospels' different views might be hard to reconcile.
He was born of a Jewish mother, in Galilee, a Jewish part of the world. All of his friends, associates, colleagues, disciples, all of them were Jews. He regularly worshipped in Jewish communal worship, what we call synagogues. He preached from Jewish text, from the Bible.
Jerusalem is a city located in modern-day Israel and is considered by many to be one of the holiest places in the world. Jerusalem is a site of major significance for the three largest monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and both Israel and Palestine have claimed Jerusalem as a capital city.
The date of birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources, but most biblical scholars generally accept a date of birth between 6 BC and 4 BC, the year in which King Herod died.
After the Six-Day War of 1967, it was part of the Israeli-occupied territory of the West Bank. In 1995 Israel ceded control of Bethlehem to the newly established Palestinian Authority in preparation for a two-state solution. Bethlehem is an agricultural market and trade town that is closely linked to nearby Jerusalem.
Jesus' name in Hebrew was “Yeshua” which translates to English as Joshua.
"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said in a press release.
What emerges from the two biblical traditions of Luke and Matthew is: Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Judea. Herod the Great was king in Israel at the time of Jesus' birth. But he actually died already in 4 BC and not in the year 0, so the period from 7 to 4 BC can be considered as the time of Jesus' birth.
Even Paul, who literally thought Jesus was God incarnate, doesn't mention the virgin birth or any of this narrative. All of these things, both big and small, can lead us to only one conclusion: There's probably not much historical fact in the birth of Jesus narratives found in the Bible.
It was a society where everyone was coerced.” As in most agrarian societies, about 10% of the population was born into nobility and lived lavishly. The remaining 90% worked the fields around Nazareth, growing grapes, olives and grain, Horsley said.
The slopes of Bethlehem's surrounding hills and their adjacent fields provided fertile agricultural lands for harvesting wheat and barley (see Ruth 1:22; 2:1–3; and 4:11), which likely gave the village its Hebrew name, “House of Bread.” These sloping hills also contained terraced orchards of olive trees, exposed ...
Located in the beautiful Lower Galilee region of Israel, and famed for being the city where Jesus had lived and grown up, today Nazareth is the largest Arab city in Israel, and one of the largest cities in northern Israel. The majority of the people in Nazareth are Muslim or Christian.
Although born in Bethlehem, according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus was a Galilean from Nazareth, a village near Sepphoris, one of the two major cities of Galilee (Tiberias was the other).
The piece of clay dates back to the First Temple period (1006 – 586 BCE), making it the first tangible evidence of existence of the city of Bethlehem in ancient times. The artifact, called a “bulla,” is a piece of clay typically used as an official seal on a document or object.
Birth of Jesus
From the age at which Jewish maidens became marriageable, it is possible that Mary gave birth to her son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age. No historical document tells us how old she actually was at the time of the Nativity.
Arrival in Bethlehem
The town was filled with individuals who had come to be registered much as Mary and Joseph had. They made do with what was available and set up in the manger, where Mary immediately went into labor and gave birth to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Did you know, for example, that the manger in which the baby Jesus was laid was actually made of stone? That archaeological artifact, the stone manger, will be the starting point for a reading adventure into the authentic story of Christmas that will surprise and delight at every turn.