A TOWN CALLED BETHLEHEM

About ten kilometers east of Nazareth in the Galilee is the settlement of Beit Lekhem ha-Glilit ('the Galilean Bethlehem'). The settlement was started by members of the German Templar (not the same as the ancient Templars) movement in 1906. They chose to site their settlement close to ancient 'Bethlehem of Zebulun' mentioned in Joshua 19: 15. (Included were Kattath, Nahallal, Shimron, Idalah and Bethlehem: twelve cities with their villages.) The Templars left before WWII to join the Nazis or moved to Australia.

Most Christians accept the birthplace of Jesus to be Bethlehem in Judea and this might be true, but it raises too many questions which cannot easily be answered. It makes a lot more sense if the birth took place in Bethlehem in the Galilee. As in all things, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one.

It would also clarify a discrepancy between the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew.

In Luke 2: 1 - 4, it says:

• a decree went out
• census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria
• all went to be registered, everyone to his own city
• Joseph also went up from Galilee
• to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem

Matthew 2: 1 says

• Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king
• wise men from the East came to Jerusalem

Quirinius only became legate in 6 CE, while Herod the Great died ten years earlier in 4 BCE. To overcome this discrepancy there is an interpretation which says Matthew meant Herod Antipas and not his father, Herod the Great. The problem with this is Herod Antipas was not a king and he never ruled from Jerusalem - it must have been Herod the Great Matthew is talking about. This means Luke was wrong.

Such a small discrepancy is of little importance except to show the authors of these two books did not have their facts straight. This can be understood as they wrote more than seventy years after the event. Luke introduced the census as a convoluted reason to justify a long and dangerous journey. Nobody in their right mind would load a pregnant woman on a donkey and travel for ten days through the snow. It simply did not happen.  

The simple and elegant solution is the birthplace of Jesus was Bethlehem in the Galilee. With the help of archeology and history, an alternative sequence of events can be constructed which makes a lot more sense.

Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth which at the time was a farm with a few houses for the workers. They travelled to the 'big' town of Bethlehem 10 kilometers away on the 24th of Kislev for the celebration of Hanukkah - and to await the birth. Being in Bethlehem had the advantages of being close to midwives and the local rabbi for the circumcision on the 8th day after the birth. The Galilee never gets freezing cold in winter so there were shepherds in the field. When it turned out the inn was full due to the influx of festival goers, Joseph and Mary could comfortably move into a cave area at the back which would normally have been a manger. 

The trip brought on the birth, and Jesus was born on the evening of the 24th - the 25th in the Jewish calendar and the first day of Hanukkah. (Traditionally the evening of the 24th is as important as the 25th.) Herod, on hearing of the birth of a rival, sent Roman soldiers to the area and they destroyed everything including Bethlehem. Everybody from the town and the surrounding areas fled to the area around Ptolemais (modern Akko) at the time Egyptian under the Ptolemies.

Herod the Great captured Sepphoris or Zippori/Tzipori as part of his conquest of the Galilee in 37 BCE, and the town which used to be an important centre, stagnated. With Herod's death, the town rose in revolt against Roman rule. The Romans quickly captured it and razed it to a ruin. The inhabitants were enslaved. Shortly afterward, Herod Antipas started a rebuilding program of Sepphoris - he called it Autocratoris. With work available, craftsmen, including carpenters returned from far and wide to the Galilee. Religious Jews refused to live in Autocratoris as it was Roman but instead of rebuilding Bethlehem, they moved to Nazareth, as it was closer.

Nazareth became a 'city' overnight while Bethlehem was quickly forgotten. By the time of the writing of the gospels of Luke and Matthew (60 - 70 CE) even Sepphoris had become a backwater and the authors of the gospels would not have heard of Bethlehem of the Galilee at all. It would have been an easy mistake to assume it was Bethlehem in Judea.