Biblical Recorder

News
Biblical Recorder: Journal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina

Thursday, Dec. 25, 1997
Bethlehem much changed since Jesus' time

Bethlehem's focal point is the Church of the Nativity, a Greek Orthodox Church built in 530 A.D. by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I on what is believed to be the site of the ancient inn where Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. That stable was likely a cave rather than the wooden stall depicted in most Christmas Nativity scenes, according to biblical scholars.

By Mark Wingfield
Each Christmas, thousands of Christian pilgrims descend upon the no-longer-little town of Bethlehem to mark the event that put the village on the map 2,000 years ago.

Mary's well
The traditional site of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem is covered by the Greek Orthodox Church of the Nativity. Visitors must pass through a small door called the "gate of humility" to enter the church.

Bethlehem is more than a name in the Bible or the subject of Christmas carols. It is an actual place -- a city of 50,000 residents on Israel's Palestinian-controlled West Bank -- where about 1.25 million tourists visit each year, especially at Christmastime.

Christmas Day is celebrated three times each year in Bethlehem: Catholics and Western Christians commemorate Jesus' birth on Dec. 25; Orthodox Christians mark the day on Jan. 6; and Armenians celebrate on Jan. 18.

Born in a cave

"In that day, inns were built around caves, usually enclosed in a big quadrangle with a courtyard area in the middle," said Wayne Ward, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a frequent visitor to the Holy Land. Animals often were kept in these limestone caves adjoining the inns, he said.

The 'authentic' birthplace

Ward is convinced the site marked by the Church of the Nativity is authentic. It was first permanently marked by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, in about 325 A.D. After Constantine's conversion to Christianity, his mother traveled across Palestine to locate all the sites revered by the Christian community. She and others erected ornate church buildings on many of those holy sites. "The oldest and surest site she picked out was the inn at Bethlehem," Ward said.

Biblical archaeologist Joel Drinkard, professor of Old Testament interpretation at Southern Seminary, agreed that the Bethlehem inn is one of the most reliable locations related to Jesus' life and ministry. Nevertheless, Drinkard pointed out, Helena marked the site 300 years after the birth of Christ.

"The gap from the birth in 5 or 6 B.C. down to 300 A.D. is an awfully long gap," Drinkard said. "We have an awfully hard time proving this is actually the site. Likewise we have a hard time proving it is not." That gap isn't as huge as it appears, though, Ward said, because there were signs of earlier veneration of the site predating Helena's visit. Also, a village the size of Bethlehem would likely have had only one inn, and everybody would have known where it was, he said. And unlike nearby Jerusalem, Bethlehem never has been destroyed by war.

Centuries of change

What tourists see today at the Church of the Nativity, however, bears little resemblance to the Bethlehem during Mary and Joseph's time. In modern Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity sits off a square. Visitors stoop to enter the church through a four-and-a-half foot doorway called the "gate of humility." It actually is the result of precautions taken centuries ago. According to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, the church's wooden door was built in 1272 by the Armenian King Hetron to protect the site from invaders.

Just inside, some areas of the floor are pulled back so visitors can look down on mosaic tiles from a previous, significantly older, floor. The older floor dates to the original fourth century church. One mosaic features the Greek word for "fish," an acronym for Christ which Christians used as a secret code during Roman persecution.

Visitors descend a narrow stairway to the grotto, where one small area is marked off with a silver star embedded in marble to mark the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born.

'Discomforting' appearances

American Protestants often find the appearance of the site discomforting at first, noted Drinkard. "To us, there's nothing very worshipful about the idea of the marble, the hanging lights, the silver of the star encrusting the location. That doesn't speak to most of our Baptist feelings of worship," he said. "Nonetheless, those are the most ancient indications we have of veneration of this site as a place of worship."

Ultimately, the most important aspect of a visit to the Holy Land is to increase the pilgrim's sense of worship, Drinkard added. "That's what these churches and the traditions tied to these churches do. They help make it concrete."

While visitors are not always really walking where Jesus walked, there are some places they are seeing and touching remains that were present during the time of Christ or the Old Testament prophets, he said. (ABP)


News	Opinion	Subscriptions	Staff	History	Help	Links
Home biblical@biblicalrecorder.org