Acheologist discovered "another" Bethlehem
When news was slow over Christmas, a spate of newspapers ran one of those "here's an interesting little factoid" articles about a Israeli archaeologist who dug up a different town called Bethlehem in north Israel, quite close to Nazareth and said "hey, I wonder if the bible story about Jesus' birth is about this one, not the one at the other end of the country".
I was sceptical that Jesus was born in any Bethlehem, but I didn't know enough biblical history to know either way. Here's my understanding of the history, can anyone fill in the gaps?
Terminology
In this explanation, we'll refer to two regions. At the time of Jesus, Gallilee was in north Israel, around the lake of Gallilee, and relatively rural, and Judah was in south Israel near Jerusalem, comparatively cosmopolitan.
I've previously referred to the distinction in mentioning Daniel Boyarin's book, which suggests that Jesus' story, especially as told in the (earliest?) gospel of Mark makes more sense if viewed as a conflict of:
Charismatic preacher arises out of rural, earnest, down-to-earth religious traditions around the lake of gallilee. He preaches common-sense tolerance yet is unforgiving to immorality and hypocrisy.
He acquires a large following and eventually goes to the capital, where he's horribly shocked that the religious traditions are overly complicated, and in his view corrupt and distorted.
The religious authorities are scared to find thousands of workers abandoning their families and jobs to wander the countryside without any means of support, and descending on the capital with considerable resentment of existing lifestyle of the authorities.
But conveniently, at this point, the secular authorities find the preacher and arrest him, beat him, whip him, nail him to a tree, disembowl him and bury him, and everyone thinks the problem has gone away.
King David
David is born in Bethlehem, and the bible specifically says in Judah. In fact, it seems David became king of Judah first, and all of Israel later, so the Judah part seems fairly clear. (Is that definitely Judea, not a way of referring to all Israel including Gallilee?)
In fact, in some ways it doesn't matter where David was actually born, but that biblical scholars of 1AD and 2000AD both have the same information, that the book of Samuel says he was born in Bethlehem in Judah, and that they would assume that was accurate.
Then God got fed up with King Saul's incompetent jealous plots against his subordinates, said "Screw this, lets try David instead, maybe his jealous plots against his subordinates will be more competent."
David is regarded as the king of Israel. Later tradition says a messiah will be a descendant of David, and he's super-awesome (if a bit immoral) in other ways too.
Isaiah (or Micah?)
Later on, the israelites were suffering under some other sort of oppression (I can't remember exactly what), and Isaiah channelled God and made a big speech about someone having some sort of connection to King David, and being born in Bethlehem, and coming from obscurity to unite the jewish people and rule as a king of kings, and basically do a lot of other stuff that King David did.
This is rather controversial, but I think that some people (most Jews?) would interpret this as referring to king david, and being a prophecy in the sense of a combination history of king david, message from god, and wish fulfilment crying out for a new leader to rescue the jewish people from this particular iteration of oppression. Whereas some people (most Christians?) would interpret this as referring to a prophecy of the future, and this is to what the gospel writers are referring when they make a big deal out of Jesus being a descendant of David, etc, etc.
I'm not at all sure I have this right? But either way, I think Mark, Matthew and Luke were trying to say that Jesus was born where King David (apparently) was.
Birth of Jesus
The bible explicitly says Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judah. Is that clearly referring to south Israel, as distinct from Gallilee?
The discovery
If so, this archeologist's theory seems to be that all of the census stuff that doesn't seem very historically plausible happened as described, but not quite as dramatically as Joseph and Mary travelled from Nazareth to the nearby Bethlehem, not the Bethlehem at the other end of the country.
And then, the people who wrote down the bible got the wrong end of the stick, and heard "in Bethlehem" and assumed it was David's Bethlehem. (Or maybe the Gallilean Bethlehem was the only one at the time?)
But the only evidence for this seems to be that there is a town with that name in Gallilee. (Rachel says it's not an especially uncommon name anyway -- any confirmation or denial?) There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the Bethlehem near Jerusalem existed at Jesus' time, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it doesn't, either.
So I don't see what benefit this theory has over the idea that all of the nativity story, including all references to Bethlehem was myth, made up some time after Jesus began preaching. Which would explain why the dates don't line up well.
But presumably there is some reason. The man who discovered it was archeologist and an Israeli -- presumably he's heard of King David and Bethlehem, and has some reason for thinking his interpretation is sensible? Am I missing anything (other than that crying "discovered birthplace of Jesus" is about the only way to get the popular press interested in archeology)?
In brighter news
In brighter news, thinking about it, the gospels do agree that Jesus was from Nazareth, and there seems to be no particular reason to make that up, which makes me feel it very likely that someone fitting that rough description did exist at about 30AD. (I'm still not convinced by the idea that the miracles are historically convincing, though.)
You can also comment at http://jack.dreamwidth.org/818350.html using OpenID.
comments so far.
I was sceptical that Jesus was born in any Bethlehem, but I didn't know enough biblical history to know either way. Here's my understanding of the history, can anyone fill in the gaps?
Terminology
In this explanation, we'll refer to two regions. At the time of Jesus, Gallilee was in north Israel, around the lake of Gallilee, and relatively rural, and Judah was in south Israel near Jerusalem, comparatively cosmopolitan.
I've previously referred to the distinction in mentioning Daniel Boyarin's book, which suggests that Jesus' story, especially as told in the (earliest?) gospel of Mark makes more sense if viewed as a conflict of:
Charismatic preacher arises out of rural, earnest, down-to-earth religious traditions around the lake of gallilee. He preaches common-sense tolerance yet is unforgiving to immorality and hypocrisy.
He acquires a large following and eventually goes to the capital, where he's horribly shocked that the religious traditions are overly complicated, and in his view corrupt and distorted.
The religious authorities are scared to find thousands of workers abandoning their families and jobs to wander the countryside without any means of support, and descending on the capital with considerable resentment of existing lifestyle of the authorities.
But conveniently, at this point, the secular authorities find the preacher and arrest him, beat him, whip him, nail him to a tree, disembowl him and bury him, and everyone thinks the problem has gone away.
King David
David is born in Bethlehem, and the bible specifically says in Judah. In fact, it seems David became king of Judah first, and all of Israel later, so the Judah part seems fairly clear. (Is that definitely Judea, not a way of referring to all Israel including Gallilee?)
In fact, in some ways it doesn't matter where David was actually born, but that biblical scholars of 1AD and 2000AD both have the same information, that the book of Samuel says he was born in Bethlehem in Judah, and that they would assume that was accurate.
Then God got fed up with King Saul's incompetent jealous plots against his subordinates, said "Screw this, lets try David instead, maybe his jealous plots against his subordinates will be more competent."
David is regarded as the king of Israel. Later tradition says a messiah will be a descendant of David, and he's super-awesome (if a bit immoral) in other ways too.
Isaiah (or Micah?)
Later on, the israelites were suffering under some other sort of oppression (I can't remember exactly what), and Isaiah channelled God and made a big speech about someone having some sort of connection to King David, and being born in Bethlehem, and coming from obscurity to unite the jewish people and rule as a king of kings, and basically do a lot of other stuff that King David did.
This is rather controversial, but I think that some people (most Jews?) would interpret this as referring to king david, and being a prophecy in the sense of a combination history of king david, message from god, and wish fulfilment crying out for a new leader to rescue the jewish people from this particular iteration of oppression. Whereas some people (most Christians?) would interpret this as referring to a prophecy of the future, and this is to what the gospel writers are referring when they make a big deal out of Jesus being a descendant of David, etc, etc.
I'm not at all sure I have this right? But either way, I think Mark, Matthew and Luke were trying to say that Jesus was born where King David (apparently) was.
Birth of Jesus
The bible explicitly says Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judah. Is that clearly referring to south Israel, as distinct from Gallilee?
The discovery
If so, this archeologist's theory seems to be that all of the census stuff that doesn't seem very historically plausible happened as described, but not quite as dramatically as Joseph and Mary travelled from Nazareth to the nearby Bethlehem, not the Bethlehem at the other end of the country.
And then, the people who wrote down the bible got the wrong end of the stick, and heard "in Bethlehem" and assumed it was David's Bethlehem. (Or maybe the Gallilean Bethlehem was the only one at the time?)
But the only evidence for this seems to be that there is a town with that name in Gallilee. (Rachel says it's not an especially uncommon name anyway -- any confirmation or denial?) There doesn't seem to be any evidence that the Bethlehem near Jerusalem existed at Jesus' time, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that it doesn't, either.
So I don't see what benefit this theory has over the idea that all of the nativity story, including all references to Bethlehem was myth, made up some time after Jesus began preaching. Which would explain why the dates don't line up well.
But presumably there is some reason. The man who discovered it was archeologist and an Israeli -- presumably he's heard of King David and Bethlehem, and has some reason for thinking his interpretation is sensible? Am I missing anything (other than that crying "discovered birthplace of Jesus" is about the only way to get the popular press interested in archeology)?
In brighter news
In brighter news, thinking about it, the gospels do agree that Jesus was from Nazareth, and there seems to be no particular reason to make that up, which makes me feel it very likely that someone fitting that rough description did exist at about 30AD. (I'm still not convinced by the idea that the miracles are historically convincing, though.)
You can also comment at http://jack.dreamwidth.org/818350.html using OpenID.
comments so far.