Bethlehem

• 1. Introduction

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  Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, about 10 km south of Jerusalem, and its Christian community has fallen from roughly 86% of residents in 1950 to about 10% in 2022. That community is now a minority in a city with a Muslim majority. Yet pilgrims still crowd toward the Church of the Nativity at Christmas, and more than two million visitors arrive every year. How did a town in the Judean Mountains come to carry so much meaning? What does its name actually say, and why do three languages disagree about it? Who has ruled it, who has fought over its church, and who lives in its old quarters today? And what happens to a sacred place when walls, checkpoints and emigration reshape daily life around it?

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• 2. Three Names

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  In Hebrew the town is Bet Leḥem, which means house of bread or house of food. In Arabic it is Bēt laḥm, and there the same sounds mean house of meat. Greek writers spelled it Bethleem, while Aramaic speakers kept the Hebrew form and pronounced it Beit Lekhem. Evidence for that Aramaic spelling comes from the Syriac version of the Gospel of Matthew, in chapter 2, where the Syriac letters transliterate to the Hebrew ones.

  Scholars of the ancient Near East read the name another way. In Canaanite and Israelite place names, beth meant house of, and the house was understood as a temple. The second half of the name then identified the god who was worshipped there. On that logic, one longstanding suggestion ties Bethlehem to Laḫmu, a fertility god of Mesopotamia or Canaan, and to his consort and sister Lahamu. The word lahmo was the Chaldean term for fertility.

  Otto Schröder first proposed that derivation, and the biblical scholar William F. Albright thought it was "certainly accurate". Albright noted that the pronunciation had stayed essentially the same for 3,500 years, even as the meaning shifted. In his words: "'Temple of the God Lakhmu' in Canaanite, 'House of Bread' in Hebrew and Aramaic, 'House of Meat' in Arabic." Schröder's theory is not widely accepted, yet academic writing still tends to favour it over the later literal translations.

  A third suggestion links the name to the root l-h-m, meaning to fight, which would make it a house of war or house of fighting. Scholars consider that unlikely. The earliest written trace of the name, though, may be a cry for help sent to an Egyptian pharaoh.

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• 3. Ancient Town

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  Abdi-Heba, the governor of Jerusalem appointed by Egypt, wrote six letters to the pharaoh, and one contains what is usually treated as the earliest reference to Bethlehem. He reported that Apiru mercenaries were causing disturbances and pleaded for help: "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!" Albright also read another Amarna letter, EA290, as naming the town, but that reading is uncertain and has met objections.

  On the hill now called the Hill of the Nativity, Canaanites erected a temple some time in the third millennium BCE, probably dedicated to Laḫmu. A town formed around it. The resemblance between its early name and the modern forms suggests a settlement of Canaanites who shared a Semitic heritage with later arrivals. By 1200 BC the Philistines had conquered the area. The Greeks came to call the region Philistia, a word later corrupted to Palestine.

  A burial ground found in the spring of 2013 gives a sense of how long people lived here. A joint Italian-Palestinian team surveyed it in 2015 and found that it covered 3 hectares, more than 7 acres. It once held more than 100 tombs, used between roughly 2200 BCE and 650 BCE. The archaeologists were able to identify at least 30 of them.

  In 2012, a dig at the City of David turned up a bulla, a seal impression in dried clay, written in ancient Hebrew script. It reads "From the town of Bethlehem to the King". The excavators believe it sealed a shipment of grain, wine or other goods sent as a tax payment in the 8th or 7th century BCE. That is archaeological confirmation of Bethlehem as a town of the Kingdom of Judah.

  The Bible places the town in the hill country of Judea and gives it several names. Scholars think it may be the Ephrath of Micah, a word meaning fertile, and the text also calls it Beth-Lehem Judah. It is first mentioned as the place where the matriarch Rachel died and was buried "by the wayside", and her traditional tomb stands at the entrance to the city. In the Book of Ruth, the valley to the east is where Ruth of Moab gleaned the fields before returning to town with Naomi. In the Books of Samuel it is the home of Jesse, whose son David was anointed there by the prophet Samuel. David later hid in the cave of Adullam, and three of his warriors brought him water from the well of Bethlehem.

  In the 4th century, a traveller known as the Pilgrim of Bordeaux reported that the tombs of David, Ezekiel, Asaph, Job, Jesse and Solomon lay near the town.

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• 4. The Contested Birthplace

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  The Gospels of Matthew and Luke both place the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest, says only that he came from Nazareth, and the Gospel of John likewise has no nativity story. In Luke, Jesus' parents travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where he is born. Matthew adds that Herod the Great was told a "King of the Jews" had been born in the town, which led to the Massacre of the Innocents. An angel warned Joseph, who fled to Egypt with his family, and they settled in Nazareth after Herod died. Modern scholars regard the two accounts as contradictory and remain divided on whether Jesus was born in Nazareth or in Bethlehem.

  Around 155, the apologist Justin Martyr told doubters that they could visit the very cave where Jesus was said to have been born. In his Dialogue with Trypho, he described the Holy Family taking refuge in a cave outside the town and placing the child in a manger. About the year 247, Origen of Alexandria wrote that local people believed a cave in the town was the birthplace. The apocryphal Gospel of James and the church historian Eusebius refer to the same cave. Early Christians also read a verse in the Book of Micah as a prophecy that the Messiah would be born there.

  Archaeology has complicated the picture. In a 2005 article in Archaeology magazine, Aviram Oshri pointed to an absence of evidence that Bethlehem near Jerusalem was settled when Jesus was born. He proposed Bethlehem of Galilee instead. Other archaeologists argue that Bethlehem of Judea was inhabited at that time. In a 2011 article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor defended the traditional position.

  After the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed, the Roman emperor Hadrian converted the Christian site above the grotto into a shrine to the Greek god Adonis. He did so to honour his favourite, the Greek youth Antinous. Around 395 CE, Jerome described the result 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 take this as evidence that the cave had once been a shrine to the fertility god Tammuz.

  Not everyone agrees. Eusebius never links the cave to Tammuz, and no other early Christian source suggests that Tammuz had a shrine in Bethlehem. Peter Welten argued that Jerome misread Christian mourning for the Massacre of the Innocents as a pagan ritual. Joan E. Taylor replied that an educated man like Jerome could hardly have made so naive a mistake.

  Close to the church lies another cave, where Jerome spent thirty years creating the Vulgate, the dominant Latin version of the Bible until the Reformation.

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• 5. Church and Conquerors

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  Between 326 and 328, the empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, made a pilgrimage to Syria-Palaestina and visited the ruins of Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity was built at her initiative over the cave where Jesus was said to have been born. In the Samaritan revolt of 529, the town was sacked and its walls and church destroyed. The Emperor Justinian I ordered both rebuilt. In 614, the Persian Sassanid Empire, backed by Jewish rebels, captured Bethlehem. Later sources say the invaders spared the church after seeing the magi shown in Persian clothing in a mosaic.

  In 637, soon after Muslim armies took Jerusalem, the second caliph 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb promised that the Church of the Nativity would remain in Christian use. A mosque dedicated to Umar was built beside the church, at the place where he prayed. Bethlehem then passed to the Umayyads in the 8th century and the Abbasids in the 9th. In 985, the Arab geographer al-Muqaddasi praised the church as the "Basilica of Constantine, the equal of which does not exist anywhere in the country-round." In 1009, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered it demolished, but local Muslims saved it because they were allowed to worship in its southern transept.

  In 1099, the Crusaders took Bethlehem, fortified it, and built a new monastery and cloister on the north side of the church. They removed the Greek Orthodox clergy and replaced them with Latin clerics. On Christmas Day 1100, Baldwin I, first king of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, was crowned in the town, and a Latin episcopate was established that year.

  In 1187, Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt and Syria, captured Bethlehem. The Latin clerics had to leave and the Greek Orthodox clergy returned, though Saladin agreed in 1192 to admit two Latin priests and two deacons. The town lost much of its pilgrim trade as European visitors dwindled. William IV, Count of Nevers, had promised the bishops of Bethlehem a home in the small town of Clamecy in Burgundy. In 1223 the bishop took up residence in the hospital of Panthenor there. Clamecy remained the seat of the Bishopric of Bethlehem for almost 600 years, until the French Revolution in 1789.

  In 1229, a treaty between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil briefly ceded Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Sidon to the Crusader kingdom, in return for a ten-year truce. The treaty expired in 1239, and Muslims recaptured the town in 1244. When the Mamluks came to power in 1250 under Rukn al-Din Baibars, tolerance of Christianity declined. Clergy left, and the town walls were demolished in 1263. The Latin clergy returned the following century to the monastery beside the basilica. The Greek Orthodox were given control of the basilica itself, and they shared the Milk Grotto with the Latins and the Armenians.

  From 1517, under the Ottomans, the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches bitterly disputed custody of the basilica. By the end of the 16th century, Bethlehem was one of the largest villages in the District of Jerusalem and was divided into seven quarters. The Ottoman tax record and census of 1596 counted 1,435 people, making it the 13th largest village in Palestine, with total revenue of 30,000 akce. Residents paid taxes on wheat, barley and grapes. Muslims and Christians formed separate communities, each with its own leader, and the Basbus family was among the town's heads.

  From 1831 to 1841, Egypt's Muhammad Ali Dynasty ruled Palestine. During those years Bethlehem suffered an earthquake, and in 1834 Egyptian troops destroyed the Muslim quarter, apparently as a reprisal for the murder of a loyalist favoured by Ibrahim Pasha. After the Ottomans returned in 1841, residents faced unemployment, compulsory military service and heavy taxes. Many emigrated, particularly to South America. An American missionary in the 1850s reported a population of under 4,000, nearly all of them belonging to the Greek Church, and noted that a lack of water limited the town's growth.

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• 6. Trade and Pilgrimage

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  Olive wood carvings are the item most bought by tourists in Bethlehem. The main streets and old markets are lined with shops selling Palestinian handicrafts, Middle Eastern spices, jewellery and sweets such as baklawa. Religious goods include ornaments of mother-of-pearl and olive wood statues, boxes and crosses. Local factories also make paints, plastics, synthetic rubber, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, and food products, mainly pasta and confectionery. Stone and marble cutting, textiles and furniture round out the list.

  Mother-of-pearl carving is said to have been a Bethlehem tradition since the 15th century, when Franciscan friars from Italy introduced it. A steady stream of pilgrims created demand and gave women jobs. Richard Pococke noted the industry when he visited in 1727.

  Bethlehem embroidery was renowned for its "strong overall effect of colors and metallic brilliance." Its women were known for bridalwear. Special-occasion dresses were made of striped silk with winged sleeves, worn with a short velvet or broadcloth jacket called the taqsireh, or Bethlehem jacket. The distinctive technique was couched gold or silver cord laid onto the fabric in stylized floral patterns. Some trace it to Byzantium, and others to the formal costume of the Ottoman elite. As women in a Christian village, the embroiderers also saw the heavy embroidery and silver brocade of church vestments.

  Cremisan Wine, founded in 1885, is run by monks at the Monastery of Cremisan. Its grapes grow mainly in the al-Khader district, and in 2007 the monastery produced around 700,000 liters a year.

  Tourism accounts for approximately 65% of the city's economy and 11% of the Palestinian National Authority's. More than 20% of the working population is employed in the sector. Unlike many Palestinian localities before 2000, most employed residents did not work in Israel. Tourism ground to a halt for over a decade after the Second Intifada and began to recover in the early 2010s. Bethlehem now has over thirty hotels. Jacir Palace, built in 1910 near the church, is the oldest. It closed in 2000, then reopened in 2005 as the Jacir Palace InterContinental at Bethlehem. In 2008, the city hosted the largest economic conference yet held in the Palestinian territories, which secured 1.4 billion US dollars in business investments.

  Christmas is observed on three dates. Roman Catholics and Protestants celebrate on the 25th of December. Greek, Coptic and Syrian Orthodox Christians celebrate on the 6th of January, and Armenian Orthodox Christians on the 19th of January. Most processions pass through Manger Square, outside the basilica. Roman Catholic services are held in St. Catherine's Church, and Protestants often gather at Shepherds' Fields. On the 5th and the 6th of May, Greek Orthodox Christians march to al-Khader for the Feast of Saint George. There they baptize newborns in the waters around the Monastery of St. George and sacrifice a sheep.

  In 2023 and 2024, the Christmas celebrations were cancelled because of the Gaza war. They resumed in 2025 after a peace deal.

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• 7. Walls and Checkpoints

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  The United Nations General Assembly's 1947 partition resolution placed Bethlehem inside an international enclave around Jerusalem, to be run by the United Nations. Instead, Jordan captured the city in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Refugees from areas seized by Israeli forces in 1947-48 fled to the Bethlehem area. They settled mainly in what became the official camps of 'Azza and 'Aida in the north and Dheisheh in the south. The influx turned a Christian majority into a Muslim one. Jordan held the city until the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel took it along with the rest of the West Bank.

  On the 5th of May 1989, during the early months of the First Intifada, Milad Anton Shahin, aged 12, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Defence Minister Yitzak Rabin told a member of the Knesset in August 1990 that reservists at an observation post had come under attack by stone throwers. The post commander, a senior non-commissioned officer, fired two plastic bullets in breach of operational rules. No evidence was found that this caused the boy's death. The officer was found guilty of illegal use of a weapon, sentenced to 5 months, two of them in prison, and demoted.

  On the 21st of December 1995, Israeli troops withdrew from Bethlehem. Three days later the city came under the administration and military control of the Palestinian National Authority. The Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005, damaged the city's infrastructure and its tourism industry. In 2002, Bethlehem was a primary combat zone in Operation Defensive Shield, a major military counteroffensive by the Israeli Defense Forces. They besieged the Church of the Nativity, where dozens of Palestinian militants had taken refuge. The siege lasted 39 days, and several militants were killed. It ended with an agreement to exile 13 of them to foreign countries.

  Under the Oslo Accords, Bethlehem is part of Area A of the West Bank, which nominally means Palestinian control, though it remains under Israeli occupation. Two bypass roads for Israeli settlers now surround the city. They leave residents squeezed among thirty-seven Jewish enclaves, home to a quarter of all West Bank settlers, roughly 170,000 people. An Israeli barrier 8 metres high closes the gap between the roads and cuts Bethlehem off from its sister city Jerusalem. On its northern edge, it runs close to the houses of the Aida refugee camp.

  Most entrances and exits from the Bethlehem area are subject to Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, and the level of access varies with Israeli security directives. Palestinian residents need a permit to travel from the West Bank into Jerusalem. Buses and taxis with West Bank licenses may not enter Israel without one. Palestinians also need a permit to visit Rachel's Tomb, while Israeli citizens are barred from entering Bethlehem and from the biblical Solomon's Pools.

  Land seizures for Israeli settlements have also prevented the construction of a new hospital for the people of Bethlehem.

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• 8. Quarters and Clans

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  At the center of Bethlehem, around Manger Square, lies an old city of eight quarters laid out like a mosaic. Seven are Christian: an-Najajreh, al-Farahiyeh, al-Anatreh, al-Tarajmeh, al-Qawawsa, Hreizat, and a Syriac quarter outside the old city whose families come from Midyat and Ma'asarte in Turkey. The eighth, al-Fawaghreh, is the only Muslim quarter. Most of the Christian quarters take their names from the Arab Ghassanid clans that settled there. Al-Qawawsa was founded in the 18th century by Arab Christian emigrants from the nearby town of Tuqu'. About 5,000 people live in the old city, on a ridge roughly 775 m above sea level, 30 m higher than Jerusalem.

  The census of 1922 counted 6,658 residents: 5,838 Christians, 818 Muslims and two Jews. By 1945 the figure had reached 8,820, including 6,430 Christians and 2,370 Muslims. Israeli authorities counted 14,439 people in 1967, of whom 7,790 were Muslims, or 53.9%, and 6,231 were Christians, or 46.1%. Palestinian statisticians recorded 28,591 residents in 2017, and in 1997 they found that 6,570 residents, or 30.3%, were refugees.

  By 1998 the Christian share had dropped to 40%. In 2005, Mayor Victor Batarseh explained: "due to the stress, either physical or psychological, and the bad economic situation, many people are emigrating, either Christians or Muslims, but it is more apparent among Christians, because they already are a minority." In 2006, a Zogby poll of more than 1,000 Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem found that 79% blamed the Israeli occupation for the difficulties driving emigration. A separate poll that year found that 90% of the city's Christians had Muslim friends and 78% blamed the Israeli blockade for the exodus.

  A Pew Research Center study concluded that Christians' lower birth rate explained part of the decline in the Arab Christian population, and that Christians were also more likely to emigrate than any other religious group. Researcher Amon Ramnon observed that many Christians attend church-affiliated schools where they learn European languages, which makes it easier to settle in the West. Since the Second Intifada, 10% of the Christian population has left the city.

  Bethlehem held its first municipal elections in 1876, after the mukhtars of the quarters decided to elect a council of seven, one for each clan. A Basic Law required that if the mayor was a Catholic, his deputy would be Greek Orthodox. In 1976, women gained the right to vote and sit on the council. Hamas won the majority of the open seats in the 2005 municipal elections. In October 2012, Vera Baboun of Fatah became the first female mayor of Bethlehem.

  Bethlehem University, founded in 1973 in the Lasallian tradition, was the first university established in the West Bank. It is open to students of all faiths, and its roots reach back to 1893, when the De La Salle Christian Brothers opened schools across Palestine and Egypt. The Bethlehem branch of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music has about 500 students learning music and Palestinian folk songs.

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