Nadene Goldfoot
You'd never know but Bethlehem is in a fertile limestone hill country and this distance is only between Jerusalem and Bethlehem 8.89 km. This distance is equal to 5.52 miles, from Jerusalem and Nazareth is in the Galilee (6.2miles from Jerusalem ). I lived in Safed from 1980 to the end of 1985 and that is on top of another mountain about as high as Jerusalem is. Safed is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of 900 metres (2,953 ft), Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. It's cooler in the summer as you feel the breeze.
Bethlehem as the birthplace of David as well as the city where he was anointed as the third monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel, and also states that it was built up as a fortified city by King Rehoboam, son of Solomon by his Ammonite wife, Naamah, the first monarch of the Kingdom of Judah. Archaeological confirmation of Bethlehem as a city in the Kingdom of Judah was uncovered in 2012 at the archaeological dig at the City of David in the form of a bulla (seal impression in dried clay) in ancient Hebrew script that reads "From the town of Bethlehem to the King." According to the excavators, it was used to seal the string closing a shipment of grain, wine, or other goods sent as a tax payment in the 8th or 7th century BCE.
View of Nazareth, with the Basilica of the Annunciation at the center
Nazareth: Archaeological evidence shows that Nazareth was occupied during the late Hellenistic period, through the Roman period and into the Byzantine period. It's elevation is 347 meters or (1,138 feet high)
Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. In 2021 its population was 77,925. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and commercial center for the Arab citizens of Israel, and is also a center of Arab and Palestinian nationalism. The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel, of whom 69% are Muslim and 30.9% Christian. The city also commands immense religious significance, deriving from its status as the hometown of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity.
Jerusalem is an ancient city in West Asia, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim, however, is widely recognized internationally.
Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. As Jacob told the pharaoh of Egypt, his family was a long line of shepherds, and he had brought his flock to Egypt where the pharaoh said that Goshen would be his new home.
Saul was the first king of Israel in about 1030 BCE, and then David was the next king from 1010 to 970 BCE. David was born in Bethlehem, married Saul's daughter, Michal. He settled in Hebron and declared himself king of Judah. In the 8th year of his reign he captured the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem and made it his capital , then moved the Ark there. Many agree that he wrote the Book of Psalms.
No doubt, most readers will recognize the significance of these 3 cities. They are important in the religions of Christianity and Islam along with the Jews. Jerusalem is the heart and soul of Judaism. Bethlehem lies in Judah and Nazareth in the Lower Galilee of Israel and is 20 miles (32 Km) east of Haifa. They both are important to Christianity. All three were being influenced by Hellenism.
Hellenism was the form of the Greek civilization which was diffused over the Mediterranean and the Middle East after the end of the 4th century BCE as a result of the conquest of Alexander the Great.
About that time, Israel-Judah fell under Greek rule and Judea was surrounded by a ring of hellenized cities. At the same time, the Jewish Diaspora was expanding rapidly in Egypt, Cyrenaica, Syria and Asia Minor, which were all in a process of hellenization.
By the 3rd century BCE, the Jews of Egypt had adopted Greek and the Septuagint translation of the Bible had been completed. Antagonism between the traditional and hellenizing Jews in Jerusalem (the latter led by the Tobiads) brought on Antiochus IV Epiphanes' attempt to suppress Judaism and the Hasmonean revolt. This is when our historic holiday of Chanukah took place.
John Hyrcanus ( son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean-one of the 5 sons of Mattathias-leader in Chanukah story 135-104 BCE) and Alexander Yannai, son of John Hyrcanus, broke the power of the Greek cities of Judah, but later these were restored and strengthened as a result of Roman intervention aided by the Herods.
By the Mishnaic Period (273 BCE to 190 CE) , Jewish material life in Judah/Palestine (not Palestine until the Romans renamed all the land Palestine in 135 CE) was predominantly hellenistic although hellenization had ceased to be the political program of any Jewish faction. Both the Mishnah and Talmud contain hundreds of Greek words which had become absorbed into Hebrew and Aramaic and tomb inscriptions were in Greek.
In a few cases, Jewish scholars fell away from Judaism under the influence of Greek philosophy. In the Diaspora, Judaism was first tolerated by the Greeks, and the organ of Jewish religious and juridical autonomy, the politeuma, essentially Greek in form, was recognized by the hellenistic kings; however, Jews frequently had recourse to the Greek courts.
Their aspirations to Greek gymnasium education and Greek citizenship caused a violent civil struggle in Egypt which only ended with the revolt of 117 CE. The revolt, known as the Kitos War in 115–117, which took place mainly in the diaspora (in Cyprus, Egypt, Mesopotamia and only marginally in Judea), while poorly-organized, was extremely violent and took two years for the Roman armies to subdue. Jewish contacts with Hellenism gave rise to a variegated Judea-Hellenistic literature, one school of which advocated a Greco-Jewish rapprochement and held Greek philosophy to be Jewish in origin. The writings were propagandist, apologetic, literary, historical, and ethical: the leading authors were Philo and Josephus.
An intricate mosaic depicting Alexander the Great meeting a Jewish high priest was uncovered in a 5th-century synagogue at the archeological site in the ancient village of Huqoq.
An extremely rare find, the mosaic is significant because it is the first non-biblical scene discovered in an ancient synagogue.
There were also translations into Greek of works of the Apocrypha and Apocalypse, while synagogue decoration and architecture were influenced by Greek art. the Greeks as a whole, however, learned little about Judaism, and Jewish monotheism to them was aetheism. The Jewish rejection of polytheism, with which the Greek city was bound up, prevented the Jews' general acceptance into Greek life despite the assimilation of a few wealthy Jews and the desire of the Jewish upper class to be regarded as Greeks. Jewish life, although influenced by Hellenism, therefore remained fundamentally apart.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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