Nadene Goldfoot
ROMAN RULE: (70-395)
The city of Bethlehem was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117-138) during the 2nd century Bar Kokhba revolt. General Bar Kokhba died in 135 in the last battle for Jerusalem after holding it for 3 years, infuriating the Romans. Bethlehem's rebuilding was promoted by Empress Helena,, who commissioned the building of its great Church of the Nativity in 327 CE.
Helena was the mother of emperor Constantine the Great. She was born outside of the noble classes, a Greek, possibly in the Greek city of Drepana, Bithynia in Asia Minor.. Helena ranks as an important figure in the history of Christianity and of the world due to her influence on her son. In her final years, she made a religious tour of Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem, during which ancient tradition claims that she discovered the True Cross. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion revere her as a saint; the Lutheran Church commemorates her.
Helena was later known as Flavia Julia Helena Augusta, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. Although he lived much of his life as a pagan, and later as a catechumen, he began to favor Christianity beginning in 312 and was credited after his mother's death with having discovered the fragments of the Cross and the tomb in which Jesus was buried at Golgotha. Helena was born at Drepanum in Bithynia, later renamed after her Helenpolis, about the year 250.
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
Constantine was the 1st Christian emperor of Rome (312-337). He's also known for his Edict of Toleration which he issued in 312 which in effect established the supremacy of Christianity.
By 315 Constantine's decrees took an anti-Jewish turn, canceling Jewish exemptions from municipal office and prohibiting proselytization or interference with Jewish converts to Christianity. His legislation initiated the legal degradation of Jews characteristic of the Middle Ages. Constantine I enacts various laws regarding the Jews: Jews are not allowed to own Christian slaves or to circumcise their slaves. Conversion of Christians to Judaism is outlawed. Congregations for religious services are restricted, but Jews are also allowed to enter the restituted Jerusalem on the anniversary of the Temple's destruction.
- 325
- Jews are expelled and banned from Jerusalem.
- 325
- First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea was the first council in the history of the Christian church that was intended to address the entire body of believers. It was convened by the emperor Constantine to resolve the controversy of Arianism, a doctrine that held that Christ was not divine but was a created being. As of the Jews, they separated the dates of Easter from Passover. The feast of Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, as Christians believe that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred at the time of those observances.
As early as Pope Sixtus I, some Christians had set Easter to a Sunday in the lunar month of Nisan. To determine which lunar month was to be designated as Nisan, Christians relied on the Jewish community. By the later 3rd century some Christians began to express dissatisfaction with what they took to be the disorderly state of the Jewish calendar. They argued that contemporary Jews were identifying the wrong lunar month as the month of Nisan, choosing a month whose 14th day fell before the spring equinox. .
Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father , the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed, establishing uniform observance of the date of Easter, and promulgation of early canon law.
- On August 13, 339, C.E., Emperor Constantius II, his son, enacted a series of new laws restricting the freedom of Jews in the Roman Empire even more than under the anti-Jewish legislation imposed by his father, Constantine the Great. Intermarriage between Christians and Jews is banned in the Roman Empire, declaring the punishment death. Judaism faced some severe restrictions under Constantius, who seems to have followed an anti-Jewish policy in line with that of his father.] Early in his reign, Constantius issued a double edict in concert with his brothers limiting the ownership of slaves by Jewish people and banning marriages between Jews and Christian women. A later edict issued by Constantius after becoming sole emperor decreed that a person who was proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism would have all of his property confiscated by the state. However, Constantius' actions in this regard may not have been so much to do with Jewish religion as with Jewish business—apparently, privately owned Jewish businesses were often in competition with state-owned businesses. As a result, Constantius may have sought to provide an advantage to state-owned businesses by limiting the skilled workers and slaves available to Jewish businesses.
Jew-related edicts issued by Constantius (by himself or with others) included:
- Weaving women who moved from working for the government to working for Jews must be restored to the government
- Jews may not marry Christian women
- Jews may not attempt to convert Christian women
- Any non-Jewish slave bought by a Jew will be confiscated by the state
- If a Jew attempts to circumcise a non-Jewish slave, the slave will be freed and the Jew shall face capital punishment
- Any Christian slaves owned by a Jew will be taken away and freed
- A person who is proven to have converted from Christianity to Judaism shall have their property confiscated by the state
326
Constantine's mother, Helena, was not only converted but was so excited by her spiritual experience that it enticed her to make a pilgrimage, circa 326 A.D., to Judea, where she could visit all of the sites that were important in the life of Jesus. She was in her late 70s at the time she embarked
BYZANTINE (Roman) RULE: (395-636)
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople.
The church was badly damaged by the Samaritans, who sacked it during a revolt in 529, but was rebuilt a century later by Emperor Justinian I (527 to 565.). Jerome (c. 342-347 – 30 September 420) lived here when translating the Bible into Latin. The Catholic, Orthodox Armenian and Coptic religious institutions are maintained here. This edict actually was the start of anti-Semitism which has never stopped.
Pre-Israelite Rule (1476 BCE-1271 BCE)
Before Joshua's entrance in about 1476 BCE with the 600,000 Israelites and others on the Exodus, Bethlehem was a Canaanite city named for their fertility god, Lehem. It lies about 6.2 miles south of Jerusalem. This is where Rachel's Tomb lies, which is at the northern entrance of Bethlehem. Rachel was the wife of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. She most importantly was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She died near Bethlehem in giving birth to Benjamin. Her tomb is very important to Jews. She was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. Her tomb was shown 5 miles south of Jerusalem. An 18th century domed building stands on the traditional site where Jews used to pray, especially in the month of Elul (August-September) . Another tradition places the tomb at Ramah, north of Jerusalem. Until 1948, the domed structure near Jerusalem was the only recognized HOLY PLACE in Jewish hands to which it returned after the Six-Day War in 1967.
Outsiders first heard of Bethlehem through the Amarna correspondence of 1350-1330 BCE when the native dwellers were still the Canaanites.
ISRAELITE RULE (1000 BCE-70 CE)
King Saul of the 11th century was the first king of Israel, which Bethlehem would be under.
King Rehoboam, king of Judah (933-917 BCE) son of Solomon and his Ammonite wife, Naamah, built up the city and made it fortified. King David, king of Israel (1,000-960 BCE), was born in Bethlehem and was crowned here as the king of Israel.
Bethlehem is where the Book of Ruth took place. Ruth was an ancestor of King David, a Moabite. Her Israelite husband had died and so she lived with her mother-in-law, Naomi. They returned to Bethlehem and Naomi married her to her relative, Boaz, probably a cousin who was the son of Judah. Ruth was King David's ggrandmother.
ARAB RULE (636-1072)
The city was taken over during the Muslim conquest in 637 and became part of Jund Filastin. ( Jund Filasṭīn was one of the military districts of the Umayyad and Abbasid province of Bilad al-Sham, organized soon after the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s.)
CRUSADERS RULE (1099-1291)
. Muslim rule continued until its conquest in 1099 by the Crusaders with their army who replaced the town's Greek orthodox clergy with a Latin one. It had become a Christian city as Jesus was reported to have been born here.
MAMLUKS RULE (1291-1516)
The Mamluks (-non-Arab, ethnically diverse slave soldiers and freed slaves to which were assigned military and administrative duties, serving the ruling Arab dynasties in the Muslim world) demolished the city's wall in the mid 13th century.
Outside of their rule in Spain, came the the Alhambra Decree in 1492. (It is also known as the Edict of Expulsion; Spanish: Decreto de la Alhambra, Edicto de Granada) which was an edict issued on 31 March 1492, by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon. Hostility towards the Jews in Spain was brought to this climax during the reign of the "Catholic Monarchs," Ferdinand and Isabella. Their marriage in 1469, which formed a personal union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, with coordinated policies between their distinct kingdoms, eventually led to the final unification of Spain.
The king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. Although Isabella was the force behind the decision, her husband Fernando did not oppose it. That her confessor had just changed from the tolerant Hernando de Talavera to the very intolerant Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros suggests an increase in royal hostility towards the Jews. The text of the decree accused the Jews of trying "to subvert the holy Catholic faith" by attempting to "draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." These measures were not new in Europe.
In order to eliminate their influence on Spain's large converso population and to ensure its members did not revert to Judaism, many Jews in Spain either converted or were expelled. This had not been changed since 1492 until the edict was formally and symbolically revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second Vatican Council. This was a full century after Jews had been openly practicing their religion in Spain and synagogues were once more legal places of worship under Spain's Laws of Religious Freedom.
Why all this intolerance towards Jews? The Catholic religion was set up from the 315 Roman decree to be against Jews.
OTTOMAN RULE (1516-1917)
They were rebuilt under the Ottomans from Turkey in the early 16th century. Control of Bethlehem passed from the Ottomans to the British at the end of world War I in November 11, 1918. The Brits held the reigns of rule for 30 years because they were awarded the mandate from the League of Nation, the first UN. Bethlehem came under Jordanian rule during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Israeli rule (1967-Present)
Later, Bethlehem was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. since the 1995 Oslo Accords, Bethlehem has been administered by the Palestinian Authority or PA.
Bethlehem has a Muslim majority today but is still home to the Palestinian Christian community. Israelis live nearby and in the city itself . The Israeli West bank barrier separates both the Muslim and Christian communities which is causing many to move. This was done for a reason; to stop terrorists from the Muslim neighborhoods from terrorizing and killing Israelis.
Today, the city is surrounded by two bypass roads for Israeli settlers, leaving the inhabitants squeezed between thirty-seven Jewish enclaves, where a quarter of all West Bank settlers, roughly 170,000, live; the gap between the two roads is closed by the 8-metre high Israeli West Bank barrier, which cuts Bethlehem off from Jerusalem.
In the center of Bethlehem is its old city. The old city consists of eight quarters, laid out in a mosaic style, forming the area around the Manger Square. The quarters include the Christian an-Najajreh, al-Farahiyeh, al-Anatreh, al-Tarajmeh, al-Qawawsa and Hreizat quarters and al-Fawaghreh — the only Muslim quarter. Most of the Christian quarters are named after the Arab Ghassanid clans that settled there. Al-Qawawsa Quarter was formed by Arab Christian emigrants from the nearby town of Tuqu' in the 18th century. There is also a Syriac quarter outside of the old city, whose inhabitants originate from Midyat and Ma'asarte in Turkey. The total population of the old city is about 5,000.
In 1948, Bethlehem had 10,000 inhabitants of which 7,500 were Christians and 2,500 were Muslims. From 1948-1967, Bethlehem was under Jordanian rule. In the Six-Day War it was captured by Israel. In 1968 it had 32,000 inhabitants. 25,266 is the population today.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna_letters
FACTS ABOUT ISRAEL, Division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantius_II
Jesus and the riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering
The Jesus Mysteries by Timothy Freke &Peter Gandy, not used in this article but an excellent read
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