Nadene Goldfoot
Bethlehem's ancient history, spanning from Canaanite times to the Roman period, features it as a strategic location, a Canaanite settlement, and later, a place of biblical significance, including the birthplace of King David and, for Christians, the birthplace of Jesus. It became a Hellenized city. The Greek invasion of Judah, specifically by the Seleucid Empire, occurred in the 2nd century BCE, leading to the Maccabean Revolt ,including the story of Judah Maccabee and his family, and significant cultural and religious shifts for the Jewish people. Alexander the Great was the one who won the Jews over. Antiochus III, reigned from (223-187 BCE) conquered Eretz Yisrael/Judah in 200 BCE. He was a Greek king. Greek wayslingered throughout Roman days.
I might mention that in Jewish research, Moses was born in c1391 BCE and died 120 years later in 1271 BCE to give you a reference of time.
Bethlehem was mentioned around 1350 BCE in the Tell al-Amarna letters, from the Egyptian governor of Israel to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was depicted as an important staging and rest stop for travelers from Syria and Palestine going to Egypt. The letters also signify that it was a border city of mid-Palestine and an outpost looking out towards the desert. The Philistines had a garrison stationed in Bethlehem because it was a strong strategic point. They entered the land of the Canaanites, mingled with its people and settled in the southern coasts between Jaffa and Gaza. The Philistines had achieved military supremacy over the greater part of the country around 1200 BC, and called it Palestine. I found the first reference of Palestine was when Rome renamed Israel as Palestine in 135 CE out of anger over Bar Kokhba having taken back Jerusalem and held it for 3 years.
The narrative of the Tanakh/ Old Testament mentions Bethlehem in Genesis/the first book of the Bible, when Jacob, son of Abraham, and his family were journeying to the city of Hebron passing by Bethlehem.(Ephrata)(Genesis35:16-19). Ephrath or Ephrathah or Ephratah (Hebrew: אֶפְרָת \ אֶפְרָתָה) is a biblically referenced former name of Bethlehem, meaning "fruitful".
There, his wife Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin, and he buried her by the side of the Bethlehem Road where her tomb has been a shrine to this day: "And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." In that time, Bethlehem was a small, walled town erected on a hill in the northern part of the present town of Bethlehem. The name of Bethlehem (Ephrata) "the fruitful" itself suggests a pastoral and agricultural life. The tale of Ruth, the Moabite, and Boaz suggests an atmosphere of idyllic rusticity that is still obvious today (Ruth 2-4). Ruth's grandson was King David of whose lineage Jesus was born according to Christians, according to Jewish genealogists, there is no line to a Jesus, a Greek name. Jesus is a masculine given name derived from Iēsous (Ἰησοῦς; Iesus in Classical Latin) the Ancient Greek form of the Hebrew name Yeshua (ישוע). As its roots lie in the name Isho in Aramaic and Yeshua in Hebrew, it i's etymologically related to another biblical name, Joshua.
We have now established that King David had 1/4 Moabite genes from grandmother Ruth along with probably Canaanite genes though Ruth's family who were strictly Jewish. Because Jesus is compared to David makes it easy to think that Mary could have been a Moabite as well. Certainly there would have been boy-girl attraction in both people. I think this because Bethlehem was a crossroads once, and that Mary was young, records say, married to an older man. She did not seem to feed Jesus with much Jewish learning, as women then would have done. You were Jewish through the father in those days, as they followed that tree.
The Hebrew name for Mary, the mother of Jesus, is Miriam (מִרְיָם), a name that also belonged to Moses' sister. Miriam is a name given to most converted Jewish women. In the New Testament, the name is rendered as Μαρία (Maria) in Greek and then translated to Mary in English.
"She was a virgin who was told by an angel that she was going to be a mother, that her child was going to change the world and that she would have her heart broken. >The word "virgin" in Christian translations is disputed. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, "but has nothing to do with whether she is a virgin", and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. While the Hebrew word "almah" (עַלְמָה) often translates to "young woman" and can sometimes be understood as "virgin," it's not a direct equivalent, and the word for "virgin" in Hebrew is actually "betulah" (בתולה).
Mary was a very young mother, some report that she was as young as 14 when she gave birth to Jesus. While the New Testament doesn't specify Mary's age, historical and cultural context suggests she was likely in her early teens, perhaps around 12-14 years old, when she conceived Jesus. The angel had to come before her marriage to Joseph.
The fact is that no Jewish genealogist of that period had a family tree connecting Jesus to David's tree. That has been done by Gentile genealogists of a much later date. As Jesus had birth and death on a cross, in this human plane he would have also shared some Canaanite and Moabite genes with David along with Jewish genes. He could also have some Syrian and Lebanese genes as well.
Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, and both cities full of Greeks and Romans for a long period of time. Rome gained control of Judaea (present-day Israel) in 63 BCE when Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, ending the Hasmonean dynasty's rule.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod the Great (73 BCE-4 BCE) was a vassal of Rome and king of Judea, and in 6 AD, Palestine was incorporated in the imperial province of Syria. Jesus may have been born in about 8 BCE, as he died in 29 CE at age 37 as far as I have found.
Emperor Hadrian in 135 AD profaned the sanctity of the Grotto of the Nativity and turned it into a pagan shrine. That's the date the Romans killed Bar Kokhba, Jewish leader who was fighting to keep Judah after holding it for 3 years.
The history of Jesus, identified only in Gentile writings of the New Testament by the Gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and Mark-Synopatic Gospel and dealt with the narrative material from similar viewpoints, and Mark, regarded as the most authentic while the 4th book, John, is the latest. The Gospels throw much light on Palestinian Jewish conditions in the 1st century CE. Matthew is traditionally believed to have been composed originally in Hebrew (though modern scholars tend to question this) and Hebrew versions of all have been published since the 16th century. My Jewish encyclopedia uses 29 CE as the year Jesus would have died.
Scholarly consensus suggests the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were written approximately 40 to 90 years after Jesus's death, with Mark around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke around 80-85 CE, and John around 90-95 CE.
Mark: wrote after Jesus' death in 29 CE; in years 70 CE; 41 years after his death
Matthew wrote in 80-85 CE; 56 years after death; possibly 61 years later
Luke wrote in 80-85 CE; 56 years after death; possibly 61 years later
John wrote in 90-95 CE 76 years after death; possibly 110 years later (150AD-175AD
) found in Egypt. John is very anti-Semitic. 
The four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, had diverse backgrounds: Matthew was a tax collector, Mark was a companion of Peter, also a fisherman, Luke was a physician, and John was a fisherman. Who was Peter? In the New Testament, Peter, also known as Simon Peter and Cephas, was one of Jesus' closest disciples, and a key figure in the early Christian church, often portrayed as a leader and spokesperson for the apostles. In the New Testament, Peter, whose original name was Simon, was born in Bethsaida, a town near the Sea of Galilee, and was raised there as a fisherman, along with his brother Andrew.
In Oxford Press:
Oral Traditions Behind the Gospels
Scholars agree that Jesus died around 30 C.E. and that the first Gospel to be written, Mark, was penned around 65-70 C.E. Matthew and Luke were written around 80 or 85 C.E. and John about ten years after that. The earliest accounts of Jesus' life, ministry, and death, then, were written 35-65 years after Jesus' death.
Composition. Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from around AD 70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110., which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family.
Priest Minos wrote: They are dated using palaeography (the study of text) and based on that the oldest documents are fragments of the Gospels from the 2nd century AD. The style, wording, grammar, and typeface of Koine Greek used and the discovery locations of them all indicate 1st century AD origins for each of the four Gospels. No authentic Gospels from the 1st century are known to us. The likely oldest text (p52) is from John's Gospel and was discovered in Egypt. It's been dated to AD 150 (±25 years). A few others date to the late 2nd century AD.
Very exact dating is more difficult. At best you can estimate the decade they were written but we lack any tools that would grant us greater precision. So dating them to the exact year is currently impossible. I'm unaware of the use of carbon dating to estimate the age of any of these documents which is interesting because the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) have been carbon dated (and estimated to have been mostly written between 200 BC and 70 AD).
A decree of Caesar Augustus, ordering the taking of a census in all the provinces of the Roman Empire, brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Micah, spoken 750 years before: "And thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, art a little one among the thousands of Juda: out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be the ruler of his people"(Mikha 5:2). This was in referral to another name for Bethlehem of Judah (see Genesis 48: 7). As a city of Ruth, a convert rom Moab, Bethlehem was an unlikely source of leadership, but it produced David, the ancestor of the Messiah, and Messiah here does not mean Jesus but the Jewish concept of the Messiah. (The Annointed one, the ultimate deliverer, an adjective used in the Torah referring to kings who have been anointed and had received Divine sanction, and a unique inaviolability of status.
Here's a love story of a female goddess, Aphrodite, in love with a human man, Adonis. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite and Adonis had two children: a daughter named Beroe and a son named Golgos; half human and half gods.
From Hadrian's time until the reign of Constantine (312-337), the population worshipped Adonis in the cave where the infant Jesus was born. In Greek mythology, Adonis was a mortal youth of extraordinary beauty, beloved by the goddess Aphrodite, and whose story became associated with the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth. The Greeks considered Adonis's cult to be of Near Eastern origin. Adonis's name comes from a Canaanite word meaning "lord" and most modern scholars consider the story of Aphrodite and Adonis to be derived from a Levantine version of the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Inanna (Ishtar) and Dumuzid (Tammuz). Constantine's mother went to Jerusalem when he was in power to collect items about Jesus. She talked Constantine in the Christianity of her days, but he really liked the old gods better.
In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, Ishtar (Inanna in Sumerian) is a prominent goddess of love, fertility, and war, while Dumuzi (Tammuz in Akkadian) is her beloved, a shepherd king who is associated with vegetation and the dying god, and they are often depicted in myths, such as the "Descent of Inanna into the Underworld. When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a wanton boy or handsome youth. (Note-part of the Jewish law of Kashrut (kosher) is not eating meat and milk in the same meal.
According to the canonical Gospels, Joseph (Hebrew: יוסף, - Yosef; Greek: Ἰωσήφ, romanized: Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. Though not his biological father Christians say, this may also be true of genetics as well. He is revered as Saint Joseph in various Christian traditions, including the Catholic Church, and is considered the patron saint of fathers.
Nazareth: This city is in the lower Galilee and is 24 miles East of Haifa, where I lived when I first moved to Israel. Joseph and Mary lived here and it is where Jesus grew up. Until Byzantine times of 330AD, it was a Jewish village. It is a principal Arab city today. In the New Testament Nazareth is associated with Jesus as his boyhood home, and in its synagogue he preached the sermon that led to his rejection by his fellow townsmen. The city is now a center of Christian pilgrimage.
Palestine, consequently, was officially pagan as was the whole Roman empire until 313 when Constantine proclaimed Christianity as the religion of the state. In the year 325 the Bishop of Jerusalem, St. Maccarius, took the opportunity of acquainting the Emperor Constantine with the neglected condition of the Holy Places in his diocese. Thus, the Emperor ordered the construction, at public expense, of monumental churches to commemorate the three principal events of Jesus' life: Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection. One of these was a church enshrining the scene of the Nativity. Christian traditions were so clear and deeply rooted that there was no problem in locating the correct place. Among the trees, not far from the village, was a cave which the local people and their parents had known for generations to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The cave was made the center of a scheme for the church and work began the following year (326 AD)
Andrew Lim tells us that: Christians celebrate Easter because we regard it as commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus . Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith. Christians believe that Jesus died for the sins of humanity so that they could be reconciled by God. Christians also believe that salvation is a free gift from God that cannot be earned. Most Christians believe that Jesus was the Son of God and was both human and divine.
This basically sums up some of the core beliefs of Christianity plus why they celebrate Easter. Just a little history, Easter originated as a pagan spring festival celebrating the renewal of life. The reason why many Western countries have Easter eggs and rabbits is because they are symbols of life and fertility. When the Roman Empire was Christianized and Christianity became the state religion, the Church co-opted the ancient pagan spring festival as Easter. They had a policy of Christianizing all the former pagan holidays. For example, the pagan rest day Sunday (in honour of the sun god Apollo) became the new Christian Sabbath. Jews and Seventh Day Adventists still regard Saturday as the Sabbath and Friday holds a similar status for Muslims.
Easter communicates a very optimistic message: that of love, hope, resurrection, and rebirth to Christians. The fact that it happens in spring, a season linked to fertility, enhances the whole experience. Above all, it has not been the occasion of unity between peoples and societies. It's been the holiday time to attack Jews. 6–8 April] 1903. During the pogrom, which began on Easter Day, 49 Jews were killed, 92 were gravely injured, over 500 were lightly injured and 1,500 homes were damaged. American Jews began large-scale organized financial help, and assisted in emigration. That was the The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre in Moldova.
The Easter Pogrom was a series of assaults on the Jewish populations of Warsaw and Kraków, Poland, between 22 and 30 March 1940, while Poland was occupied by the Germans in World War II. The incident was provoked by an allegation of a murder of a child who had stolen from Jews. The story caused violence against Jews despite appeals from Polish underground organizations for calm. The worst excesses took place in Warsaw's Powiśle and Praga districts. About 500 persons participated in the riots, including activists and sympathizers of the Polish collaborationist, pro-Nazi National Radical Organization (NOR). NOR's activists used the slogan, "Long live Poland without Jews."
Nam Y. Huh/AP
During the week leading up to Passover, the website Combat Antisemitism Movement put out a list of what it called the "most shocking" anti-Semitic instances of March 2024. Among the instances it details:
- a Jewish man being attacked outside a Chicago screening of a documentary about the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7
- the film director Jonathan Glazer making claims that Israel's prosecution of the Israel-Hamas war is "dehumanization"
- fake accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, pushing the phrase "Zionism=Nazism"
- a forum hosted by the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee at which Jewish students shared first hand accounts of being threatened on college campuses.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephrath
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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