Bethlehem, town of the Nativity: Bible, excavations and visiting

Bethlehem in the Bible: from Ruth and David to the Nativity

Bethlehem first appears in Genesis under its other name, Ephrath. Rachel, Jacob's beloved wife, dies there giving birth to Benjamin and is "buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem" (Genesis 35:19). The place tradition associates with her tomb is described below.

Ruth, Boaz and the roots of David

The Book of Ruth takes place almost entirely in Bethlehem. Naomi returns there from Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth "in the beginning of barley harvest" (Ruth 1:22); Ruth gleans in the field of Boaz, who eventually marries her. Their son Obed "is the father of Jesse, the father of David" (Ruth 4:17). Bethlehem thus becomes the town of the Davidic dynasty: it is here that the prophet Samuel anoints the young shepherd David, the youngest of Jesse's sons (1 Samuel 16:1-13).

The prophecy of Micah

In the 8th century BC, the prophet Micah announces that a ruler of Israel will come from this small town of Judah. The verse is quoted in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:5-6).

"But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."

Micah 5:2 (KJV)

The birth of Jesus according to Luke and Matthew

Both infancy narratives place the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, through different stories. In Luke, Joseph and Mary, who live in Nazareth, travel to Bethlehem for a census, "because he was of the house and lineage of David" (Luke 2:4).

"And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn."

Luke 2:6-7 (KJV)

Shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the nearby fields hear an angel announce: "unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour" (Luke 2:11). Matthew, for his part, tells of the wise men guided by a star, then of the massacre of the children of Bethlehem ordered by Herod (Matthew 2:1-16) and the flight into Egypt. For the wider context of these accounts, see the period of the birth and childhood of Jesus.

Bethlehem in the time of Jesus: history and archaeology

• NameHebrew Beit Lehem, "house of bread"; Arabic Bayt Lahm, "house of meat"
• AltitudeAbout 775 m, ≈ 10 km south of Jerusalem
• Earliest secure mentionA clay bulla reading "Bethlehem", 8th-7th century BC
• Venerated caveAttested by Justin around AD 150-160
• BasilicaConstantine (330s), rebuilt under Justinian (6th century)

A town of Judah attested by archaeology

One of the Amarna letters (14th century BC), written by Abdi-Heba, king of Jerusalem, may mention a town called "Bit-Lahmi", but the reading is debated. The firmest evidence comes from Jerusalem: in 2012 the Israel Antiquities Authority published a small clay bulla found in the City of David, dated to the 8th-7th centuries BC, that bears the name of Bethlehem.

A Judean village in the 1st century

In the time of Jesus, Bethlehem was a small farming village, with a population estimated at a few hundred. It lay a few kilometres from the Herodium, Herod's palace-fortress, and from the aqueduct that carried water from the so-called Pools of Solomon to Jerusalem. As in many villages of the limestone hills, houses were built against caves used as stables or storerooms: Luke's Greek word rendered "inn" (kataluma) can also mean a guest room, which fits the tradition of a birth in an adjoining cave.

The cave before the basilica

Around AD 150-160, Justin Martyr, a native of the region, writes that Jesus was born in a cave near the village (Dialogue with Trypho, 78). In the 3rd century, Origen reports that the cave and the manger are shown in Bethlehem (Against Celsus, I.51). Saint Jerome, who settled in Bethlehem at the end of the 4th century, states that the place had been overshadowed by a grove of Adonis under the emperor Hadrian: if true, this would suggest an earlier Christian cult that someone wanted to erase.

Soundings by William Harvey and the British Mandate authorities in 1932-1934 uncovered, beneath the present floor, the mosaics of the first church and the foundations of an octagon built over the grotto. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the Franciscan Bellarmino Bagatti studied the neighbouring caves, in use in the Roman and Byzantine periods.

The Church of the Nativity, from Constantine to the restoration

The Church of the Nativity was commissioned by the emperor Constantine, encouraged by his mother Helena, and completed in the 330s. The present building, a five-aisled basilica ending in three apses arranged in a trefoil, is essentially that of the emperor Justinian, rebuilt in the 6th century after damage usually attributed to the Samaritan revolt of 529.

• 330s — Constantinian basilica with an octagon above the grotto.
• 6th century — rebuilt under Justinian in its present form.
• 614 — the Persians spare the church; according to a later tradition, they recognised Magi in Persian dress on a mosaic of the façade.
• 1100 — Baldwin I is crowned king of Jerusalem here on Christmas Day.
• 1160s — wall mosaics made under King Amalric I and the Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos.
• Ottoman period — the entrance is reduced to the small "Door of Humility", about 1.2 m high.
• 1852 — the Status Quo fixes how the site is shared between communities.
• 2012 — UNESCO World Heritage listing, placed directly on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
• 2013-2019 — restoration of the roof, windows, columns and mosaics; removed from the danger list in 2019.

Three communities under one roof

Under the Ottoman Status Quo, the basilica is administered by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (which holds the nave and the choir), the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land (the adjoining Church of St Catherine) and the Armenian Patriarchate. The three communities celebrate Christmas on different dates: 25 December for Catholics, 7 January for the Orthodox and 19 January for the Armenians of the Holy Land.

The 2013-2019 restoration

Launched by the Palestinian Authority after water leaks threatened the timber roof, the restoration was carried out mainly by the Italian firm Piacenti. It replaced the lead roofing and some of the beams, recreated the windows and cleaned the 12th-century mosaics, which depict the ancestors of Christ, the councils of the Church and a procession of angels. In 2016 a seventh angel, hidden under plaster, was detected by thermography. This work allowed UNESCO to remove the site, "Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem", from the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2019.

Visiting Bethlehem: the Grotto of the Nativity and Shepherds' Field

The Grotto of the Nativity

You enter the basilica through the Door of Humility and cross the nave, where wooden hatches reveal the Constantinian floor mosaics. Two stairways on either side of the choir lead down into the Grotto of the Nativity, a lamp-lit cave about 12 m long. Beneath an altar, a fourteen-pointed silver star bears the Latin inscription Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est ("Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary"). A few steps lower, the Chapel of the Manger, in Catholic care, commemorates the manger. Expect a long queue in high season.

St Catherine's Church and the grottoes of St Jerome

Adjoining the basilica, the Franciscan Church of St Catherine hosts the Midnight Mass broadcast around the world. From its cloister, steps lead down into caves connected to the Grotto of the Nativity: tradition places here the cell of St Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin in Bethlehem, as well as a chapel of the Holy Innocents. A few minutes' walk away, the Milk Grotto, cut into white rock, is linked to a tradition of the flight into Egypt.

Shepherds' Field in Beit Sahour

About 2 km to the east, the town of Beit Sahour preserves the memory of the shepherds of Luke 2. Two sites share the tradition. The Franciscan site of Khirbet Siyar al-Ghanam ("ruins of the sheepfold") was excavated by Virgilio Corbo, who found caves inhabited in the Roman period and a Byzantine monastery destroyed in 614; a tent-shaped chapel by the architect Antonio Barluzzi was built there in 1953-1954. The Greek Orthodox site of Deir er-Ruwat preserves a cave church and the remains of several churches of the 5th-7th centuries. Neither can be identified with the exact field of the story: they are places of remembrance.

To follow the footsteps of Jesus further, the Nazareth page covers the town of his childhood, and the Holy Sepulchre page the traditional place of his death and resurrection.

Rachel's Tomb, at the northern entrance to Bethlehem

According to Genesis, Rachel dies in childbirth on the road to Bethlehem, and Jacob sets up a pillar on her grave.

"And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day."

Genesis 35:19-20 (KJV)

Other passages seem to place the tomb further north, on the border of Benjamin (1 Samuel 10:2; Jeremiah 31:15, where Rachel is heard weeping for her children in Ramah), and scholars debate its original location. The tradition placing it at the northern entrance to Bethlehem is old: pilgrims record it from the Byzantine period. The small domed building seen today dates from the Ottoman period; in 1841 Moses Montefiore added an antechamber. Rachel is the only matriarch not buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

A much-visited Jewish pilgrimage site, also revered by Christians and Muslims (who associate it with a Bilal ibn Rabah mosque), the tomb lies less than 2 km north of the basilica, but it is enclosed by the Israeli separation barrier and can only be reached from the Jerusalem side, under Israeli control. It cannot be reached on foot from central Bethlehem.