Bethlehem (Judea)

• Bethlehem (Judea)

134:7.5Je­sus then started on his fi­nal tour, as a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual, through the heart of Pales­tine, go­ing from Beer­sheba in the south to Dan in the north. On this jour­ney north­ward he stopped at He­bron, Beth­le­hem (where he saw his birth­place), Je­ru­sa­lem (he did not visit Beth­any), Beeroth, Lebonah, Sy­char, Shechem, Samaria, Geba, En-Gan­nim, En­dor, Madon; pass­ing through Mag­dala and Ca­per­naum, he jour­neyed on north; and pass­ing east of the Wa­ters of Merom, he went by Karahta to Dan, or Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi.

• Bethlehem (Judea)

142:8.1By the end of April the op­po­si­tion to Je­sus among the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees had be­come so pro­nounced that the Mas­ter and his apos­tles de­cided to leave Je­ru­sa­lem for a while, go­ing south to work in Beth­le­hem and He­bron. The en­tire month of May was spent in do­ing per­sonal work in these cities and among the peo­ple of the sur­round­ing vil­lages. No pub­lic preach­ing was done on this trip, only house-to-house vis­i­ta­tion. A part of this time, while the apos­tles taught the gospel and min­is­tered to the sick, Je­sus and Ab­ner spent at En­gedi, vis­it­ing the Nazarite colony. John the Bap­tist had gone forth from this place, and Ab­ner had been head of this group. Many of the Nazarite broth­er­hood be­came be­liev­ers in Je­sus, but the ma­jor­ity of these as­cetic and ec­cen­tric men re­fused to ac­cept him as a teacher sent from heaven be­cause he did not teach fast­ing and other forms of self-de­nial.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

122:4.3Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Da­vidic an­ces­try than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Beth­le­hem, to be reg­is­tered for the Ro­man cen­sus, but that was be­cause, six gen­er­a­tions pre­vi­ously, Joseph’s pa­ter­nal an­ces­tor of that gen­er­a­tion, be­ing an or­phan, was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a di­rect de­scen­dant of David; hence was Joseph also ac­counted as of the “house of David.”

135:7.1John still had con­fused ideas about the com­ing king­dom and its king. The longer he preached the more con­fused he be­came, but never did this in­tel­lec­tual un­cer­tainty con­cern­ing the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom in the least lessen his con­vic­tion of the cer­tainty of the king­dom’s im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance. In mind John might be con­fused, but in spirit never. He was in no doubt about the com­ing king­dom, but he was far from cer­tain as to whether or not Je­sus was to be the ruler of that king­dom. As long as John held to the idea of the restora­tion of the throne of David, the teach­ings of his par­ents that Je­sus, born in the City of David, was to be the long-ex­pected de­liv­erer, seemed con­sis­tent; but at those times when he leaned more to­ward the doc­trine of a spir­i­tual king­dom and the end of the tem­po­ral age on earth, he was sorely in doubt as to the part Je­sus would play in such events. Some­times he ques­tioned ev­ery­thing, but not for long. He re­ally wished he might talk it all over with his cousin, but that was con­trary to their ex­pressed agree­ment.

159:6.4About this time Ab­ner moved his base of op­er­a­tions from He­bron to Beth­le­hem, and this lat­ter place was also the head­quar­ters in Judea for David’s mes­sen­gers. David main­tained an overnight re­lay mes­sen­ger ser­vice be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Beth­saida. These run­ners left Je­ru­sa­lem each evening, re­lay­ing at Sy­char and Scythopo­lis, ar­riv­ing in Beth­saida by break­fast time the next morn­ing.

162:9.2At this time, Ab­ner was mak­ing his head­quar­ters at Beth­le­hem, and from that cen­ter many work­ers had been sent to the cities of Judea and south­ern Samaria and even to Alexan­dria. Within a few days of his ar­rival, Je­sus and Ab­ner com­pleted the ar­range­ments for the con­sol­i­da­tion of the work of the two groups of apos­tles.

122:10.3When, af­ter more than a year of search­ing, Herod’s spies had not lo­cated Je­sus, and be­cause of the sus­pi­cion that the babe was still con­cealed in Beth­le­hem, he pre­pared an or­der di­rect­ing that a sys­tem­atic search be made of ev­ery house in Beth­le­hem, and that all boy ba­bies un­der two years of age should be killed. In this man­ner Herod hoped to make sure that this child who was to be­come “king of the Jews” would be de­stroyed. And thus per­ished in one day six­teen boy ba­bies in Beth­le­hem of Judea. But in­trigue and mur­der, even in his own im­me­di­ate fam­ily, were com­mon oc­cur­rences at the court of Herod.

142:8.2The peo­ple liv­ing in this re­gion did not know that Je­sus had been born in Beth­le­hem. They al­ways sup­posed the Mas­ter had been born at Naz­a­reth, as did the vast ma­jor­ity of his dis­ci­ples, but the twelve knew the facts.

122:7.7The inn was over­crowded, and Joseph ac­cord­ingly sought lodg­ings with dis­tant rel­a­tives, but ev­ery room in Beth­le­hem was filled to over­flow­ing. On re­turn­ing to the court­yard of the inn, he was in­formed that the car­a­van sta­bles, hewn out of the side of the rock and sit­u­ated just be­low the inn, had been cleared of an­i­mals and cleaned up for the re­cep­tion of lodgers. Leav­ing the don­key in the court­yard, Joseph shoul­dered their bags of cloth­ing and pro­vi­sions and with Mary de­scended the stone steps to their lodg­ings be­low. They found them­selves lo­cated in what had been a grain stor­age room to the front of the stalls and mangers. Tent cur­tains had been hung, and they counted them­selves for­tu­nate to have such com­fort­able quar­ters.

122:7.8Joseph had thought to go out at once and en­roll, but Mary was weary; she was con­sid­er­ably dis­tressed and be­sought him to re­main by her side, which he did.

122:8.1All that night Mary was rest­less so that nei­ther of them slept much. By the break of day the pangs of child­birth were well in ev­i­dence, and at noon, Au­gust 21, 7 B.C., with the help and kind min­is­tra­tions of women fel­low trav­el­ers, Mary was de­liv­ered of a male child. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was born into the world, was wrapped in the clothes which Mary had brought along for such a pos­si­ble con­tin­gency, and laid in a near-by manger.

122:8.2In just the same man­ner as all ba­bies be­fore that day and since have come into the world, the prom­ised child was born; and on the eighth day, ac­cord­ing to the Jew­ish prac­tice, he was cir­cum­cised and for­mally named Joshua (Je­sus).

122:8.3The next day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Joseph made his en­roll­ment. Meet­ing a man they had talked with two nights pre­vi­ously at Jeri­cho, Joseph was taken by him to a well-to-do friend who had a room at the inn, and who said he would gladly ex­change quar­ters with the Naz­a­reth cou­ple. That af­ter­noon they moved up to the inn, where they lived for al­most three weeks un­til they found lodg­ings in the home of a dis­tant rel­a­tive of Joseph.

122:8.4The sec­ond day af­ter the birth of Je­sus, Mary sent word to Eliz­a­beth that her child had come and re­ceived word in re­turn invit­ing Joseph up to Je­ru­sa­lem to talk over all their af­fairs with Zach­a­rias. The fol­low­ing week Joseph went to Je­ru­sa­lem to con­fer with Zach­a­rias. Both Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth had be­come pos­sessed with the sin­cere con­vic­tion that Je­sus was in­deed to be­come the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, the Mes­siah, and that their son John was to be his chief of aides, his right-hand man of des­tiny. And since Mary held these same ideas, it was not dif­fi­cult to pre­vail upon Joseph to re­main in Beth­le­hem, the City of David, so that Je­sus might grow up to be­come the suc­ces­sor of David on the throne of all Is­rael. Ac­cord­ingly, they re­mained in Beth­le­hem more than a year, Joseph mean­time work­ing some at his car­pen­ter’s trade.

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

123:0.5Mary had never fully given up the idea that Je­sus ought to grow up in Beth­le­hem, the City of David. Joseph did not re­ally be­lieve that their son was to be­come a kingly de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Be­sides, he knew that he him­self was not re­ally a de­scen­dant of David; that his be­ing reck­oned among the off­spring of David was due to the adop­tion of one of his an­ces­tors into the Da­vidic line of de­scent. Mary, of course, thought the City of David the most ap­pro­pri­ate place in which the new can­di­date for David’s throne could be reared, but Joseph pre­ferred to take chances with Herod An­tipas rather than with his brother Archelaus. He en­ter­tained great fears for the child’s safety in Beth­le­hem or in any other city in Judea, and sur­mised that Archelaus would be more likely to pur­sue the men­ac­ing poli­cies of his fa­ther, Herod, than would An­tipas in Gal­i­lee. And be­sides all these rea­sons, Joseph was out­spo­ken in his pref­er­ence for Gal­i­lee as a bet­ter place in which to rear and ed­u­cate the child, but it re­quired three weeks to over­come Mary’s ob­jec­tions.