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time of Yeshua's birth
and was under the rule of the same Herod that the wise-men visit in
Matthew 2:1. Thus Bethlehem-Ephratah in Galilee was in fact Bethlehem
Judea as well and was the only Bethlehem in Judea at the time of Jesus’
birth.
Modern archeology has
confirmed that the town of Bethlehem in Galilee was a thriving Judahite
community at from well before the 1st century until at least the Jewish
revolts of the 1st and second century AD after which it was a center of
Christianity until the mid 7th century when it was overrun by the
Persians. Excavations conducted between 1992 and 2003 have unearthed a
prosperous Judahite community from around the beginning 1st
century AD and a latter extensive Christian community with a significant
Byzantine church and other buildings. Today Bethlehem Galilee is thriving
community with archeological excavations of the period of Yeshua and the
early Christian church underway.
Excavations at the town
of Bethlehem found south of Jerusalem, which was identified during the
medieval era by the Roman church as the town of the nativity have shown
that the last ancient settlement of this region was about 1000 - 580 BC
and at the time of the birth of Yeshua the area was virtually uninhabited,
at least there were no buildings of any type and therefore no inn to be
shut out of.
Settlements around the area of
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Bethlehem south of
Jerusalem did not again take hold until Byzantine town in that area was
founded some time in the 3rd century AD. It was during this time that a
village grew up in the area of Bethlehem south of Jerusalem in response to
pilgrims looking for the birthplace of the Messiah. A church was built, a
cave was found and, a tradition of man was founded. According to Aviram
Oshri, a senior archeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)
the IAA database known as “Menorah”, identifies Bethlehem south of
Jerusalem as an "ancient site" with Iron Age material (100-580
BC) and then nothing again until the fourth-century Church of the Nativity
and associated Byzantine and medieval buildings. But there is a complete
absence of any settlement remains for antiquities from the Herodian
period--that is, from the time around the birth of Jesus. Neither is there
in ancient writings showing that a settlement existed at that location at
anytime other then what the archeological evidence indicates.
But, we don’t need to rely on modern
archeology alone to show that the Bethlehem of the nativity was in the
north, in Galilee. Let us turn to Matthew 2:6 where we find one of only 9
occurrences of the word Judah in the New Testament. There we see that the
original Greek word is Iouda, which means Judahite or Juttah or Jute.
Although similar in structure to the Greek word for Judea or Judean (Jew)
Ioudaia the Greek word for Judah is clearly a different word and is used
to identify a set of people different from (cont.)
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