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The Spot Where Jesus Was Born
the spot where jesus was born













But it was just this little star marking the spot.And it goes without saying that we journeyed to Bethlehemthe city where Jesus was born. We were roped off from approaching it. It’s located in a little grotto down some stairs and commemorated by a star set into the floor (with a hole that allows access down to the bedrock). This purports to be the the actual, exact spot where Jesus was born.

The book opens with you arriving in Bethlehem carrying a Christmas pudding. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Instead, we found a cab.Please be respectful of copyright. On the morning of July 15, 2011, we went to Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem to see if we could catch a bus to Bethlehem.

I was determined to bring something of England, thinking of Christmas and Charles Dickens. The books that.I knew nothing about Bethlehem or Palestine or the politics, but I was in love with Leila and we were going to get married, so I went to Bethlehem to meet her family. 188 Probably Jesus was born in the fall of 5-4 B. Her mother’s Russian, her father is Palestinian and was one of a group of academics that founded Bethlehem University.Traditional site of synagogue at Capernaum that Jesus taught in and close to the. She’s a Palestinian from Bethlehem. The floor is covered in marble, and 15 lamps hang above the star (six belong to the Greeks, five to the Armenians and four to the Latins).I met my wife, Leila Sansour, at university in Britain where we were both studying philosophy.

This quintessentially British dish turned out to be absolutely Middle Eastern! Bethlehem is, of course, famous as the birthplace of Jesus. And everything that doesn’t grow there, I learned, had been carried through the desert in ancient times by desert traders on the spice route. The lemons were in fruit there were oranges, figs, and almonds.

the spot where jesus was born

Archaeologists dated it to the Stone Age—11,000 years ago—and it’s the earliest depiction we have of people making love.Karen Armstrong has a theory of world history before history gets written, where nomads track across the desert eventually establishing towns as they go, creating little pockets of their civilization and telling stories about themselves. It became evident that it was two people having sex. There’s a route up from the Dead Sea in an area called Ain Sakhri, and in caves there, in the 1930s, some Bedouin shepherd boys found a small stone carving. Tell us about the Ain Sakhri lovers —and the work of biblical historian, Karen Armstrong.Bethlehem is very close to the Dead Sea.

The Spot Where Jesus Was Born Free Time To

It’s so fertile because Bethlehem sits on an enormous aquifer, which eventually became the water source for Jerusalem in around 200 BCE. Though it is perched on a hilltop, water has played a key role in Bethlehem’s history, hasn’t it?Bethlehem is a collection of very fertile villages that grows almonds and, more importantly, olives for oil. This lifestyle gave them enough free time to sit down and start thinking about sex—and carving some sculptures. In the hills they can grow almonds, which were the first trees to be cultivated. In the springtime, when the lambs are born, there’s grass for about two weeks, so they can feed their sheep. They were nomads who found that if they stayed in one spot, they could have everything they needed.

the spot where jesus was born

Unauthorized use is prohibited. They’re still there.Please be respectful of copyright. Over the course of history another three gigantic reservoirs were built just to the south of Bethlehem, which became known as Solomon’s Pools.

In her late teens, she was a barmaid somewhere near Isthmia or Smyrna. Helena was the Emperor Constantine’s mother. Helena —and her architectural legacy.St.

She made a huge pilgrimage, building churches as she traveled through Europe, what’s now Turkey and the Middle East, until she arrives in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.The church she built in Bethlehem is unlike any other. Helena was one of these women, and the most powerful of them. Christianity became a roundabout way in which they could have influence.St. But there wasn’t any way to use that power in Roman political society. At a great age, his mother became the most powerful woman in the empire and a very influential Christian.Christianity seemed to appeal to wealthy Roman women because many of them had built up large inherited fortunes, either through divorce or death.

She was celebrating a site that already existed.The church she built is unlike any other. She wasn’t inventing the mythology. She saw this little cave and this ceramic manger or trough where people worshipped Christ.

Two churches following the same design also no longer exist. The Samaritans burnt it down in a revolt. Paula.Sadly, the church she built doesn’t exist anymore. She was followed by other very wealthy Roman women, the most prominent among them being St. She put the place on the map as the center of pilgrimage. Helena who created the famous little town of Bethlehem.

In the course of it, the Israelis fired a missile at the building opposite my wife’s house. Tell us about that experience—and how it shaped your view of the conflict.In late 2001, the violence between Israel and Palestine escalated. You had a frontline view when you worked with paramedics in Bethlehem during the intifada. Bethlehem is today a hostage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

the spot where jesus was born

There was an attempt by militants to meet Israeli violence with violence but Palestinian cities got hammered. By that point I felt very Palestinian. There was an idea that ambulances would be able to drive around in the curfew if there were Europeans with them. The Israeli army eventually moved into the old souk area and surrounded the Church of the Nativity.I was working with paramedics.

What’s that all about?The reason Israel has been so interested in Bethlehem is the same reason everyone’s always been interested in it the aquifer is still one of the main sources of water for Israel. The reclusive street artist Banksy recently opened a venue in Bethlehem called the Walled Off Hotel. To live through that, you feel you are living as one of the defeated.

Then I realized there were Banksy paintings springing up all over town. I’d heard of Banksy but discounted it. We were there over Christmas, and people started saying that an English graffiti artist was here. There’s no other way to describe it.Banksy arrived in about 2006. Between the settlements and Bethlehem there is a settler ring road and between that and Bethlehem there’s a wall. Now there are 42 settlements surrounding the town.

Other people feel that he’s drawing attention to the wall. People wonder if he’s making money out of it or self-publicizing it.

the spot where jesus was born