Product Code Database
Bethel (, "House of El" or "House of God",Bleeker and Widegren, 1988, p. 257. also transliteration Beth El, Beth-El, Beit El; ; ) was an ancient Israelites city and sacred space that is frequently mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
Bethel is first referred to in the Bible as being near the place where Abraham pitched his tent. Later, Bethel is mentioned as the location of Jacob's Ladder that Jacob named Bethel "House of God". The name is further used for a border city located between the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and that of the tribe of Ephraim, which first belonged to the Benjaminites and was later conquered by the Ephraimites. In the 4th century, Eusebius and Jerome described Bethel as a small village that lay 12 Roman miles north of Jerusalem to the right or the east of the road leading to Nablus.Robinson and Smith, 1856, pp. 449–450.
Most scholars identify Bethel with the modern-day village of Beitin, located in the West Bank, northeast of Ramallah.Harold Brodsky (1990). "Bethel". In the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. 1:710-712. After the fall of the Crusader kingdom, Bethel was left in ruins under the rule of Saladin, remaining uninhabited for centuries until the mid-19th century when modern-day Beitin was established. In 1977, the biblical name was applied to the Israeli settlement of Beit El, founded nearby. In several countries, particularly the United States, the name has been given to various locations (see Bethel (disambiguation)).
Among the earliest proponents of this identification was biblical scholar and traveler Edward Robinson, in his work Biblical Researches in Palestine (1838–1852). Robinson based this assessment on the location described in ancient texts, and on the philological similarities between the modern and ancient name, arguing that the replacement of the Hebrew el with the Arabic in was not unusual. This viewpoint was later reaffirmed by another early scholar, Henry Baker Tristram. The final 'l' in the name "Bethel" endured until the Crusades period. The name "Beitin," with the /n/ ending, was not documented until the 19th century, possibly coming into use after the Early Middle Ages. minority view was proposed by David Palmer Livingston and John J. Bimson, who proposed an alternative identification, suggesting that Bethel might be equated with al-Bireh, while positing Beitin as biblical Ophrah. However, Ophrah is commonly identified with the nearby village of Taybeh. These proposals have been rejected by Jules Francis Gomes, who wrote that "The voices of Livingston and Bimson have hardly been taken seriously by those who worked on the excavations of Bethel."
Another account, from repeats the covenant with God and the naming of the place as El-Bethel, and makes this the site of Jacob's own change of name to Israel. Both versions state that the original name of the place was Luz, a Canaanite name.
In the narrative of Levite's concubine, in , where the Hebrew Beth-El is translated in the King James Version as the "House of God", the people of Israel go to Bethel to ask counsel of God when they are planning to attack the Tribe of Benjamin at the battle of Gibeah. They make a second visit () after losing the battle.
Bethel was evidently already an important religious centre at this time; it was so important, in fact, that the Ark of the Covenant was kept there, under the care of Phinehas the grandson of Aaron ( f). At , Bethel is said to be south of Shiloh.
In the book , it is said that the prophet Samuel, who resided at Ramah, used to make a yearly circuit of Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpah to judge Israel. At I Samuel 10:3, Samuel tells Saul to go to Bethel to visit the 'Hill of God,' where he will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with a 'psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp.' It appears that there was a Philistine garrison there at that time. Bethel is mentioned again in and .
Bethel is next mentioned in connection with the tenth king of Israel, Jehu (c. 842–815 BC). Despite his killing of the prophets of Baal and destruction of their temple, it is said that Jehu continued to tolerate the presence of the golden calves in Bethel and Dan (). The shrine at Bethel apparently avoided destruction in the Assyrian invasions of the Kingdom of Israel in c. 740 and 722, but was finally completely destroyed by King Josiah of Judah (c. 640–609 BC).
Amaziah, a priest of Bethel, expels Amos from the shrine:
A few years later, the prophet Hosea (8th century BC) speaks (at least according to modern translations) of the "wickedness" of Bethel () and Jeremiah (6th century BC) speaks of the "shame" which it brought on Israel (). describes how the Israelites are abandoning Adonai for the worship of Baal, and accuses them of making or using images for 'idol' worship. Chief among these, it appears, was the image of the bull at Bethel, which by the time of Hosea was being worshipped as an image of Baal.
During his excavation campaigns, James Kelso found a clay stamp in contextually challenging debris near a Middle Bronze Age wall on the site’s south-west side in 1957.Van Beek and Jamme (1958), 'An inscribed South Arabian Clay Stamp From Bethel', in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 151: 9-16. Intriguingly, this find bore a striking resemblance to one Theodore Bent brought back from al-Mašhad Wadi Dawan (Hadhramaut, Yemen) in 1894. Indeed, such was the similarity, some scholars considered that the Bethel stamp was actually the Bent find and that the latter’s wife, Mabel Bent, had somehow, and for some reason, deposited the object there after her husband’s untimely death in 1897.Jamme (1990), 'The Bethel Inscribed Stamp Again: A Vindication of Mrs. Theodore Bent', in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 280: 89-91. Bizarrely, neither of the stamps (or the single one) have been traced for decades, and the only evidence that can be seen today is a Squeeze paper made of the Bent stamp, which is now in the
/ref>
Recent excavations at Elevation Point 914, a prominent hill located 900 meters east of the village of Beitin, by Aharon Tavger have uncovered several Middle Bronze and Iron II remains which have led excavator at E.P. 914 to propose this place as the ancient cult site of Bethel, and perhaps the location of Abram’s altar.
In the Middle Bronze Age (around 1750 BCE) its status was elevated from a village to a fortified Canaanite town which is believed to be Hebrew Bible Luz. Luza, also Bethel - (Beitin) Studium Biblicum Franciscanum - Jerusalem. 2000-12-19. Two city gates dating to this period have been excavated, one in the northeast and the other northwest of the wall. A second temple was built in Luz during this period, but was destroyed as a result of an earthquake.
The Late Bronze Age city at Bethel was destroyed at some point during the late 13th or early 12th century BCE.Gary A. Rendsburg, “ The Date of the Exodus and the Conquest/Settlement: The Case for the 1100s,” Vetus Testamentum 42, no. 4 (1992): 510–527.
During the Great Jewish Revolt, Vespasian captured Bethel in the summer of 69 CE.
Robinson notes that after the writings of Eusebius and Jerome, he found no further references to Bethel in the written historical record. However, he notes that the ruins at Beitin are greater than those of a village and seem to have undergone expansion after the time of Jerome, noting also the presence of what appear to be ruins of churches from the Middle Ages. The town appears on the 6th century Madaba Map as Louza (), also known as Bethel (Βεθηλ, Bethēl)".
|
|
