pattern marks the very spot of the Nativity with the inscription : ' Hie dc Virgine Marid Jesus Christus natus est.' To the Christian the associations of the place make it full of impres- siveness, and the visitor has no more sacred or tender recollections of holy ground than those which cluster round the Church and the Grotto of the Nativity. Not far oft' is a cave, cut out of the same limestone ridge, which was the abode of St. Jerome for over thirty years. Here, ■with the noble ladies whom he had won to the religious life, Paula and her daughter Eustochium, he laboured totus in lectione, toius in lihris, preparing the Vul- gate translation of the Holy Scriptures, which for more than a thousand years was the Bible of Western Christendom, and is a powerful tribute to Ills piety and learning. ' It is the touch of Christ that has made Bethlehem ' (Kelman and Fulleylove, The Holy Land, p. 234). And the touch of Christ is making itself felt still in the works of Christian philanthropy and missionary zeal that are being performed there. There are schools and other missionary agencies maintained by Protestants and Roman Catholics to instruct in His truth and to enrich with His grace the community who occupy the place of His birth. Bethlehem appears among the .stations of the Church Missionary Society, and the work done there among women and girls has borne good fruit. The Germans have built an Evangelical Church, which was dedicated in 1893. There is much superstition and error among the nominally Christian inhabi- tants of the place, but the efforts of the Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries have stirred up the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Christians to activity for the moral and spiritual welfare of their people.
LiTERATFRB.— Andrews, Life oj our Lord^, p. 82; Cunning- ham Geikie, Tlie Bolij Land and the Bible ; Stanley, Siiml and Palestine ; Kelman, The Holu Land ; Sandav, Sacred Sites of the Gospels ; G. A. Smith, Histor. Geog. of Holy Land ; The Surveu of Western Palestine, vol. iii. ; Ramsay, Was Christ bom at Bethlehem ? ; Palmer, ' Das jetzige Bethlehem ' inZDPVxvii.; articles in Kitto's Cyclop., PRE 3, Vigouroux's Dictionnaire de la Bible, Smith's DB, Hastings' DB, and Encyclopedia Biblica. T. NiCOL.
BETHPHAGE {'B7te(payn).—A place unknown to the OT, the Apocrypha, or Josephus, and men- tioned in the NT only once— on the occasion of our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem five days before His death. It was certainly situated upon the slope of the Mt. of Olives, on or near the road from Jericho to Jerusalem (Mk 10^^ IV, Lk 19'-^), and in the inmiediate neighbourhood of Bethany. Tlie site of the latter being accurately determined as the modern el-Azariyeh (see art. Bethany, 1), it might be expected that there would be little difficulty in locating Bethphage. Unfortunately, however, the texts of the three Synoptists [St. John does not mention Bethphage] are obscure on two points —
(1) As to the relation between Bethphage and Bethany, St. Luke (19'-") alone mentions both places ('as he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany'). His language seems to imply that a traveller com- ing from Jericho would come first to Bethphage, then to Bethany, and finally to Jerusalem. St. Matthew ('21') mentions only Bethphage. As for St. Mark, his original text (11') probably contained no reference to Bethphage, but this name has been inserted, and in the majority of MSS stands be- tween Jerusalem and Bethany in such a way that, if this reading were accepted as the original one, we should have to place Bethphage in a different position in relation to Bethany from what is im- plied in the text of St. Luke.
off the direct route from Jericho to Jerusalem, upon i
BETHSAIDA
BETHSAIDA
road, and Bethphage at the point where this joined the main road. It would thus have been necessary to pass Bethphage both in going to Bethany and in returning from it. Support for this conjecture has been sought in the use of the word i^«J». in Mil ll-l.
(2) In all three Synoptics, Jesus sends two of His disciples to a village {ku/iti) to bring the ass on which He was to ride. Is this village, which is 'over against' {KarivavTi), to be identified with Bethphage, or with Bethany, or with some third locality ? Each of these views is capable of defence ; the traditional identification of the village of the ass's colt with Bethphage is at least questionable, especially in view of Mt 2V 'When they had reached Bethphage . . . then Jesus sent two dis- ciples to the village over against.' A site for the village of the colt might be suggested at Siloe, or rather at Kcfr et-Tiir, on the top of the Mt. of Olives. [It Ls known that in the time of Jesus Christ there were houses on its summit]. In the circumstances of the case it would be hazardous to offer any opinion as to the probable situation of Bethphage.
Etymologically the name Betkphage appears to mean 'house (or place) of rniripe fruits,' more especially 'of unripe figs' (cf. Ca2", and see Dal- man, Gramniatik Aesjud. pal.-Aramaisch, 1894, p. 152, and Arnold Meyer, Jcsu 3Ti(ffcrsprache, 1896, p. 166). Recently a coiini-xion Im liuen suggested by Nestle ('Etymoloj;iM h,. l.iu.iMlrn ?' in ZJVTh