a square tower apparently of old date, though certain- ly qoI of the age of the kings of Judah, to which De Saulcj assigns it <i, 128)— the latter a deep vault ex- cavated in the limestone rock, the bottom reached by
twenty-Six BtepS. The hOUSe of Simon the leper i<
also exhibited. As to the real age and character of these remain-, there is at present no information to guide ns. Sch war/, maintain-. eUAzariyeh to lie A/.ai., and would fix Bethany at a spot which, he says, the Arabs 'all lieth-hatian, on the .Mount of < tffence above
Siloam (p. 263, L35). These traditional spots are first
heard of in the fourth century, in the Jtinerarj/ of the Bourdeaux Pilgrim, and the Onomasticon of Eusebius and Jerome, and they continued to exist, with certain varieties of buildings and of ecclesiastical establish- ments in connection therewith, down to the sixteenth century, since which the place has fallen gradually into its present decay (Robinson, Researches, ii, 102, 103). By Mandeville and other mediaeval travellers the town is spoken of as the "Castle of Bethany," en expression which had its origin in castellum being cm- ployed in the Vulgate as the translation of /cw/<;/ in John xi, 1. — Smith, s. v. See Jerusalem.
Beth-ar'abah (Heb. Beyth ha-Arabah', fV^a fl2*l3n, house of the desert ; Sept. Brftdpafia v. r. BatSapaj3d and Bapa)3adp ; in Josh, xviii, 22, lb/.~- «/3«p« v. r. Ba&a/3apa), one of the six cities of Judah which were situated in the Arabah, i. e. the sunk val- ley of the Jordan and Dead Sea ("wilderness," Josh, xv, Gl), on the north border of the tribe, and apparent- ly between Beth-hoglah and the high land on the west of the Jordan valley (xv, G). It was afterward in- cluded in the list of the towns of Benjamin (xviii, 22). It is elsewhere (Josh, xviii, 18) called simply Arabah ( q. v.). It seems to be extant in the ruins called Kusr Hajla, a little south-west of the site of Beth-hojlah (q. v.).
Beth'-aram (Heb. Betfh Jlaram ', t^ft tVa, house of the height [for the syllable ha- is prob. merely the def. art.], q. d. mountain-house ; Sept. Btfsaou \ v. r. Ba&appd and BaiSrapdv), one cf the towns i ("fenced cities") of Gad on the east of Jordan, de- scribed as in "the valley" (paSM, not to be confound- j ed with the Arabah or Jordan valley), Josh. xiii. 27, i and no doubt the same place as that named Beth-ha- ■ rax in Num. xxxii, 36. Eusebius (Onomnst. s. v.) re- ; ports that in his day its appellation ("by the Syrians" ) was Bethramtha (Bi)dpaj.i(pBd [prob. for the Chaldaic form XFlEl'1 T'Z] ■ Jerome, Bcthiram~), and that it was also named Livias (Aiflidg, Libias; Jerome adds, "by | Herod, in honor of Augustus"). Josephus's account (Ant. xviii, 2, 1) is that Herod (Antipas), on taking I possession of his tetrarchy, fortified Sepphoris and the I city (-oA(c) of Betharamphtha (BriSrapapQSa), build- j ing a Avail round the latter, and calling it Julias Clov- Xu'iq; different from the Julias of Gaulonitis, War, ii, 9, 1\ in honor ef the wife of the emperor. As this could hardly be later than B.C. 1, Herod the (Ireat, the predecessor of Antipas, having died in B.C. 4, and as the Empress Livia did not receive her name of Julia until after the death of Augustus, A.D. 14, it is prob- able that Josephus is in error as to the new name given to the place, and speaks of it as having originally re- ceived that which it bore in his own day (see Ant. xx, 8, 4 : War, ii. 13, 2). It is curious that he names Liv- ias ( \ir>idr) long before (Ant. xiv, 1, 4) in such con- nection as to leave no doubt that be alludes to the same place. L/ndcr the name of Amathus (q. v.) he again mentions it (Ant. xvii, 10, G; comp. War, ii. 4, 2), and the destruction of the royal palaces there by insurgents from Peraea. At a later date it was an episcopal city (Reland, Pakest. p. 874). For Talmudical notices, sea Schwarz, Palest, p. 231. Ptolemy gives the locality of Livias (At/3idc) as 31° 26' lat", and G7° 10' long. (Ritter, Krdk. xv, ,"73 >; and Eusebius and Jerome < (Onomnst. s. v. Brfivafipdv, Bethamnaram) state thai it was live miles south of liethnahris or Bethamnaris 1 (i. c. Beth-nimrah ; see Josephus, War, iv, 7, 4 and G). This agrees with the position of the Wady Seir or Sir, which falls into the Ghor opposite Jericho, and half way between Wady Hesban and Wady Shoaib. Seet- zen heard that it contained a castle and a large tank in masonry (Reisen, 1854, ii, 3bv). According to Van de Velde (Memoir, p. 296), the ruins are still called
Beit-Uaran Smith, s. v.
Betharamptiia. See Betii-aram.
BETII-ARBEL 773