January 3, 2018

The Tale of Three Cities: Washington, Jerusalem and Bethlehem

January 3, 2018

By Paul V.M. Flesher

What a nice Christmas present President Trump gave to Israel Dec. 6.

He signed a diplomatic proclamation recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital for the first time in modern history. The timing was interesting because, of course, as a Jewish nation, Israel does not celebrate Christmas.

The timing comes from Washington’s (President Trump’s) playing to the American evangelical Christians, who voted for him by more than 80 percent. It is their Christmas present and, among them, this was a highly popular decision.

Apocalyptic belief in the imminent end of the world and the second arrival of Jesus on Earth to bring God’s kingdom is widespread among evangelicals. One common detail of this apocalyptic scenario is that Jews gather in Jerusalem before Jesus’ arrival. So, anything that promotes Jewish presence in Jerusalem, like recognizing it as Israel’s capital, constitutes a positive development in their eyes.

Most American evangelicals seem to be unaware that Jerusalem is already a large Jewish city. With approximately 900,000 residents, Jerusalem comprises the largest city in Israel. Two-thirds of its citizens are Jews. Another million or more Jews live within an hour’s drive. Jews need no additional impetus to move to or near Jerusalem.

Of course, Trump’s move simply recognizes the facts on the ground. Jerusalem is the location of Israel’s government. It is where the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) is located and where the president, the prime minister and other government officials live and work.

The issue of diplomatic recognition comes from the decision at Israel’s founding in 1948 that the problem of the displaced Palestinians needed resolution. That resolution would include a decision by the negotiating parties (Israel and the Palestinians) concerning the final status of Jerusalem, which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians. Pending that supposedly immanent decision, the world’s nations decided to locate their embassies in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.

Despite decades of diplomatic efforts by European countries and the USA to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis to an agreement, no peace plan has yet been successfully negotiated. So, foreign embassies have remained in Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem did not view Trump’s decision as a Christmas present, to say the least. Not only is it a decision against them as Palestinians, but it came just at the moment to turn an economically positive 2017 into a negative one. Although the results are still being tallied, the numbers of arriving pilgrims and tourists in Bethlehem for Christmas celebration and observances were down significantly.

The main reason for the decline has been the publicity of Palestinian protests against the Jerusalem decision and the heightened security that has brought about. After the Israeli government built the border wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the security corridor has made it more difficult to reach Bethlehem. It also has made it easier to slow down and even block movement into Bethlehem, thus affecting the number of people visiting.

And, while yearly economic trends are always up and down, the long-term trajectories are clear. Native Christianity in Bethlehem and other Christian areas of Palestine is decreasing. Less than 50 years ago, 5 percent of West Bank residents were Christian. Now, just 2 percent of them are.

At least there are native Christians in Bethlehem. In Jerusalem, few, if any, remain. Even though Jerusalem is likewise 2 percent Christian, nearly all of those Christians came from outside the country to help maintain the Christian shrines, churches and monasteries, or, to be blunt, to convert the Jews.

By contrast, Palestinian Christians are leaving, generation by generation. Their children see little future in a Palestine under Israel’s control, so they seek a better life in other countries. In the years after 1967, the USA was a favorite destination. But, more recently, Australia and Canada have become more popular.

In their exodus, Christian Palestinians are no different from their Muslim neighbors -- large numbers of whom also have sought to emigrate to countries where they can live freely. The Christians of Bethlehem and its neighboring towns are simply leaving at a slightly faster rate.

Although President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will not have an immediate effect on Palestine’s native Christianity, if it delays peace negotiations for another four years, then yet more Christians will leave. Soon, Bethlehem and nearby areas will have no native Palestinian Christians.

Why did Joseph live in Galilee? (column for 12/27/2014)

When Caesar Augustus decided to conduct a census of the Roman Empire, he did not send interviewers door-to-door to count each village’s residents, as is the practice in the USA’s census taking. Instead he required each man to return “to his own city.” In Luke’s gospel, chapter two, this accounts for why Joseph leaves his northern home in Galilee and undertakes a week-long journey with his wife-to-be to the town of Bethlehem, which is in southern Judea.

But why is Joseph in Galilee in the first place?  If his ties to Judea are so strong that he must return there for the census, what could have motivated him to ever leave it? Although we cannot give a definite answer, there is a sequence of historical events that may indicate why Joseph, a descendant of David’s royal house, a house identified with Bethlehem of Judea, lived in Galilee. In short, the answer is that a century or less earlier, Joseph’s ancestors took part in a mass migration of Judeans to settle in Galilee.

The story actually begins in 732-722 BC, when the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern Israelite kingdom of Israel, which included the regions of Galilee and Samaria. The book of Second Kings relates in chapter 17 how the inhabitants were carried off to Assyria in exile. A few years later, residents of other regions of the empire were brought to Samaria and settled there. 

Galilee’s situation after the conquest has long been unclear. Was it treated like Samaria, which 2 Kings specifically mentions, or was it treated differently?

Archaeologist Zvi Gal has recently discovered that Galilee was emptied of population by the Assyrian conquest and essentially remained desolate until the beginning of the first century BC.  His on-the-ground examinations of the occupation history of 80 different Galilean sites showed a six-century break in habitation. Other archaeological investigations confirm this conclusion.

So where did the Galileans of Jesus’ day come from? 

The ancient historian Josephus indicates that in 104-103 BC, the Maccabean king of Judea, Aristobolus, took control of Galilee on his way further north to conquer the Itureans who lived west of Mt. Hermon. His successor, Alexander Janneaus, sent thousands of Judeans north to settle Galilee and farm its rich agricultural land during his 25-year reign. Not only did this give Judeans access to an increased amount of agricultural products, but it also solved an apparent crisis of over-population in Judea.

Archaeological evidence also makes it clear that these new inhabitants were from Judea, for the excavated finds from the first centuries BC and AD follow the same characteristics as those of Judea. In particular, Galilean finds reveal the same concern for ritual purity with regard to the Jerusalem Temple typical of Judea. The finds characteristic of Judea and Galilee that differ from the surrounding regions include: immersion pools for purification baths, stone drinking vessels which protect from impurity, the practice of ossuary burial, and an absence of pig bones in the waste heaps.

If Joseph’s family came to Galilee by this scenario, then it is quite possible that it was his grandfather who migrated from Judea to Galilee in the early decades of the first century BC. Or, it could have been his great-grandfather. In addition, the same scenario may apply to Mary, but her engagement to Joseph caused the gospels to record only his family lineage, and leave hers out.

The implications of this repopulation of Galilee during the first century BC are quite significant, for it indicates that the people called Galileans had lived in that area for less than a century at the time of Jesus’ birth; they did not represent a centuries-old population of that area. Their identity was still primarily Judean and had not yet been transformed into a Galilean distinctiveness.