At least the Magi had a star . . .

. . . to help them find Bethlehem -- the right Bethlehem, that is, since there was more than one near Nazareth back then. The current case for the "other" Bethlehem is laid out in the current issue of Archaeology, and summarized in the Times of London:

“Following the Six-Day War in 1967, surveys showed plenty of Iron Age pottery, but with the single exception of a publication that mentions Herodian sherds found in a corner of the church, there is surprisingly no archaeological evidence that ties Bethlehem in Judaea to the period in which Jesus would have been born.” A contemporary aqueduct running through the locality suggests that there was no settlement, since such works did not cross built-up areas.

In the 1990s, as one of the IAA’s staff archaeologists, Mr Oshri carried out rescue archaeology at the rural settlement of Bethlehem in Galilee, and was surprised to find a substantial ancient community of the time of Christ. “We know that Bethlehem of Galilee was a “bustling centre of Jewish life around the time of Jesus’s birth,” he says. “There were residential areas, and a workshop for making stone vessels used in Jewish purification rituals.”

In the 19th century there were suggestions that the Galilee site could have been the “real” Bethlehem, but there was at the time no archaeological evidence to back them up.

Posted by David on October 30, 2005 8:11 PM