Bethel

Lore & Background

Bethel is first referred to in the Bible as near the place where Abram pitched his tent. It is the location of Jacob's Ladder, which Jacob named Bethel. The city was located between the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and that of Ephraim, first belonging to Benjaminites and later conquered by Ephraimites. In the 4th century, Eusebius and Jerome described it as a small village 12 Roman miles north of Jerusalem. After the fall of the Crusader kingdom, Bethel was left in ruins under Saladin, but historical records show intermittent habitation, including the village of Beitin which appears in 16th-century Ottoman tax records, long before the mid-19th century.

Reader's Guide

Bethel is widely identified with the modern Arab village of Beitin in the central West Bank. Early proponents included Edward Robinson (Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1838–1852) and Henry Baker Tristram. A minority view by David Palmer Livingston and John J. Bimson proposed al-Bireh as Bethel, but this has been rejected by Jules Francis Gomes. Excavations at Beitin were conducted by William F. Albright in 1927 and by Albright and James L. Kelso in 1934, continuing under Kelso in 1937, 1954, 1957, and 1960. In 1957, Kelso found a clay stamp near a Middle Bronze Age wall; it resembled one from al-Mašhad Wādī Dawʿan (Yemen) brought back by Theodore Bent in 1894. Some scholars considered the Bethel stamp might actually be the Bent find, but neither stamp has been traced for decades; only a squeeze of the Bent stamp remains in the Eduard Glaser Collection, Vienna.

Did You Know?

• Jacob renamed the site Bethel after his dream of a ladder to heaven.
• In 1977, the biblical name was applied to the Israeli settlement of Beit El, founded nearby.