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JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription "Bethlehem," the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus' traditional birthplace. The tiny clay seal's existence and age provide vivid evidence that Bethlehem was not just the name of a fabled biblical town, but also a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, archaeologists said. Eli Shukron, the authority's director of excavations, said the find was significant because it is the first time the name "Bethlehem" appears outside of a biblical...

Casinos are not like Starbucks stores: You really can’t have one on every corner. That’s the word from David Cordish, whose company is opening a huge new casino next month in Maryland. Yet Cordish warns that the expansion of casino gambling can’t go on unchecked forever. A big problem is the attitude of politicians nationwide who view casinos as free money. “I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word ‘oversaturation,’” Cordish said Thursday. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.”If that attitude continues, Cordish said, “it’s going to implode on them.” That...

Ten years have passed since the end of the 39-day IDF siege of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, where 39 terrorists had holed up. The siege was ended through an agreement that involved exiling the terrorists to other countries. Bethlehem-based news agency Ma'an says the terrorists now feel "abandoned by the Palestinian Authority and all political factions." They have not been allowed to return to their families in Judea and Samaria, the agency notes. Deportees had planned to demonstrate on Thursday but canceled the protest to support the terrorists on hunger strike in Israeli jails, a spokesman for the...

The governor of Bethlehem signed an order, on Sunday, banning the entry of Israeli agricultural products into the city, effective from May 1, Ma’an News Agency reported. Abdul-Fattah Hamayil gave orders to security services to enforce the ban and monitor all agricultural imports. Hamayil has also sought to ensure PA produce is not brought into the 47-year-old St. George Landmark Hotel in eastern Jerusalem. The decision follows the ban on Israeli-grown watermelons, onions, strawberries and potatoes implemented by PA Minister of Agriculture Ahmad Majdalani earlier this month, a press statement said. The ban, only the latest in a series of...

A writer tells the members of the Christ at the Checkpoint organization that they really must be more consistent - and also accept the resulting conclusions. Dear Committee of “Christ at the Checkpoint” Conference, I recently read the written materials of your latest conference in March and was thunderstruck by the assumption (...it is not an assumption any more, but a dogma, in which everyone in your community has to believe) that Jewish people never lived here, and that the whole history of this land is Palestinian history. Mitri Raheb, in his article, plays with the idea of DNA matching:...

By Ryan Jones.. The First Baptist Church in Bethlehem was ordered closed by the Palestinian Authority on Saturday, according to Rabbi Russell Resnik of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. Resnik reported the incident after meeting with Pastor Steven Khoury, the son of First Baptist’s head pastor, Naim Khoury.

The Palestinian Authority declared a Baptist Church in Bethlehem to be unlawful and said that it will no longer receive rights as a religious institution, Algemeiner reported. This decision comes a week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an audience of Evangelical Protestants that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities. “They said that our legitimacy as a church from a governmental point of view is not approved,” said an assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church. “They said they will not recognize any legal paper work from our church. That includes birth certificates, wedding certificates and death...

The church in Bethlehem had survived more than 1,000 years, through wars and conquests, but its future now seemed in jeopardy. Spray-painted all over its ancient stone walls were the Arabic letters for Hamas. The year was 1994 and the city was about to pass from Israeli to Palestinian control. I was meeting with the church's clergy as an Israeli government adviser on inter-religious affairs. They were despondent but too frightened to file a complaint. The same Hamas thugs who had desecrated their sanctuary were liable to take their lives.

An extraordinary brawl between clergymen broke out yesterday at the very site where Jesus is said to have been born. The annual cleaning of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem descended into a battle between the rival Christian denominations that share it. Brooms, fists and vicious insults flew in all directions between 100 priests and monks dressed in their traditional robes. The fight ended only after Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church’s low ‘door of humility’, rushed in with batons to restore order. The row is believed to have begun after a clergyman of one...

The video below is sad and disturbing. More on that in a minute One of the more surprising, and personally saddest things I have encountered in my trips to the Holy Land, is the encounter with Orthodox clergy. While I had been trained to expect tensions between Jews and Arabs, my experience involving the Orthodox clergy was actually the most tense and shocking. It also surprised me since, speaking for myself, I have always had great admiration for the beautiful liturgies of the Orthodox. And, while I know little of the internal realities of those Churches, I have always hoped...

Prof. Justus Reid Weiner discusses the situation regarding Christians living in Palestinian Authority controlled Bethlehem as opposed to those Christians living in Nazareth, Israel.

Another anti-semitic invention to exploit the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem to propagate a lie:["More than a billion Christians around the world are about to celebrate Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah. There is one thing the Palestinian Arabs hope you all remember during those celebrations - that Jesus was, in fact, a Palestinian (Arab).It is nothing new for the Palestinians to claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. The Palestinian leadership gets in on the action all the time. Yasser Arafat used to openly declare as much as he kicked off Christmas from Bethlehem every year.Arafat...

http://youtu.be/Isuu9EiFU_E

Jingle Bells Bethlehem style. Palestinian minister Fadiha with a special Christmas carol...

On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8)...

The modern search for the Star of Bethlehem began with Johannes Kepler (imperial astronomer for Rudolph II of Germany), who shortly before Christmas in 1603 observed a conjunction (pairing) of Jupiter with Saturn from his observatory in Prague. That this occurred in the constellation of Pisces he thought was important as well – perhaps recalling Rabbi Isaac Abarvanel's belief, noted in his 15th-century commentary on Daniel, that not only does a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn foretell important events, but in Pisces this holds a special significance for Israel; and such an event might even foretell the coming of the...

Arab Islamic apartheid, discrimination, oppression, persecution against Christians Vs the only free State [in the region]: Israel---Christine M. Flowers: The very real persecution of Christians in the Arab worldSeptember 30, 2011IF THE "Arab Spring" bathed the Middle East in some much-needed sunlight, there's at least one group that sees ominous clouds on the not-so-distant horizon. That would be the region's embattled and apprehensive Christians, who've lived a kind of double life for many decades.While nominally citizens of the countries they inhabit, most non-Muslims, the majority of whom are Christian, are treated as second-class members of society because so many governments...

Jordan closed Bethlehem to Christians from 1949 until 1967 when Israel opened the gates. Now the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, prohibited a Jewish guide from attending a Congressman’s tour. Florida Republican and Tea Party member Allen West wrote his constituents after touring Israel earlier this month, “When we went to Bethlehem to visit the birthplace of Jesus- a Jew- our group was not allowed to have our regular Jewish guides or bus drivers because Israeli citizens are not allowed in Bethlehem or the ancient city of Jericho where the Bible teaches us that Joshua blew down the wall...

The Muslim Fatah-controlled authority in Judea and Samaria is encouraging a "sharp demographic shift" in Bethlehem, where the Christian population went from a 60 percent majority in 1990 to a 40 percent minority in 2000, to about 15 percent of the city's total population today. It is estimated that, for the past seven years, more than one thousand Christians have been emigrating from the Bethlehem area annually and that only 10,000 to 13,000 Christians remain in the city. International human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner, who teaches at Hebrew University, told the Jerusalem Institute for Global Jewish Affairs that, under...

Sarah Palin has emerged at the centre of a potentially embarrassing mystery when she abruptly aborted a visit to Bethlehem just yards from an Israeli checkpoint guarding the entrance to the city of Christ's birth. Mrs Palin, whose trip to the Holy Land is being seen as an attempt to burnish her foreign policy credentials ahead of a possible presidential bid, had been planning to tour Christian sites before holding evening talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. Bethlehem was supposed to be her first stop of the day, according to a leaked copy of her schedule. .... It...

When Christmas comes around, the Palestinian Authority looks for ways to incite Christian hatred of Jews worldwide. This year, the Jew-baiting has taken the form of a report by AFP regarding a Jewish town's opposition to Christmas trees and a book that calls Jesus "the first Palestinian martyr." While carrying the anti-Jewish Christmas tree story, world media neglected to note that the PA has been brutally and systematically driving out its Christian population - in Bethlehem and elsewhere - through torture and murder. Depicting Israel in the role of Dr. Seuss's "Grinch who stole Christmas," AFP sadly reported that "there...

We are far too accustomed to thinking that the Middle East is populated only by Muslims and a few Jews. There are Christians living there, too, often beleaguered and under attack. Here are three stories that remind us during this Christmas season that life for Christians in the Holy Land during this Holy Season can be particularly perilous. First, we learn that the cross, the very symbol of Christianity, has basically been abolished from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. “This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land. Some textile...

We are far too accustomed to thinking that the Middle East is populated only by Muslims and a few Jews. There are Christians living there, too, often beleaguered and under attack. Here are three stories that remind us during this Christmas season that life for Christians in the Holy Land during this Holy Season can be particularly perilous. First, we learn that the cross, the very symbol of Christianity, has basically been abolished from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. “This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land. Some textile...

This Christmas in Bethlehem, the cross has been banned from souvenirs for tourists and pilgrims in the Holy Land... Samir Qumsieh, journalist and director of the Catholic television station Al-Mahed Nativity TV in Bethlehem, said: "I want to launch a campaign to urge people not to buy these products - he says - because the removal of the cross is an intimidation against Christians, it is like saying that Jesus was never crucified. " Qumsieh points out that from 2002 to 2010 the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped from over 18 thousand to 11 thousand people... Only 15,400 Christians...

Migal Eder-"Tower of the flocks"Alfred Edersheim, author of the excellent "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah", wrote the following: "And yet Jewish tradition may here prove both illustrative and helpful. That the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, was a settled conviction. "Equally so, was the belief , that He was to be revealed from Migdal Eder, 'the tower of the flock.' This Migdal Eder was not the watchtower for the ordinary flocks which pastured on the barren sheepground beyond Bethlehem, but lay close to the town, on the road to Jerusalem." "A passage in the Mishnah leads to...

When I was in college, I journeyed to Cologne, Germany and visited the city's glorious cathedral. I was a Protestant at the time, but I remember being amazed that people had been building this cathedral for so many centuries. It is one of the greatest Gothic churches of all time.

Early Christians hid the origins of the Bethlehem star 13:15 21 December 01 Marcus Chown A US astronomer claims he has found the first mention of the star of Bethlehem outside the Bible. The reference is in a 4th-century manuscript written by a Roman astrologer and Christian convert called Firmicus Maternus. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library Michael Molnar, formerly of Rutgers University in New Jersey, is the originator of the idea that the star of Bethlehem was not a spectacular astronomical event such as a supernova or a comet but an obscure astrological one. The event would nevertheless have been ...

I am a Christian, I belive in Christ. However, why do Christians knowing that Christ was born in the summer time (northern Hemisphere, celebrate Christmas in Decemeber? I know that December 25th was a holiday during the Roman Empire. It would make sense if some astronomer could calculate when Christ was born. Also, I am sure other religions have records on when the astological event took place when Christ was Born. I think that God intended Christmas to be treated somewhat differently than Easter. For some reason it seems in the telling of the birth of Christ, there is a...

<p>FOR a few minutes on Christmas, children may set down their new toys from the man in the red suit and listen to transmissions from a machine on the red planet. On Thursday, the European Space Agency is scheduled to guide a British probe called the Beagle II onto the surface of Mars in what should become the first successful landing there since NASA's Mars Pathfinder in 1997. But while Mars grabs all the extraterrestrial attention this holiday ("The Beagle has landed!"), normally Christmas is the season of Jupiter, because there's a very good chance that the biggest planet in our solar system was the Star of Bethlehem.</p>

For centuries, historians, scientists and scholars have debated the existence of the Star of Bethlehem in the Biblical telling of Christ’s birth. Now Texas lawyer and professor Rick Larson says he has proven the existence of this celebrated, yet debated, star. He sets forth his case in a documentary, “The Star of Bethlehem.” “Historically, people have taken two positions on the Star,” said Larson in a news release. “Either they believe the Star is true or they think it was made up by the early Church. I took a different approach in my research and treated the Star as a...

According to the Bible, when Jesus was born three Magi saw a star in the East that signaled the birth of a new king. But just what was it, from an astronomical point or view, that the Magi actually saw? Fred Grosse, a professor of physics and astronomy at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa., says there are several popular theories that may answer this question.

AnalysisMany balk at this element of the Nativity story, but historical and astronomical evidence tends to corroborate it. By Michael J. MillerDuring a 2007 BBC radio interview, the archbishop of Canterbury deconstructed elements of the Nativity story. “Stars simply don’t behave like that,” Rowan Williams said. Asked about the existence of three wise men, he replied, “It works quite well as legend.”But years ago Father Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, published an essay applying the historical-critical method to the question of the Nativity story. (The essay is reprinted without cumbersome footnotes in Light and Shadows: Church...

The Christmas Star By Dr. Hugh Ross For centuries scholars and laymen alike have speculated on the nature of the star that led the wise men from the east to seek out the Messiah that had come to the Jews. The only reliable account of this event is found in Matthew 2 of the Bible. Three controversial questions arise out of a study of this text: 1. Were the wise men led by astrology? Some people have used the story of the advent of Jesus Christ, specifically the Matthew 2 portion, to suggest that astrology might be okay, at least...

For centuries scholars and laymen alike have speculated on the nature of the star that led the wise men from the east to seek out the Messiah that had come to the Jews. The only reliable account of this event is found in Matthew 2 of the Bible. Three controversial questions arise out of a study of this text...

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted recently to officially declare Rachel's Tomb to be a mosque. UNESCO director Irena Bokova had previously stated “concern” at Israel's decision to treat the tomb as a heritage site. The vote called for Rachel's Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs – the burial site of the other Biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs – to be removed from Israel's National Heritage list. The Palestinian Authority has claimed that Rachel's Tomb is holy to Muslims as the site of a mosque called the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque. The PA demands control over...

Some Milestones in Israel-Palestine1834 - 1886 - 1920 - 1922 - 1929 - 1938 - 1941 - 1948 - 1950s-1960s - 1970 1972 - 1973 - 1975 - 1976 - 1982 - 1987 - 1994 - 2000 - 2001 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 1834 First recorded attack on native Jews in Israel by Muslims, is the one in June 1834, Safed (the Plunder), the massacres and mass rapes went on for 33 days, (an inciter, Muhammed Damoor, a self-proclaimed prophet, ‘prophesied’ the attack for which he agitated). It was repeated in 1838. 1886 First...

Muslim Coupled Jailed For Church Sex A Ugandan court has sent a Muslim couple to jail on charges of insulting the Christian religion by allegedly having sex in a church in Entebbe

“Epiphany: From Bethlehem to Baptism and Beyond” (Matthew 2:1-12; Luke 3:21-22)The Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord always falls on January 6, which this year was this past Wednesday. And the reading for Epiphany Day proper is always the visit of the wise men, to Bethlehem, when Jesus was a baby. Then for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, which is today, the reading is the account of the Baptism of Our Lord, in the Jordan, when Jesus was about age 30. Well, because of the weather, we had to cancel our Epiphany service on Wednesday, and so today,...

IsraelNN.com) As Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilios III arrived in the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Bethlehem on Wednesday to celebrate the sect’s observance of Christmas, undercurrents of hate and rage smoldered beneath the surface among some of his so-called followers. Prominent members of the church refused to welcome the patriarch as he made the traditional pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. A split is beginning to develop among clergy in Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church, fueled by a dispute led by one of the PA Arab contingents. Among the protest leaders was Deputy PA Tourism Minister Marwan Toubasi, who had seized the opportunity...

1Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. 2This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.

The pilgrims will be there as midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity is again broadcast live around the world this Christmas Eve -- but the town of Bethlehem is fast losing its last few year-round Christian residents. Christians are fleeing the town of Christ's birth, and the much-reported hardship that Israel inflicts on residents of the West Bank town has little to do with it. It's the same reality across the Arab world: rising Islamism pushes non-Muslims away. Islamists frown on real-estate ownership by non-Muslims -- Christian, Jew or anything else. And though the secular Palestinian Authority still...

The pilgrims will be there as midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity is again broadcast live around the world this Christmas Eve -- but the town of Bethlehem is fast losing its last few year-round Christian residents. Christians are fleeing the town of Christ's birth, and the much-reported hardship that Israel inflicts on residents of the West Bank town has little to do with it. It's the same reality across the Arab world: rising Islamism pushes non-Muslims away. Islamists frown on real-estate ownership by non-Muslims -- Christian, Jew or anything else. And though the secular Palestinian Authority still...

Christmas is heaven's marvel. It is beyond us and yet with us. The birth of God! It took place in Bethlehem. The theologians refer to this marvel as the "incarnation." This is truly the marvelous paradox in our midst: God had no beginning, yet Bethlehem is his start. God is the author of life, yet he comes to life in a castoff barn. God, the creator of all, is created in Mary's womb. The Eternal One becomes earth-bound. The Invisible becomes visible. The Immortal becomes mortal. The Immeasurable becomes measurable. The Timeless and Spatially Limitless One becomes logged into this...

A message to observant Christians, you should know that if there ever is a Palestinian State you can say goodbye to holy sites Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Ascension. Christian holy sites and populations are endangered whenever Palestinians gain control. Christian towns and churches, including the sacred Church of the Nativity, have been used as bases for Palestinian snipers and launching-sites for terrorist attacks. Many historically Christian towns that came under Palestinian control through Oslo — Bethlehem being only the most famous example — quickly lost their Christian majority as those citizens steadily fled Muslim oppression...

Christian leaders representing a wide spectrum of sects were assured Monday morning by the commander of the IDF's Civil Administration Bethlehem Coordination and Liaison Office that Christian pilgrims would have free access to the birthplace of Jesus during the Christmas holiday. Priests, archbishops and friars representing Latin Catholic, Coptic, Greek Orthodox, Franciscan, Lutheran, Anglican, Syrian Orthodox, Ethiopian and Armenian Christian sects met with Lt.-Col. Eyad Sirhan, the Druse commander responsible for orchestrating pilgrimages by a diverse collection of Christian faithful. Some wore the black and white collar of the priest, others wore robes and traditional hats. Conversation was conducted in...

A memory of an innkeeper was published in the Nov. 22, 2006 edition of the local paper. Authored by Ralph Wilson of Joyful Heart Ministries. Finding it a unique take on the Christmas story, for the season, I have decided to add it to my column. For the rest of the writing period before Christmas, I will be doing articles on the holiday and its traditions. Please enjoy. They think I'm some kind of cruel, heartless landlord. Someone must have told them that. But they're wrong, just plain wrong, and it's time to set the record straight, once and for...

After all, Christmas offers nothing but small.

Bethlehem – Ma’an News-Rachel’s Tomb lies behind Israel’s eight-meter concrete separation wall in a fortified enclave close to the center of Bethlehem. The wall criss-crosses Bethlehem, blocking the main road to Jerusalem, encircling a refugee camp and looming over the upscale Intercontinental hotel. Right-wing religious groups petitioned Israel’s highest court in 2004 to re-route the wall to include the tomb on the western side. To this day the site, formerly known as the location of the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque, is accessible only from the Israeli side. A major strategy of the Palestinians in their goal of ultimately taking over...

BETHLEHEM - One of the untold stories of the Middle East is what is happening to the Christian population. Many are fleeing areas like the West Bank city of Bethlehem because Muslims are persecuting them. Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ and was once a Christian city. But today Christians are only about 10 to 15 percent of the population. Some observers say if the mass exodus continues, within another generation it could become a city of Christian holy sites without any Christian residents. Justice Weiner believes that is happening. He has spent years investigating persecution and the exodus of...

Many observers are watching to see to what extent Fatah's Sixth General Congress will advance or retard the prospects for re-launching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. In this regard, the crucial question is: Is Fatah going to waive its historical principle of "armed struggle" and devote itself to peace negotiations based on compromise? The two relevant documents to be discussed and approved by the Fatah Congress are the Political Program and Fatah's "Internal Order." The Political Program might be seen as reflecting progress in terms of accepting a political solution and rejecting violence - but it falls...