Bethlehem

In Arabic, Bethlehem means ‘house of meat’, while in Jewish, it means ‘house of bread.’ Could it be coincidence that the Bread of Eternal Life eventually became the Body of Christ when Jesus said ‘Take and eat...this is my Body.’? Bethlehem is also mentioned in the book of Samuel (Sam 17:12) when Samuel left for Bethlehem to anoint King David. That is why Bethlehem is also called the ‘City of David.’ Later on, the prophet Micah elevated Bethlehem further when he said ‘Bethlehem, Ephrata, you are the smallest among the cities of Judah, but the Lord will choose from your midst One who will lead his people.’ (Mic 5:2) From then onwards, the Jewish people kept waiting for the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem. After Jesus was born, this little village which was not very populated, and only 10 kilometres from Jerusalem, was destroyed in the 2nd century during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. But St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine was able to reconstruct the village in 327 AD, just after the persecutions have ended, and even commissioned the church of the Nativity. Some damage was done to the church in 529, and was rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian I one hundred years later. Today it is a city with 25,000 inhabitants, and still visited by many pilgrims to see the place where Jesus was born.