Nativity Church

Nativity Church

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem ("Nativity Church") commemorates the nativity - i.e., birth - of Jesus, which according to the Bible took was in a barn, which would have been filled with animal excrement, to a poor girl who then wrapped and placed Jesus in a manger, which is an animal food bowl (Luke 2:4-7).

The humility of that birth is lost on Bethlehem's hulking Nativity Church, which has a turbulent history. The original Nativity Church was built in 326 AD as ordered by Constantine, the first "Christian" Roman emperor. Here is the mosaic floor of that church, which was destroyed in 529 AD when the Byzantine (the surviving eastern half of the Roman empire) army sacked Bethlehem while crushing the Samaritan Revolt of 529-531 AD.

Justinian I, the Byzantine emperor, rebuilt the Nativity Church toward the end of his reign in 565 AD. Since then, the church has been expanded, added to and fought over by and between the Orthodox church and the Catholic church.

Today's Nativity Church is actually two churches - the Orthodox Basilica of the Nativity and the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Catherine - and their respective additions put together. The resulting structure is big (compare the size of the church above to the men at the bottom of the photo), but it isn't exactly an eye pleaser.

Even more of an eyesore are the occasional fist fights between the rival Orthodox and Catholic monks inside the Nativity Church, not unlike those at the Holy Sepulchre Church, reflecting the tension that linger between the two groups.

Why was Jesus born in a town called "Bethlehem"?

See Bethlehem.

 Exactly where in this church was Jesus was born?

See Jesus' Birthplace.

Was Jesus born on December 25th?

No, for the evidence that He was born in September / October, click here.

Travel Tip
Taxi drivers in Jerusalem offer round trips to Bethlehem, which is only 7 kilometers away, for hundreds of shekels. An alternative is to take the air-conditioned bus #21 for 6 shekels from the bus station just northeast of Damascus Gate. If you take the bus, get off at its terminus, which is half way down a hill in the center of Bethlehem, then walk the rest of the way down the hill, turn left at the first major intersection and then walk straight for 15 minutes, through a bustling market, to the Nativity Church. If you take a taxi, the driver will try to upsell by dropping you off at a gift shop near the church and introduce you to a tour guide. If you want neither, agree before getting in the taxi that you are to be driven directly to the church's front door, which is the little black rectangle in the bottom left of the top photo.

That door looks small because it is. The entrance to a church covering over 14,000 square yards - bigger than two football fields put together - is the 5 foot tall "Door of Humility" (above) through which adults can enter, one at a time, only by bowing.