Bethany (Bible)
Bethany , also Bethany ( Hebrew בית עניה, German Armenhausen ), is the name of two different Palestinian places in the New Testament .
Biblical tradition
Hometown of Lazarus
Bethany southeast of Jerusalem , on the east side of the Mount of Olives , about 15 stadiums (about 2.7 km) from Jerusalem ( Joh 11.18 EU ), is the hometown of the siblings Mary , Martha and Lazarus ( Joh 11.1 EU ). The place plays a role in the Bible several times, for example the donkey on which Jesus entered Jerusalem came from a village near Betfage and Bethanien, and Jesus stayed in the place ( Mk 11.1 EU ). The house of Simon the Leper was also in Bethany ( Mt 26.6 EU ). According to Lk 24.50 EU , the ascension of Christ took place near Bethany .
According to Jerome , a church was built here over the grave of Lazarus in ancient times. In the Middle Ages, the Bethanien Abbey, founded by Queen Melisende and her sister Ioveta , was located here . The place corresponds to today's Al-Eizariya (Al-Izzariya / العيزرية) in the West Bank (Palestine), about 2.4 km east of Jerusalem . The current name Al-Eizariya is a corruption of the Greek "Lazarion" ("place of Lazarus").
Place of the baptism of John
Another place of the same name was according to Joh 1,28 EU east of the Jordan . It is there that John the Baptist is said to have baptized and testified of Jesus Christ . According to Jn 10.40 EU , Jesus stayed there for a long time later. Since Origen , Bethany has been identified with Bethabara , a Jordan ford near the baptismal site of Jesus . Modern Bible atlases mark this place east of the Jordan with question marks in the maps.
Rudolf Bultmann sums up the situation: "The attempts to identify a Bethanien ... east of the Jordan have not led to a reliable result". Siegfried Schulz stated succinctly: "A Bethanien east of the Jordan is unknown". Nonetheless, in 2015 the site of al-Maghta on the east bank of the Jordan was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites because the site is “scenically and culturally significant”.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfred Görg: Art. Bethany. In: New Bible Lexicon. Volume I. Zurich, Düsseldorf 1991, Sp. 280-281
- ↑ Shimon Gibson: The Seven Last Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Facts. Page 37, Verlag CH Beck, Munich, 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60502-4
- ↑ Origen in his commentary on the Gospel of John: "We are convinced that one should read Betabara rather than Bethany" (Günther Schwarz: Das Jesus-Evangelium. Munich 1993, p. 353.)
- ↑ z. B. Stuttgart Bible Atlas - Historical Maps of the Biblical World, ed. by John Strange, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-438-06020-5 , p. 47.
- ↑ Rudolf Bultmann: The Gospel of John (= critical-exegetical commentary on the New Testament, Vol. 2). Göttingen 1985, ISBN 3-525-51514-6 , p. 65, note 5
- ^ Siegfried Schulz: The Gospel according to Johannes (= The New Testament German (NTD), Vol. 4). Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-51312-7 , p. 38
- ↑ ideaSpektrum No. 28, July 8, 2015, p. 5