Bethlehem | History, People, Meaning, & Facts - Britannica

Church of the Nativity

The site of the Nativity of Jesus was identified by St. Justin Martyr, a 2nd-century Christian apologist, as a manger in “a cave close to the village”; the cave, now under the nave of the Church of the Nativity in the heart of the town, has been continuously venerated by Christians since then. St. Helena (c. 248–c. 328), mother of the first Christian Roman emperor (Constantine I), had a church built over the cave; later destroyed, it was rebuilt in substantially its present form by Emperor Justinian (reigned 527–565). The Church of the Nativity is thus one of the oldest Christian churches extant. Frequent conflicts have arisen over the jurisdiction of various faiths at the sacred site, often incited by outside interests; thus, for example, the theft in 1847 of the silver star marking the exact traditional locus of the Nativity was an ostensible factor in the international crisis over the holy places that ultimately led to the Crimean War (1854–56). The church was later divided between the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic faiths at the Congress of Berlin (1878). In 2012 the church was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The town has been a monastic center for centuries; St. Jerome built a monastery there and, with the aid of Palestinian rabbis, translated the Old Testament into Latin from the original Hebrew (5th century ce). This, together with the New Testament, which he had translated from the Greek before going to Palestine, constitutes the Vulgate, the standard Latin translation of the Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church.

In 2002 when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered Bethlehem as part of Operation Defensive Shield, an extensive Israeli military campaign into Palestinian cities during the second intifada, about 200 Palestinians, some of them armed or members of militias, took refuge in the church. A standoff between the Palestinians in the church and the IDF captured significant international attention before it ended 39 days later.