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This entry incorporates text from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia with some modernisation.
Bethabara (/bɛθˈæbərə/ beth-AB-ər-ə; בית עברה; bēth‛ăbhārāh; Βηθαβαρά; Bēthabará; “house of the ford, place of crossing”), in modern-day Jordan: According to the King James Version (following Textus Receptus of the New Testament[1] the place where John the Baptist baptized those who came to him (John 1:28). The Revised Version (British and American) (with Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in Greek following Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Ephraemi) reads "Bethany." It is distinguished from the Bethany of Lazarus and his sisters as being beyond the Jordan. The reading Bethabara became current owing to the advocacy of both Origen.,[2] and John Chrysostom,[3] and that same Bethabara is attested in both the 6th century AD Madaba Map[4] and in the Jewish Talmud.[5] Various suggestions have been made to explain the readings. G. A. Smith (HGHL) suggests that Bethany (house of the ship) and Bethabara (house of the ford) are names for the same place. Bethabara has also been identified with Bethbarah, which, however, was probably not on the Jordan River but among the streams flowing into it (Judges 7:24). It is interesting to note that the Greek Septuagint Codex Vaticanus (LXXB) reads, Baithabara for Hebrew Masoretic Text Bēth-‛ărābhāh, one of the cities of Benjamin (Joshua 18:22). If this is correct, the site is in Judea.
Another solution is sought in the idea of a corruption of the original name into Bethany and Bethabara, the name having the consonants n, b and r after Beth. In Joshua 13:27 (Septuagint, Codex Vaticanus) we find, Baithanabra for Bethnimrah (Massoretic Text), and Sir George Grove in Dictionary of the Bible (arts. "Bethabara" and "Beth-nimrah") identifies Bethabara and Beth-nimrah. The site of the latter was a few miles above Jericho (see Beth-nimrah), immediately accessible to Jerusalem and all Judea (compare Matthew 3:5; Mark 1:5). This view has much in its favor.
Then, again, as G. Frederick Wright observes: "The traditional site is at the ford east of Jericho; but as according to John 1:29, John 1:35, John 1:43 it was only one day's journey from Cana of Galilee, while according to John 10:40; John 11:3, John 11:6, and John 11:17, it was two or three days from Bethany, it must have been well up the river toward Galilee. Conder discovered a well-known ford near Beisan called Abarah, near the mouth of the valley of Jezreel. This is 20 miles from Cana and 60 miles from Bethany, and all the conditions of the place fit in with the history."
See also [link]
References [link]
- ^ Which follows the New York and Moscow uncials, corrected forms of Ephraemi and Athos, along with uncial fragments from St Petersburg, Paris, minuscule 1, and family 13, backed up by Eusebius, Cyril, some Byzantine texts and lectionaries, and the Curetonian Old Syriac, Aramaic Peshitta, Armenian, and Georgian manuscripts, among others cited in The Greek New Testament, 4th ed. (1983).
- ^ Bethany Beyond the Jordan - Catholic Encyclopedia article
- ^ Bruce Metzger, Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (1994), 171 and n. 5.
- ^ Harper's Bible Dictionary (1985), 105
- ^ Raymond Brown, Gospel According to John I-XII, Anchor Bible (1968), 44-45.
External links [link]
Media related to Bethabara at Wikimedia Commons
- The Baptism of Christ - Uncovering Bethany beyond the Jordan - 47 min Documentary
- The Baptism of Jesus Christ: Uncovering Bethany beyond the Jordan. Full film (Authorized by content owners.)
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Coordinates: 31°50′13″N 35°32′50″E / 31.83694°N 35.54722°E
https://wn.com/Bethabara
Bethabara Historic District
Bethabara Historic District encompasses the surviving buildings and archaeological remains of a small Moravian community, that was first settled in 1753. Located in present day Forsyth County, North Carolina, it is now a public park of the city of Winston-Salem. It was designated National Historic Landmark in 1999.
History
Bethabara (from the Hebrew, meaning "House of Passage" and pronounced beth-ab-bra, the name of the traditional site of the Baptism of Jesus Christ) was a village located in what is now Forsyth County, North Carolina. It was the site where fifteen men from the Moravian Church first settled in 1753 in an abandoned cabin in the 100,000-acre (400 km2) tract of land the church had purchased from Lord Granville and dubbed Wachovia.
Its early settlers were noted for advanced agricultural practices, especially their medicine Garden, which produced over fifty kinds of herbs.
Although later parties of Moravians joined the first fifteen, including women and children, Bethabara was never meant to be a permanent settlement. It was intended to house the Moravians until a more suitable location for their central village could be found. In 1771, that place was completed: Salem. Many of the settlers moved to Salem, and Bethabara became an outlying farm to supply the residents of Salem and other Moravian villages with food.
