This is the inside of the dome in the chapel at Shepherd’s Field outside Bethlehem. I liked the light pouring into the little chamber better than the murals on the walls, which were rather predictable.
The quiet fields are now gardens that cling to the side of the hills overlooking the sprawling suburb that Bethlehem has become. No, a strange thing, I never saw a single shepherd in my entire visit. Not that I visited too many places in 3 days of sight seeing. But for what its worth I did see fishermen!

The only greenery at Bethlehem today
There are grottos, and ruins of churches and new statues nestling in an oasis of green. Most of Bethlehem is large houses and buildings all built of stone, on the day we visited, Friday, it was quiet, as like in all Arab cities the Christian population has shrunk to a fraction of what it was even 20 years ago, so Bethlehem is a majority Muslim town today.
A strange square hill looms over the horizon, the guide told us that excavations had shown it to be Herod’s Summer Palace. That was enough to send a chill down the spine.
Maybe the hills looked like this

Looking out over the Judean Hills from Bethlehem

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Its also the birthplace of David, dont know how that’s commemorated. But we also saw in a drive-by, “Ruth’s Fields”, and some of them are still fields. The reference is to the fields that Ruth gleaned, to get near Boaz. Ruth is, for the Biblically challenged, one of the ancestors of King David ( great-grandmother???). She is the Moabite daughter-in-law who did not abandon her destitute mother-in-law, but followed her back to Bethlehem. The famous quote attributed to her – “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God”.  I guess she has a good claim to be the Saint for daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law!

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As that’s the only way to get into the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square. You can see the three doors shrinking with each destruction, and the final one is to prevent Muslim invaders from riding their horses into the church. In the square a mosque and the Bethlehem municipality face the church.

At the door of the Church of the Nativity

Bethlehem is now cut off from Jerusalem by a high wall, so the town is sad and the streets very silent, though there appears to have been a building boom going on for around 2000 years. I’ll upload photos later! But Bethlehem is no longer a village, it’s a suburb of Jerusalem, spread across the hills. In the distance was a funny square hill that is the remains of Herods Summer Palace.

Shepherd’s field Church and grotto, is where we started the tour, after the Palestinian guide joined the tour. Guess what her name was, Gabriela – kinfd of appropriate that she took us to where the angels appeared to the shepherds!

We saw “Rachel wailing for her children”. There was a funeral for a baby going on in the main church of St. Catherine, and the young mother ran screaming up the aisle and wouldn’t be parted from the coffin. I wept for her. We had just that minute come up from the grotto, and the chapel of the Holy Innocents, where the bones of the children killed by Herod are interred.

Lots of kissing going on today, starting with kissing the star in the grotto – on the Greek Orthodox side. We also saw the grotto where St Jerome called Heironymus translated the Hebrew into the Latin Vulgate. Now we know what Kay’s surname really means! ( er dialecters will get the reference!

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