The Tabernacle of David

In December of 2023 I made the most refined version of my Zion/The City of David is Bethlehem not Jerusalem argument, more refined mainly in that I resisted the urge to trail off the main topic at hand into more specific geographical speculations.

So I do here want to speculate on where in Bethlehem the Tabernacle of David that for a time housed The Ark of The Covenant was located.  But first I need to talk about some of Bethlehem’s History.

When Emperor Hadrian banned Jews from living in Jerusalem he also banned them from living anywhere Jerusalem was visible from.  Jerusalem is visible from Bethlehem. That’s why it’s easy for some more fringe skeptics to try and argue Bethlehem as we know it didn’t even exist before the 130s, there was this massive discontinuity in the population. 

Hadrian also impacted the history of Bethlehem in another way, he built a Temple on the site where the Church of The Nativity now stands.  Fourth Century sources identify it as a Temple to Adonis or Tammuz, it was probably actually originally part of the Cult of Antinous which was probably from the start Synchronized with those kinds of cults.  I doubt that Church is actually the location of the Nativity (the Cave fixation is Anti-Biblical), but even if it was, Jerome is wrong to claim that’s why Hadrian built a Temple there.  

I doubt Pre-Hadrian Bethlehem ever even had a local Christian population to identify and venerate that location.  The New Testament never refers to missions to Bethlehem focusing instead on the Church’s spread Northwards and Westwards from Jerusalem, nor does Eusebius. There aren’t even any later traditions I can find about there being an Apostle in Bethlehem in the first Century. All Ante-Nicene references to Bethlehem are from a distance, from Justin and Origen.  Christian Bethlehem as we now know it really does begin in the 4th Century.

But even if there had been the Religion whose local legacy Hadrian wanted to blot out was Judaism.  In his turning of Jerusalem into Aelia Capitolina the main Temple Complex was built over the former Temple of Herod.  I’m working on another Post about why the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus had to be East of Jerusalem not West or North.

If the original local Jewish population of Bethlehem who Hadrian had just deported remembered that they were the true City of David, then maybe they also remembered where The Tabernacle of David had been?

The Church of The Nativity is most well known to those who’ve never visited it for its underground Caves one of which being where they claim the Manger was. But the Church proper is above those Caves on a Hill with a similar lay out to other Byzantine Churches that can be compared to the design of The Tabernacle and Temple of The Hebrew Bible.

I have also sometimes wondered if one of those Caves could have been the Cave of Adullam.

I believe Jesus was born in a House Joseph owned, so if St Joseph’s Church in Bethlehem is the site of St Joseph’s House like it claims to be, then that is where the Nativity happened.

Now I know some people might eventually say “what if the Church of The Nativity is both?  Maybe Jesus was born where The Tabernacle of David was” and that would be neat.  But The Church of The Nativity is too heavily tied to the false Cave tradition.

The Cave tradition is Anti-Biblical but it also can’t be blamed on Constantine and Helena, it is Pre-Nicene, it’s in Justin Martyr, Origen and the Protoevangelium of James.  But none of them Predate Hadrian’s remaking of this entire region.  I think the Cave tradition came from a desire to presume Hadrian was desecrating the place of The Nativity.

I believe Jesus was born in a House Joseph owned and lived in.  And if the site of David’s Tabernacle was still locally known up until Hadrian it’s unlikely any residential House was there, at best Joseph could have been living in a Davidic Family estate adjacent to it.  So a theory that the Church of The Nativity’s above ground Altar could correlate to where Jesus was born instead of the Cave would be mutually exclusive with that being the Tabernacle of David. 

If I were to consider a second option for the Location of David’s Tabernacle, it would begin by asking if the location of the former Kathisma Church would have been considered part of Bethlehem territory rather than Jerusalem in Antiquity?

The Kathisma or “Church of Mary’s Seat” was an Octagonal Byzantine Church on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem that tradition said marked a place where Mary rested on the way to Bethlehem.  Christians of Late Antiquity symbolically associated Mark with the Ark of the Covenant, so for example at Abu Gosh which was Kirath-Jearim in The Bible a Church dedicated to The Virgin Mark marks where the locals believe The Ark of The Covenant was kept when it was there.

So a Church of Mary’s Seat built around a Rock that The Ark once rested on is very plausible.