Strata
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Church of the Nativity Unscathed After Standoff
BAR Photographer Caught in Bethlehem Crossfire
Despite numerous gun battles, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem suffered remarkably little damage during a recent 39-day siege, in which Israeli troops surrounded the church complex hoping to capture about 40 Palestinian gunmen who had taken refuge inside. Fire did however damage two nearby buildings associated with the church.
At the height of the standoff, some 200 people—including about 60 priests, monks and nuns, armed Palestinian policemen, various civilians (including a BAR photographer) and the gunmen—were trapped inside the church, which Christian tradition says marks the birthplace of Jesus. Intense diplomatic negotiations finally led to a compromise: 13 Palestinians identified by Israel as terrorists were sent into exile in Europe and another 26 gunmen were deported to the Gaza Strip; the rest were released.
The standoff at the church occurred during a major Israeli military incursion into several West Bank Palestinian cities, following a wave of suicide bombings in March that left scores of Israelis dead and hundreds wounded.
When the siege ended on Friday, May 10, the church was in a chaotic state—with bedrolls, rugs (that had been used for sleeping), cooking and washing utensils, garbage and cigarettes strewn about and with the air reeking of human waste. But the church needed only a few hours of cleaning. Services resumed in the church that Sunday.
The priests and monks who endured the siege seemed at pains afterwards not to cast blame on either side. “When the Palestinian gunmen entered, we found ourselves invaded by these people with guns. It was frightening,” Father Nicolas Marques, master of clerics for the Franciscans, told BAR. “We found ourselves between two forces, the Palestinians on the inside and the Israeli military on the outside.”
“The church should not have been occupied,” Marques said, “because the Palestinian Authority has guaranteed protection for all the holy places. But maybe with the situation the way it was, it was their only option,” he added. “I just don’t think it was an appropriate place for the gunmen.”
The church suffered no structural damage despite numerous exchanges of fire between Palestinians and Israelis during the standoff. Some windows were broken and a hole was blown in the roof after a Palestinian’s gun went off accidentally. Two nearby buildings, however, did not fare as well: The parish hall at the Franciscan monastery and three rooms in the Greek Orthodox convent were badly burned. Each side blamed the other for the blazes; a priest interviewed by BAR after the siege ended said he could 015not determine who caused the fires.
Among those trapped inside the church at the beginning of the standoff was photographer Garo Nalbandian, a frequent contributor to BAR and perhaps the premier photographer of Christian holy sites and events in the Holy Land. A lifelong resident of the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, Nalbandian was the official photographer for Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Holy Land in 1964 and for the Jerusalem portion of Pope John Paul II’s trip in 2000.
On April 2nd, the day Israeli troops entered Bethlehem, Nalbandian was working near the church as a cameraman for an Italian television news crew. As fighting erupted, the team made its way to Manger Square. There a fierce gun battle was raging; one of the reporters called a Franciscan priest inside the Church of the Nativity, who was then able to lead the team to a pilgrim’s hostel inside the church complex.
The six-man news crew was inside when a large group of Palestinians, two-thirds of them armed (by Nalbandian’s estimate), broke in through a metal door. Nalbandian later heard a Palestinian gunman claim that the Israelis had broken the door; the photographer surprised the gunman by responding in Arabic, “I know exactly who broke the door.” Nalbandian also upbraided the Palestinians for entering the church with weapons.
Nalbandian and the news team spent their first night in the hostel kitchen as shooting continued outside. They passed the time making spaghetti and enjoying “lots of wine,” Nalbandian told BAR. Nalbandian was amused at one point when the Palestinians, whom the Franciscans were feeding from their own supply, complained that they weren’t given enough food. A priest retorted, “Do you think this is a hotel?”
The Italian embassy in Israel worked quickly to arrange for the news team’s release. At 8 p.m. on the second day of the standoff, two cars dispatched by the embassy appeared in Manger Square, flanked by Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. For Nalbandian’s group, at least, the crisis was over.
The Church of the Nativity is run jointly by the Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian churches under terms, known as the Status Quo, hammered out in the 19th century, when the Holy Land was under Turkish Ottoman rule. Upkeep of various parts of the church is assigned to the three groups, and they follow an agreed-upon schedule for leading mass at the Cave of the Nativity, the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. A similar Status Quo arrangement is in force at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but involves more church groups.
The church groups guard their rights zealously. Those rights were an important factor in the decision of the priests and monks not to abandon the church during the standoff—each group worried that another would encroach on its rights. After the standoff ended, each group cleaned only those parts of the church for which they are responsible.
Also of concern in the early days of the siege was the fate of the bodies of two Palestinians killed by Israeli snipers inside the church compound. The Christians adamantly refused to have the body buried on church grounds for fear that the grave would give Muslims a claim to the site. Christians and Muslims have been battling for years, at times physically, over a Muslim plan to erect a mosque atop the grave of a Muslim saint next to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Canon Andrew White, sent to Bethlehem by the Archbishop of Canterbury in hopes of negotiating a settlement, told the Associated Press early in the standoff, “What happened in Nazareth is a very good example of what could happen if things were to go wrong [at the Church of the Nativity].”
The Church of the Nativity was founded by Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, in 339 A.D. Constantine’s church was a square hall about 90 feet on each side and divided by rows of columns into a main hall and four side aisles. At the northeast end of the church, directly above the birth cave, stood a raised octagonal apse 15 feet long on each side. A 13-foot-wide hole in the center of the apse floor provided pilgrims a view of the cave.
In the sixth century, the Byzantine emperor Justinian partially razed the church and then built a larger structure in its place. Few changes have been made to it since then, despite earthquakes, fires and numerous armies that have swept through the Holy Land in the intervening centuries.
Might the Church of the Nativity become a battle zone once more? The deported Palestinians defiantly vowed to continue their fight against Israel. They did not say whether they would again seek refuge in a church.
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Father Bargil Pixner (1921–2002)
Father Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine monk and excavator of ancient Jerusalem’s Essene Quarter, died unexpectedly on March 5 at age 80. He was buried on Mount Zion, the southwestern hill of Jerusalem, where he had lived for many years at the Dormition Abbey.
Father Pixner actually lived three lives. He was born in 1921 in the German-speaking Italian province of Suedtirol. As a theology student, he was part of the Catholic resistance movement—first against Mussolini and then against Hitler. When he was conscripted into the German army, he helped to convince his comrades to refuse the oath of allegiance to Hitler. The entire regiment refused and was disarmed—a singular event in the history of the Third Reich. Later, because of pro-Jewish remarks, he was condemned to a punitive battalion.
Pixner’s second life began after the war. Although he could have pursued a political career in his homeland, he instead followed his inner calling: In 1946, he was ordained as a Catholic priest. For ten years he served as director of a home for lepers in the Philippines, and for his efforts he was awarded American citizenship. Subsequently, he was active as a spiritual adviser to priests in the United States, Italy and France.
Pixner’s third life began in 1969 when a lifelong dream of his was fulfilled: He went to Israel. There he became one of the founders of the interdenominational and inter-religious peace village Neve Shalom.
In 1973 Pixner joined the German Benedictines as a monk and moved to the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem. Founded in 1898, it hosts an international Benedictine community and also runs a theological school for German students. It is the only theological faculty where Catholics and Protestants study together. Pixner taught Biblical archaeology and Biblical topography at the Abbey.
Pixner’s research centered on the history of Mount Zion. In 1976 he first published his view that a dissident group of Jews known as Essenes lived there. His obstinacy and archaeological efforts paid off. In 1977 he began excavating an ancient city gate that the first-century A.D. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus called the “Gate of the Essenes.”a Pixner uncovered ancient ritual baths (mikva’ot) both inside and outside the current city walls. He also found support for his view that the Essenes inhabited Mount Zion in the Copper Scroll from Qumran. Many of the hiding places of great treasure described in the Copper Scroll are concentrated on Mount Zion. Leading Qumran scholars now accept Pixner’s thesis of an Essene Quarter on Mount Zion.
Pixner’s thesis is especially interesting because a very ancient tradition holds that the first gathering of Jesus’ followers after Easter was on Mount Zion (Acts 2). There they founded a Judeo-Christian synagogue.b Apparently, many Essenes who had been waiting, perhaps impatiently, for the end of time joined the new Christian community.
Pixner always emphasized that both Jesus and his first followers were Jewish. Pixner also searched for the Jewish roots of Christianity at the site of Bethsaida on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
For thousands of Christian pilgrims, Catholics and Evangelicals alike, Pixner made Israel a profound spiritual experience. With his guidance, they followed in the steps of Jesus, to whom Father Pixner had devoted his life.
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What Is It?
A. Jewelry mold
B. Astronomical diagram
C. Board game
D. Divination tool
016
What It Is, Is …
A. Jewelry mold
This 3-by-1.5-inch block of chlorite with ring- and rosette-shapes carved into its surface dates from 1300 B.C. and comes from Tell Bazi, on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. It originally would have been paired with a matching block; when the blocks were fastened together through the holes at the corners, molten gold would have been poured between them through the channels running from the edge (left and top in the photo). The result, after the metal cooled and the blocks were separated, would be delicate gold jewelry. Such molds are usually made from chlorite (sometimes called steatite) because that stone can be sculpted finely and doesn’t break or crack when it comes into direct contact with heat.
This jewelry mold is one of nearly 400 Syrian artifacts on display until September 2 at the Fernbank Natural History Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the exhibition, Ancient Empires, Syria: Land of Civilizations. For more information call 404–929-6300 or visit www.fernbank.edu.
Church of the Nativity Unscathed After Standoff
BAR Photographer Caught in Bethlehem Crossfire
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Footnotes
See Avraham Negev, “Understanding the Nabateans,” BAR 14:06.
See Robert S. MacLennan, “In Search of the Jewish Diaspora,” BAR 22:02.