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27 November, 2017<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/files_u28_books_fischer_3.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\nI once met a carpenter who had been born in Bethlehem and lived in Galilee. He did seem a little apologetic about his lack of miracles and inability to come up with catchy parables.<\/p>\n
In the Western mind, Bethlehem is irreversibly linked with Christ and our vision of the Holy Land. Mangers. Magi. The Life of Brian<\/em>. But of course, there\u2019s much more. Bethlehem: Biography of a Town<\/em>, by Nicholas Blincoe, is a cross between an informal guide book and a history.<\/p>\n
Blincoe is best known as a novelist, so you would expect his work to contain some souped-up rhetoric superior to the work of the average historian or hack. He opens with a story of how he took a Christmas pudding to Bethlehem one December as a gift. He manages to extend a witty conceit out of the suet cannonball for 18 pages, taking in East-West relations, Derrida, Jewish mysticism and history (\u201ctime literally hinges on Bethlehem, as we count forwards and backwards from Christ\u2019s birth\u201d). It\u2019s a performance that would have had the metaphysical poets standing to applaud.<\/p>\n
If it\u2019s hard to unpick the political and economic morass\u00a0 that is present-day Israel and the West Bank, it\u2019s comforting to know that complexity has always been standard in the region. Almost a suburb of Jerusalem, Bethlehem has attracted attention because of its powerful neighbor (Bethlehem controls Jerusalem\u2019s water supply, so invaders go for it first) and has been caught up in the relentless battles over commerce and ideology in the region.<\/p>\n
Married to a Bethlehem native, Blincoe includes a number of personal anecdotes in his chronicle, ranging from his hanging around the British Museum (an unavoidable destination if you\u2019re investigating the ancient past of the Middle East) to his enjoying an ice-cream in the Popemobile.<\/p>\n
Blincoe doesn\u2019t stint. He goes all the way back to the geology and the creation of the Jordan Rift valley, some 23 million years ago. There\u2019s a bit of a gap until the next substantial item, the famous Ain Sakhri calcite figurine, some 11,000 years old, that was discovered in a cave near Bethlehem. It depicts two entwined bodies and is possibly the oldest representation of sexual intercourse (or a wrestling trophy).<\/p>\n
The role of Bethlehem as a sort of \u201cair-lock\u201d is something Blincoe underlines. It\u2019s a point of contact with the big city, an entry-point for traders and the desert people, or the doorway to the baking voids for those early Christians who had a mania for emulating Christ\u2019s experience in the wilderness.<\/p>\n
The word hermit comes from the Greek for desert, and one of the most successful former hermits was St Jerome, who ended up in residence in Bethlehem. Blincoe is very amusing on St Jerome, a relentless self-publicist, dietician and guru to many rich Roman widows. New Age scamming started a long time ago.<\/p>\n
Visiting a gloomy underground chapel that was supposed to be St Jerome\u2019s study, Blincoe is put in mind of D\u00fcrer\u2019s\u00a0 celebrated print showing the saint hunched under his labours: \u201cIt was something of a disappointment to learn that his actual study was a bright, upper-storey room with a view over the desert. Of course it bloody was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summing up history in a pithy way is one of the book\u2019s charms. Jerusalem and Mount Zion weren\u2019t always the centre of the Jewish world. The Crusades? The first crusade was essentially a land grab by some itchy European warlords. <\/p>\n
I never knew about the Arab contribution to the Catholic Church: a run of Syrian Popes. \u201cMuch like the Cubans of Miami, who tirelessly campaign against the island\u2019s communists, the Arab exiles coloured the Church\u2019s attitude toward Islam.\u201d\u00a0 A dispute in the Church of the Nativity between the Franciscans and the Orthodox monks was one of the causes of the Crimean War.<\/p>\n
You sense that Blincoe is straining to be balanced as we get to the modern era, but unsurprisingly, as someone close to Palestinians, he leans a little to their side. I doubt many non-Palestinians (or even Palestinians) would go along with Blincoe\u2019s characterisation of Yasser Arafat as \u201cone of the most interesting and dynamic political leaders of the 20th century\u201d (assuming he\u2019s using \u201cinteresting\u201d in the traditionally complimentary sense).\u00a0 Blincoe argues that Arafat has been unfairly scapegoated for the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000 by Barak and Clinton. That\u2019s one for academics to chew over.<\/p>\n
Blincoe uses the trendy term \u201celitist\u201d a number of times, as in \u201cthe people may share the anti-elitism of all Palestinians\u201d. This is a lapse for a talented writer. \u201cElitist\u201d, like \u201cpopulist\u201d, doesn\u2019t\u00a0 mean anything but a vague, general disapproval.<\/p>\n
The temple in Jerusalem created a thriving publishing industry because the skins of the many sacrificial animals were turned into vellum, and thus helped to promote the dissemination and status of scripture. Reflecting on this, Blincoe observes a parallel later, that, because of technology and education, \u201cthe Victorian publishing industry gave birth to the modern novel\u201d. I\u2019m puzzled. I suppose it depends how you define \u201cmodern\u201d, but Jane Austen died 20 years before Victoria got to the throne.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem: Biography of a Town<\/em> is a thorough and entertaining account, although it will doubtless , like anything on this subject, enrage some readers.<\/p>\n
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Beat that<\/a><\/p>\n