About
Bethany (Βηθανία) is recorded in the New Testament as the home of the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, as well as that of Simon the Leper. Jesus is reported to have lodged there after his entry into Jerusalem, and it could be from Bethany that he parted from his disciples at the Ascension. == Location == Bethany is located at the site now also known by the Arabic name al-Eizariya.Bethany has traditionally been identified with the present-day West Bank city of al-Eizariya (Arabic العيزرية "place of Lazarus"), site of the reputed Tomb of Lazarus, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the east of Jerusalem on the south-eastern slope of the Mount of Olives. The oldest house in present-day al-Eizariya, a 2,000-year-old dwelling reputed to have been (or which at least serves as a reminder of) the House of Martha and Mary, is also a popular pilgrimage site.The tomb in al-Eizariya has been identified as the tomb of the gospel account since at least the 4th century AD. Both the historian Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 330) and the Itinerarium Burdigalense (c. 333) mention the Tomb of Lazarus in this location. == Etymology == The root meaning and origin of the name Bethany has been the subject of much scholarship and debate. William Hepworth Dixon devotes a multi-page footnote to it in his The Holy Land (1866), largely devoted to debunking the meaning "house of dates", which is attributed to Joseph Barber Lightfoot by way of a series of careless interpretative mistakes. Dixon quotes at length a refutation of Lightfoot's thesis in the form of a letter by Emanuel Deutsch of the British Museum, who notes that neither the name Bethany, nor any of the roots suggested by Lightfoot, appear anywhere in the Talmud. Deutsch suggests a non-Hebrew root, a word transcribed in Syriac script whose meaning he gives as "House of Misery" or "Poor-house".This theory as to Bethany's etymology, which was eventually also adopted by Gustaf Dalman in 1905, is not without challengers. SOURCESWikipedia