place
Bethphage
Βηθφαγή
- verses
- 3
- first named
- Matthew 21:1
- last named
- Luke 19:29
- feature
- settlement
- coordinates
- 31.78°N · 35.25°E
Et Tur (OpenBible)
Scholarship offers 3 identifications for this place. The leading one is shown; the others are recorded in the gazetteer.
Description
Bethphage in the text
Bethphage, meaning "house of unripe figs" in Hebrew, was a village located on the Mount of Olives, near Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. It is mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels in connection with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
In Matthew 21:1, Mrk.11.1, and Luke 19:29, Jesus and His disciples approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives. It was from Bethphage that Jesus sent two of His disciples to retrieve a donkey and a colt, on which He would ride into Jerusalem, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9.
The fact that Bethphage is mentioned alongside Bethany suggests that the two villages were in close proximity to each other. Bethany is known as the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead (Jhn.11.1, 38-44).
The exact location of Bethphage is not specified in the Bible, but it was likely situated on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, near the road leading from Jericho to Jerusalem. Its name, "house of unripe figs," may refer to the presence of fig trees in the area or to a local feature associated with the cultivation or processing of figs.
Bethphage's significance in the Gospels lies in its role as the starting point for Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which marked the beginning of the events leading up to His crucifixion and resurrection. The village's proximity to Jerusalem and its location on the Mount of Olives, a site of great prophetic and eschatological importance, further underscores its significance in the Gospel narrative.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Stands in the same events as
- Olives Mount3 events
- Bethany2 events
- Jesus1 event
The pattern
Where Bethphage is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
3 verses across 3 of 66 books; 63 write the name nowhere. Named in Matthew (1), Mark (1) and Luke (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 3, across 3 books.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
What happened here
Atlas's reading of each chapter this place appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources