JERUSALEM. 
made. It has not hitherto excited the attention 
of any writer by whom Bethlehem is described: 
for Quaresmms\ who has written a chapter " De 
Cisternd Bethlehem quce et David nuncupaturj' 
places this upon the road to Jerusalem, at a 
considerable distance from the town. 
The tradition respectina; the Cave of the Account of 
. Bethlehem. 
Nativity seems so well authenticated, as hardly 
to admit of dispute. Having been always held 
in veneration, the oratory established there by 
the first Christians attracted the notice and 
indignation of the Heathens so early as the time 
of Adrian, who ordered it to be demolished, 
and the place to be set apart for the rites of 
Adonis. This happened in the second century, 
and at a period in Adrian's life when the Cave of 
tlie Nativity was as well known in Bethlehem as 
the circumstance to which it owed its celebrity. 
In the fourth, or in the beginning of the fftJi 
qentury, we accordingly find this fact appealed 
to by St. Jerom as a notorious testimony by 
which the Cave itself had been identified'*. 
(3) Elucidatio Terr. Sanct. torn. II. jo. 614. Jntv.\639. 
(4) " Bethleemnunc nostram, et augustissimum orbis locum de quo 
Psalmista canit (Ps. 84. 12.) Veritas de terra chta est, lucus inumbra- 
hat Thamus, id est, Adonidis : et in specu ubi quondam Christus 
parvTilus vagiit, Veneris Araasius plangebatur." Hierovymus, Ej>is(. 
ad Paulin. p. 564. 
