BETHABARA

BETHABARA. — A name that Origen (PG 14, 270) substituted for «Bethania» in Io. 1:28, since he had been unable to identify a locality of this name on the eastern bank of the Jordan, from which river the well-known Bethania is 180 stadia distant. The name Βηθαβαρά was probably suggested to him by Bethbera in Iudc. 7:24, a locality that Origen imagined to lie beyond the river because of V. 25. On the map of Madaba, B. is indicated on the right bank of the Jordan, at the latitude of Jericho. Origen’s textual correction, accepted by many of the Fathers and introduced into the Greek manuscripts of the textus receptus, is today commonly rejected.

Domenico Trisoglio