JbAC 63 (2020) Seiten: 217-239

The toponym »Bethabara beyond the Jordan« once materialized the exegetical and territorial ambitions of late ancient Christian scholars, monks, and emperors. Informed by nineteenth-century textual scholarship, however, critics today generally affirm that »Bethany« is the appropriate appellation for the place beyond the Jordan where, according to tradition and scripture, John once baptized (Joh. 1,28). The twined pilgrimage sites at Qasr al-Yeh¯ud and Al-Maghtas concretize this shift in nomenclature, with both the National Park and the UNESCO World Heritage Site claiming to be »Bethany«. Yet the name Bethabara endures: Employing an alternative etymology from that of Origen of Alexandra, archaeologists now associate Bethabara with an Aramaic term for »the place of the crossing«, locating it along the Roman road from Jericho to Livias. In Christian antiquity, Origen’s etymological rationale was also dropped though the reading Bethabara was repeatedly affirmed in Greek contexts and places were constructed to carry this name. It is now impossible to cross the Jordan at the ancient ford and, outside of the Greek Orthodox tradition, Bethabara has been erased or forgotten. Still, the migration of these twinned toponyms in and out of manuscripts and monuments points to a larger truth: textual and territorial infrastructures must be repeatedly refreshed if they are to maintain their illusion of permanence. Eccentric behaviors settle into patterns that make what is odd or strange seem static or inescapable. Rivers, however, are unpredictable, change is inevitable, and what seems to be stable is only a temporary condition.