[9] According to local tradition, Beit Sahour was uninhabited until the 14th century when a number of Muslim and Christian families from Wadi Musa near Petra (today in Jordan) settled in caves on the site of the modern village.

Further immigration in the 18th century from Rashda in Upper Egypt[dubious – discuss], Shobak in Transjordan and Al-Kukaliya "in Syria" cemented the Christian character of the village.

[11][12][13] In spite of the influx of Christian families, they remained in the minority all until 1839, when Muslims from Palestine fought in the armies led by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt in his war against the Turkish Sultan.

[12] Huge losses, due mainly to heat and dehydration rather than battle, meant that three quarters of the male Muslims of Beit Sahour perished, leaving the Christians in the majority.

[17][18] In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Beit Sahur as: This village is a sort of suburb of Bethlehem, situated on the same ridge, with the broad plateau east of it known as the 'Shepherd's Field' ... [with] the small Greek Church of the Grotto of the Shephard, a subterranean chapel reached by 20 steps, containing pictures and mosaic.

[20] A construction text, dating to 1897, engraved in the lintel of a door on Municipality Street has been examined, and was found to be a poem in 19th century Christian naskhi script.

These efforts were documented in 2014 film The Wanted 18, co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker Amer Shomali and Canadian Paul Cowan.

Elias Rishmawi, a member of the Beit Sahour council, is co-founder, together with Ghassan Andoni, Majed Nassar, Rifat Odeh Kassis and Jamal Salameh, of the Alternative Tourism Group (ATG), a non-governmental organisation specializing in tours of the Palestinian territories,[33] where the olive harvest is used as a backdrop for showing the effects of the Israeli occupation and land confiscation on the Palestinian population.

[34] In 1989, during the First Intifada, the Palestinian resistance (Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, UNLU) and Ghassan Andoni and Kamel Danoun, urged people to stop paying taxes to Israel, which inherited and modified the previous Jordanian tax-collection regime in the West Bank.

[38] The Israeli military stopped the consuls-general of Belgium, Britain, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden when they attempted to go to Beit Sahour and investigate the conditions there during the tax strike.

[39] Israel's military occupation had the authority to create and enforce taxes beyond the baseline Jordanian code enacted in 1963 in areas formerly administered by that country, including Beit Sahour.

"[40] The United Nations Security Council considered a resolution demanding that Israel return the property it confiscated during the Beit Sahour tax resistance.

[45] The old core of Beit Sahour is reputed to be close to the place where, according to the New Testament, an angel announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds—the "Annunciation to the shepherds".

[dubious – discuss][48][49] The new Greek Orthodox monastery, which includes on its grounds the ancient church, was established through the efforts of Archimandrite Serapheim Savvaitis as a metochion of the Lavra of St. Sabbas between 1971 and 1989.

An archaeological survey-excavation was conducted at the site in 2010, 2013 and 2016 by Zubair Adawi on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which yielded pottery from the Byzantine era.

In the southern outskirts of the village is the ruin Khirbet Beit Bassa, which is identified with Bethbassi, a fortress in the toparchy of Herodium in which Hasmonean leader Jonathan Appus was besieged by Seleucid general Bacchides.

It surrounded the tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Sahuri, a local saint to whom the local Arab tribe of al-Sawahreh[21] Mujir al-Din mentions this place in a biography of a Muslim scholar Sha'ban bin Salim bin Sha'ban, who died in Beit Sahur al-Atiqah in 1483 at the age of 105.

The villagers paid taxes on wheat, barley, vines or fruit trees, and goats or beehives; a total of 4,500 akçe.

[58] The place was noted by French geographer Guerin in 1863 as being 40 minutes south-east of Jerusalem, a short distance south of the Kidron Valley.