[1] The modern moshav is located at the site of the ancient Israelite settlement known as Bethlehem of Zebulun or Betlehem Zoria(h).

Aviram Oshri, a senior archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), supports this claim, but other researchers at the same institution reject it.

[citation needed] In the Jerusalem Talmud it is referred to as Beth Lehem Zoria, as it was part of the kingdom of Tyre (Ṣūr) at the time.

[5] Archaeologist Ariel Berman discovered a chalk vessel industry from the Early Roman period as well as a huge wine press.

[2] This shows that it was a prosperous city, which is used as an argument in favour of identifying today's Bethlehem-in-the-Galilee with biblical Bethlehem of Zebulon.

[dubious – discuss][citation needed] Due to its proximity to Nazareth, one historian believes that it is the Bethlehem where Jesus was born.

[10] In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman Empire, and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as Bayt Lahm, located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad.

They paid a tax rate of 25% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, cotton, vegetable and fruit gardens, occasional revenues, goats and beehives; a total of 1200 Akçe.

[14] He further noted the ruins of two buildings; one, completely destroyed, had been constructed of good cut stones; the entrance was at the south façade.

[20] In 1932 the Nazi Party gained its first two members in Palestine; Karl Ruff and Walter Aberle from the Templer colony in Haifa.

In December 1941 and in the course of 1942 another 400 German internees, mostly wives and children of men who had enlisted in the Wehrmacht, were released - via Turkey - to Germany for the purpose of family reunification.