The Village Where Jesus May Have Taken Refuge Is Losing Its Christians

A forgotten place in John’s Gospel and the Christians still calling it home

Taybeh, a Palestinian Christian village northeast of Jerusalem, is widely identified as the strongest modern candidate for the Ephraim mentioned in John 11:54. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

I have a habit of disappearing down biblical rabbit holes.

Give me an ancient inscription, an archaeological site or a village mentioned once in the Gospels, and I can lose an excessive amount of time trying to work out exactly where it was. That was pretty much what happened when I came across a place called Ephraim in John’s Gospel.

I had read the name countless times without really noticing it. Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead. The authorities have decided he is becoming dangerous and begin plotting to kill him. John then tells us that Jesus stops moving openly among the people and withdraws with his disciples to a town near the wilderness called Ephraim.

That is almost everything John tells us, so naturally, I wanted to know where it was.

What I expected was a pleasant excursion into biblical geography: competing locations, ancient maps, perhaps an archaeological argument or two. There is plenty of that, as it turns out. But somewhere during the research, the article I thought I was writing began to change.