Beth- El (Hebrew: "House of El " or " House of God"; named because of the tradition of translation and Bethel ) is mentioned in the Bible, place, 17 km north of Jerusalem and 16 km south of Shiloh in Israel or the West Bank.
In the Bible, Bethel is mentioned several times and partly contradictory: Here Jacob shall be published on the run from Esau Jacob's ladder in a dream, and he was troubled, and said,
This alleged event repeats similar in the Bible, in ( Genesis 35.1 to 15 EU) in the statement.
But the same place called Beth- El appeared earlier on in the Bible in connection with Abraham, which states that it is contradictory that allegedly Jacob, who lived much later, to have given the town its name. ( Genesis 12:1-9 EU)
Furthermore, Bethel is located by following Bible passage:
During the Israelite period it was an important religious center and temporarily competed with Jerusalem to reputation. The first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Jeroboam I, can in Bethel, set up as well as in Dan is a golden calf in order to provide a counterpart to the central sanctuary, the temple in the southern kingdom. Jeroboam I is therefore condemned by the Deuteronomistic historians looking at the Jerusalem Temple as the only legitimate sanctuary of YHWH.
The place is found today near the Palestinian village in the West Bank Beitin. It is believed that the name Beitin is the Arabic form of the former betel. Nearby there is the Jewish settlement Beit El, the but was built after the Six Day War in 1967 Israel there.