Bethel ("House of God") is mentioned in the Bible as the site where Jacob slept and dreamed of angels going up and down a ladder (Genesis 28:19). Some scholars identify Beit El with the site of the biblical Bethel. The first to establish the village of Beitin as the site of Bethel was Edward Robinson, in 1838. Henry Baker Tristram repeated this claim. J. J. Bimson and David Livingston proposed el-Bireh as the site of Bethel, a view rejected by Jules Francis Gomes, who wrote that "The voices of Livingston and Bimson have hardly been taken seriously by those who worked on the excavations of Bethel."
See Bædeker (1898) Route 22 page 249 (Bêtin)
See Bædeker (1876) Route 13 page 324 (Bêtîn)
BETHEL, now called Beitín, stands on the shelving point of a low rocky ridge between two converging valleys, which unite below it, and run off southward into Wady Suweinít. The site is surrounded by higher ground on every side except the S., and yet it is so high that from the upper part of it the dome of the Great Mosk in Jerusalem can be seen. The ruins of the ancient city cover the whole surface of the ridge, and are 3 or 4 acres in extent. They consist of foundations, fragments of walls, and large rude heaps of stones. On the highest point are the remains of a square tower; and towards the S. are the walls of a Greek ch., standing within the foundations of a much older edifice built of large stones. Amid the ruins are about a score of low huts, rudely formed out of ancient materials. In the western valley is a huge cistern 314 ft. long by 217, constructed of massive stones. The southern side is entire, but the others are more or less ruinous. The bottom is now a beautiful grass-plat, watered by two little crystal fountains, from which the cattle of Abraham often drank in former days, and at which the maidens of Sarah were doubtless wont to fill their pitchers, just as the Arab maidens from the village do still.