On Christmas Eve, Bethlehem’s Church of Nativity rebuilt in Minecraft
“With Israel being of major importance to multiple religions, it’s essential that people come to see the sites.”
By AARON REICHBethlehem’s Church of Nativity rebuilt in Minecraft(photo credit: BTE ISRAEL & THE WEST BANK / SIMPLEX MAPPING LTD)
Gamers have taken to celebrating the Christmas holiday on Thursday by fully recreating the iconic Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the popular video game Minecraft.As part of the Minecraft Build The Earth (BTE) project, which seeks to fully recreate the Earth in the video game on a 1:1 scale model, the BTE Israel team is going all out to build the famous church of Jesus’s birthplace.The design and architecture of the in-game structure is based on a 3D model provided by Simplex Mapping, a company that often works with Israeli municipalities to make 3D terrain models.The BTE Israel effort is still ongoing, and as a result, the fully constructed world has yet to be finished, and is therefore not yet available for the public. But for the Bethlehem project, anyone is available to join their server on the popular messaging service Discord, linked here.The church is the latest major collaborative event for the BTE Israel team, which previously held massive events for other projects like the Knesset and Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. But unlike the others, this new project has helped the team attract a new surge of attention.“Doing the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem is a big deal. The event has gotten a lot of attention from users and has resulted in an increase in sign-ups as people want to take part,” BTE Israel manager Bernard Moerdler told The Jerusalem Post.“We are excited for it and, most of all, excited to have the server open for the public for the duration of the event," he said. "It serves as a great load test for us, to see how much activity we can theoretically handle – so when we do go fully public, we are ready.”But there is a deeper significance to building the Church of the Nativity.Speaking to the Post's Magazine earlier in December, Moerdler explained that places like Bethlehem and Jerusalem’s Old City are especially important due to the religious and cultural significance they hold for the many diverse people that live in Israel and the West Bank, especially the many important landmarks in these cities.“With Israel being of major importance to multiple religions, it’s essential that people come to see the sites,” he said.This can be seen as being in line with BTE Israel’s motto: “Breaking the divides between – us one block at a time.”
