Issued to mark the 2,000th anniversary of Bethlehem, this coin was struck during a period of acute political dislocation for Jordan — just two years after the Six-Day War, in which Israel had seized the West Bank, including Bethlehem itself. Jordan still claimed sovereignty over the territory and continued issuing commemoratives tied to it, a deliberate assertion of administrative legitimacy over land no longer under Hashemite control.
The .999 fine silver specification is unusually pure for a circulation-adjacent commemorative of this period; most contemporaries settled for .925.
Issued to mark the 2,000th anniversary of Bethlehem, this coin was struck during a period of acute political dislocation for Jordan — just two years after the Six-Day War, in which Israel had seized the West Bank, including Bethlehem itself. Jordan still claimed sovereignty over the territory and continued issuing commemoratives tied to it, a deliberate assertion of administrative legitimacy over land no longer under Hashemite control.
The .999 fine silver specification is unusually pure for a circulation-adjacent commemorative of this period; most contemporaries settled for .925.