Where was Ephraim, the town to which Jesus withdrew before his last Passover?

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John's Ephraim is usually identified with et-Taiyibeh (Taybeh), a hilltop village in the West Bank about 21 km north-north-east of Jerusalem and 7 km north-east of Bethel in a straight line, on the edge of the wilderness that falls away to Jericho, some 17 km to the south-east; the map point stands there. The identification is likely but not proved: it rests on the name, on Eusebius' village Aphra five miles east of Bethel, and on taking John's Ephraim, as Eusebius already did, for the same town as Ephron and Ophrah of Benjamin. Other sites have been proposed, and the Gospel gives no distance. John tells why Jesus went there. After the raising of Lazarus at Bethany the council resolved to kill him: “Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.” Taybeh is about 21 km from Bethany, a day's walk, near enough to return and far enough from Jerusalem to be out of the way. The next verse begins the end: “the Jews’ passover was nigh at hand”, and six days before it Jesus came back to Bethany. The Old Testament knows the place under several spellings: Absalom held his sheep-shearing “in Baal-hazor, which is beside Ephraim”, and Abijah of Judah took from Jeroboam “Beth-el with the towns thereof… and Ephrain”. Josephus says that in AD 69 Vespasian “took Bethel and Ephraim, two small cities” before riding up to Jerusalem. Taybeh is today a Palestinian Christian village, with the ruins of the Byzantine church of St George at its edge.