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The Jezreel Plain is bounded on the north by a ridge. This has
a dent in its top. In the bottom of the dent sat the tiny un-walled village where
Jesus grew up.
Today
Nazareth is the largest Arab city in Israel, numbering 70,000 Muslims and
Christians. The conical dome of the Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation
stands out among many smaller buildings, a constant landmark. Just north of it
stands the Church of St. Joseph. The Franciscan property containing these
churches probably covers most of the ancient village. Just to the west (where
Casa Nova is today) was the cemetery. To the east was a valley (now Pope Paul VI
street) and then a large field. About 500 yards outside the town, at the base of
the northern slope, there are three springs whose water is channeled today into
the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel.
The Nazareth of Jesus' youth had but a few hundred people.
Archaeological excavations have revealed little but rock-cut installations, such
as tombs from the Middle Bronze Age (2100-1550 BC), silos from the Iron Age
(1200-586 BC) and, from later periods, parts of olive and wine presses,
cisterns, and holes for storage jars. Amid the zealous search for sacred
connections, some of these have achieved cultic status (probably unwarranted).
(Horsley, p. 109) The most dramatic find is the earliest known inscription
containing the words "Hail, Mary," from the early 5th century, roughly inscribed
by someone in Greek at the base of a column. The most splendid discovery dates
from the Crusaders: a series of well-preserved capitals, buried for safekeeping
in a cavern after the victory of Saladin in 1187, depicts scenes from the lives
of the Apostles. These finds and others may be viewed in the museum of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Beside the Nazareth of Jesus' youth was a much bigger town,
Yapha, atop the ridge to the south (Yafia today). Josephus Flavius fortified it
with a double wall during the first Jewish revolt against Rome (66-70AD), and it
was the scene of a major battle. Above its Greek Orthodox church are scant
remains of an ancient synagogue, including elements reminiscent of synagogues
from the third and fourth centuries AD.
Four miles to the northwest of ancient Nazareth lay the first
capital of Galilee under Herod Antipas: Sepphoris (called Tzippori in Hebrew).
Between Yapha and Sepphoris, two important towns, Nazareth itself was so
insignificant that it fails to get a mention either in the First Testament
(though it existed then) or in Josephus. The latter names more than sixty
localities in Galilee, but not it. In view of the town's unimportance, we can
understand Nathanael's amazement: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
(John 1:46) Pilate was joking, perhaps, when he let it be inscribed on the
cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."
The insignificance of the place is evidence (in addition to
the word of the Gospels) that Jesus really did grow up here. No one, inventing a
town for his Messiah, would have placed him in Podunk!
Later, Nazareth must have been more substantial. In the 2nd
century AD, many Galilean cities still lay in waste as a result of the first
revolt against Rome (66-70 AD). Another revolt in 132-135 (led by Bar Kokhba)
occurred, it would seem, in Judea only. The Emperor Hadrian punished the
Judeans by prohibiting circumcision, thus forcing the pious to leave. Among
them were the 24 priestly families whose ancestors had officiated in the Temple.
Each of these resettled in a town in Galilee. According to an inscription found
in a 5th-century synagogue at Caesarea Maritima, one of the priestly families
(that of Happizzes, mentioned in 1 Chronicles 24:15) made its home in Nazareth.
The situation of the village, nestled in its mountain valley,
might tempt us to think it was tucked away from the world. Not so. Jesus had
only to climb the southern rim of the ridge to see the Jezreel Plain spreading
below. Having read the Song of Deborah (Judges 5) in school, he had before him
the whole theatre of the battle with the Canaanites (as well as the future
Armageddon). It was from this ridge that his townsfolk, according to Luke 4:29,
would later attempt to throw him.
Crossing to the town's northern rim, Jesus would have seen the
acropolis of Sepphoris (see map above). This city must have carried bitter
associations for the villagers. In Jesus' infancy, after the death of Herod the
Great, it had risen in revolt, and the Romans had taken rough revenge, selling
the inhabitants as slaves. The scars would still have been fresh. The Galileans
also groaned, no doubt, under the burden of taxes and rents that they had to pay
to maintain the aristocrats of such a luxurious city, especially Herod's son,
the tetrarch of Galilee, Antipas.
Relatives of Jesus, who believed in him as the Christ,
continued to live in Nazareth in the centuries before the first church was built
here. During the persecution by Decius (249-51), a man named Conon was arrested.
He told the court: "I am from the city of Nazareth in Galilee. I am of the
family of Christ, to whom I offer a cult [which has existed] from the time of my
ancestors."
Thus, in Nazareth, there seems to have been a continuous
presence of believers. They may have preserved the memory of the house where
Mary lived. In that case, they could have shown the spot to the founder of the
Byzantine church of the Annunciation, the remains of which one sees inside
today's Roman Catholic Church . This founder may have been the Deacon Conon of
Jerusalem, who lived in the early 5th century: his name is inscribed in a mosaic
on its northwest side.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE(r),
(c) Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The
Lockman Foundation. (www.Lockman.org)
© 2003 Near East Tourist
Agency (NET)
Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur
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