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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 unwalled 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.
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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 Judaea only. The Emperor Hadrian punished the Judaeans
by prohibitin g 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. (The
view from the ridge).
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.
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Nazareth: Introduction
The Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation
Mary's Well and The Greek Orthodox Church
of St. Gabriel
Touring Nazareth: Logistics and a walk
Nazareth: The view
from the ridge
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. Used by permission.
(www.Lockman.org)
©
2003
Near East Tourist Agency
(NET)
Text
© 2003 Stephen
Langfur
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