that is entirely possible. were these ancient artifacts the personal belongings of his mother, mary? we do know that it was a house of the kind that mary and joseph could ve lived in. i personally think it s very possible this was the childhood home of jesus. and what might the childhood of jesus tell us about jesus the man? we are looking at such an important part of human history. according to the gospels, jesus spent his childhood in the village of nazareth, in the region of galilee. today, nazareth is a bustling city of more than 70,000 people in northern israel. here, in a deep cellar beneath a 19th-century convent, lie the remains of what may prove to be one of the most extraordinary discoveries ever made, the very home in which jesus was raised. if this were in fact the childhood home of jesus, it would allow us to picture the world that jesus came from in a way that no other discovery has. how people fed themselves, what people worked at, the political
Place, in a real home. to be able to fill in something from the context in which he grew up would be very, very exciting. for the english archaeologist who made the discovery, it s the find of a lifetime. i don t expect that i will ever again work on a site which is both so fascinating and catches the imagination of quite so many people around the world. first uncovered in the 19th century, the true significance of this site was ignored by mainstream archaeology for more than 100 years. only when ken dark began investigating in 2006 did clear evidence emerge from the dust, the ruins of a first century jewish house. was this simple home where jesus spent the formative years of his life?
That is entirely possible. were these ancient artifacts the personal belongings of his mother, mary? we do know that it was a house of the kind that mary and joseph could ve lived in. i personally think it s very possible this was the childhood home of jesus. and what might the childhood of jesus tell us about jesus the man? we are looking at such an important part of human history. according to the gospels, jesus spent his childhood in the village of nazareth, in the region of galilee.
the journey from the galilei to jerusalem on passover would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 miles and taken on foot about 7 days, so this was a really big undertaking. evidence of first-century jerusalem can be found deep under the modern city. archaeologists tunneled down for years until they finally came to this point here. this is the street level from the time of jesus. you can see the columns here that, that held up the roofs of shops where shopkeepers would have been selling their goods. you can imagine children running through the streets and people yelling at one another, and of course these are the streets where jesus would have walked towards the temple to go up to worship. i mean this this is a very sacred place.
Did it have a well? well, yes. there is a well at the site. did it have a vault under it? yes, the site included a large vaulted area. did that vault include two tombs? yes, there are tombs incorporated in the vault. this did alert me to the possibility that we d found the church of the nutrition. what ken dark says he s found in this underground site matches the description of the church of the nutrition which according to legend was built on the site of jesus childhood home. according to a later tradition, there was also a tomb deep beneath the church belonging to none other than mary s husband. it was believed that the site contained the tomb of saint joseph. one of the strong clues that