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Nazareth is mentioned many times in the New Testament. Among the most important events …
- The birth of Jesus was announced by the angel Gabriel to a “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary” (Luke 1:27, ESV)
- Jesus began His ministry by reading from a scroll in a synagogue in Nazareth after 40 days of fasting, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:18a)
- Pilate affixed a sign on the cross of Jesus that proclaimed, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19)
Nazareth was a small community in Galilee of about 50 houses and 400 inhabitants at the time of Jesus. For many years, in the absence of definitive archaeological evidence for the existence of Nazareth, skeptics claimed that the town was a myth, thereby implying that Jesus must be a myth as well.
However, excavations now reveal the existence of Nazareth in the first century. My favorite story begins in the 1880s, with nuns-turned-amateur-archaeologists investigating the area around their Sisters of Nazareth convent. These excavations discovered a first-century courtyard house, olive oil presses, water cisterns, and many other artifacts.
The nuns’ efforts attracted considerable and unjustified scorn from professional archeologists, and their work was basically ignored until 2006, when Ken Dark (noted scholar) began the Nazareth Archeological Project. The Project re-examined all previous discoveries and, in the process, revisited the first-century courtyard house that had been partially carved out of a pre-existing cave, a cave with a spring of water inside.
In subsequent centuries, this house ceased to be used as a residence and was converted into a church. Why? Ken Dark writes …
While the discovery of a fourth-century and later cave-church is itself interesting, one may also be able to relate this to the description of late fourth-century Nazareth by Egeria, a Western pilgrim. Egeria describes a cave-church in Nazareth, considered by her to be where the Virgin Mary had lived, with a well.
House, cave, spring, church, and fourth-century reports of it being known as the house where Mary lived. And perhaps when Joseph, Mary, and Jesus returned to Nazareth after they escaped from Herod and sojourned in Egypt, they lived in this house, making it …
The childhood house of Jesus!
I love this quote by Dallas Willard (another Christian scholar) …
Evangelicals often have a tendency to find implausible solutions to difficulties in the Bible and to be satisfied that they have once again vindicated the Word of God. On the other hand, critical scholars tend to find errors in the Bible where none exist.
Ken Dark argues that we can only speculate about whether the house in Nazareth was the home of Jesus. My point, based upon the Willard quote above, is that doubters previously denounced the legitimacy of Jesus and the gospel because there was no evidence outside the Bible for Nazareth. Now, we have so much evidence that evangelicals like myself can speculate about the plausibility of a house being the former home of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
HHHHMMMHHM. Another win for the Bible!