The birth and life of Jesus has always been of interested to all. The early life and the place of his childhood has always been a mystery and a new research claims to have unearthed the home where Jesus spent his childhood.
In a recent book “The Sisters of Nazareth Convent: A Roman-period, Byzantine, and Crusader site in central Nazareth”, Prof. Ken dark of the University of Reading in England says that he has unearthed the location of the home where Jesus lived when he was a child.
The ruins were found under a modern day convent. Dark spent more than a decade studying these first century ruins. Though the place was suggested as the home of Jesus in the 19th century, there was no proof to establish it. The professor took up the research and started exploring the site.
The home of Jesus is now claimed under a Byzantine-era church, which is itself beneath the Sisters of Nazareth Convent. Dark has revealed that he did not make any excavation but correlated all the evidence of the previous studies and excavations.
As evidence to his findings that it was the house of Jesus, Dark mentions that a person who was skilled in stonework built the house. Joseph. Gather of Jesus, was known as a “tekton” in Bible. Tekton is a word that means craftsman or carpenter.
Another archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre said that she had come across a small site of Early Roman Houses in the Chemin Neuf International Mary Centre in central Nazareth, close to the site examined by Dark. This place is where Jesus is thought to have been brought up.
The archaeological site beneath the Sisters of Nazareth Convent is located close to the present day basilica. The area is generally accepted as the ancient core of the small Roman-period Jewish village. A Roman burial cave as well as remains of some buildings were earlier unearthed here.
The researchers believe that more study was needed in the surrounding areas to find out more evidence.
