Archaeologist May Have Discovered Jesus' Childhood Home
- Amanda Casanova ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor
- Updated Mar 04, 2015
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A British archaeologist claims he has found the house that Jesus grew up in.
Dr. Ken Dark, of the University of Reading, started the Nazareth Archaeological Project in 2004. Two years later, he found remnants of a house that nuns in the 19th century had dug up.
The house has since been identified as a first century structure, Dark told Christian Today.
"It just happened that for a range of reasons, no actual archaeologist had studied the site, and so the significance and date of it had not been realized," he said.
A 7th century text appears to link the home to Jesus’ childhood, and the Byzantines, the people of the eastern Roman Empire, also believed it to be the home of Jesus.
"They liked to build churches, particularly impressive ones, in holy locations associated...with events or personalities in the Gospels, and so there was a Byzantine church built over the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, and another at Bethlehem and so on," he said.
"We know that Nazareth had two impressive churches – one at the Church of the Annunciation, which is still the great cathedral of Nazareth, and near that one, another called the Church of the Nutrition, meaning the upbringing of Christ."
Dark did admit, however, that it is impossible to verify that the site is actually of Jesus’ childhood.
"This is a straightforward piece of archaeological investigation, and so if we can establish on that basis the date of the church and of the house, and by comparing that evidence with the written evidence the identity of the church, that raises the possibility that this really is the house of Jesus,” he said.
Publication date: March 4, 2015