Faith


Exploring Jesus’ Childhood Home


Once a small Galilean village, Nazareth today is filled with reminders of its first-century roots.


I BY JAMES R. STRANGE


n the early first century, Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth was a Galilean village with a pop- ulation probably numbering only


in the hundreds. Nazareth today is a very diff erent


place. With nearly 80,000 residents, it is one of the largest cities in north- ern Israel, but its population is packed into just a few square miles of close-set houses built along steep, narrow streets. Around 70% of Nazareth’s resi-


dents are Muslim and 30% are Chris- tian (primarily Latin and Greek Cath- olics and Greek Orthodox), while Jews make up the bulk of the population of the adjacent city of Nof HaGalil. Thanks to this diversity, Nazareth


has become well known for its toler- ance, with Muslim sheikhs and Boy Scouts marching in the annual Christ- mas Eve parade, church bishops and Christian Boy Scouts participating in


60 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2025


the parade on the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, and many Jewish families from Nof HaGalil fi lling Nazareth’s restaurants on Friday evenings. Many who visit Nazareth, of course,


come to see sites and places associated with the life of Jesus. Outside of the New Testament,


however, Nazareth is rarely men- tioned in ancient and medieval sourc- es. It does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, Josephus, or early rabbinic writings, and receives no mention in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which contains stories about Jesus’ childhood, or the Pro- tevangelium of James, which tells of Mary’s childhood. We have a late fourth-century


report that Emperor Constantine granted permission for a church to be built in Nazareth, and between the fourth and ninth centuries, Christian pilgrims visited a cave that was identi- fi ed with Mary’s house, as well as vari-


ous churches identifi ed with the site of the annunciation, the home of Joseph, Jesus’ childhood home, and the syna- gogue where Jesus learned his ABCs. Thanks to these long-venerated


spaces, today there is much to see nes- tled among Nazareth’s sweet shops (the city is famous for them), falafel stands, and clothing boutiques. The Basilica of the Annunciation,


whose black cupola makes it the most visible building in the city, was con- structed in the 1960s in part to preserve earlier holy spaces following the demo- lition of a church that dated to the fi rst half of the 18th century. Between demolition and construc-


tion, archaeologists conducted exten- sive excavations. The present church preserves


the outline of the 12th-century Cru- sader church. Beneath an octagon in the fl oor, we can see into the “lower church” that contains the apse of a fi fth-century Byzantine monastery church adjacent to a grotto that Cath- olic tradition continues to venerate as the site of the archangel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary (Luke 1:26-38). Elsewhere on the church grounds, archaeologists uncovered the remains of house walls, oil presses, storage chambers, and silos from the fi rst- century village. St. Joseph’s Church, just to the


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