Could this be Jesus’s childhood home?
THERE was, he admits somewhat ruefully, no big “eureka” moment. As Dr Ken Dark descended the steps under the convent of the Sisters of Nazareth he did not feel the thrill of discovery. That has all changed now.
With the publication of his report into fi nding what he believes is the childhood home of Jesus, archaeologist Dr Dark has just had one of the most thrilling days of his life.
“I’ve never known anything like it,” he said yesterday. “It has been reported in Nigeria. I’ve just had Russian TV on the phone and I’m due on the radio in half an hour. This story has gone all round the world and the world is going crazy over it.”
Since we are talking about one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever, this is hardly surprising. For make no mistake, whether you are a Christian or not, the identifi cation of what is very probably the house where the founder of one of the world’s major religions grew up is a very big deal.
The site has the potential to become a place of pilgrimage to rival Bethlehem or Jerusalem. At the very least, it is a hugely important historical fi nding from the imperial Roman era.
But back in the summer of 2005 when Dr Dark, a specialist in Roman archaeology from Reading University, and his all- British team of professional archaeologists and enthusiasts began working in Nazareth, such thoughts were nowhere near his mind.
“I’m not a biblical archaeologist,” he said. “I don’t go about with a trowel in one hand and the Bible in the other. We were looking at how Nazareth developed and how its status as a place of Christian pilgrimage affected the landscape.”
It has long been thought that the convent of the Sisters of Nazareth sits over the site of a church built by the Byzantines who followed the Romans in occupying the region and stayed until the 7th century. But when the nuns led Dr Dark down into the cellar he found more than he bargained for.
“Nobody was more surprised than me to see spread out before me a vast array of walls and archaeological features such as a water system,” said Dr Dark.
To the right was what looked very much like a cave church known as the Church of the Nutrition which was built by the Byzantines some time between the 4th and 6th centuries. The layout and features of the church and two tombs beside it matched a detailed description in a text written in 670AD by a monk named Adomnan in which he mentioned a church standing on the spot “where once there was the house in which the Lord was nourished in his infancy”.
But to the left was a house consisting of a series of rooms built out of the limestone hill. One room was completely intact with a full- height doorway. Another had a stairway next to one of its walls. Parts of the original chalk fl oor were visible.
The fact that the house had been cut out of the hillside had helped to ensure its preservation. Unlike a built wall, a hillside does not fall or get knocked down. As Dr Dark and his team examined the soil layers it dawned on him that the house was several centuries older than the church.
The incorporation of the hillside into the structure, the evidence that the walls had been cut out of the rock with much older implements all pointed to the house dating back to the 1st century AD.
Very little of 1st- century Nazareth has survived so the fact that an early Christian church had been built over the house – followed by
HIS team also unearthed cooking pots and limestone vessels which he could defi nitively date back to “no earlier and no later than the 1st century”. The limestone vessels suggest the occupants of the house were Jewish, as in the Jewish faith limestone is considered to be impervious to impurity.
As everyone knows, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. But it was in Nazareth, her home town in what is now northern Israel, that his mother Mary learned that she was pregnant with the Son of God – an event commemorated in the Church of the Annunciation which is across the road from the convent and the site of the new discovery. After fl eeing into exile in Egypt, it was to Nazareth that Mary and Joseph returned with the baby Jesus, who grew up as a carpenter’s son. In the Bible he is sometimes referred to as Jesus the Nazarene.
According to Dr Dark the house carved out of the limestone hill is just the sort of home that the family of an artisan like Joseph would have lived in.
“These were the typical homes of everyday people,” said Dr Dark.
IT IS also known that during the Roman occupation Nazareth was a busy place experiencing a building boom, meaning there was lots of work for craftsmen such as Joseph and perhaps also his growing son.
The Sisters of Nazareth gave Dr Dark full permission to excavate the site. He said: “They could not have been more helpful but they were not terribly surprised by what we found. They said they have always thought it was Jesus’s home.”
Dr Dark published interim reports on his fi ndings in 2006 and 2012 but his fi nal report will be published as a book.
“As an archaeologist the thrill of discovery doesn’t really come in to play at the time as you are too busy engaging with highly technical data,” he said. “But it is amazing to see how the fi ndings have been received.
“In 2012 I discovered a whole town which was previously unknown by the Sea of Galilee and it didn’t get this sort of response. I was 54 on Monday so this is quite a way to celebrate my birthday.
“The simplest reason for believing it is the home of Jesus is that the Byzantines believed it and they were a lot closer to the early Christian period than we are.
“Of course there isn’t a name plate to say this is the childhood home of Jesus. It can’t be proved on archaeological grounds. But there is no archaeological reason to say this is NOT his home.”
In other words, perhaps all that is needed is a little faith.