UK Archaeologist Claims To Have Found Childhood Home Of Jesus Christ

As families gather to celebrate this Christmas, it can be very easy to forget the true meaning of the festive season.

Photo Insert: The 1st Century dwelling beneath a modern-day convent in Nazareth - what is believed to be the childhood home of Jesus Christ

For two millennia, people across the world have observed the sacred religious holiday with a wide range of traditions. Christians celebrate Christmas Day as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Charlie Pittock reported for the Daily Express.

Though the Bible does not mention a specific date for Jesus’ birth, the gospels of Matthew and Luke both agree that Christ was born in Bethlehem. They both describe Jesus’ birth to a virgin named Mary, but their respective accounts are rather different besides that.

However, the various gospels are in agreement that Jesus’ childhood home was in the town of Nazareth in Galilee, modern-day Israel.

English archaeologist Professor Ken Dark spent 14 years studying the remains of a 1st Century dwelling beneath a modern-day convent in Nazareth. All the clues added up to this being Jesus' childhood home. He published his findings in the book “The Sisters of Nazareth Convent: A Roman-Period, Byzantine, and Crusader Site in Central Nazareth.”

A group of nuns first stumbled upon the dwelling in 1881. Prof. Dark told Artnet News last year: “In many ways, they were way ahead of their time. They conducted a perfectly reasonable rescue excavation or salvage excavation.” He described the discovery as “one of the first examples of an archaeological project directed by a woman”.

The idea that this was Jesus’ home was dismissed by archaeologists in the 1930s, and remained largely forgotten until 2006. The site contained a 1st Century building, partly cut out of rock, which could possibly have been a dwelling.

A Byzantine church was built on the ground above, which Prof. Dark suspects could be the previously lost Church of the Nutrition — built to commemorate the place where Jesus was raised and mentioned in historian Adomnán’s 7th Century book “De Locis Sanctis.”

He told the BBC last year: “We know from written evidence this church was believed in the Byzantine period to have been built on the site of Jesus’ home and the dwelling preserved in its crypt.”

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