How cool would it be to see the house where Jesus grew up! It’s not certain, but archaeologists have excavated a courtyard house in Nazareth which may be the one.
The site within the Sisters of Nazareth Convent has had unusual interest for Christians from earliest times. A complex sequence of building over the site, whether it be Crusader walls, a Byzantine cave church, or Roman-period tombs, reveals a diligent and reverent effort to preserve the site. Did all this later effort indicate that the site was considered very important—perhaps because it was related to Jesus’ home?
The home was built of carved-out rock walls in a limestone hillside, to which stone-built walls were added. The rectilinear structure had a series of rooms. Cooking pottery and a spindle whorl found at the site point to domestic occupation, and limestone vessels indicate Jewish residents.
A seventh-century pilgrim account known as De Locus Sanctis describes two large churches in the center of Nazareth. One is clearly identified with the Church of the Annunciation. The other stood nearby and was built over vaults that also contained a spring and the remains of two tombs. At the recently excavated site, archaeologists indeed found evidence of a former Byzantine church with a spring and two tombs in its crypt. The first-century house, now thought to be the home of Jesus, stands directly between the two tombs just as the pilgrim account says.
Have they found the house where Jesus grew up? Archaeology doesn’t have the certain evidence yet, but they also have no archaeological reason why this identity should be discounted. Certainly it seems this is where the Byzantine Christians believed Jesus had spent his childhood in Nazareth.
Source: “Has Jesus’ Nazareth House Been Found?” Dr. Ken Dark. Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April, 2015.
