NAZARETH: Days 01, 02 of 21,22 of 2015: Locations #01, #02, #03, #04.
+ The Greek Orthodox Church of Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel and Mary’s Well (LOC #01): The East Orthodox claims the very site of the Annunciation
+ The Synagogue Church (LOC #02) : Jesus proclaimed the first ministry, Matt 13:54; Luke 4:16. Next to the Greek Catholic Synagogue Church
+ The Church of Annunciation (LOC #03): The Archangel Gabriel told Mary who that she would bear the child Jesus
+ The Greek Orthodox Church of Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel (LOC #04)
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PERSONAL NOTES:
Nazareth was the first site we visited, the House of Mary as it was normally called. We arrived at the airport Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv from Rome in 4.5 hrs of flight, so the first anticipation was grandeur. The bus drove us about 1:15 hr to get to Nazareth in the evening. The city was congested with vehicles as we got off from the main freeway; it was the last night of Christmas shopping before shop closure, the street where our hotel staying was closed for a concert. People poured out on the streets with festival spirits of the holiday. Peace time and holiday spirit were everywhere on the streets of Nazareth. We mingled with the locals in the crowd to see a bit of the concert and had a taste of town, the crowd stayed late into the night.
In the morning after breakfast, instead of taking the main street straight down to the Annunciation Church, more than a mile from the main, we walked from our hotel thru the winding alley streets of the town, where Jesus walked. A few carpenter shops were along the way, a trademark of St Joseph perhaps as photographed. In the center of the old city is a typical Mediterranean market, full of bazaars and shops, winding roads, old buildings, churches, squares, restaurants, and coffee houses. This is the place to experience a unique atmosphere with traditional local daily as photographed. We walked the streets at subsequent night after shop closure, streets were much quiet to the end of the night, safe as the residents anticipated the new year of 2015.
IMAGE SEQUENCE: The images in this page were the collection of the morning walk from our hotel to the sites in sequence at each location of the described churches. In the morning walk ,the locations of these churches were very close to each other within short distance walks the alley windings and turns made us disoriented of their proximity; the House of Mary (Basilica of Annunciation) and St Joseph Church (built on his carpenter’s shop) were next door to each other; between the two churches were the open excavation of Nazareth remnants from the first century in which “Mary’s kitchen” was found. The Synagogue Church, Jesus’ first ministry in Luke 4:16, was about 1,000ft (300m) from both sites.
Nazareth was much less than 500 people during Jesus time, so this was a small town. Jesus went east from Nazareth, 15 miles to the Tiberias, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, to handpick the first Apostles. Among the locations was the House of Peter, by the shoreline, to be visited later.
After the visit of the Annunciation Church, it started to rain as we stopped for lunch in a restaurant, hardly noticeable from the outside, yet quite elegant inside. The foods were good in all 3 meals a day. We just visited all 4 locations of Nazareth churches within walking distance in the morning.
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JESUS in NAZARETH
Jesus grew up in Nazareth, which was a very small village near the Plain of Esdralon in Galilee. Although it is not mentioned in the Old Testament, there have been excavations revealing settlements in the area dating back to the Bronze Age, and tombs dating from the iron age to the Hasmonean period. The Biblical narrative reveals that Joseph and Mary lived here after their betrothal, in the an
