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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
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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 recorded. In the center of the old city is a typical Mediterranean market, full of bazaars and shops bazaar, winding roads, old mansions, churches, squares and coffee houses. This is the place to experience a unique atmosphere with traditional local daily as photographed. We walked the streets on the subsequent night after shop closure, streets were much quiet, safe as the residents anticipated the new year of 2015.
After the visit of the Annunciation Church, it started to rain as we stopped for lunch in a restaurant, hardly known from the outside, yet quite elegant inside. The foods were very good for all of our 3 meals daily.
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 announcement of Jesus' birth came to Mary here in Nazareth (Lk 1:26). Joseph made his living here as a carpenter possibly because it was near Sepphoris, a Hellenistic city being built by Herod Antipas.
Jesus left here at age 30 to be baptized by John (Mk 1:9), and returned to Nazareth before beginning his public ministry (Matt 4:13) and was violently rejected by the people of His town, and thus He moved on to Capernaum (Lk 4:16-30). There is no mention of Him ever returning back to His home town of Nazareth, but he was always identified with it (Matt 21:11), having been called a "Nazarene" which comes from the Hebrew root meaning "branch", in accordance with the promises made to David that King Messiah would be a descendant (branch) from the royal line of King David.
Nazareth was right on the Roman Road to Jerusalem and therefore contact with the whole known world could be made from this small village. In Jesus' time there is a synagogue located there (Lk 4:16), and Jews were living there after the destruction of the second Temple. Eusebius makes mention of a small village called Nazareth in the 4th century A.D. It's first
