Researchers may have found home of Jesus Christ
Researchers may have found the home of Jesus Christ. And it isn’t your typical suburban home, according to research published in the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology.
The house, which is located in Nazareth where Jesus was believed to be from, is cut into a rock wall and primarily made of “mortar-and-stone walls,” according to Fox News.
The report said the home was also built with limestone, which, according to Jewish beliefs, signifies purity. This suggests that a Jewish family, which could have been Jesus’ family, lived in that house.
The home has several rooms, a doorway and a staircase. It also includes a cooking pots and a spindle whorl used for spinning thread, according to Fox News.
“Was this the house where Jesus grew up? It is impossible to say on archaeological grounds,” said Dr. Ken Dark, an archaeologist who examined the home for the Biblical Archaeology Review. “On the other hand, there is no good archaeological reason why such an identification should be discounted.”
You can view pictures of the home at LiveScience.
But Jesus’ house isn’t the only biblical artifact that’s made headlines in recent weeks. This past Sunday, Brittany Binowski and I wrote about the Shroud of Turin, which was recently the subject of study in the first of a six-part series called “Finding Jesus” on CNN.
The Shroud, which many believe Jesus was wrapped in after his death, offers what could be the first clue to discovering Jesus’ appearance, according to the documentary. But the Shroud has been wrapped up in controversy. Carbon testing in 1988 found the Shroud was likely made in medieval times, thousands of years after Jesus’ death, even though further evidence proves otherwise.
Religious artifacts, like the Shroud, are so fascinating to believers because they educate people about biblical times, provide context to biblical stories that are often left ambiguous, and offer a glimpse at Jesus from a historical perspective rather than a biblical one, according to the Religion News Service.
“Obviously, objects associated with a famous person or a loved one (Jesus can qualify as both) have a great allure on their own. They provide a direct physical connection with the past, allowing us to reach across the chasm of time and space,” Religion News Service’s David Gibson and Michael McKinley reported. “Artifacts and archaeology can be a way to take us out of ourselves, to transport us to a time and place not our own, in hopes of discovering something about Jesus that is not filtered through the lens of our own desires.”
