Jesus’ Home | 5 Discoveries of Jesus (Ep. 2)

Hi, my name's Bob Ronglian and I'm your teacher and guide for this course, Five Ancient Discoveries That Will Rock Your View of Jesus. Welcome back to episode two. In episode one, we went to Bethlehem and we explored the birth of Jesus. Now, we're moving to Nazareth, to Jesus' home. We're going to look at how the early years of Jesus' life became the basis for ultimately the mission that he was called to. When you go to Nazareth today, it's a good sized city, similar to Bethlehem, but it's within the state of Israel. It's a primarily a Palestinian Arab city with also a significant Jewish population. But it's a little misleading because in the time of Jesus, Nazareth was a relatively small village. Now, if you look a little more closely here at the picture, you can see that right in the heart of the modern city is the most ancient part, which was the original village. And there we find the Church of the Annunciation. This modern church is built over the ruins of a series of ancient churches, which ultimately were built over a first century Jewish home. We're going to look more closely at that. So when you go to the Church of Annunciation today, it's quite a beautiful church, a modern church built in the 60s and 70s. And as you enter into the church, it's got a beautiful funnel-shaped dome, and you're surrounded by a beautiful artwork depicting Mary and Jesus. But right in the middle of the church, there's an opening in the floor, and you can look down into the lower section, which you also can visit. And when you go into the lower section underneath, you can see preserved the remains of a Crusader era church from like about 1,000 years ago, and a Byzantine period church from about 1,500 years ago, and then an early pre-Constantinian Jewish Christian church, which is quite unusual, where Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah met for worship.

And underneath that lie the remains of this first century Jewish home, which has been identified as the home of Mary's family, Mary the mother of Jesus. So this was the house that Mary grew up in. And we have both historical literary evidence as well as archaeological evidence, which confirms this tradition that this actually was the house of Mary. So it's incredible to be able to go there today, and to see the actual place where Mary, the mother of Jesus, grew up. And the event that's associated with this place is when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her of her pregnancy, which we talked about in episode one. But now as we come back to Nazareth, we're coming back with Jesus and Mary and Joseph, his stepfather. And you might remember that they fled to Egypt because they were fleeing from Herod the Great, who was trying to find out where this baby was and put him to death. And then a few years later, they made their way back to Nazareth and resumed their life there now as a family. Now, as much as the house of Mary is a fascinating sight, there's an even more fascinating sight that not very many people know about, just across the street from the Church of the Annunciation. And it's found underneath the Sisters of Nazareth convent, where you see the arrow pointing right there. And so when you visit that convent, the nuns, by appointment, will take you down underneath the ruins of their convent. And they'll show you a very similar dynamic where there was a Crusader church built over this site 1,000 years ago. There was a Byzantine church built over here 1,500 years ago. And then before that, there was a first century Jewish home. And that home has been identified as the home of Joseph's family, where Mary and Joseph would have raised Jesus. The ancient name for the church built over that house was the Church of the Nutrition, which I think is an interesting name. That's where Jesus was nurtured, where he grew up. And if you look at this picture here, we're looking at a stone cut doorway in that house. Here you can see part of the walls are cut directly out of the stone. And we don't have the whole footprint of the house today when they built the churches over it. that kind of destroyed the rest of the house, but the main room of the house and a tomb underneath have been preserved.

And it's amazing to think that when you look at that doorway, you're looking at a doorway that the boy Jesus went in and out every day as he grew up, really for his first 30 years of life. Now, here's an artist's reconstruction of another first century house that's been discovered right nearby. It's not the house of Joseph or the house of Mary. We don't know the full layout of those houses, but we do know the full layout of this house. And it shows you again what we saw in episode one, the typical construction where you have multiple rooms around a central courtyard, and it's all surrounded by a solid wall. The wall's been cut away so you can see inside. But it's a typical extended family home that people lived in and where they also carried out their family business. And this would have been very similar to the house of Joseph that we just saw where Jesus grew up. Now, when Jesus returns to Nazareth later in his ministry, the people say, is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us? So this is a little glimpse that we get into the family that Jesus grew up in. And of course, we think of Jesus as a carpenter because of this passage. However, the word that we translate carpenter, the Greek word is tectone,

from which we get words like tectonic and that sort of thing, technical. It actually means builder. And that word, we've translated it carpenter, which causes us to think of a woodworker. But in the Middle East, there's not a lot of wood. Almost everything is built out of stone. And so a builder works primarily in stone. So rather than a woodworker, we should think of a stonemason. And so Jesus as a stonemason, as a builder, that's the family business in which Jesus grew up. Now, almost all extended families were built around a family business. And everybody in the family was involved to some degree in the business, especially the boys were apprenticed into the family business, starting at about around the age of 12. And so Jesus grew up in this family in Nazareth, and around 12, he started to be apprenticed into that business. And here you can see an image of typical tectone at work, cutting stone, building stones, making columns, pillars, capitals, all those kinds of things. So right near to Nazareth was the city of Sepphoris, which was the capital of Galilee, built by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. And Antipas decided to make Sepphoris his capital.

And so he began to build beautiful buildings, beautiful marketplaces, roads, spas, even a theater. And that meant that there was a huge demand for tectone, for builders. And this may be part of the reason that Joseph brought his young family back to Nazareth, because there was a lot of work for them there. And so as Jesus started to engage in the family business, he almost certainly would have been going with Joseph, his uncles, eventually his younger brothers, into Sepphoris, maybe on a daily basis, to do various building projects there. When we visit Sepphoris today, it's quite amazing because it's been extensively excavated, and we're actually walking on the very streets and the steps and the stones that Jesus and his family would have been involved in building. We don't know exactly which parts of it, but almost certainly this was part of the city they helped to build. And so it gets you in touch with the reality. The stories about Jesus are not just stories. This is historical fact, historical reality. And it's amazing to actually touch that reality when you go there. And so here's a shot of the theater in Sepphoris. And it's also a sign that when Herod Antipas was building this city, he was building it in a Greek and Roman style,

even though it was a Jewish city. And that was very different from Jesus' hometown of Nazareth, which was a conservative, religious, Jewish village. And so we see that Jesus had these different kinds of experiences growing up. In fact, later in his teaching, he speaks of the Pharisees, the religious leaders, as hypocrites. And the word that he used means that the mask that the Greek actors would use in the theater. And you can see that here. And see, that was part of the culture right there in Sephora. So it's interesting to see that kind of cultural background to Jesus' own teaching. Now, interestingly, when you go to the house of Joseph today you see the house, which is amazing, amazing touchstone to the reality of Jesus as a person, but also underneath the house is something very unusual. Now Luke says, he records Jesus teaching, everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he's like. He's like a man building a house. Isn't that interesting? Jesus is a builder, he's a techtone, and he's telling a story about building a house, which he had done many, many times himself. And here's the description, a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.

Houses were not built out of wood, they were built out of blocks of stone, and if you didn't found those blocks on rock, they would shift and sink, especially when floods came. And so Jesus says, when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it because it had been well built. You see, Jesus the builder is teaching us about being not only hearers of the word, but doers of the word, as he says. Now, when we look at the house of Jesus, it was literally built into and onto the rock of Nazareth. And amazingly, underneath the house of Joseph is a beautifully cut tomb. And it's unusual for two reasons. One, it would be very unusual for Jews to build a tomb in the same place where they live, because they considered dead bodies to be ceremonially unclean, ritually impure, and so they normally had their cemeteries well outside of the village. But in the case of someone who was exceptional, someone considered a truly righteous man, they would sometimes have the tomb in close proximity. And that seems to be the indication here. Also, what's unusual about this tomb is that it's built in the style of a wealthy person's tomb. Notice that beautiful rolling stone. It's shaped like a wheel, basically. That's about four feet tall,

and it's built into a slot that rolls down and seals the entrance and then can be opened up again. And so why would Jesus' home have such a beautiful tomb built right underneath it? Well, it's interesting. The Gospels describe Joseph as a righteous man. That's why he decided to put away Mary quietly rather than publicly disgracing her. And when the sisters bought the property where they discovered the house of Joseph, the people that lived on the ground above that, they didn't know what was underneath, but they said there was a tradition that the tomb of the righteous man was underneath there. Fascinating. The righteous man. Joseph is a righteous man. And I think it's very likely because Joseph probably died sometime after Jesus was 12, but before his public ministry started. And I think it's very likely that Jesus and his brothers dug this tomb, especially for their father, Joseph, and it shows something of their craftsmanship because when you look at ancient tombs, it's a beautiful, beautiful tomb. And fascinatingly, if that's true, what we're looking at is some of the actual handiwork of Jesus and his brothers as builders. And so it's putting us in touch with this reality of Jesus. Now, Nazareth had a synagogue in the first century.

We so far haven't discovered it. Nazareth, as we saw, is a big city, so it's hard to excavate there, and there's a lot of things still waiting to be discovered. But Jesus and his family were religiously devout. They worshiped in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and they regularly would take pilgrimages down to Jerusalem. So Luke says his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And so one of those years, they would go down probably with their whole extended family and they'd stay with relatives in the area. They'd spend eight days celebrating the Passover, and then they would make their way back. And it was a big deal, because as I said, it's about a five-day journey, as you can see on the map, from Nazareth all the way down to Jerusalem. Eight days in Jerusalem, five days back. Now you're taking three weeks off, shutting down the family business. It was a big deal. And it shows you that Jesus' family were quite devout. They were quite committed in their faith. Now, when you come to Jerusalem and you stand on the Mount of Olives, you have a dramatic view of the Temple Mount. You can see the gold dome right there in the middle of the picture.

That's right where the temple stood at the time of Jesus, surrounded by huge courtyards. Here you can see a reconstruction of Jerusalem from the time of Jesus and by far the most prominent element are these temple courts. And so this is the area where the rabbis would gather and they would teach under the shade of the porticos and people would gather around them and so forth. Now Luke tells us that when Jesus was 12 and they had finished their celebration of the Passover in Jerusalem, they departed with their extended family. But when they got a day's journey, which would be Jericho, they realized that Jesus, a 12-year-old boy, was not with them. And that's probably they thought he was with other relatives as they were traveling in their group. So when Mary and Joseph came back to Jerusalem, you can imagine how anxious they were. If you've ever lost a child, you know, you're just freaking out, wondering where your child is. And they finally come into the courts of the Temple Mount and they see Jesus there interacting with the rabbis, the greatest teachers of Israel. And these rabbis are amazed at Jesus' questions and answers, which means Jesus is engaging them in a kind of rabbinical dialogue, which is the way that rabbis taught in the first century. And so in the in the midst of all this, Luke describes it this way. He says, when his parents saw him, they were astonished, not necessarily in a good way. His mother said to him, son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress. And look at Jesus' response. He said to them, why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? So this is an incredible statement for Jesus to make, that he must be in his father's house. Tells us that at the age of 12, Jesus understood himself to be the son of God, that his father was God and his father's house was the temple. Now, this phrase is a little tricky to translate. It's a Greek idiom. It can be translated in my father's house or about my father's business. And so you see that Jesus understood not only his relationship to the father, but also that he had a purpose, a mission, his father's business. It wasn't the building business of his family in Nazareth, of building houses. It was building a new kingdom, building a whole new creation. And yet, even though Jesus had this self-understanding, his parents didn't quite get it. Luke goes on, he says that they, meaning Mary and Joseph, did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. And I think this next statement is incredible.

Luke says he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. Now, every teenager feels like their parents don't understand them. But in this case, it was really true, wasn't it? They didn't get it. They didn't understand who Jesus was or what his mission was. But despite that, Jesus chose to submit to them. He knew that even though he was basically ready to go, that his time had not yet come, that the timing wasn't right. And Luke says his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. And this was part of the critical preparation that was going on in Jesus' life, that he was he was 12 years old and it would be another 18 years before he launched his public mission. And he would spend those 18 years cutting stone and hauling blocks and building houses and building roads. And, you know, it wasn't an easy life, but God was working and preparing Jesus for the mission that he had for them. And I think there's an incredible message for us in all of that. Jesus says, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing. For whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. This is how Jesus lived his life in submission to the father. He listened for the word that God gave him. He watched to see what God was doing. And he simply did that. And this ability of Jesus to carry out the will of his father was born out of these 18 years of submission, of waiting and of being prepared. And I don't know about you, but I am not a very patient person. And I find that often I'm kind of going ahead of God. I'm going ahead of the Holy Spirit. And what Jesus shows us in these early years is how important it is that we learn to listen and submit and wait and watch to see what God is doing so that we don't run ahead of him. We certainly don't want to lag behind either. We don't want to resist the spirit or quench the spirit, but we want to keep in step with the spirit, don't we? And that's exactly what we see in these early years of Jesus. So I encourage you to just consider, as I have in my life, what does it mean to wait and listen and submit and let the Father prepare you for the mission that he has in mind. So I encourage you to take a minute now at the end of this little segment

and to consider what is God saying to you and what's the next step of faith in your journey of discipleship and following Jesus. Well, I hope you'll join us for episode three when we begin now the public mission of Jesus and we go to Capernaum on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee and discover the new kind of family that Jesus built there. So thanks for joining us as we continue in this course the five ancient discoveries that will rock your view of Jesus.