Could this really be JESUS CHRIST'S childhood home?

A British archaeologist has identified what he believes could have been the house where Jesus was raised.

Dr Ken Dark said that the humble first century home in Nazareth, northern Israel, could have been where Mary and Joseph brought up the son of God.

The Reading University archaeologist said that an ancient text described precisely how it was located between two tombs and below a church. 

Clerics from the Crusader period and the Byzantine era also put the ruins in the cellar of their churches, suggesting that it was of great significance and needed to be protected.

In an article Professor Dark said that there was ‘no good reason’ why the courtyard style house was not the boyhood home of Jesus. He has been researching the ruins since 2006 and published his findings in Biblical Archaeological Review, a respected journal.

Should Dr Dark’s analysis be correct, it will solve a mystery which has baffled Christians for centuries. They believe that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth when the angel Gabriel revealed that Mary would give birth to the son of God, a baby to be named Jesus.

According to Dr Dark, the house is located beneath the Sisters of Nazareth Convent which is across the road from Church of Annunciation in Nazareth.

He describes it as having been cut out of a limestone hillside and having a series of rooms and a stairway. One of the original doorways has survived, as has part of the original chalk floor.

Overall the design was typical of early Roman settlements in the Galilee, Dr Dark says.

The limestone items suggest a Jewish family lived there as Jews believed that limestone could not be impure.

Dr Dark also found that subsequent generations after the first century took great care to look after the site.

In the article he wrote: ‘Great efforts had been made to encompass the remains of this building within the vaulted cellars of both the Byzantine and Crusader churches, so that it was thereafter protected.

‘Both the tombs and the house were decorated with mosaics in the Byzantine period, suggesting that they were of special importance, and possibly venerated’.

...DailyMirror