NAZARETH VILLAGE, a living-history recreation of life in first-century Nazareth, is discussed in this article, "A Window to Jesus' World," in the South Bend Tribune. Excerpts:

In Nazareth Village, the sheep stray in the streets, weeds grow among the wheat in the donkey-plowed furrows, and you can see the lights from a city on a hill four miles away.

A synagogue, a wine press and some houses are already built with scrupulous faithfulness to first-century materials and methods. A watch tower for the fields is under construction.

People from all over the world are coming to visit the real-world reproduction of life in Jesus' Nazareth, about 500 yards from the traditional site of his boyhood home.

"Up to now, there has never been an authentic setting you could step into of the world Jesus knew," said Michael Hostetler, executive director of the project, in a telephone interview from Nazareth. "What we have now is a living laboratory of what Jesus saw and knew."

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"In the daytime, our staff will cook and weave and do carpentry work," Hostetler said. "They will be out plowing with donkeys.

"Last year we added the olive press building," Hostetler said. "There's none other in the world like it. This year we hope to build a watchtower, which is part of the agricultural way of life. Around harvest time, the people would come to the watchtower and sleep over. They wanted to protect the harvest from animals and from possible theft."

"There's sheep and mules roaming around," Troyer added. "We follow the harvest season. It makes the Bible come alive."

The setting provides, among other things, real-life experience of sowing seed, seeking sheep, and keeping oil lamps burning, images Jesus used in his parables.

"This is, as close as we know, an exact replica of housing in Nazareth in the Galilee area in the time of Jesus," Troyer said. "We worked with the top archaeologists on this.

The project has a website at www.nazarethvillage.com.