NAZARETH VILLAGE, the simulation of first-century Nazareth located near modern Nazareth, is back in the news with its annual Christmas celebrations:

Nazareth Village re-creates life as Jesus knew it
Replica designed to improve understanding of Scriptures

Matthew Kalman, [San Francisco] Chronicle Foreign Service

Friday, December 23, 2005


Nazareth, Israel -- On a rocky hillside in Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up and spent much of his life, a familiar scene is taking shape. In the courtyard of a stone stable, surrounded by rough-hewn wooden farming implements, a young man and his wife are comforting their newborn son. They are dressed in simple, handwoven tunics, and the baby is lying on a bed of fresh straw in an animal's trough.

It is as if they had been transported back in time 2,000 years to the birth of Christ and the simple rural community where Mary and Joseph lived, probably less than a mile away. This is Nazareth Village, an authentic re-creation of a first-century Holy Land farm.

[...]