Nazareth - City of Israel

Nazareth is the capital and largest city in the North District of Israel. It also serves as an unofficial Arab capital for Israel's Arab citizens who make up the vast majority of the population there. In the New Testament, the city is described as the childhood home of Jesus, and as such is a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical associations.

Archaeological research has revealed a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles from Nazareth, dating back roughly 9000 years .The remains of some 65 individuals were found, buried under huge horizontal headstone structures, some of which consisted of up to 3 tons of locally-produced white plaster. Decorated human skulls uncovered there have led archaeologists to believe that Kfar HaHoresh was a major cult centre in that remote era.

According to Luke, Nazareth was the home of Joseph and Mary and the site of the Annunciation, when Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would have Jesus as her son. Nazareth is also where Jesus grew up from some point in his childhood. In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary settle in Nazareth after returning to Israel from Egypt.Many modern scholars argue that Nazareth is probably, in fact, where Jesus was born.

In the 6th century, legends about Mary began to spark interest in the site among pilgrims, who founded the Church of the Annunciation at the site of a freshwater spring, today known as Mary's Well. In 570, the Anonymous of Piacenza reports travelling from Sepphoris to Nazareth and refers to the beauty of the Hebrew women there, who say that St. Mary was a relative of theirs, and records: "The house of St. Mary is a basilica.

Some historians have called into question the traditional association of Nazareth with the life of the historical Jesus. Instead, they suggest that what was known of Jesus in his own time as a title, that is was, in later times, corrupted into a cognomen of place; thereby, in effect --and apparently by design, see below-- assigning Nazareth to him as his hometown. Alfred Loisy, for example, in The Birth of the Christian Religion, argues that Iesous Nazarene meant not Jesus "from Nazareth", but rather that his title was "Nazarene.

Nazareth was in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The town was not a field of battle during 1948 Arab-Israeli War before the first truce on 11 June, although some of the villagers had joined the loosely organized peasant resistance forces, and troops from the Arab Liberation Army had entered Nazareth.