The Archaeological Findings on the Life of Mary of Nazareth

For centuries, the memory of the Mother of Jesus was handed down only by the Gospels and by the first Christian pilgrims. Today, the excavations in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, and at the sites of Galilee make it possible to cross-check these testimonies with concrete data from the soil: behind the written sources there is a precise historical context. This article surveys the principal archaeological findings that illuminate the life of Mary, from the place of her birth to the family and religious environment in which she grew up.

The question of Mary’s birthplace is inseparable from the criticism of the sources: the texts point to Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem as distinct possibilities. Bethlehem is a doctrinal postulate that made the Virgin a member of the House of David, without direct stratigraphic support. The Jerusalem tradition, supported by the Protoevangelium of James (2nd cent.) and by the monumental memory of the first pilgrims near the Sheep Gate, proves to be the most consistent. It is in Jerusalem that the oldest topographical memory of the birth of the Mother of God has been preserved.

The Jerusalem tradition: the Sheep Gate, the Pool of Bethesda, and the birth of Mary in Jerusalem

Near the Sheep Gate, in the es-Satireh Valley, a twin trapezoidal pool was built in the times of the Maccabees, with a therapeutic establishment called Bezetha to the east. It was reached by a channel that opened into an original natural grotto. To the northeast there was a central cistern surrounded by baths, painted rooms and, apparently, a dwelling with grottoes, which now lies beneath the apses of the Crusader church of Saint Anne. This place was frequented by the sick (Jn 5:3) and by superstitious women desirous of fertility. Solomon was invoked as the great healer at all the Palestinian thermal springs. White magic was practiced with the King’s ring, his medals representing the triad of health, that is, the holy horseman who pierces Lilith and the Archangel Raphael who protects him, and his seal. Despite the rabbinic polemic against this cult, Essenes and Therapeutae practiced it. The ritual later converged in the “Testament of Solomon” of the third century, published by the Jewish-Christians, who thus made it their own.

In the Protoevangelium of James, in chapter VI, we read that Anne was healed of her sterility, deserved for some hidden sin, when she went to the Pool, and she conceived Mary. Mary lived in her little room, transformed into a domus ecclesia, which is still to be found in the Grotto beneath the choir of the Crusader church and which goes back to the first century. The “Gospel of the Infancy” of Pseudo-Matthew, in the fourth and fifth centuries, supposes that Anne had a house in the area mentioned. The Copper Scroll of Qumran attests that near the Pool there were some hiding places of the Essene treasures, with a statement that for some is symbolic and for others real, and a residential structure, which was probably connected to the quarter where the Virgin’s family lived.

With the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, the establishment was torn down, but the cult continued to be practiced. The name of the Pool changed to Bet Hesdatain, popularly called Bet Hesda, the House of Mercies, and the cult became syncretistic from 135 onward, with the pagan buildings erected by Hadrian (117-138) precisely in order to eradicate the Jewish-Christian memory. The Solomonic cult was inherited by the Kinsmen of the Virgin, who Christianized it by putting Jesus the physician in the place of Solomon and the Angel, to whom He is superior (Mt 12:42b, Jn 5:1-9): on the medals there then appeared His bust beside the horseman with a crossed lance or in Christian attitudes. Mary, no longer the object of the miracle, was associated with the healing Son. Lilith was replaced by various little she-devils. The Angel of God was accompanied by several other angels of health. The ceremonies were celebrated in the buildings visible to the east after the excavations near the North Pool: cisterns, a large hall with mosaics bearing floral crosses, symbolic flowers and fruits, the base of a probable altar and cupboards set into the wall, as well as a grotto hewn in the rock 10 m long and 2.50 m wide.

As for the Hadrianic pagan cult, it was centered on the Serapeum built on the site, following the model of many other similar buildings scattered throughout the Empire. It was a square complex, later dismantled by the Byzantines, to the east of the transverse portico and of the great southern basin. In it there were adapted cisterns, galleries carved in the rock, a large building not yet completely excavated, a favissa with the remains of sacrifices. In this complex there was a Serapis, now in fragments, venerated in the naos of the establishment, that is, the original natural grotto. A woman undressing and another lying on a couch, bending beneath a blessing hand. Two cargo ships that accord with the cult of Isis. Two votive feet. The place was consecrated to the pagan triad of health, formed by Serapis/Asclepius, Isis/Hygieia, Harpocrates/Telesphorus, which were to supplant the Jewish and the Jewish-Christian triads. In its honor black magic, the horoscope, the lunar calendar, and hydromancy were practiced.

Constantine (306-337) proscribed pagan black magic in 319, but tolerated the white magic of the Jewish-Christians. The Great Church, however, waged polemics against both the pagan cult and the Jewish-Christian cult, ordering the dismantling first of the Hadrianic building and then of the Jewish-Christian building, in the first quarter of the fifth century. They were replaced by the great Basilica of the Paralytic, recently rediscovered, and by that of Saint Mary, whose side aisles went beyond the limits of the fifth portico of the Pool, resting on columns that sank into the basins, evidently to be identified with the buildings and grottoes discovered beneath the crypt of the Crusader church. The hydriae and the Solomonic ring were carried away and venerated in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.

John Damascene is the first to speak clearly, in the seventh century, of the House where Mary was born, near the Pool of Bethesda. But already in 530 Theodosius had made reference to a church dedicated to the Virgin in that place. In the time of the Crusades, the two basins of the Pool were filled in and the Church of Saint Mary was transformed into a monastery, while a little farther to the east the Crusader Church of Saint Anne was built, which, as mentioned, preserves beneath it the House of the Virgin.

Connected with this memory is also the tradition of the Virgin’s education in the Temple. The Protoevangelium of James, as we have seen, attests the consecration of Mary as a little girl and her life in the sacred place in the College of the Weaving Virgins. The truthfulness of what is drawn from the ancient accounts has been confirmed by D. Flusser and S. Safrai. Justinian, on the site where the Virgin was believed to have been educated, raised the Basilica called the Nea, later destroyed by the Persians in 614. The excavations have made it possible to establish that the building, eighty-two by sixty-five meters, with an added hospice and other outbuildings, was one of the most important of the Byzantine era in Palestine.

The excavations in Nazareth: Bellarmino Bagatti, the house of the Annunciation, and the Jewish-Galilean remains

Following now the thread of the Gospel accounts, we move on to Nazareth. The town itself is already an archaeological discovery, since its existence was for a long time called into question. In the time of Jesus, Nazareth was a very small village, with a maximum population of one hundred and fifty people, at the foot of the hills of Lower Galilee. It had never before been mentioned in the Bible. The inhabitants were all descendants of David (1000-961 B.C.) and called themselves Nazarenes (Ναζωραίοι, ןידצןנ), in order to fulfill Is 11:1, where it is said that a branch (nezer רצנ) will spring from the roots of the stem of Jesse. The Davidides returned in waves to Palestine from 520 B.C. on, with Zerubbabel, continuing with Ezra in 457 B.C. and reaching down to the second century B.C. It was precisely at the end of this period that Nazareth was repopulated, its original name being unknown to us, having been abandoned in 733 B.C., at the time of the Assyrian invasion. The immigrants came from Babylon. They took advantage of the Hasmonean conquest of Galilee for a more massive exodus. The excavations in fact show a continuity of settlement from that period on. The Davidic clans that arrived from Babylon during the Hasmonean independence settled first in Batanaea (or Bashan) and then moved to Nazareth. Julius Africanus (c. 220 A.D.), a native of Emmaus, informs us that the descendants of David lived in villages with messianic names, such as Nazareth (“village of the Branch”) and Kochaba (“village of the Star”). Two villages, one to the north of Nazareth and one in Bashan, bore the latter name. The same author informs us that the Davidides preserved the genealogies of their lines of descent. They devoutly awaited the Messiah who was to arise from their own ranks. Joseph, a native of Bethlehem and still resident there (as is shown by the journey he made in order to be registered in that city and not in Nazareth), and Mary were therefore Nazarenes. The Davidides had a strong sense of their own royalty, though it had fallen into decline: proof of this is that the buildings of Nazareth had a necropolis relatively close by, despite the traditional norms of purity, since, as the Talmud attests, these could be disregarded for royal burials. These tombs were, in some cases, of refined Roman workmanship.

In Nazareth, the tradition of the House of Mary, where the Annunciation took place, attested by the Gospel of Luke (1:26-38) and preserved by the “Kinsmen of the Virgin,” was confirmed by the excavations carried out between 1950 and 1960. The cult began with a domus ecclesia, into which were incorporated the remains of a house, that is, grottoes, silos, basins, original stairways, all embellished in the first two centuries with paintings, graffiti, and mosaics. In the second century, the whole became a baptismal place. A fragment of a targum of Is 55:1-3, paleographically dated to that period, attests the cult of the “well of Mary,” from which sprang the saving stream of the Incarnate Word. In the third century, over the domus ecclesia, the Nazarenes built a Jewish-Christian synagogue, of which the whole south wall and the beginning of the east wall remain, which turned northward so as to take in the cut rock of the traditional grotto. In the fill there remained various architectural elements such as jambs, cornices, arches, capitals, bases with grooves for transennae, bases of the altar columns, Marian symbols and graffiti, among which stand out the inscriptions of XĒ MAPIA and of the woman pilgrim who states that she wrote her name beneath the “holy place of M” and venerated her image.

Around 430, the Byzantines came to Nazareth and, probably supported by the Emperor, took the synagogue of the Jewish-Christians, demolished it, and replaced it with their own Basilica. It had as its platform the elements of the ancient construction. The sacred Grottoes were preserved. The south wall was used as a stylobate after being cut down. The apse was placed to the east, and two aisles were raised, taking the traditional Grotto into the north aisle. This Basilica was visited by pilgrims as the House of Mary transformed into a church, from the Anonymous Pilgrim of Piacenza to Arculf and Bede the Venerable, among others. A significant fact is that the foundations of the room of this House of Mary, where the Annunciation presumably took place, correspond perfectly to the Walls preserved in the Shrine of the Holy House of Loreto. In Nazareth, Epiphanius of Salamis tells us of the House of Joseph, the place where Jesus was raised. The tradition was handed down by the “Kinsmen of Joseph,” who vigorously defended their rights of ownership over the site, preventing for centuries the access of Christians converted from other backgrounds. Only in 670 was Arculf able to visit it and describe it as a building partly built over arches, which in the crypt preserved a well and a grotto “very luminous,” as an Anonymous author cited by Peter the Deacon defines it, and an entire baptismal place according to the Jewish-Christian ritual. The excavations of 1970, directed by Bellarmino Bagatti, confirmed the traditional reports and dated the room to the first century. This is the dwelling where Jesus spent His hidden life, with Mary and Joseph.

Ain Karem and the house of Zechariah: the excavations of 1973 and the Jewish-Christian memory of Elizabeth and John the Baptist

Following the thread of the Gospel events, we must consider ‘Ain Karem, the birthplace of John the Baptist, visited by Mary, as Luke attests (1:39-56). The facts narrated in the Gospel and in the Protoevangelium of James are set in the region of Judah called Orini, a mountainous triangle between Jerusalem and the wadis of es-Sarar and es-Sikka, with ‘Ain Karem at the center. It was an unspoiled and hospitable region, where Elizabeth had, halfway up the slope, a retreat house, in which she hid herself for five months to thank God for having freed her from sterility (Lk 1:25). She also possessed a grotto, which in the account of the Protoevangelium (22:3) opened miraculously to shelter Elizabeth and John, pursued by the soldiers of Herod (37-4 B.C.) during the Massacre of the Innocents. At the foot of the mountain stood the House of Zechariah, where Mary arrived when she went to visit her cousin. These places have been identified archaeologically.

In 1973, Father Bagatti, beneath the crypt of the modern Church of the Visitation, found a Roman house, with a winepress, a well hewn in the rock, Hellenistic tombs, several Roman coins from the times of Nero to those of Constantine, and a great deal of Roman pottery. The well is in the grotto that is said to have lit up in order to give refuge to the fugitives. Occasional excavations in 1885 and then systematic ones in 1941-1942, directed by S. Saller at the traditional House of Zechariah, brought to light a domus ecclesia, located in a grotto, the traditional site of the birth of John the Baptist, and various annexes of a Roman house, beneath the present portico, such as a winepress, cisterns, and Roman tombs, including a double one.

These places were made sacred by the Jewish-Christian commemoration of Elizabeth, John, and Mary, united in a true cultic triad. A confirming proof is given by the customary Hadrianic profanation, which replaced the three Christian figures with pagan ones bound together by equally solid connections, namely, Smyrna, Adonis, and Venus Pudica. Smyrna, having irregularly conceived a son, takes refuge in the garden of Venus, remaining five months behind a myrrh tree that sheds bitter tears. Protected by Venus Genitrix, she bears Adonis, whom Proserpina wishes to kill by means of a boar. Between Venus and Proserpina, however, a compromise is reached: Adonis will remain in the underworld in winter and the rest of the year with the Goddess of love, who laments his absence. During these lamentations, for three days the Adonia are celebrated: on the first day, the garden in the House of Adonis blossoms and is then thrown into a cistern with pieces of the statue of the God. On the second day, in the grotto of Adonis, the torn limbs of the God and his severed head are awaited, while the women of the thiasus, near the simulacrum of Venus Pudica, make the lamentations. On the third day, all go to the courtyard of the apotheosis and celebrate the resurrection of the God of vegetation.

In view of this cult, in which the New Testament narrative is consciously and evidently transfigured and contaminated in a polemical sense, Hadrian planted a sacred grove in Orini, built the House of Adonis, dug out the double grotto, and raised the courtyard of the apotheosis over the ancient walls of the annexes of the House of Zechariah. In fact, Father Saller found there numerous Roman elements, dated to the third and fourth centuries, remains adapted from the work of Hadrian.

Constantine destroyed the pagan buildings, and thus the cultic motifs of the Jewish-Christians came once more to the fore: in the hill country of Orini, the groves of Venus and Proserpina were uprooted and the country House of Elizabeth was restored. The grotto was faced with stones, painted, and filled with graffiti. The well was regularized with masonry and connected to a cistern outside the crypt by a channel. In front of the grotto, in order to preserve the Roman House, a small church was raised to venerate the stone called the Hiding Place, which recalled the Rock of Refuge, from which eulogiae and earth were taken to obtain blessings.

On the site where the House of Zechariah, the House of Adonis, and its grove stood, everything was completely destroyed. The Adonian vegetation was replaced by the Garden of John, which “grows in every place where he baptizes,” according to the happy expression of Aenon of Scythopolis in the citation of Egeria. In the funerary chamber of Adonis, in his grotto and in the courtyard of his apotheosis, two chapels were built, one dedicated to the Martyrs, with a magnificent mosaic in honor of the Head of the Baptist, and another to the south, enriched with mosaics bearing symbols of glorification. In them three Masses were celebrated, in honor of John and of Mary, who makes fruitful the harvests, the seeds, and the vineyards. Thus the definitive reversal took place: Smyrna was supplanted by Elizabeth, Adonis by John, and Venus by Mary. And this on the site where Mary visited her cousin and remained with her until the birth.

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To deepen the historical and theological reflection on Mary of Nazareth, consult the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Pope John Paul II.