The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (37 page)

However, this association to Mary’s youth may not have been the earliest. A competing story is presented in the
Protevangelium of James
, an immensely popular text of the early Christian centuries. Related to the romance in style, the
Protevangelium
has survived in many versions, languages, and under a number of titles, such as “The Story of Mary.” The work chronicles the miraculous birth of the Virgin to wealthy parents, her upbringing (in the Jerusalem Temple, no less), her purity and betrothal to Joseph, and the immaculate conception of Jesus. Its last paragraph states that the apostle James wrote down the text, hence the title. This work was particularly prized in Eastern Christendom, but condemned by the Roman Church as early as IV CE.
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 Though the
Protevangelium
assumed its present form after 150 CE, it contains a number of even older traditions which, however, it fails to harmonize with complete success (see below).
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Many of its characterizations and events are at first blush entirely unbelievable—except perhaps to an already deeply committed Christian. For example, Mary is raised in the Jerusalem Temple (PrJa 8.1–2), and the census affects only the inhabitants of Bethlehem (PrJa 17.1). In all fairness, however, the canonical birth stories are hardly more believable.

The
Protevangelium
artfully focuses the reader’s attention upon the mysterious nature of the divine child which Mary bears in her womb. Joseph is, understandably, entirely suspicious of this anomaly which he had nothing to do with. He is unsure of Mary’s status, which gains literary force in view of the imminent census (
pre-70
Lk 1:1–7). “How shall I enroll her?” he asks. “As my wife? I am ashamed to do that.”
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“Or as my daughter? But all the children of Israel know that she is not my daughter.” Joseph resigns himself to God: “The day of the Lord itself will do as the Lord wills” (PrJa 17.1).

The geography of the
Protevangelium
reflects a southern, or Judean, tradition: the elderly Joseph lives in Bethlehem of Judea (8.3; 17.1),
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and all events take place in and around that town. The
Protevangelium
does not know Nazareth, nor does it once mention Galilee. This scenario is closer to that of Matthew than Luke. According to Matthew, the Holy Family resides in Bethlehem of Judea (Mt 2:1) where Jesus is also born. Herod the Great exterminates the male babies of Bethlehem (2:16), and no mention is made of Galilee until after the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt (2:22–23). This southern tradition survived for many centuries, as we see in the following account of a Medieval pilgrim visiting Nazareth:

Some say the Virgin was born in this city, but wrongly and out of ignorance they say so,
for, as I told you above, she was born in Jerusalem
… The real house, then, of the Blessed Virgin is cut in the mountain [
of Nazareth
], which is of tuff rock, and is underground, sixteen braccia square, of two small rooms, one beside the other, in one of which Joseph lived and in the other the Blessed Virgin. And that same house that was there at the time of the Annunciation is there at present.
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[Emphasis added.]

This house “cut in the mountain,” where Mary allegedly lived after her betrothal, is the grotto presently under the Basilica of the Annunciation.

In contrast to the above account and that of the
Protevangelium
, the Gospel of Luke presents the more familiar northern tradition, in which both Mary and Joseph are originally from Nazareth (Lk 1:26–27; 2:4). Like Matthew, however, Luke seems aware that the Messiah should hail from Bethlehem, according to scripture:

But you, O Bethlehem
Ephrathah,

    who are little among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

    one who is to rule in Israel,

whose origin is from of old,

    from ancient days.               (Micah 5:2)

Luke accordingly uses the device of the census to place the birth of Jesus in the messianic city of Bethlehem (Lk 2:1–7;
pre-70
Mt 2:6).
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For several reasons, such a census cannot have been historical. Galilee was not within the area of direct Roman jurisdiction but was administered by the puppet ruler, Herod Antipas. In addition, the Romans would hardly have required people to return to their birthplace—a curious recipe for social chaos with no practical purpose.
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Then again, we know that the  nearest census was in 6 CE, too late to accommodate the traditional chronology of Jesus.

My interest is not to delve deeply into the pious literary traditions regarding Jesus’ provenance. I touch on those traditions because they have decisively shaped the history of Nazareth. They have determined the location of the holy shrines, present as early as the fourth or fifth century, and have guided the interests of the Church, the archaeology of the basin, and the thoughts of pious pilgrims through the ages. Indeed, the venerated texts have forcefully asserted themselves to the exclusion of the very evidence in the ground.

The Christian literary traditions are, however, not monolithic. Incompatibilities have led to curiosities such as competing venues of worship. For example, in Nazareth there are two Churches of the Annunciation separated by one-half kilometer. To the Greek Orthodox, the Annunciation as well as the place where the Holy Family lived are directly above Mary’s Spring. A church has marked the spot since Byzantine times. It has been variously called the Church of St. Gabriel, the (Greek Orthodox) Church of the Nutrition, and the (Greek Orthodox) Church of the Annunciation.

The rationale behind this alternate site can be traced back to the
Protevangelium of James
.
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As mentioned above, in this text Mary was raised in the Jerusalem Temple, “and the whole house of Israel loved her” (PrJa 7.3; 10.2). At the age of twelve Mary was placed in the care of the elderly and widowed Joseph, who lived in Bethlehem of Judea (17.1). In the Greek tradition, then, the Virgin’s maiden home (after her stay in the Temple) and the home of Joseph are identical. The
Protevangelium
gives the following account of the Annunciation:

And [
Mary
] took the pitcher and went forth to draw water, and behold, a voice said: ‘Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women,’ And she looked around on the right and on the left to see whence this voice came. And trembling she went to her house and put down the pitcher and took the purple and sat down on her seat and drew out (the thread).

And behold, an angel of the Lord (suddenly) stood before her and said: ‘Do not fear, Mary; for you have found grace before the Lord of all things and shall conceive of his Word.’ When she heard this she doubted in herself and said: ‘Shall I conceive of the Lord, the living God, [
and bear
] as every woman bears?’

And the angel of the Lord came and said to her: ‘Not so, Mary; for a power of the Lord shall overshadow you…
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We notice that there are
two
auditions in the
Protevangelium
. The first is at the spring (or well), where Mary went to draw water, and the second is at her home—which, as we have seen, was also Joseph’s home. Thus, for the Greek Orthodox, several elements are united in one site: Mary’s home, Joseph’s home, the (second) annunciation, and also the place where Jesus was reared.
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 The Eastern Church has quite ignored that this account belongs to the southern Judean tradition. Obviously influenced by the canonical accounts, which emphatically place Jesus’ youth in Nazareth, pilgrims early on transposed the above-mentioned events from Bethlehem of Judea to Nazareth of Galilee. Yet they conserved many of the elements in the story from the
Protevangelium
. Thus, according to the Eastern Rite, Mary had two auditions. The first took place at the spring which the Nazarenes duly dubbed “Gabriel’s Spring.” The name did not sit at all well with the Latins across the basin, who believed that Gabriel visited the Virgin on their property. Kopp writes:

The Name “Gabriel’s Spring” remained uncontested until the beginning of the Middle Ages, when the Latins dislodged it through silent yet energetic opposition. It was renamed after “Jesus and Mary” or simply “Mary,” and today even the Greek Orthodox
call it “Mary’s Spring.”
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The Nazareth basin offers only one proper site where Mary could have gone to draw water, and the Greek Orthodox constructed an edifice directly upon it in Byzantine times. Today this is known as the Greek “Church of the Annunciation,” to be distinguished from the better-known Franciscan church bearing that name. Not sure whether the holy domicile was to the left or to the right of the spring, the Greek tradition has simply constructed its shrine on arches over the water source itself. This edifice is probably the only church in existence constructed over a fully functioning spring. It was already visible when the pilgrim Arculf visited in the year 670.

The Eastern Rite was not so much claiming possession of the spring as primacy of certain traditions enshrined in the
Protevangelium of James.
  After all, that text asserts that Mary experienced her first angelic audition when she “went forth to draw water.” Kopp considers the possibility with typical Germanic thoroughness:

Topographically it is possible that immediately next to the spring, left and right on the elevations of the narrow watercourse, Jewish dwellings once stood, which were removed between 630 and 670 with the construction of the [Greek Orthodox] basilica.
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Presumably, Mary went a few paces outside her dwelling to draw water. Others supposed that she lived in a cave right over the spring, and did not need to go out to draw water. Thus, Peter the Deacon writes in his
De Locis Sanctis
(XII CE):

The cave
in which she lived is large and most luminous, where an altar has been placed, and there inside the cave itself is the place from which she drew water. Inside the city, where the synagogue
was where the Lord read the book of Isaiah, there is now a church. But the spring from which Mary used to take water is outside the village.
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So, once a church was over the site, pilgrims assumed that the holy family lived over the spring itself. Thus, Arculf notes that “the house in which our savior was raised” was over the village spring. Pious tradition considered this colorful scene, and was pleased to imagine that Jesus drew water for his mother. A fully-functioning pulley, with rope and bucket, was visible within the Greek church already in 1283 CE.
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Apparently, the entire village came to Jesus’ home for water and, indeed, no more apt reification of the Johannine saying is possible: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14).

Determined to get to the bottom of this tradition, one day Fr. Kopp took it upon himself to discover the actual source of the spring. He proceeded to crawl on his belly along the narrow underground passageway which feeds water from the mountain to the church, and verified that the source is “about thirty-two and a half feet underground.”
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The passageway is about eighteen meters long and, to his great embarrassment, Kopp got stuck. He subsequently complained (to the Greeks?) of the narrowness of the conduit and in his 1963 book writes tartly, “The way ought to be opened and kept open by a slight excavation.” We may imagine that some inside the church (or perhaps startled passersby) heard muffled yells coming from an unknown quarter deep within the rock, and upon investigation discovered the begrimed priest stuck fast in the dark tunnel and quite soaked with holy water. In fact, no better metaphor can be found for a soiled tradition, one that has for two millennia been stuck fast within the narrow and dark confines of unreasoning faith.

Kopp has few charitable words for the Church of St. Gabriel and writes of the “wrong path” [
Irrweg
] taken by the Greeks.
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He is only half-right. Both competing Latin and Greek venues for the site of the annunciation are founded on very creative, incompatible and, at bottom, fantastic literary traditions.