NAZARETH -- An ambitious project has been launched to reconstruct an ancient part of Nazareth as a living village -- looking and operating as it did when Jesus Christ lived there.
On Nov. 21, a groundbreaking ceremony was held on the eight-hectare site, and organizers have begun a major fund-raising drive for the estimated $60 million needed to complete the work.About 200 volunteers, including Christians and Muslims from Nazareth, have already cleared the area so work can begin. The village will be constructed in part from archaeological remains of ancient stone watchtowers.
According to the project managers, it is highly probable that Jesus walked on the site, since during his lifetime there were only 300 villagers.
"It's more than likely he was involved in this area (of farmland)," archaeologist Ross Joseph Voss, a Roman Catholic working at the site, told ENI.
People from Nazareth would be hired, dress in first-century clothes and perform tasks such as weaving and farming, he said. The products of their labor, including wine and olive oil, would be offered for sale.
The staff will also act as storytellers, explaining the early life of Jesus.
Visitors will also be able, if they wish, to wear first-century robes -- wool in winter and linen in summer -- and sandals and join in village activities such as treading grapes to produce wine.
"Maybe visitors can come and stomp on the grapes to get the juice into the vats, and that will be fermented and, who knows, maybe they can drink some of this wine after a few months in the cellars," said Voss.
He stressed that the project managers intended to make the village life as close to the original as possible. Farm animals would help create the ambiance. "It was a little dirty, a little smelly and a little rough," Voss said of first-century life in Nazareth. "People are insulated from the rural lifestyle today, and they have really no awareness of what it might have been like. So this village will be eye-opening in the sense of how rustic and just how difficult and dirty a life might be like in a small village like this."
The site will also have a study center, a museum, a restaurant and underground parking for up to 30 tourist buses.
Nazareth, today a predominantly Muslim city of 60,000 jammed with buildings and traffic, will be able to put on display part of its biblical heritage. Stephen Pfann, who works with Voss at the site and is director of the Center for the Study of Early Christianity in Jerusalem, told ENI: "I suppose you could also call it a theme park, if it wasn't the real archaeological place where it happens. People are getting the real thing.
"Here you have a piece of property that is nearly contiguous with the original village, and it just happens by chance or by miracle that this here has not been developed. Everything else is covered with concrete and dug up and covered over." The project site is cut into two parts by a road, and there are plans to join them with a tunnel. The land on one side is owned by the state of Israel, which has approved the project. The village itself will be constructed on the other side of the road, on the grounds of the Nazareth Hospital, owned and operated since 1861 by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society.
Dr. Nakhle Bishara, medical director of the hospital and a ninth-generation Nazareth resident, told ENI he had been trying for years to get a project like this off the ground. "Where people once saw dusty stones and open meadows, we hope they will now see the mustard plants, thistles and olive trees of Jesus' childhood that he used to illustrate spiritual truth," said Bishara, a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.
"I grew up in Nazareth since childhood," he said. "I came to realize that most of the parables of Jesus were taken from his actual surroundings.
All these parables have deep spiritual meaning, but they are all taken from the surroundings of Nazareth."
His enthusiasm is shared by other residents of Nazareth from different denominations, including Fadul Mazawi, a Roman Catholic. "(Most) people here in Nazareth don't value Nazareth as much as the people who come from other places,* he told ENI.