Whether you believe that Jesus is the son of God or just a man, he had a house and archaeologists might have found it, according to Live Science.
The mortar-and-stone house is partially cut into a rocky hill. It was first discovered in the 1880s by nuns from the Sisters of Nazareth convent. In 2006, archaeologists led by Ken Dark, a professor at the U.K.'s University of Reading, dated the house as a first century structure and identified it as the home where Mary and Joseph reared Jesus.
Dark told Live Science that it is possible to know if Jesus lived in the house."Was this the house where Jesus grew up? It is impossible to say on archaeological grounds," Dark wrote in an article published in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review, according to Live Science. "On the other hand, there is no good archaeological reason why such an identification should be discounted."
Centuries after Jesus' time, the Byzantine Empire covered the walls of the house with mosaics and built a church around the house to protect it. Twelfth century Crusaders fixed up the church. Dark told Live Science that those actions suggest that both the Byzantines and Crusaders believed the home to be the childhood home of Jesus.
Artifacts were found inside the house, including limestone vessels, which suggests that a Jewish family lived in the home (according to Live Science, limestone could not become impure, as dictated by Jewish beliefs).
Dark's findings have also been published in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly and The Antiquaries Journal, with more publications forthcoming.
