Nazareth and its surroundings

As you can guess, today we traveled around Nazareth. We started late yesterday with a tour of the Basilica of the Annunication, which is huge!  The complex covers all of biblical Nazareth, and it reminds me a lot of the Gaudalupe complex. There are two main churches, the Basilica and the Church of St. Joseph. In the basement of the Basilica is the ruins of a Byzantine church which contains the ruins of a house where the Annunciation occurred.

The Byzantine church

The grotto of the Annunciation 

While we were there, we ran into several other American seminarian groups.  We had mass the following morning at St. Joseph's and then went to Cana. One of the other groups was holding mass when we got there, so I didn't take any pictures.

The rest if the day was spent in the ruins of Zepphori. Zepphori is not in the Bible, but was a Greek city about 5 kilometers (so we should start a race) from Nazareth. It was under construction during the first century, and it's highly likely Joseph and Jesus worked there. They had cool mosaics, but it was a long day. Now we are relaxing about a half block from the Basilica and tomorrow we are off to the Sea of Galilee. 

The ruins of Zepphori

Relaxing in Nazareth