Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE CHILDHOOD OP JESUS JESUS was brought up at Nazareth. In the middle of the eighth century of Rome, about 1890 years ago,1 this was the name2 of a small town hidden away among the hills of Galilee, and making part of the Roman province of Syria. It was twenty-five leagues north of Jerusalem, and eight or nine hours’ walk from Capernaum. Its general aspect was dull and mean. Nazareth was a cluster of cubical houses without character or elegance, built in terraces in the hollow of an amphitheatre of rocky hills. Irregularly disposed, they formed a confused medley of small white 1 It is impossible to fix the exact date. The first ten or twelve years of Jesus’ life must have lain between the years of Rome 760 and 765. 2 According to the best manuscripts, the correct Greek transliteration of this word is Nazara; but we retain the name Nazareth, consecrated by usage. J flat-roofed dwellings, threshing-floors and wine-presses. Here were pits hollowed out of the ground; there tombs hewn out of the rock. The fig-tree, the olive, the cactus grew everywhere, and now and then, between the houses, a tiny field of wheat. The streets were rough and uneven; and the lanes, narrow, crooked, and steep, were often crossed by streamlets from the ravines in the hills north of the town. We are told that Nazareth contained three or four thousand inhabitants. This estimate is certainly excessive. Judging by the small area which it covered, Nazareth was a mere village. It is true that in the Orient men and beasts can huddle themselves into a very small space; but we cannot credit more than fifteen hundred or two thousand inhabitants to a village which had only one synagogue, one fountain, and one public square. The fountain is still there. Springs do not change. Th…