Mr Bartlett, in his “Walks about Jerusalem,” deems the identification of the spot at variance with probability, since, although it may occasionally happen that caverns are used as stables in Palestine, this one is deeper underground than would be convenient for such a purpose. When we consider, in addition, the tendency of the monks to fix the scene of remarkable Scriptural events in grottoes, perhaps from the impressiveness of such spots, the presumption against the site appears almost conclusive.
Palestine exploration was hardly likely to throw any light on this question, which is to be elucidated rather by a study of the causes which led to a confusion between the traditions relating to Christ and the legends told of Tammuz.
The people of Bethlehem are better fed, better dressed, better off in most respects than the people of other small towns in Palestine. The women are remarkable for their beauty, and they wear a peculiar kind of head-dress, adorned with rows of silver coins. It is believed that at the time of the Crusades a good deal of intermarriage took place between Europeans and the women of Bethlehem. The population now is chiefly Christian.
If we attempt to follow Joseph and Mary, returning from Egypt and taking at first the road for Bethlehem, but changing their course when they hear that Archelaus reigns, and withdrawing into the parts of Galilee (Matt. ii. 23), we may suppose that they make their way to the river Jordan, cross by the ford near Jericho, journey on the eastern side and so avoid Samaria, and then, re-crossing by the ford near Bethshan, make their way to Nazareth.
Nazareth, the town in which Jesus was brought up, is also without any Jewish inhabitants at the present day; the population is about six thousand, of whom one-third are Moslem, while two-thirds are Christians of the Latin, Greek, and other churches. Unfortunately they bear an evil character for their turbulence.
In Nazareth we are shown what purports to be the workshop of Joseph the carpenter, but we know that this is a modern appropriation, a Latin chapel, built only in 1859. We are asked to look at the _Mensa Christi_, a block of rock, rudely oval, 10 feet across and 3 feet high, in a church built in 1861, but we have no confidence that Jesus and his disciples used it as a table. Making a stronger claim is the house in which the Holy Family lived, or what remains of it, for the legend says that the upper storey or the outer room was carried away by angels through the air, and after lengthy travels was set down on the wooded hill-top of Loretto in Italy. It is a rock-cut grotto under the high altar of the Latin church. A wall of separation makes two chambers of it, the outer being called the Grotto of the Annunciation, and the inner the Grotto of St Joseph. The shaft of a red granite pillar hanging through the roof is believed to be miraculously suspended over the very place where the angel Gabriel stood to deliver his message. From the inner chamber--that of St Joseph--a narrow passage, with seventeen steps, leads up obliquely to the inmost part of the cave, a chamber of irregular shape, traditionally supposed to be the Virgin’s kitchen.