MARY'S
WELL
You
may think that one place
to be the location where Mary received the Annunciation in Nazareth
would be enough. You
may be right, but that isn’t the case.
The first location is The
Church of the Annunciation.
It has ruins
of early Nazarene dwellings, silo, and cisterns.
It works for me.
However, not so far away is Mary’s Well.
It was mentioned in the apocryphal Gospel
of James. And,
if one apocryphal
book isn’t enough for you, there are references in the Infancy
Gospel of
Thomas. The
well that is seen today
was rebuilt twice in modern times, 1967 and 2000.
Alas, the location
served the
needs of the local people for centuries, but today there is
no water in the
well. But,
not far away at the Greek
Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel, there is a spring beneath
the church. The
Greeks believe that this is the real site
of the Annunciation. The
crafty people,
who supplied the water to Mary’s Well from their church,
decided that pilgrims
would come to see the water in their building if the well in
the public square ran dry.
Their best laid plans didn’t work on me.
