Guided Historical Tour of the Holy Land | Mary and the Church of Saint Anne (Video 4)

In case you missed it, watch the previous video: Dan and Qumran

Join us to learn more about Jesus’ mother Mary, and the Church of Saint Anne’s on this fourth stop in the virtual tour of Israel.

Best of all—this tour is free! Consider this a gift from us and from Aspect Ministries. If you’re excited about the tour, be sure to invite your friends and family to join in on the journey! They can subscribe to our YouTube channel, follow along here on our blog, or catch us on Facebook, we’ll be posting there as well.

What do we really know about the background of Jesus?

The Church knows him as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Messiah of Israel. He was probably known in his own day as Yeshua of Nazareth, or Yeshua, son of Joseph. The New Testament introduces him by focusing on certain Old Testament prophecies about important issues like the nature of the Messiah’s birth (to be born of a virgin), the place of the Messiah’s birth (in Bethlehem), and the purpose of the Messiah’s birth (as the Redeemer and King of Kings). In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we learn a bit about Jesus’ birth and early life and how those events fulfilled the prophecies. But further back, the line becomes much harder to trace with any certainty…

We know that Jesus’ mother was Mary. But her background is uncertain. Scripture is silent on Mary’s origins. However, both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church have traditions connecting Mary with Jerusalem. The tradition says that Mary was born in early September around 20 BC, and that her mother’s name was Anne, or Hannah in Hebrew. Early Christians believed that Mary spent at least part of her childhood in Jerusalem in a house near the Temple compound. Later on at this site, crusaders built the Church of Saint Anne in the 1130s, which is our next stop on this tour.