Church of the Holy Table, Nazareth
The scenes connected with the closing events of Christ’s earthly life are limited to the city of Jerusalem. We allow our artist to transport us for a moment to Nazareth, where there is a fanciful tradition which makes the rock visible in the picture the place where Christ and his disciples often ate together. It is found in the interior of the Church of the Holy Table in Nazareth. The rock is about three feet high, ten feet long, and three feet wide. We are standing in front of the church and are looking toward the altar. The picture was taken by our artist on the 7th of May, 1894, at two o’clock in the afternoon. The church is one of the best kept and most pleasant in the city of Nazareth. There is a tradition that our Lord and his disciples often dined upon this rock both before and after his resurrection. The tradition, however, is not traceable further back than the seventeenth century. The chapel itself was built in 1861 and belongs to the Latins. There is an altar behind the table with inscriptions in Latin, Italian and Arabic, with candles and decorations after the manner of the Roman shrines; but the pilgrim turns from these to the open air and to the hills over which the holy child wandered with his mother nearly two thousand years ago. Whatever faith one may place in traditions of localities and “things” connected with the life of Jesus, we may have assurance touching the landscape on which his holy eyes feasted as he walked hither and thither in Galilee.
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