Sea of Galilee, Israel. Photo: Wiki Commons.

JNS.org – A religion professor from Alabama-based Samford University has discovered an ancient Galilean Jewish village five miles near Nazareth in a recent archeological dig.

“The site of the discovery has been abandoned, except for agriculture, ever since the mid-fourth century A.D. … The buildings came down and people used its stones in other nearby buildings, then those buildings were destroyed and the stones were re-used agai,” said Professor James Riley Strange, according to Science World Report.

Archeologists discovered remnants of Jewish housing and synagogues at the site, as well as pottery and moulds that were used to make oil lamps. One discovered piece, an oil lamp, has an engraving of a menorah and a lulav.

From the discovery, experts suspect the village was a potters’ village. One of the earliest Jewish villages in the region during the Hasmonaean dynasty (140-63 B.C) was “Shikhin,” a potters’ village described by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and by the Talmud.