The historical truth at the heart of Christmas

Christmas Eve this year is also the fourth and final Sunday of Advent. The day’s Gospel reading, from St Luke, describes the Annunciation. The Angel Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her that she will bear a son, Jesus: “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”

The scene is familiar from medieval and Renaissance art, the characters framed within an Italian loggia or a simply furnished Flemish parlour. That was not, of course, the world of first-century Nazareth, and recently we have got a tantalising glimpse of how it might really have been.

The Telegraph London