Identification:
The present church is built over a source of water flowing from the adjacent spring. Arculf II, xxvi, mentioned a church of St. Gabriel, where the Archangel spoke to Blessed Mary (as narrated in the Protoevangelium Iacobi and Pseudo Matthew), but attributed the features of the water source to the church built over the house where Christ was brought up (seemingly The Church of Nutrition / The House of St. Joseph; unless he meant the Church of Annunciation), which he correctly placed in the center of Nazareth. His description cannot refer to the present House of Joseph. Bagatti and Alliata 2002, 153, providing a plan and cross-section of St. Gabriel of the present (built in 1750), suggests that a Byzantine church might had existed under the Mediaeval one. The Russian abbot Daniel, early under the Crusaders (1106-8), speaks about a round church above the well associated with the First Annunciation, and called St. Gabriel. Given his date and the shape of the church, this could not be the oblong Mediaeval chapel. Pringle II, 141, also associates the church abbot Daniel spoke about with what was seen by Arculf. The church that stood there in the Crusaders period was destroyed by Baibars (1263).
