Nazareth #7

Nazareth was a small, unremarkable village in the hill country of Galilee, so obscure that it goes unmentioned in the Old Testament, Josephus, or the Talmud. When Philip tells his friend Nathanael that he has found the Messiah in “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,” Nathanael answers with a question that captures the town’s low regard in the first century: “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:45-46). It was in this unlikely place that Mary and Joseph made their home, and here that Jesus was raised.

Annunciation and Childhood

The angel Gabriel comes to Mary in Nazareth to announce that she has found favor with God and will conceive and bear the Messiah, greeting her, “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1:28). After the family’s flight to Egypt to escape Herod, an angel warns Joseph in a dream not to return to Judea, and he settles instead in Nazareth, which Matthew reads as fulfilling what the prophets had spoken: “He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:19-23). Luke summarizes the next three decades in a single line, noting that the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, in the town that would shape his identity for the rest of his life.

Rejected at Home

As an adult, Jesus returns to Nazareth and, as was his custom, enters the synagogue on the Sabbath. He is handed the scroll of Isaiah, reads the passage about the Spirit of the Lord anointing him “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19), and sits down to declare, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21). The initial wonder of the congregation curdles into fury once Jesus presses the point that a prophet is not honored in his own country, and the crowd drives him to the edge of a hill, intending to throw him down, before he passes through them unharmed (Luke 4:22-30). The name Nazareth nevertheless became permanently attached to him: he is called “Jesus of Nazareth” and “the Nazarene” throughout the Gospels and Acts, including in the inscription Pilate ordered placed over his cross, “JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS” (John 19:19).

Today

Nazareth is today the largest Arab city in Israel, with a population that includes both Muslim and Christian residents. The Basilica of the Annunciation, completed in 1969 over the remains of earlier Byzantine and Crusader churches, is built above a grotto venerated since ancient times as the traditional site of Mary’s home and Gabriel’s announcement. Nearby, the Church of Saint Joseph marks the traditional site of Joseph’s carpentry workshop, and an archaeological park called Nazareth Village recreates a first-century farming settlement to give visitors a sense of the town Jesus would have known. The precise sites cannot be verified archaeologically, but Nazareth’s identification as Jesus’ hometown is not in dispute, and the town remains a significant destination for Christian pilgrims tracing his early life.