One of my favorite places in Israel is the site known as “Mount Precipice” in modern Nazareth. Nazareth is built on a hill and overlooks the broad, flat, fertile plain to the south known as the Jezreel Valley. The Jezreel Valley runs east-west, and it makes a natural buffer zone between Galilee in the north and Samaria in the south. Mount Precipice is quite close to the site of first-century Nazareth—it’s a walk of a bit more than a mile. I don’t expect that Jesus came there every day, but I suspect that when he wanted to be alone to …
nazareth
With Jesus In Nazareth
I live in a small town. The population is about 20,000. I don’t feel terribly isolated, because we’re half an hour from a much larger town of about 200,000. And we’re right across the river from a good sized city of over 600,000. It’s worth noting that my small town is about twice the size of the largest cities in Galilee at the time of Jesus. At the time he began preaching the news of the kingdom of God, the capital of Galilee was Tiberias, with a population of about 10,000. Tiberias was a day’s walk from Nazareth, so Jesus …
Mother’s Day With Jesus
They didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day in first-century Nazareth. But pretend for a moment that they did. How many Mother’s Day cards would Mary have gotten? That’s not an easy question to answer, because we don’t know how many children Mary had. There’s an old tradition that Mary was a lifelong virgin and only ever had one child, Jesus. But not everybody accepts the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin. This is a church tradition that doesn’t go back to the first century. What does the Bible tell us? What Mark Tells Us The gospel of Mark mentions several siblings …
The Incident at Nazareth
Three of the gospels report a very strange incident at Nazareth. Jesus had spent some months making a name for himself all around Galilee. Then he came back to his hometown. And the villagers gave him a very cold shoulder. You can read all about it in Mark, in Matthew, and in Luke. Each of these gives us unique information. What Mark Tells Us Mark is our earliest gospel, and it tells the story in Mark 6:1-6. Jesus came to Nazareth with some of his disciples and was asked to teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Mark reports that …
Around Galilee With Jesus
In a previous blog post, I talked about what it was like to go On the Road With Jesus. Jesus took a lot of road trips. He seems to have gone often to the major feasts in Jerusalem (Passover in the spring, Pentecost in early summer, Tabernacles in the fall). It was a long trip to go from his home region of Galilee down to Jerusalem. Each trip must have taken several weeks. But he also took a lot of local trips inside Galilee. What was Galilee like? Galilee Was Small Galilee was a pretty small region in the time …
The Synagogue at Nazareth
Homecomings don’t always work out the way you expect. Three of the gospels tell accounts of Jesus returning to his hometown, Nazareth, where he got a rather rude welcome. The earliest account appears in Mark 6:1-6. Jesus teaches in the synagogue on Shabbat, and his friends and neighbors are, to say the least, unimpressed. Jesus responds by saying that a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country. The townspeople take offense at him. The end result is that, aside from healing a few sick people, Jesus doesn’t make much of a splash. The next-oldest account comes …