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Lived in Nazareth

CHURCH POSITION

"When they finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.”        (Luke 2:39)

"...And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." (Matthew 2:23)
SCHOLARS

"If our reasoning is correct, they [ the Essenes] were not left out [of the Gospels], but appeared under the name nazoraioi, a word which has been mistakenly assumed to refer to the little town of Nazareth in Galilee (and never mentioned in the Old Testament)...Accordingly, ' Jesus of Nazareth' would be a mistranslation of 'Jesus the Nazorean' or grecicised, Jesus the Essene." (Ellegard, 1999, p. 241)

"For Christians brought up on the gospel stories, it might seem obvious that 'Nazarene' should mean 'of Nazareth'. Yet this is not necessarily the case. Although modern NT translations repeated references to 'Jesus of Nazareth', 'Jesus the Nazarene' is the more common form of words in the original Greek version. And one problem rarely appreciated by Christians is that, according to one school of thought, Nazareth may not have even existed in the first century AD." (Wilson, 1984, p. 67)

"There is no such place as Nazareth in the Old Testament or in Josephus' works, or on early maps of the Holy Land." (Holley, 1994, p. 190)

"...[people in Nazareth were] living in wretched caves...from about 900 BC to about 600 AD." (Keller, 1980, p. 337)

"...architectural elements and decorations suppose the construction of a "public" building...a church-synagogue.....before the Council of Ephesus (431)" (Bagatti, 1955)

"We cannot be totally sure that Jesus ever lived in the very tiny Galilean village of Nazarus, for the gospel reference to this may derive from the authors' mistaking the description Jesus the Nazarene for a reference to Nazareth." (Wilson, 1999, p. 217)

"To associate a Nazarite with the town of Nazareth was the kind of data a scribe, trained in the tradition of midrash, would employ" (Spong, 1992, p. 96)

"...none of the ceramic material accompanying them...suggests a date earlier than the third or fourth century. Even if it were a synagogue, it could not have been from the time of Jesus but centuries later..."(Crossan & Reed, 2001, p. 25)

"[the population of Nazare that the time of Jesus] lived in hovels and simple peasant houses." (Crossan & Reed, 2001, p. 32)

"The prophecy [that Jesus is a Nazarene from Nazareth] is based on Matthew's total misunderstanding of a passage from Isaiah (11:1), where the Messiah is called a nezer (branch); in other words, a branch from Jesse's (father of David) "stump". Matthew reads into "nezer" the city of Nazareth..." (Ranke-Heinemann, 1994, p. 22)

"...six oil lamps were discovered in a Nazareth tomb, and have been used in the scholarly literature as proof of a village at Nazareth in Hellenistic times, as early as III BCE. In fact, the six lamps date from the Middle Roman to the Late Roman periods, long after the time of Christ. Gross misdatings of the primary evidence, sometimes involving discrepancies of up to 500 years, are frequently encountered in the Nazareth literature." (Salm, 2006, Chapter 3)

"The evidence for a 1st century town of Nazareth does not exist - not literary, not archeological, and not historical. It is an imaginery city..." (Humphreys, 2005, p. 285)

"There is, in fact, no record of Narazeth's existence at that [Jesus'] time...Nazareth is not to be found in any book, map, chronicle or military record of the period so far discovered." (Gardner, 2007, p. 53)

"For one thing, the existence of a town called Nazareth during Jesus' time has never been  confirmed. There is no mention of such a town in the Hebrew Bible, or in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who - as a former Galilean rebel leader against the Romans - had personally fortified the towns of Galilee. Almost certainly "Nazarene" referred instead to a Jewish/Christian sect that was later identified with the Ebionites..." (Hooper, 2005, p.189)
THE REALITY

Most people believe Jesus was raised in Nazareth. Speaking of Joseph, the Gospel of Matthew (2:23) says:  “he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’” A careful reading of this passage reveals that the writers of Matthew are trying to fulfill the prophecy, not Jesus, and in order to fulfill the prophecy that “He will be called a Nazarean”, Matthew gives his hometown as Nazareth.  But in fact, there is no Old Testament prophecy to the effect that a Messiah will come from a place called Nazareth (which is another in the long list of errors that the writers of the Gospel of Matthew made about Old Testament prophecies). The closest we come to any such description is a passage in Judges (13:5) where Samson’s mother is warned: “…the child shall be a Nazarite [nazirarios in Greek, nazir in Hebrew] unto God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel; out of the hand of the Philistines.” The words Iesou Nazarene (Nazareneus) refer to the fact that Jesus was a Nazarene (or Nazarean), not to the fact that he came from Nazareth. To indicate that Jesus came from a place called Nazareth, the correct wording would have been Nazarethenos or Nazarethaios.

Thus, the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth is a result of a mis-translation of the Old Testament by the writers of Matthew.

From another point of view, there is a wealth of evidence that Nazareth did not even exist at the time of Jesus as it is described in the New Testament. It may have been a tiny spot where transient Arabs established tent cities or where people lived in "wretched caves", but it certainly wasn't a City that supported a sizable population and a synagogue. Cross and Reed (2001) claimed its inhabitants "lived in hovels and simple peasant houses (p. 32)." Keller (1988) calls them "cave dwellers".  In support of this, Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament, or in the works of Jewish historian Josephus nor in any of the Epistles, nor in the Talmud [1]. Nor was there a major road in that area at that time (Sanders, p. 104). In fact, from the archeological evidence available to date (Crosson & Reed, 2001), the town of Nazareth was created after the time of Jesus, partly as a result of a mis-translation. One scholar (Gardner, 2004) dates it from 60 A.D. and Crosson (1991) from 70 A.D. Finegan (1969) provides a thorough discussion of the archeological evidence, and offers the belief that Nazareth existed at the time of Jesus (largely because of the number of graves), yet the earliest date he can muster is after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., more than 30 years after Jesus’ death.

Some scholars have argued that any synagogue that might have existed in Nazareth was destroyed and hence no trace can be found. Yet 1st Century synagogues have been found in a number of Galilean cities (e.g., Masada, Gamla, Japha,  Capernaum), and there are no records of any mass destructions taking place in Nazareth that would have obliterated a synagogue if it existed.

Some scholars have argued that for 1st Century Jews, a synagogue could simply be the place where 10 men gathered to pray. In this case, a house temporarily becomes a "synagogue" for religious purposes. And this house/ synagogue would not have lasted very long. While this practice did occur, a study of the language used in the gospels shows that the word synagogue, used only 43 times, is used to describe separate buildings in Capernaum (Mark 1:21; Luke 7:5; John 6:69), Jerusalem (John 9:22; 12:42; 18:20), or Gadarenes (Mark 5:22; Luke 8:4). So when the word is applied to the synagogue in Jesus' hometown, we should assume it too was a separate structure. Moreover, the synagogue in Jesus' hometown is referred to as a synagogue without any reference to the "sabbath day". Thus, while a home might become a synagogue on the sabbath day for religious purposes, to otherwise refer to the synagogue (Matthew 13:54) implies a seperate structure. Thus, the linguistic analysis leads us to believe that Jesus' hometown had a synagogue, and as far as we know from the archeological evidence, no such place existed in Nazareth.

Some apologists have also argued that Nazareth was too small a place, but that it nonetheless existed. However, the word used by Matthew and Luke is "city" (polis), a word which is used 870 times in the Bible, and more than two dozen times in Matthew and Luke. The word refers to such places as Jerusalem (Matthew 21:18), Bethlehem (Luke 2:4), Nain (Luke 7:11), Bethsaida (Luke 9:10), Sodom (Luke 10:12) and Capernaum (Luke 4:31). Both Luke and Matthew also use the word "village" or kome (Matthew 21:2, Luke 9:52) and Luke (8:1) even uses the two words together ("...he went throughout every city and village..."). The only villages that have names are Bethany (Luke 10:38) and Emmaus (Luke 24:13). Thus it's clear that according to Matthew and Luke Nazareth is a city, not a village, and therefore should have been noted in the non-Christian texts.

If Nazareth didn’t exist as the town described in the gospels, and if the only connection between Jesus and Nazareth was a false translation, where might Jesus have called home? A careful reading of the Gospel of Mark indicates that Jesus’ hometown was Capernaunm [2], not Nazareth. He notes “When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home…” (2:1). Later the Gospel says that “He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue…” (6:1). Given that Nazareth, if it existed at all, was too small to host a synagogue, how could Nazareth have been his hometown? Capernaum, on the other hand, had a “sizable synagogue” (Asimov p. 820; Sanders, p. 103), and there is some archeological evidence for that fact (Loffreda, 1985; Wilson, 1992).

Returning to the issue of Jesus the Nazarene, raised by Matthew’s mistaken attribution, is it possible that Jesus was a Nazarene? A Nazarene was someone who lived an ascetic life, known as much for what they did (a lot of praying) as for what they didn’t do (eat animals, sacrifice animals, shave, cut their hair, drink fermented beverages). Nazarenes were originally called Nazorenes, and they were a prominent sect in northern Palestine, and according to Epipanius, were also known as Mandaeans. They derived their name from the word “Nasrani” which referred to a school of small fish. The metaphor to the early Christians is obvious, as is their early symbol, the fish. Famous examples of Nazarenes included John the Baptist, the warrior Samson and the prophet Samuel. It is also likely that Jesus’ brother, Jacob (James) the Just, was a Nazarene. All things considered, Jesus life shared many of the characteristics of a Nazarene, and two of the most prominent people in his life, John the Baptist and his brother James, also were Nazarenes. Yet his proclivity for fermented beverages indicates that if he was a Nazarene, he was a poor one.

Some authors treat the word Nazarene and Nazarite (also Nazirite) as if they are the same word; they certainly look the same in English. However, the word Nazarite (nazir in Hebrew, meaning consecrated or separated) refers to a type of short-term vow (30 to 100 days), usually made to God to achieve a specific purpose, and then discontinued when the goal had been achieved (e.g., I promise not to drink alcohol if I get a new car for Christmas). Nazarite vows are described in Numbers (6: 1-21) and usually involve abstaining from wine, vinegar, grapes, raisins, contact with dead bodies, and cutting the hair on your head. Many people took Nazarite vows, including Samson (Judges 13:5), the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1), the apostle Paul (Acts 21:20-24), John the Baptist (Luke: 1:15), and others.

The bottom line, therefore, is that we have no idea where Jesus grew up, but we can be reasonably certain that he grew up in the countryside, and not in the city, because Jesus used the language of the villages. When Jesus answered questions or when he used parables, almost all his examples came from the simple life of peasants and villagers. For example, he talked about women making bread, men planting trees, people working in the vineyards, etc. Almost all of his talk about wealth was derisive, as was his attitude toward those who promoted themselves and tried to set themselves above others.


Updated 02/20/2007

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[1] Josephus mentions 45 Galilean towns, the Talmud lists 63 Galilean towns, but neither mentions Nazareth.

[2] Indeed, Jesus rarely addresses citizenry, but when he does, Capernaum is mentioned (Matthew 11:23) but never Nazareth. Other cities he mentions include Tyre, Sidon, Chorazin and Bethsaida (Luke 10:13)
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Date:     2006-05-23 Username:   drj Helpful:   3 of 4
It's because they accept Matthew's translation error and ignore the archeological evidence. I am more inclinded to accept archeological evidence that opinion.
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Date:     2006-05-29 Username:   drj Helpful:   5 of 5
I guess so. It may be possible that some travelling group like the Slebs or the Rechabites camped by a wadi near the place where Nazareth was subsequently built. Perhaps Dr. Tabor refers to these encampments. But as a city, there is no archeological evidence for the city described in the gospels as Nazareth until mid 1st Century. Note footnotes 1 and 2 above as further proof, and keep in mind that both Josephus and the Talmud are very late writings, yet still no mention of Nazareth.
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Date:     2006-07-04 Username:   ProfWilliams Helpful:   3 of 3
Is it possible that a First Century synagogue has never been found in Nazareth because they were all destroyed over time, either by Romans or through decay? Hence the lack of a First Century synagogue in Nazareth does not negate the fact that one was there in Jesus' time.
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Date:     2006-07-04 Username:   drj Helpful:   6 of 6
Anything is possible. But 1st Century synagogues have been found in Galilee. Dr. Tabor (p. 113) mentions two - Gamla and Masada. There is also one at Capernaum, although there is a great deal of debate about whether this is a synagogue or merely a public building where they later built a synagogue. So whether you list 2 or 3, 1st Century synagogues have been found, but not in Nazareth. These archeological findings support the idea that Nazareth was not the home of Jesus and his family.
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Date:     2006-08-17 Username:   Nick Helpful:   4 of 4
Just about concerned about the fact that you suggest that Jesus may have been a Nazarene i.e. He didn't shave or cut his hair. Yet you argue in another section against him having long hair or a beard because this wasn't the fashion of the day and early art forms depicted him as clean shaven and short haired. Which leaves the Nazarene arguement a bit up in the hair!
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Date:     2006-08-19 Username:   drj Helpful:   3 of 3
Hi Nick. Great question. If you look at the evidence in the section about Jesus' appearance you'll see that the bulk of the evidence overwhlemingly indicates that his hair was short and he was clean shaven. So how does that square with being a Nazarene? Jesus, if you'll remember, was a non-conforming Jew. While he held the scriptures sacred, he didn't much like all the "suits and trappings" of religion. He performed healings on the Sabbath, allowed his disciples to gather grain on the Sabbath, let his disciples eat without washing their hands first, ate with sinners and tax collectors, etc. So I suspect he was equally willing to forgo the long hair/beard uniform of the Nazarenes just as he was willing to drink fermented beverages. Yet he seems to have remained free of animal sacrifices, and many scholars believe that the baptism was meant to be a replacement for animal sacrifice. Needless to say he also prayed a lot, which was also a Nazarene characteristic.
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Date:     2006-08-19 Username:   drj Helpful:   4 of 4
Hi Nick. Me again. I've been thinking about your question and my response and I have another idea I wanted to share. Our information about Jesus being a Nazarene comes from the Gospels because he is called "The Nazarene". He never says so, and nothing in the gospels refers to his religious beliefs in so far as he isn't mentioned as a Pharisee, or an Essene, or a Nazarene (He is called Rabbi, but that's pretty general). He is never criticized for breaking Nazarene codes (e.g., drinking) although he is self-criticized for drinking to excess, while a true Nazarene would be criticized for drinking at all. So it is possible that Jesus is not a Nazarene but he is referred to that way, perhaps as a mistake. I don't think this is likely, but I wanted to raise it as a possibility. The later association of his brother James with the Ebionites and their association with the Nazarenes suggests that the family is involved with this sect, BUT, there are no guarantees.
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Date:     2006-08-21 Username:   Nick Helpful:   6 of 6
Hi drj, I too have been thinking in some great depth. My conclusion is that any answer is pure conjecture. I wonder whether we are suffering the same confusions as early scholars and Christians- who do we want Jesus to be? In making Jesus the son of God there are certain pre-requisites and prophecies to fulfill. Maybe Matthew did mistakenly attribute this to title to Jesus which led to the belief he was from Nazareth. Maybe, the fact that Jesus was not of one distinctive sect gave him greater appeal, if he could be a little bit of each his target area for sale could be greater. We see this in Jesus who says to turn the other cheek but, also, who acts in a violent manner when the Temple is being used for trade. Perhaps that is where we have to leave him. To be to whosoever what they need him to be to get closer to their God, with or without beard! Thank you so much, your knowledge and comments are intelligent and thought provoking which leads to a great site.
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Date:     2006-08-22 Username:   drj Helpful:   1 of 1
Hi Nick. You are absolutely correct, as Schweitzer observed more than 100 years ago, we go searching for Jesus and find ourselves. It's hard to avoid this trap, even when we know it's out there. I've tried with this site to accumulate the evidence, such as we have it. But the evidence is limited, sometimes contradictory, and always illusory. One of the problems which I haven't raised on this site (but will when the next 10 errors are listed, and do in my book Jesus Who?) is that there are a bunch of Jesus characters in the time between 100 BC and 50 AD, and when the gospels were finally written (which I believe is the 2nd Century), these various stories got combined. Hence, I believe that many of the contradictions built into our histories come from the fact that different people are being referenced, which makes re-construction even more difficult.
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Date:     2006-10-05 Username:   glass Helpful:   1 of 1
in Josephus' Life, he talks of a delegation sent to the town of Tiberias ON the Lake of Genessaret. it is just a matter of translation to attribute the name of the lake to the origin of the person, and there is a major personality in this town of Tiberias named JESUS! in addition, Josephus talks about his own family. He notes having a brother named Matthias. could this same person be the Matthias elected to join the eleven in the book of Acts? one can only wonder.
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Date:     2006-10-05 Username:   glass Helpful:   1 of 1
and, seeing that the true story of Josephus involves a series of betrayals committed by his own person, it might also be fitting to designate Josephus himself as the 'judas' character of the New Testament. i should also note, at the end of his work about his Life, he tells of his children, one of whom is named JUSTUS--and this also finds resonance in the story in the opening of Acts, when deciding who will join the eleven. albeit, the version of Acts is less direct than the historical rendition found in Josephus' Life, it does touch upon many similar themes and topics.
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Date:     2007-04-29 Username:   dougweller Helpful:   1 of 1
Who is this archaeologist? I can't find any trace of this claim, which according to you means that everyone was wrong in thinking that the first Temple was built in Jerusalem. I can't understand at all the idea that someone would think that an author that they hadn't bothered to read was concealing information.
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Date:     2007-12-22 Username:   tall Helpful:   2 of 2
In your discussion on Nazareth you didn’t mention Mark 1:9 which is likely to be the first mention of Nazareth. elphen iesous apo nazaret Came Jesus from Nazareth This is not Iesou Nazarene However Mark 1:24 is (iesou nazarene) This is an unclean spirit speaking. Again not Jesus saying it. Therefore it most likely in the oral tradition that reached Mark. It is slightly different in Mk 10:47, 14:67, 16:6. Lk 4:34 agrees, while the rest are slightly different – 18:37 and 24:19. Mt 26:71 is slightly different. John 18:5, 18:7, 19:19 are slightly different. There seems to be three ways of saying it – Jesus Nazarene, Jesus the Nazarene (with different words for the). Q does not seem to use this term.
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Date:     2007-12-27 Username:   drj Helpful:   3 of 3
Hi Tall. It's important to remember that the gospels were written down dozens of years after the fact, and based on decades of oral stories. If this isn't problemmatic enough, there are no "original" copies of the gospels and for 200 or more years there are only fragments of gospels which were transcribed innumerable times. By the time that people were writing the gospels, there was a town called Nazareth, as archeology places the "birth" of the town (as described in the gospels) in the late 1st Century. So it's easy to see how a scribe working 200 years after the fact might mistake Jesus the Nazarene or Jesus the Nazarite taker for Jesus from Nazareth. You'll note that none of the major characters in the gospels have place names. Where they have another name, it is a nickname like the brothers of thunder, the rock, the zealot, the tower, the dagger man. Only peripheral characters (Joseph of Arimathea, Simon of Cyrene, widow of Naim) have place names.
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Date:     2007-12-29 Username:   tall Helpful:   3 of 3
I don’t think that Mark 1.9 and its parallel are due to transcription errors. As Matthew copies the phase and Luke could have based 2.39 on it, it is likely to have been in their copies of Mark. Therefore it must have been either created by Mark or reached him like it. However it seems that for the other four times “from” is not used in Mark and Matthew and Luke continue this. I believe this is from the older tradition. John doesn’t use “from” either. Therefore I am agreeing with you that Nazarene is unlikely to refer to Nazareth.
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Date:     2007-12-29 Username:   anorak Helpful:   4 of 5
Nazareth didn't exist until at LEAST 3rd Century CE. Nazareth didn't appear in any Jewish sources until after the 3rd century. Some even say that the city "appeared" during the 5th century.
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Date:     2009-07-11 Username:   calum Helpful:   1 of 1
The Myth of Nazareth has just been thrashed out at great length in this forum - http://wheresjesus.multiply.com/journal/item/1305?mark_read=wheresjesus:journal:1305&replies_read=365 There is much valuable comment in this 'Where's Jesus' discussion. My own view is that had there been any archaeological evidence it would have been found, especially today with so many new tools, such as geophys, radar, magnetic and the like. The old City of Per Rameses has completely disappeared beneath fields at Qantir. Despite the whole City having been moved and all stone, columns and monuments now at Tanis, the original site was found by examining pottery deposits and dating them, and then geophys at Qantir.
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Date:     2009-08-26 Username:   Veronica Helpful:   0 of 0
This whole thing started when they created the KJV. They mistranslated the word to Nazareth. They knew what that was but had no idea what Nazorean was and subsequently thought it was the town that existed by that time. It's a Biblical error for that translation which is made up of many. I would never use anything that was translated from the Latin Vulgate as any sort of authority or for any arguments. Most of these things were written years after the death of Jesus and after many re-tellings. You cannot count on much of it being anything more than myth and perhaps some truth mixed together. How do you separate that? One has to also be aware of Jewish customs of that time to be really able to give educated responses. Since we have high tech ways of looking at the gospels they know because of style and description that most of these works were not written by those that are attributed to doing so. Many were written something like 150 years after the fact. If you use the writings more power to you on there being anything factual in them other than some of these people did live during the time described and did things that over time became bigger than life.
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