Jesus Christ

442 Why is Jesus Christ associated with Nazareth? Nazareth, a small village in Upper Galilee, was the boyhood home of Jesus. Joseph and Mary, according to the New Testament, returned there sometime after Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, a small town in Judea in the south (Matthew 2:23). From Jesus’ youth until he was thirty years of age, Nazareth was his home. During this period it was not uncommon for a person to be identified with the town where he or she was born or lived (see for example Luke 8:2 where Mary of Magdala is mentioned). As a result, Jesus Christ is identified with Nazareth some seventeen times in the New Testament as “Jesus of Nazareth.” Even in his death, though he had left Nazareth nearly three years earlier, Jesus was identified with the small village off the main road in the hills of Galilee: “And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews” (John 19:19). A few years later,... Read the rest of this entry »