Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. In its population was. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and commercial center for the Arab citizens of Israel. The inhabitants are predominantly Arabs, of whom 69% are Muslim and 31% Christian. The city also commands immense religious significance, deriving from its status as the hometown of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity and a prophet in Islam and the Baháʼí Faith.
Findings unearthed in the neighboring Qafzeh Cave show that the area around Nazareth was populated in the prehistoric period. Nazareth was a Jewish village during the Roman and Byzantine periods, and is described in the New Testament as the childhood home of Jesus. It became an important city during the Crusades after Tancred established it as the capital of the Principality of Galilee. The city declined under Mamluk rule, and following the Ottoman conquest, the city's Christian residents were expelled, only to return once Fakhr ad-Dīn II granted them permission to do so. In the 18th century, Daher al-Umar transformed Nazareth into a large town by encouraging immigration to it. The city grew steadily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when European powers invested in the construction of churches, monasteries, educational and health facilities.
Since late antiquity, Nazareth has been a center of Christian pilgrimage, with many shrines commemorating biblical events. The Church of the Annunciation is considered one of the largest Christian sites of worship in the Middle East. It contains the Grotto of the Annunciation, where, according to Catholic tradition, angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she would conceive and bear Jesus. According to Greek Orthodox belief, the same event took place at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, also known as the Church of Saint Gabriel. Other important churches in Nazareth include the Synagogue Church, St. Joseph's Church, the Mensa Christi Church, and the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent.
Etymology
Hebrew
One view holds that the name 'Nazareth' is derived from one of the Hebrew words for 'branch', namely,, and alludes to the prophetic, messianic words in Book of Isaiah 11:1: "from roots a Branch will bear fruit". One view suggests this toponym might be an example of a tribal name used by resettling groups on their return from exile. Alternatively, the name may derive from the verb, נָצַר, 'watch, guard, keep", and understood either in the sense of 'watchtower' or 'guard place', implying the early town was perched on or near the brow of the hill, or, in the passive sense as 'preserved, protected' in reference to its secluded position. The negative references to Nazareth in the Gospel of John suggest that ancient Jews did not connect the town's name to prophecy.Greek from an Aramaic/Semitic root
Another theory holds that the Greek form , used in the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke, may derive from an earlier Aramaic form of the name, or from another Semitic language form. If there were a tsade in the original Semitic form, as in the later Hebrew forms, it would normally have been transcribed in Greek with a sigma instead of a zeta. This has led some scholars to question whether "Nazareth" and its cognates in the New Testament actually refer to the settlement known traditionally as Nazareth in Lower Galilee. Such linguistic discrepancies may be explained, however, by "a peculiarity of the 'Palestinian' Aramaic dialect wherein a sade between two voiced consonants tended to be partially assimilated by taking on a zayin sound".Arabic
The Arabic name for Nazareth is, and Jesus is also called, reflecting the Arab tradition of according people an attribution, a name denoting whence a person comes in either geographical or tribal terms. In the Qur'an, Christians are referred to as, meaning "followers of ", or "those who follow Jesus of Nazareth".New Testament references
In the Gospel of Luke, Nazareth is first described as "a town of Galilee" and home of Mary. Following the birth and early epiphanial events of chapter 2 of Luke, Mary, Joseph and Jesus "returned to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth".The phrase "Jesus of Nazareth" appears seventeen times in English translations of the New Testament, whereas the Greek original contains the form "Jesus the " or "Jesus the." One plausible view is that is a normal Greek adaptation of a reconstructed, hypothetical term in Jewish Aramaic for the word later used in Rabbinical sources to refer to Jesus. "Nazaréth" is named twelve times in surviving Greek manuscript versions of the New Testament, 10 times as or, and twice as. The latter two may retain the 'feminine' endings common in Galilean toponyms. The minor variants, and are also attested. might be the earliest form of the name in Greek, going back to the putative Q document. It is found in Matthew 4:13 and Luke 4:16. However, the Textus Receptus clearly translates all passages as Nazara, leaving little room for debate there.
Many scholars have questioned a link between "Nazareth" and the terms "Nazarene" and "Nazoraean" on linguistic grounds, while some affirm the possibility of etymological relation "given the idiosyncrasies of Galilean Aramaic."
Extrabiblical references
The form Nazara is also found in the earliest non-scriptural reference to the town, a citation by Sextus Julius Africanus dated about AD 221. The Church Father Origen knows the forms Nazará and Nazarét. Later, Eusebius in his Onomasticon also refers to the settlement as Nazara. The nașirutha of the scriptures of the Mandeans refers to "priestly craft", not to Nazareth, which they identified with Qom.The first non-Christian reference to Nazareth is an inscription on a marble fragment from a synagogue found in Caesarea Maritima in 1962. This fragment gives the town's name in Hebrew as נצרת. The inscription dates to c. AD 300 and chronicles the assignment of priests that took place at some time after the Bar Kokhba revolt, AD 132–35. An 8th-century AD Hebrew inscription, which was the earliest known Hebrew reference to Nazareth prior to the discovery of the inscription above, uses the same form.
Nazarenes, Nasranis, ''Notzrim'', Christians
Around 331, Eusebius records that, from the name Nazareth, Christ was called a Nazoraean, and that, in earlier centuries, Christians were once called Nazarenes. Tertullian records that "for this reason the Jews call us 'Nazarenes'." In the New Testament Christians are called "Christians" three times, but never directly by the Apostle Paul. They are called "Nazarenes" once by Tertullus, a Jewish lawyer. The Rabbinic and modern Hebrew name for Christians, notzrim, is also thought to derive from Nazareth, and be connected with Tertullus' charge against Paul of being a member of the sect of the Nazarenes, Nazoraioi, "men of Nazareth" in Acts. Against this, some medieval Jewish polemical texts connect notzrim with the netsarim "watchmen" of Ephraim in Jeremiah 31:6. In Syriac Aramaic Nasrath is used for Nazareth, while "Nazarenes" and "of Nazareth" are both Nasrani or Nasraya an adjectival form. Nasrani is used in the Quran for Christians, and in Modern Standard Arabic may refer more widely to Western people. Saint Thomas Christians, an ancient community of Christians in India who trace their origins to evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century, are sometimes known by the name "Nasrani" even today.History
Stone Age
Archaeological researchers have revealed that a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles from current Nazareth, dates back roughly 9,000 years to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B era. The remains of some 65 individuals were found, buried under huge horizontal headstone structures, some of which consisted of up to 3 tons of locally produced white plaster. Decorated human skulls uncovered there have led archaeologists to identify Kfar HaHoresh as a major cult centre in that era.Bronze and Iron Age
The Franciscan priest Bellarmino Bagatti, "Director of Christian Archaeology", carried out extensive excavation of this "Venerated Area" from 1955 to 1965. Fr. Bagatti uncovered pottery dating from the Middle Bronze Age and ceramics, silos and grinding mills from the Iron Age which indicated substantial settlement in the Nazareth basin at that time.Greco-Roman period
Archaeological evidence shows that Nazareth was occupied during the late Hellenistic period, through the Roman period and into the Byzantine period.According to the Gospel of Luke, Nazareth was the home village of Mary as well as the site of the Annunciation. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary resettled in Nazareth after returning from the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. According to the Bible, Jesus grew up in Nazareth from some point in his childhood. However, some modern scholars also regard Nazareth as the birthplace of the historical Jesus.
A Hebrew inscription found in Caesarea dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century mentions Nazareth as the home of the priestly Hapizzez/Hafizaz family after the Bar Kokhba revolt. From the three fragments that have been found, the inscription seems to be a list of the twenty-four priestly courses, with each course assigned its proper order and the name of each town or village in Galilee where it settled. Nazareth is not spelled with the "z" sound but with the Hebrew tsade. Eleazar Kalir mentions a locality clearly in the Nazareth region bearing the name Nazareth נצרת, which was home to the descendants of the 18th Kohen family Happitzetz, for at least several centuries after the Bar Kochva revolt.
Although it is mentioned in the New Testament gospels, there are no extant non-biblical references to Nazareth until around AD 200, when Sextus Julius Africanus, cited by Eusebius, speaks of Nazara as a village in Judea and locates it near Cochaba. In the same passage Africanus writes of desposunoi – relatives of Jesus – who he claims kept the records of their descent with great care. Ken Dark describes the view that Nazareth did not exist in Jesus's time as "archaeologically unsupportable".
James F. Strange, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, notes: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea." Strange originally calculated the population of Nazareth at the time of Christ as "roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people" but, in a subsequent publication that followed more than a decade of additional research, revised this figure down to "a maximum of about 480." In 2009, Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre excavated archaeological remains in Nazareth that date to the time of Jesus in the early Roman period. Alexandre told reporters, "The discovery is of the utmost importance since it reveals for the very first time a house from the Jewish village of Nazareth."
Other sources state that during Jesus' time, Nazareth had a population of 400 and one public bath, which was important for civic and religious purposes, as a mikva.
A tablet at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, dating to AD 50, was sent from Nazareth to Paris in 1878. It contains an inscription known as the "Ordinance of Caesar" that outlines the penalty of death for those who violate tombs or graves. However, it is suspected that this inscription came to Nazareth from somewhere else. Bagatti writes: "we are not certain that it was found in Nazareth, even though it came from Nazareth to Paris. At Nazareth there lived various vendors of antiquities who got ancient material from several places." C. Kopp is more definite: "It must be accepted with certainty that ... was brought to the Nazareth market by outside merchants." Princeton University archaeologist Jack Finnegan describes additional archaeological evidence related to settlement in the Nazareth basin during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and states that "Nazareth was a strongly Jewish settlement in the Roman period."
In 2020, Yardenna Alexandre confirmed that Jews from Judea migrated to Galilee and settled in new villages and settlements, including Nazareth, since the late Hellenistic-Hasmonean period. Under the leadership of priestly families, the Jewish inhabitants observed ritual purity laws. Previously, most of Galilee, except for minor short-lived Israelite settlements in the Naḥal Ẓippori basin, had an occupational gap for about 5 centuries because of the Assyrian conquest in 732 BCE. However, there is strong evidence for Assyrian presence in Galilee, based on artefacts in Cana, which was north of Nazareth. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schroter note that Assyrians were typically relocated to conquered territories, which most likely included Israel.
Some scholars believed Jesus, a native of Nazareth, was influenced by Cynicism, which was popular in Hellenized Galilean cities such as Gadara.