Nazareth

Nazareth was an obscure village in the hills of Lower Galilee, so unremarkable that Nathanael asked, "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46). Yet it was the hometown of Jesus, who is called "Jesus of Nazareth" throughout the Gospels.

The town of the Annunciation

It was in Nazareth that the angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary to announce the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:26–31). After the flight to Egypt, Joseph settled his family there, "that it might be fulfilled... He shall be called a Nazarene" (Matthew 2:23).

Where Jesus grew up

Jesus spent his childhood and youth in Nazareth, where he "increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:51–52) and worked as a carpenter's son.

Rejected in his hometown

When Jesus returned and read from Isaiah in the synagogue, declaring the prophecy fulfilled, his neighbours took offence and tried to throw him from a hilltop — prompting his words that "no prophet is accepted in his own country" (Luke 4:16–30).

Once doubted by sceptics, Nazareth’s existence in the first century is now well attested archaeologically: excavations have uncovered first-century houses, agricultural installations, and tombs, and a nearby inscription from Caesarea lists Nazareth among the towns where priestly families settled after AD 70. It was a small farming village of perhaps a few hundred people in Jesus’ day.