Nazareth

“ For, to this Carpenter of Nazareth there came a day when, in Nazareth itself, He stood forth as representative of a morality and religion higher than ever was proclaimed before. He spoke to men about the true way to live like one having authority. ”

“ If it could only be proved that Jesus of Nazareth is, in very truth, the incarnation of that which was to be 'begotten' and 'conceived' of the one dual God, and born of a woman into the world, how grandly would the fact vindicate the primitive utterances of all human faith, and translate its vague but splendid dreams into a glorious reality! ”

“ She answered directly, "Hâifa is not a holy place; but this town is holy; our Lady Mary lived here, and Christ, and Joseph." But although Nazareth is reckoned a holy place, it is by no means remarkable for its morality. In this respect it strikingly contrasts with Bethlehem, where the fathers and husbands are said to be severe and rigid disciplinarians, and where dishonor is punished with certain death. Nazareth had not a very good reputation in the time of Christ, and it does not appear to have improved.
I find that the younger girls are beginning to dispense with the coin head-dresses. ”

“ To-day I am in Nazareth, the home of Christ’s boyhood. Here He was brought as a baby after the flight into Egypt to escape the bloodthirsty Herod, and here He spent all but about four years of His life. The town is situated high up in the mountains of Galilee, within sixty miles of Jerusalem as the crow flies and sixty-seven miles from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. It is within a day’s ride on horseback of Mount Carmel and within four hours of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee from which our Saviour called His apostles and where He first preached.
Nazareth lies in a nest in the mountains. ”

“ Christians may continue to persecute Jews, and Jews may persist in disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish race? ”

“ If we turn away from the true Jesus of Nazareth because he has been disfigured and misrepresented by the Churches, we turn away from that in which our weak wills and desponding souls are meant to find their most obvious and natural help and inspiration—from that symbol of the Divine, which, of necessity, means most to us. ”

“ At Capernaum they listened to and admired him; he harangued in the synagogue, explained the scripture, and showed that he himself was foretold in it. In the midst of his sermon, one Sabbath day, they brought him a person possessed, who perhaps in concert with him, began to cry out with all his might; "Let us alone: what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God." ”

“ I came to Nazareth, and was led from the convent to the sanctuary. Long fasting will sometimes heat my brain and draw me away out of the world—will disturb my judgment, confuse my notions of right and wrong, and weaken my power of choosing the right: I had fasted perhaps too long, for I was fevered with the zeal of an insane devotion to the heavenly queen of Christendom. ”

“ It all began soon after thy departure for Jerusalem about a year ago; a more ignorant lot of fellows thou'st be puzzled to find, if thou wert to travel the world over in search of them. The prophet himself comes from the most ignorant village in Galilee—Nazareth. But why look like that, Joseph? What ails thee? Go on, Father, with thy telling of the prophet from Nazareth. He started in Nazareth, Dan answered, but none paid any heed to him but made a mock of him, for he'd have us believe that he is the Messiah that the Jews have been expecting for many a year. ”

“ Nazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where all the really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, all night, do their living.
Other cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can see a new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streets there with their new worlds in their eyes. ”

“ The Jewish Christians then—the congregation of Jerusalem, and their immediate successors, the Ebionites or Nazarenes—saw in their master nothing more than a man. From this, and the other facts which we have seen in this chapter, it is evident that the man Jesus of Nazareth was deified long after his death, just as many other men had been deified centuries before his time, and even after. ”

“ As soon as the Messiah had entered Jerusalem, he betook himself to weeping and predicting its ruin. The announcing calamities was, and will ever be, a sure method to [Pg 154] excite the attention of the vulgar. Some persons of consequence who knew not the cause of the riotous assemblies of the people around Jesus, on enquiry were answered, it is Jesus of Nazareth—it is a prophet of Galilee. ”

“ Nazareth was the abode of Jesus until He was about thirty years of age; and, in accordance with the custom of designating individuals by the names of their home towns as additions to their personal names, [269] our Lord came to be generally known as Jesus of Nazareth. [270] He is also referred to as a Nazarene, or a native of Nazareth, and this fact is cited by Matthew as a fulfilment of earlier prediction, though our current compilation of scriptures constituting the Old Testament contains no record of such prophecy. ”

“ Neither old “sacred” [123] himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the road which I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and from thence to Jerusalem, so I was forced to add another to my party by hiring a guide. The associations of Nazareth, as well as my kind feeling towards the hospitable monks, whose guest I had been, inclined me to set at naught the advice which I had received against employing Christians. ”

“ If the world, remaining Christian, but attaining to a better idea of the esteem in which the origin of its religion should be held, should ever wish to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is upon this height of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There, at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the actions of its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all Christians may worship. ”

“ These two places, which are brought into prominence at this part of the history, were 68 miles apart, Bethlehem being not quite five miles, a little west of south, from Jerusalem, and Nazareth 63 miles north of Jerusalem, if the distances be measured in a straight line.
5. Nazareth is a village of about 5,000 inhabitants, situated in a plain surrounded almost entirely by hills. The place is not mentioned in the Old Testament, nor in Josephus, but twenty-nine times in the New Testament. ”

“ Is it not possible that yet, in some ancient convent, insignificant to the eye of the traveller as modern Nazareth would be but for its ancient story, some one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful and unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist?—Oh lovely parchment!' I thought—'if eye of man might but see thee! ”

“ The virtue of those secret supplications which ascended from His sacred Heart in the silence of Nazareth is being felt throughout the world now, and will continue to be felt until the end of time, and its fruits will remain for eternity. No age, no tribe, no people, no individual soul has been excluded from its embrace, neither has there been any sorrow for which it has not won consolation, nor any temptation which it has not merited grace to overcome. ”

“ Pray, let us wait till they have passed on or entered the tavern.'
'Come, there is nothing to fear, I tell you.'
'No, I entreat you, Jane: another moment.—Really, I admire your bravery!'
'Oh! ‘tis because Jesus of Nazareth inspires courage as he inspires gentleness towards the guilty, tenderness for him who suffers. And then, if you knew how natural his language is! what touching and ingenuous parables he finds to bring his ideas within reach of simple men, of the poor in mind as he calls them, and whom he loves so! ”

“ Nazareth is less populous than Bethlehem, and from its more secluded situation, has better preserved those primitive and distinguishing characteristics, which it is so pleasant to study in a state of society, where goodness and piety prevail. ”

“ And when Jesus explained that he had received consecration during the Passover, and that he was a finished student of the Nazareth schools, the teachers with one accord derisively replied, "We might have known; he is from Nazareth." ”

“ The young man of Nazareth, so sweet, so tender of the sufferers, the sinners and the oppressed as he was, nevertheless broke out at times into terrible threats against the rich, the powerful, the worldly happy—above all and always he thundered against the princes of the church whom he branded as infamous hypocrites—and, here are you, a fervent and recent convert, seeking to place the royalty that you are striving after under the consecration of just such princes of the church, the bishops! ”

“ Make the sign of the Holy Cross, sign thyself with it on thy forehead and on thy breast, and then read devoutly the words of this title; and in place of anxiety and distress, thou shalt perceive in thyself such help as will leave its mark on thee: for if thou invoke the saving Name of Jesus by using the words, " Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" the power of Christ, and a sure trust in God, will not suffer thee to be exposed to danger. The full sweetness of this most illustrious title no words can express, no mind can adequately grasp. ”

“ And in this sense it is said: "The Lord did not choose people on account of the place, but the place on account of the people," II Macc. 5:19. For this cause, I believe it is permitted to name Christ's church from any locality which the righteous faithful inhabit, just as Christ was called the Nazarene on account of his conception which occurred in Nazareth, and as he may be called a Bethlehemite from the place of his nativity, and a Capernaumite from Capernaum where he worked miracles, and a Jerusalemite from his most glorious passion in Jerusalem. ”

“ Now, we, my dear brethren, are something like these Jews at that time. For during our lives there has stood One also in the midst of us, whom we have not known. And it is the same One whom the thoughtless and the sinful passed in the streets of Nazareth, and whom they afterward crucified in Jerusalem. The King of Glory is in our midst at this moment; he who dwells in the tabernacle of the altar is indeed God made man. ”

“ Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you."
And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid.
Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. ”

“ It is impossible that Jesus, as Luke relates, could constantly reside at Nazareth till he was twelve years of age if it be true that he was carried soon after his birth into Egypt, where Matthew makes him remain until the death of Herod. ”

“ I regard Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew of the Jews, one whom all Jewish people are learning to love. His teaching has been an immense service to the world in bringing Israel's God to the knowledge of hundreds of millions of mankind. ”

“ Cana lies on the north side of the hills of Nazareth, and Nazareth lies on the south side, a mile or two farther to the west. This range of hills is not high, and Nazareth is built on the side of it, and, in part, on a little level space that is somewhat elevated above the small plain that spreads out before it. A ridge of the hills runs to the south-east, so as nearly to shut out Nazareth from a view of the great plain in which it stands. ”

“ That Jesus the man, if such a being existed, was not born at Bethlehem is affirmed by all critics. That he could not have been born at Nazareth is urged by many. Nazareth, it is asserted, did not exist at this time. Christian scholars admit that there is no proof of its existence at the beginning of the Christian era outside of the New Testament. The Encyclopedia Biblica, a leading Christian authority, says: “We cannot perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city called Nazareth in Jesus’ time.” ”

“ The village of Nazareth, nestling among the hills of Galilee, must always be a place of supreme interest to the Christian. Its location was probably determined by the presence here of an unfailing spring, now known as Mary's fountain. Dr. George Adam Smith, in his "Historical Geography of the Holy Land," points out the relation between the springs and the routes of travel and emphasizes the prominence of Nazareth in the Bible times. Christ's boyhood and young manhood were spent near a great highway, for the old Roman road from Damascus to Egypt ran through the town. ”

“ Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
39 And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the country of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom also they slew, hanging him on a tree. ”