NAZARETH, ITS CHARACTER AND PROBABLE SIZE;
ORIGIN OF THE NAME; NOT SO ISOLATED AS IS SUPPOSED.

IN regard to Nazareth, some have apparently felt that they were honouring Christ in proportion as they were able to make His earthly home appear insignificant and mean. The pictures which have been drawn of the 'meanness' of Nazareth, and of the ' poverty ' of Christ's family, are as distressing as they are untruthful. It is a question whether the words of Nathanael have not been misunderstood. The Greek can be translated easily; but we refer to the spirit of the words. In common with all the pious at that time, Nathanael expected Christ to appear at Bethlehem. 'The passage in Micah v. 2¹ left no doubt in the minds of the Sanhedrin as to the birthplace of the Messiah,' i.e. it could occur only at Bethlehem. So Nathanael believed with the rest. Consequently, any one who should announce that He had appeared elsewhere, would at once be said to be mistaken. This is a striking case, we think, where too strict adherence to the letter does violence to the sentiments of the speaker and to the well-known facts of the time. Nathanael in his surprise said only, ' The great good which we expect cannot come from Nazareth, because Scripture has declared that He must come from Bethlehem.' Thus the words of Nathanael are best explained. Thus, also, we do not make this man whom the lips of the Saviour declared to be ' an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile,' guilty of cherishing, at that very moment, a contemptible spirit of local jealousy. Those who infer from the τι, ἆγαθόυ of Nathanael that Nazareth was an immoral place, found their assumption on a mere fancy, which is supported by not a single fact, and, indeed, is contradicted by all that we know of the place and people.

Those who claim that Nathanael meant to contrast the insignificance of the place with the greatness of the Messiah are equally wrong; for this could have been said of Bethlehem, where He was expected to appear, or, if one chose, of even Jerusalem itself, had He appeared there.

It is often said that Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament or in Josephus; implying that hence it must have been an insignificant place. As to Josephus, he speaks only of those places which he has occasion to mention; and out of the two hundred and four cities and villages of Galilee he names but about forty. Neither is Capernaum mentioned in the Old Testament or the Apocrypha, and but once (perhaps not that) in Josephus. Yet we know it was a place of importance.

As to the origin of the name ' Nazareth,' no one can decide definitely. At the same time, one explanation may be found to be more probable than any of the others. We reject that which derives it from נָזִר consecrated or devoted to God. Also, that which makes it come from נוֺצְרִי, my Saviour. Likewise the very popular one for which Hengstenberg, in his Christology, labours, who derives it from נֵצֶר, a shoot or sprout. Isa. xi. 1 is the only place where נֵצֶר is used with reference to Christ. But if the name were to contain a reference to the Messiah as a sprout or branch of David, it should have been some form of צֶמָהּ, the usual word for ' branch,' and which is supposed to have direct reference to the Messiah. The explanation of Hengstenberg (and held by many others) is very improbable; for is it likely that a place would be named from a certain prophecy, and from a certain word in that prophecy, years, and perhaps centuries, before that prophecy was fulfilled? A town could hardly have failed to have existed on so eligible a site from very early times. The hill just behind the present town is spoken of by every traveller as commanding one of the finest prospects in Palestine. It could not have wanted a name, any more than Hermon, Tabor, or Gilboa. Mountains in every country are frequently named from some peculiarity of their own. We have long had the impression, confirmed since we stood on the hill itself, that the name of the town and the hill must be intimately connected, or perhaps identical. If we had the name of the latter, we should know that of the former. We have already shown that to the New Testament writers this place was a , πόλις, and never a κώμη (i.e. 'city,' not 'village'), and hence of size and importance, in spite of modern commentaries and sermons, which insist on its insignificance. Keim puts the probable number of its inhabitants 'at ten thousand souls, at least.' But if we receive the statement of Josephus. before quoted, as to the towns and cities of Galilee, we may suppose the number of its inhabitants to have reached fifteen or twenty thousand. We have, then, a mountain 'city' of some importance and of considerable antiquity. We have the hill at the back of the town, commanding that wonderful prospect. This hill must have had a name. We have the word נָצַר, to behold, to see, to look, and then to watch, to guard. In the latter sense (watch or guard) it is often used in Hebrew (perhaps a dozen times). We have נוֺצֵר, one guarding; and נוֺצְרָה, one guarding, respectively masculine and feminine. נְצוּרָה, construct נְצוּרָה, one guarded (fem.). If Nazareth is from נְצוּרָה, it would signify the watched or guarded one (fem.), i. e., the hill-top seen or beheld from afar. If from נוֺצְרָה, we have the one guarding or watching (fem.), i.e., the hill which overlooks a vast region — in this case land and sea— and thus guards it. Both these facts are true of the Nazareth-hill. In the oldest Greek manuscripts both the forms Nazara and Nazareth appear. One cannot read the article in Fürst's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, natzar — although he does not allude to the question here discussed — without being impressed with the idea that if the word Nazareth is to be derived from the Hebrew at all, it must come from this root, and have the signification which we have given and adopted.

The view of Hitzig, as given by Tobler, making the name refer to some helping goddess of the old Canaanitish times, we cannot adopt. The view above presented is one which seemed to us most plausible, and which we had written out and adopted before we had seen Keim's first volume. We are gratified to find that he connects the city with the hill as to the origin of its name: and he gives, in substance, the view we have advocated. We submit this as the most natural explanation of the origin of the word ' Nazareth.' It cannot be charged, as every one of the others can, with being 'far-fetched.' It relieves the name from any theological or prophetical character. If it was to have a theological or a prophetical import, it was unnatural, to say the least, to derive it from נֵצֶר instead of from נֵצֶר .צֶמָהּ used but once in any such connection; while צֶמָהּ is used many times. Much is said about the ' absolute seclusion ' of Nazareth as the home of Christ. In regard to this point the following facts are important: 1. The probable size of the place, as before mentioned. 2. The Nazareth-hill was seen and known throughout all that province, in Samaria also, and by the sailors on the Mediterranean Sea. 3. Its distance from other places — three short days' journey from Jerusalem; about six hours from Ptolemais, the port at which news and merchandise from Rome first reached Palestine (as regards the early receiving of news and merchandise from Rome, Galilee had the advantage of Jerusalem and Judaea); about five hours from the Sea of Galilee; two or three hours from Endor and Nain; two hours from Mount Tabor; about one hour and a half from Cana of Galilee; also one hour and a half from Sepphoris, which before Christ's time was the capital of Galilee, and even remained so until Herod Antipas built Tiberias, in A.D. 28. 4. Doubtless, roads led out from Nazareth in Christ's time in every direction, the same as to-day. 'The main road for the land traffic between Egypt and the interior of Asia must have been the great highway leading past Gaza,' through the mountains at Megiddo, and across the Plain of Esdraelon, passing Nazareth near the foot of Tabor, and thence on to the Northern Jordan and Damascus. If the caravan routes from Tyre and Sidon passed to the north of Nazareth, that from Ptolemais to Damascus would no doubt make Capernaum, if not Tiberias, on its line, and hence would pass very near to Nazareth. 5. Its proximity to the capital of the province, Sepphoris— which is in sight from the Nazareth-hill — and to other large cities, and its nearness to the great caravan routes of commerce, would bring it into constant intercourse with the centres of business and news (Ptolemais, Capernaum, Tiberias, Scythopolis, Sepphoris, and of course Damascus), and give it, in this respect, very important advantages, which they should consider well who insist upon the ' great obscurity and isolation of the place' — a supposition wholly gratuitous, as is seen by the facts now presented.

After what we have thus far learned of Galilee, it sounds strange enough to read, especially from an eminent author, that 'Jesus grew up among a people seldom, or only contemptuously, named by the ancient classics, and subjected, at the time, to the yoke of a foreign oppressor; in a remote and conquered province of the Roman empire; in the darkest district of Palestine; in a country town of proverbial insignificance; in poverty and manual labour; in the obscurity of a carpenter's shop; far away from universities, academies, libraries, and literary or polished society,' &c.

In regard to 'manual labour,' it should be remembered that in Christ's time it was a disgrace not to labour. The most eminent teachers engaged regularly in 'manual labour.' How far must Christ have gone to have found ' universities, academies, and libraries '? They certainly did not exist in Jerusalem. The whole paragraph gives an entirely wrong impression in regard to the city and province where Christ lived, and as to the circumstances of His early life. The colouring of this picture is false.

1) Comp. Matt. ii. 6.