What was ancient Nazareth like?

What is the strange way you can tell the size of ancient Nazareth?

Roughly how many people lived there?

What was the large town nearby? How might it have affected Nazareth?

Why is Nazareth famous?

Nazareth is famous for one thing, and one thing only: it is the home town of Jesus.

It was here that Jesus spent his boyhood, living with his mother and father, and here that he faced the sceptical townsfolk of Nazareth.

The village seems to have been held in some contempt in 1st century Palestine. It was a nondescript dot on the map with not much to offer, overshadowed by nearby Sepphoris, the luxurious Greek-style capital of Herod Antipas. It is beguiling to think that Joseph and Jesus, as builders, may have traipsed over to Sepphoris to work on the new buildings.

Bible study resource: ancient Nazareth

Nazareth lay in the hills twelve miles southwest of the Sea of Galilee: fertile land.

Excavations show just how small it actually was – but every bit of space was used effectively. It was built on porous rock, so as well as the buildings above the surface there were underground cisterns for water, vats for oil, and silos for grain. There was a single, ancient spring for water.

It was a conservative town, clinging to traditional Jewish culture in a world that had been radically affected by Greek thought and culture.

It had a population of about 400, so everyone knew everyone else. The people were physically robust, strong-minded, practical, respectful of traditional and loyal to family.

They spoke Aramaic, a language with a strong poetic tradition. Being able to talk well was a valued skill.

Young Jewish men were expected to be literate. The Jewish queen Salome Alexandra had made reading and writing compulsory for all Jewish boys – for study of the Torah.

Ancient Nazareth – its size

Nazareth was small. We know this because of the discovery of underground tombs. These were chiseled into the soft limestone bedrock, and their position shows the limits of the village’s perimeter to the west, east, and south, since burial was always done outside inhabited areas. It would have been 2,000 feet at its greatest east-west length and around 650 feet at its greatest north-south width, though the actual area inhabited in the first century was much less, perhaps only around ten acres. Steep ravines and ancient terraces on the northern slope confined the oval-shaped settlement.

The people of Nazareth were essentially farmers, so they needed space between the houses for livestock and their enclosures, as well as land for plants and orchards.

Nazareth would have had a population of around two to four hundred in antiquity, that is to say, several extended families or clans.

[Continued]

https://www.jesus-story.net/about-nazareth/

What prophecy is Matthew 2:23 referring to regarding Jesus being a Nazarene?

Matthew 2:23 says about Jesus, “He went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” Where is this prophecy in the Old Testament?

Matthew is obviously not quoting a prophecy directly, as there is no Old Testament passage with the wording he uses. Three major options exist for interpreting this verse. First, it may be that Matthew is associating the word Nazarene with the Hebrew word netser (“branch or sprout”). The “Branch” was a common term for the Messiah, such as in Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Hebrew was written with only consonants, and netser would have appeared as NZR—the same main consonants as Nazareth. In fact, in Aramaic, the common language of Jesus’ day, the word for “Nazareth” and the Hebrew word for “branch” sounded very much alike. Matthew’s point could be that Jesus was “sprouting up” from an obscure village in Galilee; Jesus was the Branch predicted by the prophets, and the name of the town He grew up in happens to sound just like the prophets’ word for “branch.”

A second option is that Matthew is citing a prophecy not found in the Old Testament but in another source. If so, Matthew referred to a prophecy known to his original audience yet unknown to us today. However, this is unlikely and an argument from silence.

A third option is that Matthew uses the word Nazarene in reference to a person who is “despised and rejected.” In the first century, Nazareth was a small town about 55 miles north of Jerusalem, and it had a negative reputation among the Jews. Galilee was generally looked down upon by Judeans, and Nazareth of Galilee was especially despised (see John 1:46). If this was Matthew’s emphasis, the prophecies Matthew had in mind could include these two passages concerning the Messiah:

“But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads” (Psalm 22:6–7). It’s true that Nazarenes were “scorned by everyone,” and so one could see this messianic prophecy as an allusion to Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.

“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem” (Isaiah 53:3). Again, in Jesus’ day, Nazarenes were “despised and rejected,” and so Isaiah’s prophecy could be viewed as an indirect reference to Jesus’ background as the supposed son of a carpenter from Nazareth.

If Psalm 22:6–7 and Isaiah 53:3 are the prophecies that Matthew had in mind, then the meaning of “He shall be called a Nazarene” is something akin to “He shall be despised and mocked by His own people.” Jesus not only identified with humanity by coming to our world; He also identified with the lowly of this world. His upbringing in an obscure and despised town served as an important part of His mission. Jesus identified Himself as “Jesus of Nazareth” during His encounter with Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 22:7–8). After his conversion, Paul mentioned Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 26:9). One of the names of the early Christians was “Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5), and the term Nasara, meaning “Nazarene,” is still used today by Muslims to identify a Christian.

https://www.gotquestions.org/Matthew-2-23-Jesus-Nazarene.html

>>15281195

iPhone infrared camera on an interval timer?

>>15281243

Have you set your intention before sleep to "explore" the boundaries of your training facility?

If you find that armed guards intimidate you back into the facility, is it really a training facility?

Deceptions can come in many vibrations.

However, if you are allowed to leave of your own free will, can you find landmarks in and around the training facility that you learn to recognize every time you dream?

You can then keep a ledger of which training facility [you are likely in more than one] you find yourself in each night of the week.

As you progress in your training you may find yourself promoted to a new facility; landmarks will help you recognize when this happens.

Statistics can then be computed from the ledger.