Fr Michael Hall explores the importance of Nazareth and Bethlehem in Luke's Nativity stories helping us to deepen our understanding of the context in which Jesus was born.
Branch Lines and Branch Towns: Nazareth and Bethlehem in Luke’s Nativity stories.
“Nazareth?” said Nathaniel to Philip, who had told him of an itinerant preacher from that place who seemed to fulfil ‘what Moses and the prophets wrote’ (John 1:45), “Can anything good come out of there?”
We might well share Nathaniel’s surprise. Nazareth in the time of Jesus, we are told, was not much more than a small village – a collection of extended families. In fact, the settlement had only been developed in the century before Our Lord’s birth by the influx of a group of outsiders.
So Nazareth, along with other small towns in Galilee, was a refuge, so some scholars believe, for Judean exiles who longed for the restoration of the Temple as it had been in David’s day. They looked to the prophets such as Isaiah and Zechariah who said that this restoration would take place at the hand of the “Righteous Branch” (n’tzer). These people were shunned by the Great and the Good who ruled Jerusalem and the Second Temple.
The Hebrew spelling of Nazareth is n’tzereth – “Little Branch Town”.
Isaiah prophesied (11:1) – “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.”
Jeremiah tells us (23:5) – “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”
Zechariah (3:8) agrees “that in the end time, God will bring “his servant, the Branch.”
Now if we only had the first two chapters of the Gospel according to St Luke, we might be forgiven for thinking that this was a book about the Temple, echoing the concerns of the “Natzoreans”, the “Branch People”.
Zechariah, fulfilling his priestly duties in the Temple, is visited by the archangel and told that his wife will bear a son, who will be “filled with the spirit and power of Elijah”. Six months later, that same archangel goes to that little town in Galilee called Nazareth.
The archangel goes there to a young woman called Mary. She is betrothed both to Joseph, a Judean – (so what is he doing in Nazareth – the “Home of the Branch” – unless he is one of these Temple refugees)? We know what invitation he offered her, and her gracious – if bewildered – acceptance.
The pregnant Mary, having visited her cousin Elizabeth bearing Zechariah’s child, then sets off with Joseph to return to his hometown, Bethlehem. Bethlehem is significant in Temple terms because it was the birthplace of the priest – King David, and because, in common with other rural villages around Jerusalem, its lead industry would have been providing lambs for sacrifice in the Temple.
When her son is born, Mary does just what the shepherds do to protect their lambs. She “wraps him up in swaddling bands” and lays him in the manger.
Luke goes on to tell us that Mary and Joseph were regular visitors to the Temple. They take him “when the time came for them to be purified” and are met with great prophecy. They take him on their annual visit when he is twelve years old and eventually find him amazing the teachers in the Temple with his wisdom. Then he goes back with them to their refuge in Nazareth, to live in obedience, and grow “in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52).
Luke’s third chapter does not seem to say anything about the Temple. It jumps on thirty years to John, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, exercising his ministry of baptism “in all the region around the Jordan” (Luke 3:3) – prime territory for the dispossessed Temple loyalists who longed for the coming of the “True High Priest after the Order of Melchizedek” as referenced in the documents of the Dead Sea community, but also in Hebrews 5:6.
Luke then, turning to Jesus’ adult ministry, gives us his “supposed” genealogy through Joseph, taking us back through the generations to “the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Contrary to the commonly held belief that there was no priesthood before the sons of Aaron, it is clear from Genesis that the fathers of families exercised a priestly role, and that Adam was the First Priest, set by God to care for and govern the world he had made. This, too, would have resonated with Temple exiles.
Finally, we come to Jesus’ first public sermon, in “Branch Town” – Nazareth, and the text that he chooses – Isaiah 61 – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…”. Some scholars think that the “haftorah” that Jesus read would have been longer, and would have included verses from the previous chapter such as: “Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the Branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.” (Isaiah 60:21 ESV)
It is clear from the many documents of the Dead Sea community that these chapters of Isaiah, above all others, described the coming of the Righteous Branch, the priest-king after the order of Melchizedek. It was the passage whose fulfilment would announce that the great Jubilee – the final “year of the Lord’s favour” – had come. And Jesus chooses this to read. Having read it, he sits and says, “Today, in your hearing, this text is fulfilled”.
The restoration of the Temple is at hand, implies Jesus, but as John will tell us, this new and true Temple will be in the body – the Sacramental Body – of Jesus. And Jesus in that Gospel is the “True Vine” of which we are the … Branches!
At first the hearers welcome this news with joy and wonder. But then Jesus starts to talk about God calling Gentiles to worship, perhaps in place of hard-hearted Israelites. This, indeed, is another indication that he might have read verses from Isaiah 60 as well, such as: “And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes all around, and see; the wealth of the nations shall come to you.
They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the Lord.” (Isaiah 60:3, 6b).
At this talk of the Gentiles, they want to throw Jesus off a cliff.
If that last quotation reminded you of anything, you are undoubtedly correct.
To understand the significance of the renewed Temple being a place of worship for all nations, we shall look next month at the other source for the Christmas story, the Gospel according to Matthew.
Fr Michael Hall is a Parish Priest and Bishop’s Adviser on Evangelisation and Renewal in the Diocese of Leeds. He has a lifelong interest in the “other voices” that speak to us from around the time of Jesus.
