ent and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
In the Gospel of John, Nathaniel asks, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The meaning of this cryptic question is debated. Some commentators and scholars suggest that it means Nazareth was very small and unimportant, but the question does not speak of Nazareth’s size but of its goodness. In fact, Nazareth was described negatively by the evangelists; the Gospel of Mark argues that Nazareth did not believe in Jesus and therefore he could "do no mighty work there"; in the Gospel of Luke, the Nazarenes are portrayed as attempting to kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff; in the Gospel of Thomas, and in all four canonical gospels, we read the famous saying that "a prophet is not without honour except in his own country."
Many scholars since William Wrede (in 1901) have remarked on the so-called Messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark, whereby Jesus' true nature and/or mission is portrayed as unseen by many, including by his inner circle of disciples. Nazareth, being the home of those near and dear to Jesus, apparently suffered negatively in relation to this doctrine. Thus, Nathanael’s question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” is consistent with a negative view of Nazareth in the canonical gospels, and with the Johannine proclamation that even his brothers did not believe in him.
A tablet at the Bibliothèque National in Paris, dating to 50 AD, was sent from Nazareth to Paris in 1878. It contains an inscription known as the "Ordinance of Caesar" that outlines the penalty of death for those who violate tombs or graves. However, it is suspected that this inscription came to Nazareth from somewhere else (possibly Sepphoris). Bagatti writes: “we are not certain that it was found in Nazareth, even though it came from Nazareth to Paris. At Nazareth there lived various vendors of antiquities who got
