I’ve been keeping up a newsletter for my stake religion class on the life and teachings of Jesus—and, well, my word count is a bit high over there. This has pulled me away from posting over here, which I don’t know why I can’t just copy and paste material… But then, I figure why don’t I post links, since it’s all on the same Substack platform anyhow? In this post, I want to talk about the episode of Jesus’s last visit to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, but in the interest of filling the gap between where I had left off (the baptism) and the discourse in Nazareth, here are links to those religion class summaries:
Here’s a graphic from the ESV Study Bible that gives a rendering of the Gamla Synagogue, a structure excavated in the late 1970s at Gamla, a village about 45 miles from Nazareth. The Gamla Synagogue structure is the earliest synagogue to have been discovered in Judaea to date—and the only building that can be identified with certainty as a synagogue from the Galilee-Golan region before the year 70 AD—so it represents an important window into the synagogue culture at the time of Jesus. We can imagine the synagogue at Nazareth looking quite similar to that of Gamla’s.
The term “synagogue” is Greek (συναγωγή/synagōgē), meaning most literally, “assembling” or “collection.” (Syn = “together” + agō = “to bring”.) Remember that Jewish people in the 300s BC experienced a Hasmonean (Greek) occupation before the later Roman (Latin) occupation, and so their common language shifted from Hebrew to Greek. The synagogue of Greek-speaking Jews in North Africa referred to both a local Jewish community and its central building. By Jesus’s time, this institution had spread to virtually all of the Jewish communities that survived imperial occupations.
Temple vs. Synagogue
We can sense the gravity of the temple as we read about Jerusalem and the long shadow it cast over Jewish life at the time. But we can’t forget how the synagogue replaced the temple as the central religious institution in Jewish life—the temple, as Jesus lamented, had become elitist and available only to a select few, whereas the synagogue revitalized Jewish culture among the masses in the face of imperial opposition and helped Jewish people resist total cultural assimilation.
Synagogue leadership mattered for events in Jesus’s life, as we will see. Village elders running the local synagogue functioned as local magistrates, and the Roman government was content to let them manage local matters. This meant for Jewish people, the Torah served as the legal basis for most policy decisions and for resolving civic disputes. Village elders rendered legal decisions in synagogues, something to which Jesus referred when he told disciples, “they will deliver you up to councils and flog you in their synagogues.” The synagogue building had a dual function as a place of worship and as a civic hall, leaving it open to everyone, Jewish people and Gentiles alike. The temple, however, restricted access to Jewish priests and certain patrons; a “Women’s Court” restricted even Jewish women to a side area, preventing women from witnessing Israelite or Priestly Courts, and non-Jews were prohibited entry. (When the Roman emperor Caligula demanded a statue of himself be placed inside the temple in the year 40 AD, Jews revolted.)
A wide range of activities occurred inside synagogue campuses. On the Sabbath, attendees participated in scriptural readings, communal prayers, hymn singing, sermons, targum (recitations of Hebrew scripture but translated into common languages), and piyyut (chants or songs of liturgical poems). Whereas temple rituals were often conducted privately in silence and emphasized quiet reverence, synagogue worship was vocal and public. One of Jesus’s innovations (that deeply irked the Sadducees and chief priests of the Jerusalem Temple) was to convert the temple into a synagogue: at the moment he cleansed the temple, he invited commoners into its spaces that had been reserved for priests and began teaching them, much like he did in the synagogues. The mixed company of men and women in Jesus’s audience frightened the chief priests enough that they avoided punishing him on the spot.
Synagogue in Nazareth
We know Jesus grew up in Nazareth at least since the time his parents relocated there after their escape to Egypt during Jesus’s infancy, and we can reasonably estimate the population of the village at that time to around 20 to 40 (extended) families, or around 300 to 600 residents. (Something like one of our wards.) It’s safe to assume Jesus knew just about every villager in Nazareth and that they knew him. Luke says it was Jesus’s custom to attend the synagogue on the Sabbath, so we can also safely assume Jesus participated regularly in synagogue life—meaning, further, that he could have taken a turn in village leadership. Because synagogue elders spoke of Jesus as “the tekton” (“carpenter” in the KJV; “artisan/craftsman/handyman” in most ancient Greek texts), he may have never served in village leadership but rather kept a trade until his ministry. In any event, Jesus’s presence in the Nazareth synagogue is not noteworthy at this moment in his initial ministry, but rather routine.
The Gamla structure suggests attendees sat on steps along the perimeter of the main hall while an attendant brought scrolls to a table at the center. Sabbath meetings often followed a liturgy, meaning, a rote sequence of worship activities:
- Torah reading. (Assemblies typically completed a reading cycle of the Torah in 3–3.5 years.)
- Haftarah, or Nevi’im reading. (Nevi’im = “the Prophets,” a collection of prophetic texts that became part of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.)
- Instruction.
- Sermon(s).
- Targum recitation.
- Communal prayer.
We can assume the Sabbath assembly Jesus attended on this occasion followed the typical liturgy, and that the gospels note Jesus’s actions rather than narrate the whole meeting. So, for context, let’s imagine the scene: the Nazareth synagogue convenes with attendees sitting in the round/perimeter while a leader and scroll attendant place Torah scrolls on the center table. The leader begins reading from Torah in its Hebrew form, regardless of those in the audience who know or don’t know the Hebrew language. Then he sits down. Perhaps someone stands, indicating they would like to read from the Nevi’im scrolls; perhaps Jesus is the first to stand, but in any event, at some point Jesus stands, and the attendant brings the scroll to him. We don’t know if Jesus selected the passage of Isaiah in the scroll, or if the synagogue read the Nevi’im in a cycle like they did with the Torah and Jesus happened to pick up their reading at this particular passage. Either way, still standing, Jesus reads from the scroll, again in Hebrew, what appears today as Isaiah 61:1–2:
רוּחַ אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה, עָלָי–יַעַן מָשַׁח יְהוָה
אֹתִי לְבַשֵּׂר עֲנָוִים, שְׁלָחַנִי לַחֲבֹשׁ
לְנִשְׁבְּרֵי-לֵב, לִקְרֹא לִשְׁבוּיִם דְּרוֹר,
וְלַאֲסוּרִים פְּקַח-קוֹחַ
לִקְרֹא שְׁנַת-רָצוֹן לַיהוָה, וְיוֹם נָקָם
Ruakh adonai adonai, alai-ya’an mashakh adonai
Othi levasser anavim, shelakhani lakhavosh
Lenishbere-lev, liqro lishvuyim deror,
Val’asurim peqakh-qoakh
Liqro shenath-ratson ladonai, veyom naqam
The LORD’s spirit is upon me,
as the LORD has anointed me, to bring good tidings to the poor,
to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives,
to the prisoners, release
to proclaim a year of favor for the LORD
Jesus then closes the scroll and gives it back to the attendant who walks back to the table with it. Jesus sits, and the assembly anticipates the next part of typical Sabbath worship—for Jesus to give instruction about what he just read. Those in the audience who know Hebrew (probably only a few) can recognize the words; those who don’t know Hebrew (probably most, since they all speak Aramaic) can recognize the sounds of poetry in this reading, and may even recognize this as a famous Isaiah passage. To this point, these audience members and Jewish people at large understood this passage from Isaiah to be referring to Isaiah himself—in other words, not as a prophecy of a Messiah. (Christians much later will associate this part of Isaiah as Messianic prophecies because of how they interpreted what Jesus says about it in the Nazareth synagogue; but in this moment, this is simply a statement by Isaiah affirming how God had called Isaiah to bring good tidings to the poor and to bind up the broken-hearted and proclaim freedom and a favorable year of the Lord.)
Jesus begins his instruction saying, “Today this passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” The synoptics suggest that Jesus offered more instruction but don’t give us the words themselves. After Jesus discusses, apparently, how Isaiah’s words had been fulfilled, the audience wonders aloud about the teachings, calling them “marvelous” and “gracious,” “speaking well of him [Jesus],” and then wondering how their own fellow villager had become so erudite. “Is this the same handyman we’ve known? Is this same son of Mary?” they ask each other. I might paraphrase the reaction this way as well: “How did Jesus get so smart? Where did he learn all these fancy interpretations?” We don’t have from the text, actually, any suggestion yet that Jesus identified himself as Messiah. Contextually, it’s far more likely that Jesus’s instructions about Isaiah have stirred their surprise. He seems quite different to them than the handyman they’ve known, a real scribe or Rabbi in his own right.
What shifts the reactions comes next. Jesus responds to their shock and awe by saying, “You will surely tell me this parable: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ Whatever we have heard take place in Capernaum, do here in your hometown also!” We can imagine this reply sparking a different reaction—Jesus is suggesting that he will do more than give smart instruction at synagogue, and that his neighbors in Nazareth will someday press him to perform those feats among them. But, he predicts, he won’t.
As I try to imagine the scene in the regular speech patterns of the time, I might render what comes next like this. Jesus continues, “Truly, I’m telling you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when it didn’t rain for three and a half years and a great famine was over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to a widow woman in Zarephath out in Sidon. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, and none of them was made clean except Naaman the Syrian.”
Jesus’s audience can hear what Jesus is implying: Jesus won’t come back to Nazareth and won’t perform any kind of feat or miracle; what’s more, Jesus just associated himself with Elijah and Elisha. The audience could totally have heard this as, “I’m not a Rabbi, I’m a prophet.” And, “I don’t think you’re all worthy of my prophecies.” Notice how Elijah and Elisha were different kinds of prophets: unlike others in the Nevi’im traditions who mostly gave prophecies to Israel, Elijah and Elisha performed mighty, spectacular miracles that saved Israel (for a few moments at least) from outsider incursions. Jesus has associated what he intends to do with the works of Elijah and Elisha, and at the same time, has suggested Nazareth won’t benefit from any of those works.
Now, we can hear Jesus not rejecting Nazareth, but rather Jesus predicting how Nazareth will reject him, and how Jesus even laments this. But putting ourselves in the shoes of regular Nazarenes going to synagogue, especially Nazarenes apparently not accustomed to thinking deeply about the words of Isaiah, we can also hear how they’d be incensed at the implications of what Jesus is teaching, how they take it as one of their own hometown neighbors ripping on them and rejecting them, treating them like as though Sidon and Syria—places outside of covenant Israel—are better than they.
Village elders rage. They “were filled with wrath,” Luke says. And they interrupt their typical worship to deal with this blasphemy, as they see it. Someone probably takes on Jesus directly, accusing him of this or that, and before long, enough people grab Jesus and force him out of the synagogue and a crowd now starts pushing him toward the edge of their town to a spot where they could throw him off a hillside where Jesus might be killed or at least injured. In the very least, this is a public display of exiling a villager, something towns did at the time. It would have carried a kind of formal status that followed such “outcasts,” or shetuqi, people expelled from a local society. Jesus slips out of their midst and avoids being thrown “headlong” down the slope, but quite certainly in the district around Nazareth, he was branded a shetuqi or mamzer, someone no longer welcome in town.
According to the gospels, Jesus makes for the area surrounding Lake Gennesaret where he has at least two associates whom he met back in Bethany-beyond-Jordan: Andrew and Simon.
Sources
- Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
- Shmaryahu Gutman, “The Synagogue at Gamla,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, edited by Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: 1981), 30–34.