43 The next day Jesus decided
to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Now Philip
was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and
said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Torah and also the prophets
wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can
anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and
see.”In the Gospel of John we read about many witnesses.
Everyone is testifying. The literary context seems to have a strong court motif
in which witnesses are called to tell their story of interaction with Jesus, to
help to make the author's case. As we come to the end of the first chapter, we
meet another type of witness – Nathanael. This is a very interesting encounter
indeed. Nathanael's first reaction to Philip's claim that he and others found
the Messiah, was rather disappointing in verse 46: “Can any good thing come out
of Nazareth?” For centuries this phrase has puzzled interpreters. What was wrong
with Nazareth? Nazareth was a small village. In fact, according to archeological
evidence, it boasted no more than 200 residents. It was overshadowed by the
Roman city, Sepphoris (Tzipori) with a cosmopolitan population, only six
kilometers away. The city served as an administrative center for the region of
Galilee under Herodian rule. Jesus must have spent time there as a child and
youth, accompanying his parents for a wide variety of reasons related to
ordinary living. As a carpenter-builder, Jesus most likely worked in Sepphoris
during the city's extensive construction projects.
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Although this needs to be considered further, it
is possible that the fairly small (even by the criteria of the time) Nazareth
settlement was known as some kind of Judean affiliate center in Galilee by those
who did not embrace the current Jerusalem leaders or Jerusalem at all.
Nazareth's Judean ideological affiliation was a clear negative and signified
that they were indeed Jerusalem's regional representatives in Galilee. The name
of the village probably came from the Isaian Hebrew (Is. 11:1) by “the Branch”
(Netser). According to Luke 4:16-30, the Nazareth settlement radically rejected
Jesus although it was his “hometown.” This may argue for the view that this
village, along with the village of Cana, was one of those places which was
considered to be under Jerusalem's religious control and under the influence of
the
Ioudaioi, as we have discussed in previous commentary
sections.
Over all, the Gospel of John paints a very clear picture of
Jesus' reception in Galilee as opposed to his utter rejection in Judea where,
ironically, he belonged more than any other place. Almost every time Jesus was
accepted, it happened in Galilee; while his rejections were almost exclusively
connected to the land of Judea. The otherwise important Galilean story of Jesus'
rejection, found in Luke 4:14-30, is not mentioned in John. It is therefore
probable that: “his own received him not” (Jn. 1:11b), should be read in
connection with the largely Judean, Jerusalem-centered rejection of Jesus. After
all, he was a Jerusalem-centered, Temple-centered Jew who was not accepted by
his own; not in Jerusalem and not in the Jerusalem controlled settlements in
Galilee. Why John does not include the Bethlehem birth narrative, as Matthew
does, is not clear. It is possible the reason it was only implied, but not
explicitly mentioned, is that the city of Bethlehem was too strongly connected
with the Davidic dynasty – a connection that John consistently avoided because
of his outreach to Samaritan Israelites, as per my theory. The Samaritans
accepted the leading role of Judah, because their own Torah stated such in
Genesis 49:10,
[1]
but not the leading role of David's family (2 Sam. 7:8-9)
[2]
since this text was outside of “the canon” for the Samaritans
traditions.
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