Jesus grew up and lived in the village of Nazareth in Galilee. But the heart of the nation of Israel was always Judea to the south. That is where Jerusalem was located, with the temple there.
According to the Law of Moses, three times per year Jewish men all over the land of Israel, which included Galilee, had to go to Jerusalem to worship God during three festivals. And the high priests of the Sanhedrin lived at Jerusalem. They controlled the religious life of the Jews. Thus, Jerusalem and its temple were central to Jews’ worship of their God.
Because of this centrality of Jerusalem and its temple to Jewish worship, on the surface it seems a bit strange that Jesus—whom Christians believe was and is the promised Messiah of Israel—would have lived his life in a village in Galilee. Nazareth wasn’t even a city. And Galilee was sort of outback territory of the land of Israel. This is indicated when we read about Jesus and his earliest disciples, “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'” (John 1:45-46 NRSV). Why did Nathanael so demean Nazareth? We’ll get to that.
Later, when Jesus was conducting his public ministry, sometimes he attended these required feasts at Jerusalem. At one of them, the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles, Jews were gathered at the temple, wondering if Jesus was going to attend since he had become somewhat famous as a healer and an exorcist.
We read, “The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, ‘Where is he?’ And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, ‘He is a good man,’ others were saying, ‘No, he is deceiving the crowd.’ Yet no one spoke openly about him for fear of the Jews” (John 7:11-13).
The author of this gospel often refers to the religious authorities at Jerusalem as “the Jews.” And people fearing talking about Jesus indicated the religious authorities threatened to excommunicate them if they did. Jesus at that time revealed this by saying to them, “Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?” (John 7:19).
At that festival, people secretly discussed who Jesus was. Some said, “Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah? Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from” (John 7:26). This reflects the Jewish theory of the time that the Messiah would be hidden until he is revealed to Israel in great glory, a theory that depended mostly on Isaiah 49:2-3).
Then we read, “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him” (John 7:30). Of the next day we read, “‘This is the Messiah,’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived'” (vv. 41-42). Raymond E. Brown (John I-XII, p. 330) says this “indicates that there was no knowledge in Jerusalem that Jesus had actually been born in Bethlehem.”
This objection also shows that they were ignorant of Isaiah predicting the Messiah would come from Galilee. For he says, “In the latter time he [God] will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan [River], Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness,” which indicates Galileans were not as spiritually enlightened as other Jews, such as Judeans, “have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1-2).
And when Sanhedrin member Nicodemus, who apparently became a secret disciple of Jesus (cf. John 3:1-5), objected to trying to kill Jesus without giving him a hearing (7:50-51), his comrades said to him, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee” (v. 52).
Of course, they meant search the scriptures. Yet, ironically, it is they who did not know the scriptures. And that it why Jesus then said (skip over the pericope about the adulterous woman in John 7:53—8:11 since I think most Johannine scholars are correct in saying it was a later insertion into this gospel), “I am the light of the world” (8:12; cf. 9:5). Jesus meant that he was the One Isaiah prophesied about as being “a great light” from “Galilee” (Isaiah 9:1-2).
And why did God in his providence have Jesus grow up and live in the outback territory of Galilee, in a village rather than a prestigious place like Jerusalem or elsewhere? Surely one reason is it symbolically relects his great humility in contrast to the proud attitude of the religious authorities who live at Jerusalem.
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