60 Fun Facts About Nazareth

Nazareth is the largest city in which of Israel's six administrative regions?

Northern District: its biggest city was once so obscure that the Old Testament never names it, and in John's Gospel Nathanael asks whether anything good can come out of Nazareth.

In Matthew's Gospel, Joseph settles his family in Nazareth after bringing them back from which country?

Egypt: they had fled there from Herod, and on the way back Joseph avoided Judea, where Herod's son Archelaus now ruled, and settled in Nazareth instead.

In Luke's Gospel, what sends Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem before Jesus is born?

A Roman order to register: Luke says Caesar Augustus decreed a census and everyone had to register in his ancestral town, which for Joseph, of David's line, meant Bethlehem.

Which inscription on crucifixes abbreviates the Latin for 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews'?

INRI: John's Gospel says Pilate had the notice written in three languages, and when the chief priests objected he answered, 'What I have written, I have written.'

According to Luke, which angel appeared to Mary in Nazareth to announce she would bear Jesus?

Gabriel: Luke has the angel sent to Nazareth in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, and he points to that pregnancy of Mary's elderly relative as proof that nothing is impossible.

Which Crusader leader became the first Prince of Galilee in 1099, with Nazareth in his new domain?

Tancred. Within two years he gave up Galilee to govern Antioch for his uncle Bohemond, who had been taken prisoner by a Turkish emir.

One theory ties Nazareth's name to 'netzer', Isaiah's word for the promised king from Jesse's line, meaning what?

Branch. Isaiah promises that a branch from Jesse's roots will bear fruit, but one etymological dictionary calls the town's name of unknown origin, and a rival theory prefers a verb meaning 'to watch'.

In Acts, a voice saying 'I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute' stops Saul on the road to which city?

Damascus. Saul was carrying letters that let him arrest Jesus's followers there; instead he was led in blind, was baptised three days later and became the apostle Paul.

Which country's ancient Saint Thomas Christians are still known as Nasranis, their word for 'Nazarenes'?

India. Kerala's Nasranis trace their church to the apostle Thomas, said to have landed on the Malabar Coast in AD 52, and Arabic uses the same word for Christians in general.

The first non-Christian mention of Nazareth is an inscription found in 1962 in which city, once Pontius Pilate's seat?

Caesarea Maritima. The stone fragments list the Galilean towns where Jewish priestly families resettled after the revolts against Rome, and they place one family in Nazareth.

Which first-century historian wrote at length about Galilee's towns yet never mentions Nazareth?

Josephus. He had commanded the Jewish rebels in Galilee and fortified its towns before surrendering to Rome in AD 67, so his silence suggests how obscure the village was.

Skeletons some 90,000 years old from Qafzeh Cave, just south of Nazareth, belong not to Neanderthals but to which humans?

Homo sapiens. They are some of the oldest remains of our own species found outside Africa, yet they lay among stone tools of a kind usually linked with Neanderthals.

Jesus's first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding, took place in which village near Nazareth?

Cana. John has Jesus's mother tell him the wine has run out, and the steward who tastes the result praises the groom for saving the best until last.

Archaeologists think Nazareth held roughly how many people when Jesus was growing up there?

About 400. Excavations point to an out-of-the-way hamlet of a few dozen families, and one archaeologist cut his own first estimate of up to 2,000 down to a maximum of 480.

In 2009 archaeologists in Nazareth announced the first find of what from the village of Jesus's day?

A house. The modest home had two rooms and a courtyard, and beside it was a camouflaged pit, probably cut so the family could hide from Roman troops during the revolt of AD 67.

Around 570 a pilgrim from Piacenza reported being shown what in Nazareth's synagogue?

The bench where Jesus sat. The pilgrim claimed Christians could lift it but Jews could not budge it, and said he was also shown the book in which the boy had practised his ABCs.

Which Byzantine emperor drove the Persians out of Galilee around 630, after which Nazareth's Jewish community ended?

Heraclius. Nazareth's Jews were accused of siding with the Persian invaders of 614, and the emperor who beat Persia went on to carry the recovered True Cross back into Jerusalem.

In Acts, Peter heals a lame beggar 'in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth' after admitting he has none of what?

Silver and gold. 'What I have, that I give you,' Peter goes on, then pulls the man to his feet, and he walks into the Temple leaping and praising God.

Which 1187 clash returned Nazareth to Muslim control and forced out the Crusaders?

Battle of Hattin. The Crusader army marched out from the springs of Sepphoris, near Nazareth, and was destroyed the next day, parched and surrounded, on a twin-peaked hill; Jerusalem fell that October.

Which crusading French king heard mass in Nazareth's Grotto of the Annunciation in the 1250s, accompanied by his queen?

Louis IX. He had reached the Holy Land after being captured on crusade and ransomed, and he remains the only king of France the Church has made a saint.

Which Mamluk sultan had Nazareth's Christian buildings destroyed in 1263 during his war on the Crusaders?

Baybars. Sold into slavery in his teens, he rose through the slave-soldier ranks, helped beat the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260 and then turned on the last Crusader footholds.

The Druze emir who let the Franciscans back into Nazareth in 1620 is often called the father of which modern country?

Lebanon. Fakhr-al-Din II was the first to bring its Druze and Maronite regions under one ruler, and his alliance with Catholic Tuscany so alarmed the Ottomans that they drove him into exile until 1618.

A Nazirite is not a native of Nazareth but someone under a sacred vow; which Old Testament judge was one from birth?

Samson. An angel told his mother that no razor was ever to touch his head, which is why his strength left him the night Delilah had his hair shaved off.

Whose army briefly occupied Nazareth in 1799 while marching from Egypt into Syria?

Napoleon Bonaparte. His general Junot beat off a far larger Ottoman force outside the town, but the campaign stalled before the walls of Acre and the army was soon retreating to Egypt.

In which Hollywood epic is the chained hero given water in Nazareth by a young carpenter on his way to the galleys?

Ben-Hur. Years later Judah recognises the same man stumbling under a cross in Jerusalem and tries to give him water in return.

Nazareth's 'Scottish Hospital' grew from an 1860s clinic backed by a medical missionary society in which city?

Edinburgh. Its founder was an Armenian from Constantinople who had trained as a doctor in the Scottish capital, yet the place is also known as the English Hospital.

The feast of Nazareth's Annunciation once opened England's legal year, so Britain's tax year begins in which month?

April. The feast, Lady Day in England, falls on 25 March, nine months before Christmas, and taxes were reckoned from it until the eleven days Britain cut from its calendar in 1752 pushed the date into April.

The people of Nazareth name four brothers of Jesus in Mark's Gospel; which one became the Jerusalem church's first leader?

James. John's Gospel says that Jesus's brothers did not believe in him during his ministry, yet Paul later counts James among the pillars of the church in Jerusalem.

Nazareth's hills look south over which fertile valley, home to Megiddo, the Bible's Armageddon?

Jezreel Valley. Armageddon is simply the Greek form of Har Megiddo, 'mount of Megiddo', a real fortress town at the valley's edge that armies fought over from about 1500 BC until 1918.

Who played the title role in the 1977 television epic Jesus of Nazareth?

Robert Powell. He hardly blinks on camera, a deliberate choice that gave his blue-eyed Jesus a steady, penetrating gaze.

Which Israeli brigade commander refused an order to expel Nazareth's Arab population in 1948?

Ben Dunkelman. The Toronto-born heir to a menswear chain had just promised the town's leaders that civilians would not be harmed, so he refused; he was replaced within a day, but the order was dropped.

The Jewish town of Nazareth Illit, built from 1957 above the city, was renamed what in 2019?

Nof HaGalil. The name means 'View of the Galilee', and the mayor pushed the change so that visitors would stop confusing his town with the biblical Nazareth next door.

Which pope visited Nazareth in January 1964 on the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land?

Paul VI. On the same trip he met the Orthodox patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem, and the following year the two formally set aside the mutual excommunications of 1054.

Latin words carved across the front of Nazareth's Basilica of the Annunciation quote John's Gospel: the Word was made what?

Flesh. The altar inside the grotto below adds a single word to the line, hic, so that it reads 'Here the Word was made flesh' and claims the cave as the very spot.

What do many Christians believe the grotto on the lower level of the Basilica of the Annunciation to be?

Mary's childhood home. Pilgrims were already honouring the cave some 1,500 years ago, when a deacon named Conon paid for a mosaic floor that still lies beside it.

According to Catholic legend, angels carried the Holy House from Nazareth across the sea to which Italian town?

Loreto. In the legend the house first touched down in Dalmatia before crossing the Adriatic, and in 1920 the pope made Our Lady of Loreto the patron of aviators.

The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation is built over what?

An underground spring. Orthodox tradition follows an early apocryphal gospel in which the angel first speaks to Mary as she draws water, and the spring still flows through a chapel inside the church.

Which Italian director made the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth?

Franco Zeffirelli. The pope had told its producer, Lew Grade, that he hoped he would one day film the story of Jesus, and the director later said the pope's quiet influence ended in the order 'Zeffirelli or no one'.

Nazareth's Synagogue Church stands on the traditional site where Jesus did what?

Preached to his townsfolk. In Luke he reads from a prophet's scroll, tells his neighbours the words have come true that very day, and adds that no prophet is welcome in his own hometown.

The Franciscan-run Mensa Christi Church commemorates the spot where Jesus is said to have done what?

Dined with the Apostles. The church shelters a great slab of limestone said to be the table where the risen Jesus ate with them, which is how it got its Latin name, 'Table of Christ'.

Which religious order runs the Basilica of Jesus the Adolescent on the hilltop overlooking Nazareth?

Salesians. Don Bosco founded the order to rescue poor and neglected boys, and its Nazareth church stands beside the Salesians' own school, with a statue of Jesus aged about 16 above the altar.

The Church of Our Lady of the Fright marks where Mary supposedly saw Jesus taken where?

To a cliff by an angry crowd. In Luke the townspeople mean to throw him off the brow of the hill, but he walks straight through the middle of them and goes on his way.

The Jesus Trail walking route starts in Nazareth and ends at which lakeside site?

Capernaum. Matthew says Jesus left Nazareth to live in this fishing village on the lake, and it became so much his base that the same Gospel later calls it 'his own city'.

Nazareth lies a few miles west of which dome-shaped biblical mountain?

Mount Tabor. Christian tradition since the 3rd century has made it the scene of the Transfiguration, although the Gospels speak only of a high mountain and never name it.

By what Arabic name does the Quran know Jesus of Nazareth, whom Islam honours as a prophet?

Isa. The Quran has an Annunciation of its own, in which angels tell Maryam she will bear 'the Messiah, Isa, son of Maryam', and she is the only woman the book mentions by name.

Nazareth's Shihab al-Din shrine, focus of a 1990s row over a planned mosque, is said to hold which ruler's nephew?

Saladin. His nephew's tomb lies barely 100 metres from the Basilica of the Annunciation, and Muslim activists wanted a mosque on the plaza the state had planned for the ground between them.

Which 1968 song by the Band opens with its weary narrator pulling into Nazareth?

The Weight. Its Nazareth is the town in Pennsylvania, not the one in Galilee, and the oddballs the narrator meets there, Luke, Anna Lee and Crazy Chester, were named after people the group knew.

Which pope wrote the three-volume study Jesus of Nazareth, which he had begun while still a cardinal?

Benedict XVI. He kept writing in his free moments as pope, brought the volumes out between 2007 and 2012, and said in the preface that everyone was free to disagree with him.

The 'Nazareth Inscription', Caesar's edict against disturbing tombs, has been kept since 1878 in which city?

Paris. A 2020 study traced its marble to the Greek island of Kos, where a mob had once dragged a dead tyrant from his tomb, so the edict may have nothing to do with Nazareth at all.

Nazareth, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1740 by German-speaking immigrants of which church?

Moravian. The preacher George Whitefield hired them to build a school on his land, quarrelled with them over doctrine and threw them off it, and when his money ran out they bought the whole tract.

Which world-famous acoustic guitar maker has been based in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, since the 1830s?

C. F. Martin & Company. Its German founder had left Saxony after the violin makers' guild tried to stop cabinet makers like him from building guitars at all.

Which racing family made its home in Nazareth, Pennsylvania?

The Andrettis. Mario and his twin brother Aldo arrived from Italy as teenagers in 1955 and were soon racing stock cars on local dirt tracks; in 1978 Mario became Formula One world champion.

Where in Scotland did the hard rock band Nazareth form in 1968?

Dunfermline. They had been the Shadettes, a covers band in matching yellow suits, until they renamed themselves in 1968 after a town in the opening line of a song by the Band.

Nazareth's only US Top Ten hit, 'Love Hurts', was first recorded by which duo in 1960?

The Everly Brothers. They never put it out as a single because of a feud with their publisher, who handed the song to Roy Orbison for a B-side instead.

Which band covered Nazareth's 'Hair of the Dog' on a 1993 album made up entirely of covers?

Guns N' Roses. Axl Rose loved the song so much that in 1986, before his band was famous, he had Nazareth's guitarist flown to California to produce demos for their debut album.

Which language was the everyday speech of first-century Nazareth, and so the mother tongue of Jesus?

Aramaic. The Gospels were written in Greek, yet they keep a few of his words in the original, among them 'Talitha koum', which he says to a girl as he raises her in Mark's Gospel.

Nazaré, the town whose name is simply the Portuguese for Nazareth, is world-famous for what?

Giant surfing waves. Europe's largest undersea canyon ends just off its north beach and piles Atlantic swells into monsters; one ridden there in 2020 was measured at 26.2 metres.

Which African country's city of Adama was officially called Nazret, after Nazareth, for half a century?

Ethiopia. The biblical name replaced the town's Oromo one in the 1940s, part of a wider push to give places Christian names, and Adama was officially brought back in 2000.

A couple who bought a souvenir shop near Mary's Well in Nazareth in 1993 found what hidden beneath it?

A buried bathhouse. Officials first wrote it off as an Ottoman bath about 150 years old, then accepted it was far older, and one American archaeologist argued it dated from the time of Jesus.

The Black Nazarene, a dark wooden statue of Christ carried through huge crowds every 9 January, belongs to which city?

Manila. Millions join the day-long procession from a city grandstand to Quiapo Church, many of them straining to touch the statue with a towel or handkerchief.