In the early first century CE, Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth was a Galilean village like most others. With a population probably numbering only in the hundreds, it was much smaller than neighboring Yafia and was dwarfed by nearby Sepphoris, one of the Galilee’s wealthiest and most prosperous cities at the time. Nazareth today is a very different place. With a population of nearly 80,000, it is one of the largest cities in northern Israel, but residents are packed into just a few square miles of close-set houses built along steep, narrow streets. Around 70 percent of Nazareth’s residents are Muslim […]
