1When they came near to Jerusalem and came to Bethsphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2saying to them, “Go into the village that is opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and immediately he will send them.”
4All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying,
5“Tell the daughter of Zion,
behold, your King comes to you,
humble, and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
6The disciples went and did just as Jesus commanded them, 7and brought the donkey and the colt and laid their clothes on them; and he sat on them. 8A very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The multitudes who went in front of him, and those who followed, kept shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
10When he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?”
11The multitudes said, “This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
12Jesus entered into the temple of God and drove out all of those who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables and the seats of those who sold the doves. 13He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”
14The lame and the blind came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children who were crying in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the son of David!” they were indignant, 16and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
Jesus said to them, “Yes. Did you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of children and nursing babies, you have perfected praise?’”
17He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and camped there.
18Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. 19Seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it but leaves. He said to it, “Let there be no fruit from you forever!”
Immediately the fig tree withered away.
20When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree immediately wither away?”
21Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you told this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it would be done. 22All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
23When he had come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority?”
24Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, which if you tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things. 25The baptism of John, where was it from? From heaven or from men?”
They reasoned with themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 26But if we say, ‘From men,’ we fear the multitude, for all hold John as a prophet.” 27They answered Jesus, and said, “We don’t know.”
He also said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. 28But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first, and said, ‘Son, go work today in my vineyard.’ 29He answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind, and went. 30He came to the second, and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I’m going, sir,’ but he didn’t go. 31Which of the two did the will of his father?”
They said to him, “The first.”
Jesus said to them, “Most certainly I tell you that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into God’s Kingdom before you. 32For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. When you saw it, you didn’t even repent afterward, that you might believe him.
33“Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country. 34When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the farmers to receive his fruit. 35The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36Again, he sent other servants more than the first; and they treated them the same way. 37But afterward he sent to them his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38But the farmers, when they saw the son, said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and seize his inheritance.’ 39So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard, then killed him. 40When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”
41They told him, “He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will lease out the vineyard to other farmers who will give him the fruit in its season.”
42Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures,
‘The stone which the builders rejected
was made the head of the corner.
This was from the Lord.
It is marvelous in our eyes’?
43“Therefore I tell you, God’s Kingdom will be taken away from you and will be given to a nation producing its fruit. 44He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it will fall, it will scatter him as dust.”
45When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he spoke about them. 46When they sought to seize him, they feared the multitudes, because they considered him to be a prophet.
The hometown of Jesus was Nazareth in Galilee (Matt.2:23, Mark 1:9, Luke 2:39). Nazareth lies on the north slope of the Jezreel Valley (or Plain of Esdraelon), across to the north-east from Megiddo and Mount Carmel. At 1,150 feet, it overlooks the valley about 950 feet below.
The relative size and importance of the village of Nazareth at the time of Jesus is seen by the almost total lack of mention of it in period sources. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament. Josephus, in his catalogue of forty-five towns in Galilee does not list Nazareth. The Talmud refers to sixty-three villages in Galilee, but also does not mention it.[1] It was not on any major trade route, but it was on the road from the regional administrative center of Sepphoris. Because of this, Unger has argued that “while Nazareth was not a bustling emporium, it was far from isolated from the busy Galilean cities and the stirring events of the time.”[2] Archaeology has also given evidence of how small Nazareth was during Jesus’ time. It is estimated to have been approximately sixty acres and had a population of less than five hundred.[3]
This lack of historical textual evidence has caused some fringe skeptics to claim the town never existed.[4] However, archaeological evidence has been found that shows Nazareth was inhabited well before, during, and after the time of Jesus.
In 1963 burial caves were found containing pottery from the first part of the Middle Bronze Age (2100-2000 B.C.), lending evidence that Nazareth had been settled from a very early date.[5] Archeological excavations done by Bagatti in 1955 under the Church of the Annunciation yielded grottoes, grail silos, oil and water cisterns, raisin and olive presses, millstones, and a large amount of pottery.[6] The pottery is of special interest because it ranges from Iron II (900-600 B.C.) all the way through the Byzantine period. The finds show that Nazareth was a village for many centuries organized around agriculture. Unger speculates that Jesus’ repetitive use of agricultural illustrations is due to His having been raised in that environment.[7] Also of interest is that some of the grottos discovered had been modified to be used as dwellings and other buildings. This gives credence to the traditional location of the Church of St. Joseph, said to have been build over the grotto where Joseph had his house and workshop, and where Jesus grew up.
Very recently excavations in Nazareth led by Yardenna Alexandre have revealed a first-century house. The Roman period house was found next to the Church of the Annunciation, and according to Alexandre, “The building that we found is small and modest and it is most likely typical of the dwellings in Nazareth in that period.”[8] The house consisted of two rooms with a courtyard, typical of the time (see Houses in First Century Israel)[RD1]. Roman era pottery was found, along with chalk containers, unique to Jewish sites (due to the fact that chalk vessels were not susceptible to become ritually impure, unlike normal clay pottery). In addition, a camouflaged pit was discovered, which also contained potsherds. Alexandre theorizes the pit was constructed and stocked in preparation for the Jewish revolt of A.D. 67.
[1]Finegan, Archaeology, 43.
[2]Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962) 119.
[3] James F. Strange, “Nazareth” Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Vol. 4, ed. Eric M. Myers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)113-114; Vassilios Tzaferis and Bellarmino Bagatti, “Nazareth” New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 3, ed. Ephraim Stern (Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society and Carta, 1993)1103-1106.
[4]See Rene Salm, The Myth of Nazareth, Parsippany NJ: American Atheist Press, 2008.
[5]Finegan, Archeology, 44.
[6] Bellarmino Bagatti, Excavations at Nazareth (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1969) 77-218.
[7]Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1962) 120.
[8] Quoted in Israel Antiquities Authority, “For the Very First Time: A Residential Building from the Time of Jesus was Exposed in the Heart of Nazareth,” Dec. 21, 2009. Online: http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=1638&module_id=#as (accessed February 13, 2009).
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