Actually, Milo, I am making a molehill out of your mountain.

The original gospel writers refrained from inventing a childhood, youth or early manhood for JC because it was not necessary to their central drama of a dying/reborn sun-god. But as we know, the story grew with the telling, particularly as the decades passed and the promised redeemer and judge failed to reappear. The re-writer of the Gospel of Mark, revising his text sometime between 140 and 150 AD, introduces the name of the city only once in chapter one with these words:

"And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee ..." – Mark I, 9.


From then on the name is almost forgotten. We may reasonably suspect that all four references in Mark are a later interpolation.

We can trace the subsequent elevation of Nazareth in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the writer who emphasizes JC's ties to 'Nazareth.' Luke is the writer who goes out of his way to demonstrate an anti-Capernaum stance. Scholars have concluded Luke was not a Jew himself because of his 'glaring errors in things Jewish'. He also makes mistakes in his geography. He knows little about the place and in his mini-drama describes an impossible incident:

" ... and brought him to the precipice of the mountain that their city was built upon." – Luke 4.29.


Nazareth, in fact, is located in a depression, set within gentle hills. The whole region is characterized by plains and mild rises with no sharp peaks or steep cliffs. The terrain is correctly understood as a high basin, for in one direction is the much lower Plain of Esdraelon. But there is no disguising Nazareth is built in a valley and not on a mountain. Even the mediaeval town sat below the summit – protected from the wind. Beginning only in 1957, the Jewish suburb called 'Nazerat Illit' ('Upper Nazareth') was built to the top of the hills to the east of the city.




Foreground
(below that pointy building): – supposed location of 1st century 'city' of Nazareth



'Mount of Precipice' (aka 'Lord's Leap')


Perhaps the Multitude might really have threatened to roll JC down the slope?

It would take quite some time to get from the downtown 'synagogue' and scramble to the top of the 'cliff'!