Why is Nazareth significant? The answer seems obvious—it is the village where Jesus was conceived and grew up (though not born), and after which he was named: “Jesus of Nazareth” or “Jesus the Nazarene.”

Perhaps no other town is as strongly associated with Jesus in the Western Christian imagination as the “little town of Bethlehem,” and this despite the fact that Jesus had to be called a “Nazarene” (Matthew 2:23) and had to die in Jerusalem (Luke 13:33).