Ministry of Jesus

From Nazareth to Capernaum

See also: Mark 1

Some time after having rejected Satan's temptation, Jesus is described as leaving Nazareth. While Matthew doesn't explain why Jesus did this, both he and Mark mention that John the Baptist was arrested by Herod Antipas at this time, perhaps implying that Jesus fled in fear. Luke gives a different circumstance, stating that Jesus left when the people of Nazareth rejected him. The texts don't recount what occurred between Jesus being tempted and John being arrested, but Jones ^{[citation needed]} believes that some months likely elapsed, with Jesus frequently being seen as a disciple of John the Baptist, until this was no longer possible (due to John being arrested). France argues that it was the flight from Nazareth which resulted in Jesus carrying out a ministry based on itinerant preaching, which France sees as being quite different to the ministry which John the Baptist had carried out.

 

Judaea and Galilee at the time of Jesus

Curiously, the passage describing Jesus leaving Nazareth, both in Luke and Matthew, uses the spelling Nazara for Nazareth, which between them are the only places in the Bible that Nazareth is spelt this way. This has led some scholars to suspect that the parts of this scene were copied by Luke and Matthew from the Q document, although this neglects the fact that most scholars view Q as a collection of quotes, much like the Gospel of Thomas, and so wouldn't really contain any scenes at all. After leaving Nazareth, Jesus goes to Capernaum, a sizeable town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, located in the region that Jewish sources considered to be Naphtali, but near the region considered to be Zebulun.

Although the town is mentioned nowhere in the Old Testament, it does feature in all the Gospels, and is likely to be a new town that arose at some point during Roman control of the region, see also Iudaea Province. Matthew is the only source that has Jesus actually living in the town, while the other Gospels only have him preaching and meeting disciples there. To explain this, those who view the Gospels as harmonious with each other, such as France, feel that the town was less a home and more a base of operations to which Jesus and his disciples would occasionally return. Gundry rejects this view, since to him dwelt unambiguously means that Jesus set up house in the town, and Gundry considers that this was a deliberate embellishment by Matthew to make it easier to find a prophecy to justify the move.

Matthew does not mention why Jesus chose Capernaum to relocate to, though historically the town was prosperous, mainly due to its location on a large lake (the Sea of Galilee) and simultaneously a location on the Via Maris, the Damascus to Egypt trade route. France feels that Jesus moved there as such a prosperous community offered more opportunities to preach, while Albright and Mann propose that Jesus moved there because he was already friends with his disciples prior to them becoming disciples, and he wanted to live with his friends, who lived in Capernaum. According to Matthew, when he spies certain fishermen in the region, Jesus recruits them as his disciples - Simon, John, Andrew, and James. This write up presuposes the traditional text is not a superiour manuscript.[[1]]

 Capernaum as prophecy

 

A 1923 map showing Galilee circa 50AD. Capernaum is in the upper right while Nazareth is towards the centre.

Matthew justifies Jesus' move to Capernaum by claiming that it fulfilled a prophecy. The prophecy Matthew quotes is from Isaiah (specifically Isaiah 9:1-2), but Matthew has considerably abridged it, turning it into little more than a geographic list of places. In Isaiah, the passage describes how Assyrian invaders are increasingly aggressive as they progress toward the sea, while Matthew has re-interpreted the description as a prophecy stating that Jesus would progress (without any hint of becoming more aggressive) toward Galilee.

While Matthew uses the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah, in the Masoretic text it refers to the region of the gentiles rather than Galilee of the nations, and it is likely that the presence of the word Galilee in the Septuagint is a translation error - the Hebrew word for region is galil which can easily be corrupted to galilee. Gundry feels that instead of the Isaiah referring to Assyrians progressing to the Mediterranian, Matthew is trying to rewrite the statement so that it refers to the Sea of Galilee. Schweizer considers it odd that the phrase beyond the Jordan was not among those cut in Matthew, as it makes clear that the author of the passage is writing from east of the Jordan, and the geography does not work with the sea in question being the Sea of Galilee, which is on the Jordan, not beyond it.

The quote goes on to prophecy that after the dark period of Assyrian dominance, a light would shine, and Matthew words his quote to imply that Jesus would be this light. Carter, who has advanced the thesis that much of Matthew is intended to prophecy the imminent destruction of the Roman Empire, sees this quote as a deliberate allegory, with the Assyrians representing the then current domination of the region by Rome. The wording of this part of the quote isn't consistent with any single known ancient manuscript, but several parts of it match different versions of the Septuagint, and three versions in particular. It was long thought to be combined from differing versions, but it could also be taken from a now lost version of the Septuagint, although Matthew differs by placing the text in the past tense, to fit better with his narrative. Also, while the Septuagint states that a light would shine, Matthew states that it would dawn, an important difference that makes it refer to the appearance of a messiah, than the continuous behaviour of God.

Shedinger rejects the traditional view that this quote is merely a corruption of Isaiah, instead feeling that, in the original version of Matthew, the text was derived both from Isaiah 9:1-2 and Psalm 107:10. Shedinger alleges that later translators didn't realise that there was a second reference to the Psalms, and so altered the verse to make it conform more to Isaiah.

According to the Canonical Gospels, the Ministry of Jesus began when Jesus was around 30 years old, and lasted a period of 1-3 years. In the Biblical narrative, Jesus' method of teaching involved parables, metaphor, allegory, sayings, proverbs, and a small number of direct sermons.