What was the population of Nazareth when Jesus was born?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

Scholars are still debating whether Nazareth existed at the beginning of the first century, or whether it was only founded in the second half of the century. If it did exist at that time, it would have been a small village with a population of a few hundred at most.

Both Matthew and Luke refer to Nazareth as a city, implying a quite sizable population. However, scholars are uncertain whether Nazareth even existed at the time of Jesus. Josephus listed all the towns he knew of in Galilee, but never mentioned Nazareth. The gospels are not entirely reliable on this point, as they were not written until some decades later, and neither Mark nor John actually refers to Nazareth as a city. The general consensus among scholars is that there was probably a small rural village there at the time. So, the population of Nazareth could have been around 100 people altogether - perhaps twenty to fifty family groups - but we can not be certain.

Answer 2

Not a great deal is known about Nazareth in the time of Jesus and it is continues to be debated whether a town even existed until long after his childhood. The town certainly existed by around 80 CE, since it is mentioned several times in Matthew's Gospel, which most New Testament scholars now date to the 80s of the first century.

Whether Nazareth existed before 70 CE, when Mark's Gospel was written, is less certain. In the original Greek language, this Gospel contains only one reference to Nazareth, which some scholars consider to have been interpolated much later. In some English translations, Mark refers to Jesus of (or from) Nazareth five times (Mark 1:9,24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6). However, in the original Greek, four of these references actually refer to Jesus the Nazarene (Ναζαρηνοῦ). Now, calling someone a Nazarene could arguably mean that he is from the town of Nazareth, but also there was a sect known as the Nazarenes and this could also have meant that Jesus was a leader of the Nazarene sect.

Wikipedia describes the state of Archaeology in Nazareth, indicating that no worthwhile evidence of a settlement has yet been found from the time of Herod or the start of the first century CE. If a village did exist, it could only have been a very small hamlet.

Answer 3

Bethlehem was a small town at the time of Jesus birth, and we must remember that there was a small population in those days.