[2][4][5][6] The city also commands immense religious significance, deriving from its status as the hometown of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity and a prophet in Islam and Baha'i'sm.

The city grew steadily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when European powers invested in the construction of churches, monasteries, educational and health facilities.

[16] Such linguistic discrepancies may be explained, however, by "a peculiarity of the 'Palestinian' Aramaic dialect wherein a sade (ṣ) between two voiced (sonant) consonants tended to be partially assimilated by taking on a zayin (z) sound".

[18] Following the birth and early epiphanial events of chapter 2 of Luke, Mary, Joseph and Jesus "returned to Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth".

"[c] One plausible view is that Nazōraean (Ναζωραῖος) is a normal Greek adaptation of a reconstructed, hypothetical term in Jewish Aramaic for the word later used in Rabbinical sources to refer to Jesus.

[26] Many scholars have questioned a link between "Nazareth" and the terms "Nazarene" and "Nazoraean" on linguistic grounds,[27] while some affirm the possibility of etymological relation "given the idiosyncrasies of Galilean Aramaic.

"[28] The form Nazara is also found in the earliest non-scriptural reference to the town, a citation by Sextus Julius Africanus dated about AD 221[29] (see "Middle Roman to Byzantine Periods" below).

have revealed that a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles (3.2 km) from current Nazareth, dates back roughly 9,000 years to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B era.

[46] A Hebrew inscription found in Caesarea dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century mentions Nazareth as the home of the priestly Hapizzez/Hafizaz family after the Bar Kokhba revolt (AD 132–135).

[citation needed] Although it is mentioned in the New Testament gospels, there are no extant non-biblical references to Nazareth until around AD 200, when Sextus Julius Africanus, cited by Eusebius (Church History 1.7.14), speaks of Nazara as a village in Judea and locates it near Cochaba (modern-day Kaukab).

[52] James F. Strange, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida,[53] notes: "Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD.

"[54] Strange originally calculated the population of Nazareth at the time of Christ as "roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people" but, in a subsequent publication that followed more than a decade of additional research, revised this figure down to "a maximum of about 480.

Previously, most of Galiee, except for minor short-lived Israelite settlements in the Naḥal Ẓippori basin, had an occupational gap for about 5 centuries because of the Assyrian conquest in 732 BCE.

[75] The ruins of St. Joseph's remained untouched for a very long time, while the Church St. Mary is repeatedly mentioned throughout the following centuries, including by an Arab geographer in 943.

[78] Frederick II managed to negotiate safe passage for pilgrims from Acre in 1229, and in 1251, Louis IX, the king of France, attended mass in the grotto, accompanied by his wife.

[78] In 1263, Baybars, the Mamluk Sultan, destroyed the Christian buildings in Nazareth and declared the site off-limits to Latin clergy, as part of his bid to drive out the remaining Crusaders from Palestine.

By the late 19th century, Nazareth was a town with a strong Arab Christian presence and a growing European community, where a number of communal projects were undertaken and new religious buildings were erected.

[86] By 1930, a church for the Baptist denomination, a municipal garden at Mary's Well and a police station based in Zahir al-Umar's Seraya had been established and the Muslim Sharqiya Quarter had expanded.

[91] Most of the fighting around Nazareth occurred in its satellite villages, particularly in Saffuriya, whose residents put up resistance until largely dispersing following Israeli air raids on 15 July.

Seeking to prevent the town's destruction, the Muslim mayor of Nazareth, Yusef Fahum requested a halt to all resistance put up by Nazarenes.

[89] In the first few years of its incorporation into Israel, Nazareth's affairs were dominated by the issues of land expropriation, internally displaced refugees and the hardships of martial law, which included curfews and travel restrictions.

[98] Knesset member Seif el-Din el-Zoubi, who represented Nazareth, actively opposed the Absentees' Property Law, which allowed state expropriation of land from Arab citizens who were not permitted to return to their original villages.

Tensions between Nazareth's inhabitants and the state came to a head during a 1958 May Day rally where marchers demanded that refugees be allowed to return to their villages, an end to land expropriation, and self-determination for Palestinians.

[106] In March 2006, public protests followed the disruption of a prayer service by an Israeli Jew and his Christian wife and daughter, who detonated firecrackers inside the church.

[118] The greater Nazareth metropolitan area includes Nof HaGalil, Yafa an-Naseriyye, Reineh, Migdal HaEmek, Ein Mahil, Ilut, Kafr Kanna, Mashhad and Iksal.

The 1948 War led to an exodus of Palestinians and many expelled or fleeing Muslims from villages in the Galilee and the Haifa area found refuge in Nazareth.

Bagatti, who acted as the principal archaeologist for the venerated sites in Nazareth, unearthed quantities of later Roman and Byzantine artifacts,[146] attesting to unambiguous human presence there from the 2nd century AD onward.

John Dominic Crossan, a noted New Testament scholar, remarked that Bagatti's archaeological drawings indicate just how small the village actually was, suggesting that it was little more than an insignificant hamlet.

[147] Remains of a residential house dating to the Early Roman period were discovered in 2009 next to the Basilica of the Annunciation and are on display in the "International Marian Center of Nazareth".

Archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre adds that "based on other excavations that I conducted in other villages in the region, this pit was probably hewn as part of the preparations by the Jews to protect themselves during the Great Revolt against the Romans in 67 AD".