A Nice Jewish. Girl

The Bible does not say how old Mary was when she got betrothed to Joseph or when she got pregnant with Jesus. The Bible does not tell anything about Mary’s parents or how they raised her. This episode was created by considering the customs and conditions that existed in Nazareth during this time period.

At the time of Jesus’s birth, Nazareth was a small village in the middle of nowhere—it wasn’t even mentioned in the Old Testament. Matthew 2:23 records that the prophets said Jesus would be called a Nazarene, but we have no record of those prophecies. When Jesus started recruiting his followers, Nathaniel said, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”

At the time of Jesus’ birth, the nearby town of Sepphoris was not yet important, and the city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee had not been built. Nazareth was perched on a hillside overlooking the important trade route running through the productive Jezreel Valley, but Nazareth was separate from them.