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The Life of ChristSection 22 / 113
Section 022 · The Galilean Ministry Begins

Rejection at Nazareth

In his hometown synagogue, Jesus reads Isaiah’s “acceptable year of the Lord” and declares it fulfilled that day. Met with unbelief, he presses the point with Elijah and Elisha (precedents where God’s power passed by Israel to reach a gentile widow and a gentile leper), and the congregation’s wonder turns to wrath.

Luke 4:16–301 of 4 accountsReading: CCE
ProvenanceJSTJoseph Smith TranslationCCECovenant Christian EditionDeleted text shown struck, attributed
Study: reading text with parallel accounts; changes available.

Note. The Joseph Smith Translation makes only small changes of wording here, none of them substantive, so the column carries no marks. The prophets’ names (Elijah for Elias, Elisha for Eliseus) are the CCE’s modern spelling.

? How to read this edition

The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.

JST
Green: Joseph Smith Translation. Where the Covenant Christian Edition departs in substance from the King James text and the change is in the JST (confirmed against the parallel-column edition). Modernized English (“has” for “hath,” “you” for “thou”) is not marked.
CCE
Burgundy: Covenant Christian Edition. Where the CCE’s reading departs from the King James but the change is not in the Joseph Smith Translation manuscript (e.g. “this day I have begotten you” at the baptism). Some are Joseph’s own readings from his sermons; the section’s Joseph Smith commentary then gives the sermon.
LukeKJVLuke 4:16–30CCELuke 4:2–4NT 2

16And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. 17And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written: 18The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them who are bruised, 19to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and he sat down. And the eyes of all those who were in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. 22And all bore him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son? 23And he said unto them, You will surely say unto me this proverb: Physician, heal yourself. Whatever we have heard was done in Capernaum, do also here in your country. 24And he said, Truly I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country, 25but I tell you the truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and great famine was throughout all the land, 26but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Zarephath of Sidon, unto a woman who was a widow. 27And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them were cleansed save Naaman the Syrian.

28And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. 30But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way

No recorded JST change in this account.
Cross-references · other works
Isaiah 61:1–2 (CCE 23:1) · the acceptable year of the Lord↗Leviticus 25:10 (CCE 13:2) · proclaim liberty throughout all the land↗1 Kings 17:8–16 (CCE 4:3–5) · Elijah and the widow of Zarephath↗2 Kings 5:1–14 (CCE 2:13–15) · Elisha and Naaman the Syrian↗Mark 6:1–6 (CCE 3:6) · a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country↗Acts 10:34–35 (CCE 6:7) · God is no respecter of persons↗
Joseph Smith on the captives

Deliverance to the Captives

To Bring Them Out of the Prison House

In an editorial on baptism for the dead, Joseph Smith quoted the words Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (v. 18) and asked what they meant for the spirits in prison to whom Peter says Christ preached. His answer: the captives were to be let out, not left where they were.

Editorial, “Baptism for the Dead,” Times and Seasons, 15 April 1842 (3:760) · Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 219 · Joseph Smith Papers ↗

Here then we have an account of our Saviour preaching to the spirits in prison; to spirits that had been imprisoned from the days of Noah; and what did he preach to them? that they were to stay there? certainly not; let his own declaration testify; “he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised”— Luke iv, 18, Isaiah has it;—“To bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness from the prison house.” Is. xlii, 7 It is very evident from this that he not only went to preach to them, but to deliver, or bring them out of the prison house.

Margaret Barker · the Jubilee of Melchizedek

Nazareth: Declaring the Tenth Jubilee

Barker reads Isaiah 61 as one of the key Qumran-era Melchizedek prophecies: the promised return of the great high priest to proclaim the final Jubilee. On this reading, Jesus’s claim at Nazareth is not only that scripture is fulfilled, but that he is Melchizedek, and the wrath that follows is the congregation grasping exactly that.

The Time Is Fulfilled: Jesus and the Jubilee© Margaret Barker, 1999 ↗
The Qumran Melchizedek text (11QMelch), written in the middle of the first century BCE but not necessarily composed at that time, describes the events of the tenth Jubilee… 11QMelch alludes many times to the Jubilee oracle in Isaiah 61: “…the Lord God has anointed me… to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Isa. 61.1 [Isa. 23], “proclaim liberty,” deror, being a quotation from Lev. 25.10 [Lev. 13:2]). The coming Melchizedek is to rescue his own people… from the power of Belial… This gives the context for the opening scenes of the gospels. In the first week of the tenth Jubilee Jesus was baptised with the Spirit, which was interpreted as his anointing (Acts 10.38 [Acts 6:7]). After his time in the desert he returned to Galilee announcing “the time is fulfilled,” i.e. the tenth Jubilee is inaugurated and “Melchizedek” is here… Luke’s account of Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth shows that he claimed to have inaugurated the final Jubilee; no other interpretation can be put on the claim to have fulfilled that day (Luke 4.21 [Luke 4:3]) the Jubilee prophecy in Isaiah 61 which was central to the Melchizedek expectations of the time… The first miracle was an exorcism (Mark 1.21–26 [Mark 1:6]), setting one of his own people free from the power of Belial… This was the great ingathering of the Jubilee.
The Time Is Fulfilled: Jesus and the Jubilee© Margaret Barker, 1999 · on the Jubilee’s year of favor ↗
The Jubilee also brought the Day of Judgement, vividly described in 11QMelch… This was to be the year of Melchizedek’s favour, a very significant alteration to Isaiah 61.2 [Isa. 23], which proclaims the Jubilee as the year of the Lord’s favour… The only possible conclusion is that Melchizedek, the heavenly high priest, was the Lord, the God of Israel.
Our Great High Priest: The Church as the New TempleFr. Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, New York, January 28, 2012 ↗

Melchizedek is a key figure in our exploration. The word means ‘Righteous King’, or ‘King of Righteousness’, but was probably a title rather than a name. Most often it was written as two words, Melchi-Zedek - ‘King of Righteousness’ – and it was a title of the ancient priest-kings in Jerusalem. ‘Righteousness’ was a temple-term that described bringing the whole of creation and human society back to its Godgiven state of peace, shalom. The writer of Hebrews called Melchizedek the King of righteousness, the king of peace.5 It is likely that all the ancient priest-kings in Jerusalem had been Melchizedek priests, whose role was to uphold righteousness.

From the Dead Sea scrolls Melchizedek text, we can see there are several places where the New Testament presents Jesus as the long-expected Melchizedek. Hebrews says he was Melchizedek, and contrasted his priesthood with the other temple priesthood, the family of Aaron, as we shall see. Jesus began his public ministry at exactly the time Melchizedek was expected to return, and when he spoke in the synagogue at Nazareth, he chose to read Isaiah 617, one of the Melchizedek prophecies. Jesus said it was being fulfilled. He was Melchizedek, the great high priest.

But Melchizedek had been the royal high priest in the original temple, not the restored temple that was so diminished in its furnishings and its teachings. The actual temple in the time of Jesus was this diminished temple, and yet people still remembered what the temple had been and what it should be. This means ‘what its teachings should be’. One of the most remarkable aspects of Christian origins is that the early Church knew these teachings and developed them into what we now call Christianity. Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies, the true temple was being restored, and they called him Melchizedek.

Scholars sometimes wonder how Christianity developed so quickly into such a sophisticated theological system, especially as the first disciples are often portrayed as uneducated fishermen from Galilee. The answer to that question is very clear in the New Testament, if it is read it with eyes accustomed to the world of the original temple. When St Peter wrote to the scattered Jewish communities in Asia Minor who had become Christians, he said: ‘Like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’ The Christian community was the temple of the Messiah, the original temple restored, and it was a living temple.

The wrath that follows, “all in the synagogue were filled with wrath” (Luke 4:28), reads differently once the claim underneath “this day is this scripture fulfilled” is Melchizedek himself standing in the room.