Question
Where was Nain, where Jesus raised the widow's son?
Nain is the Arab village of Nein in Lower Galilee, in today's Israel, on the northern slope of the hill of Moreh, looking across the Jezreel valley to Mount Tabor; the map point stands on it. It lies about 9 km south-east of Nazareth and 7 km south-west of Tabor in a straight line, and about 96 km north of Jerusalem. The old name has survived, and the identification is generally accepted.
Luke alone tells the story. As Jesus “came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow”. He touched the bier and said, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.” The crowd cried, “That a great prophet is risen up among us”. The King James text says he came there “the day after” healing the centurion's servant in Capernaum, some 35 km away in a straight line, a long day's walk; other manuscripts say only that it was soon afterwards, as the Synodal translation has it.
The words “delivered him to his mother” repeat what Elijah did for the widow of Zarephath, and the place recalls Elisha: Shunem, where he raised the Shunammite's son, lies only about 3 km away on the other side of the same hill. Eusebius placed Nain near Endor south of Tabor, and Jerome writes that in the 380s it was pointed out to Paula from the mountain. Small excavations in the village have found a hiding complex of the Roman period, Byzantine winepresses and later houses, but nothing of a walled town; Luke's “gate” may mean simply the way out of the village.
Scripture: Luke 7:1; Luke 7:11–17; 1 Kgs 17:23; 2 Kgs 4:8; 2 Kgs 4:32–37
Sources
- Straight-line distances between the places' points (Nain, Nazareth, Mount Tabor, Shunem, Capernaum, Jerusalem): OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding Data (CC BY 4.0)
- Eusebius, Onomasticon, s.v. Naein (C. U. Wolf's translation, no. 750)
- Jerome, Letter 108.13
- O. Zidan, 'Nein', Hadashot Arkheologiyot 128 (2016); Y. Tsur, 'Nein', Hadashot Arkheologiyot 135 (2023)
- History Globe article “Nain” and History Globe tour “The life of Jesus”
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.