Cliff Tossing

In this Sunday's reading from Luke 4:21-30, Jesus enrages his home town's people to the point that they were ready to toss him off a cliff.

Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” And you will say, “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” ’ And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

By comparing himself to Elijah and Elisha, the crowd concluded that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy. Therefore, Jesus was to be tossed.

People have considered which cliff Luke was writing about, and many felt that it was Mount Precipice, but a more likely place would be found in the town itself. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges gives this explanation (taken from Erik Manning).

"'…the brow of the hill whereon their city was built,' The ‘whereon’ refers to the hill not to the brow. Nazareth nestles under the southern slopes of the hill. The cliff down which they wished to hurl Him (because this was regarded as a form of ‘stoning,’ the legal punishment for blasphemy) was certainly not the so-called ‘Mount of Precipitation’ which is two miles distant, and therefore more than a sabbath day’s journey, but one of the rocky escarpments of the hill, and possibly that above the Maronite Church, which is about 40 feet high. This form of punishment is only mentioned in 2 Chronicles 25:12; but in Phocis it was the punishment for sacrilege. (Philo.)" - Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Blasphemy laws are still quite common as shown by Pew Research, 

"A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that 79 countries and territories out of the 198 studied around the world (40%) had laws or policies in 2019 banning blasphemy, which is defined as speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or of people or objects considered sacred. Twenty-two countries (11%) had laws against apostasy, the act of abandoning one’s faith." 

 While we in the U.S. do not have blasphemy laws, we have "woke" culture which will throw you from a cliff if you dare to say, write, read, view, or listen to anything that might offend certain groups which the woke have made protected species. Go ahead and offend conservative politicians, Christians, WASPs, and conservative bloggers all you want because they have blasphemed against the zeitgeist. 

I better find a parachute before they toss me. Oh, that's right, I have one in Jesus!