Question: Why was Nazareth seen as a place where no good could come from?
Like humans today, very often we have a tendency to bring into a formula a concept or situation which gives a quick summary for future recall and use. This sometimes called “pigeonholing”, due to the small and neat pigeon's nesting hole!
In the Companion Bible, Dr. Bullinger has categorized this particular comment in John 1:46 as a figure of speech called “Paromia”, which calls up two examples of the above description: Gen.10:9, and Sam.10:12.
A comment from Google also gives the same explanation:
Civic and village rivalries were common in antiquity. When Nathanael asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46), however, he voices a criticism about Jesus’ humble origins that is also expressed more widely in this Gospel. Members of the Judean elite, in particular, were unimpressed with Jesus’ allegedly rural Galilean origins (see John 7:41-42, John 7:52). Subsequent critics of Jesus’ movement may have criticized his “Nazarene” origins (see also John 18:5-7, John 19:19; Acts 6:14, Acts 24:5), since another Gospel writer, Matthew, also finds a need to justify it (Matt 2:23).
The major reasons Jesus was derided and reviled by the Jewish hierarchy was the teaching of the Pharisees re. their promised Messiah. They could not accept that such a “lowly” born person, from such a lowly “area” as Nazareth could be the “great warrior Messiah” that they were (and still are) looking to appear! They could not also accept that Jesus was Divine; all of which in the hundreds of years of false teaching in their Temples and Synagogues was utter blasphemy, which to them was/is painful!
That will continue until Zech. 12:10; when they will realize whom they crucified; and they will mourn like they have never mourned before in their whole existence!
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