The Return of Jesus to Galilee is an episode in the life of Jesus which appears in three of the Canonical Gospels: Matthew 4:12, Mark 1:14 and John 4:1-3, 4:43-45. It relates the return of Jesus to Galillee upon the imprisonment of John the Baptist.
According to the Gospel of John:
The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
John's Gospel narrative refers to Jesus travelling through Samaria in order to reach Galilee, and describes his meeting with a Samaritan woman at a well at Sychar in Samaria. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus returns to Galilee from the desert after John's arrest, following a period of solitude and temptation. In Matthew's Gospel, the narrative suggests that after his baptism he had spent time in the desert, the "holy city" (Jerusalem) and a mountainous area before returning to Galilee. He left Nazareth, where he had grown up, and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the Sea of Galilee "in the heart of the world, in a busy town, and near others, on the shore of a sea that was full of fish, and on a great international highway".