It was interesting to read your take on the links, dave.
For me, the most important point was that precisely where Nazareth is supposed to have stood, was a Roman eraJewish cemetery.
No way would Jews have knowlingly built houses on top of graves.
It's a tradition which still has weight even today, as the link about the protests affirms.
Why do the gospels mention Nazareth?
Your guess is as good as mine, dave, prolly better!
About the same as before I read the articles. Nazareth probably wasn't a town in first century Palestine but it is doubtful that there will ever be enough evidence to make the case categorical.I
I meant the word, probably, there to indicate both that the I thought the case was pretty good (based on what I understood) that first century Nazareth wasn't an inhabited town and that I didn't understand the case well enough to draw a stronger view.
From the first article you linked to:
those tombs first spread to the areas north of Jerusalem from the south, and they did so not before c. 50 CE. This means that not only do all the two dozen kokhim tombs in the Nazareth basin date well after the time of Christ,
So the tombs didn't start showing up until after a first century town might have disappeared? I don't know, maybe that's a bogus argument, but before I made a stronger conclusion I think I'd need to familiarize myself with the geography a bit better to feel comfortable that there wasn't some place to put a town nearby. If people were dying presumably there were people living nearby and maybe that's where first century Nazareth existed?. I think I"d also need to fully understand what the arguments were for the existence of first century Nazareth recently put forth. I didn't do that.
The main problem is that even if they do start being built around the middle of the first century, nobody would have built them in the middle of the village. Unless, of course, there was no village.
One could speculate about some scenario where there was a village in 6 BC, but then pretty much disappears by 50 AD and it turns into a cemetery, I guess. However it's not clear what would cause that. There wouldn't be a revolt in that time, or a major plague, or anything that would cause an isolated and supposedly prosperous agricultural village to just vanish to the point where people would rather build a cemetery there than, dunno, use the houses and fields. So it's a rather implausible scenario for that particular time, IMHO.
The second problem is that the cemeteries and their contents are the earliest things dated there after the iron age. A lot of effort in pushing back the dating is about the lamps in those tombs and whatnot, but that then creates the problem that you'd not have much of a village among the tombs.
But at any rate, a village doesn't spring up overnight, except after some major traumatic event that displaced some people. Like the Jewish revolt later. For a village that just was there all the time you'd expect to see Hellenistic age coins, pottery, etc, and it seems that everything dated to that age is VERY debatable to say the least. Again, the tombs seem to be actually the earliest thing that can be supported as being there, which is a problem.
You and I seem to be having a metaconversation, talking about what we were talking about. OK, in this thread, you and I were discussing the contents of a literary work.
As I've pointed out when I answered your question the first time, the evidence for a statement about the contents of a literary work is the literary work being discussed.
If you'd like to talk about the evidence bearing on the events mentioned in the literary work, then there has been quite a bit of that in the "What counts...?" and "... did Jesus exist?" threads. Why not go there, and make some comments or ask some questions about what interests you?
I gave you a link to where I posted my explanation of my own 60-40 current view. Why ask here, when it has little to do with the topic or what we were talking about? If you have some felt need to ask me about it, then ask where I have posted about that aspect of the problem, in a thread where it is on-topic to pursue it.
OK, well that lot was just a display of hand-waving waffle wasn't it.
But at least we have now established that (a)you cannot produce any evidence to support your hypothesis of a real Jesus, and (b)you want to argue that supporting evidence is not necessary.
I'm not sure what that remark relates to, but it doesn't help in these discussions if you make confrontational remarks about your ability to "correct" people (or indeed about "calling people out").
Whatever you think is the best investigative procedure.
Personally, knowing that Mark is a very different book from Matthew, and that Mathhew simply makes up things to conform to his misunderstandings of Jewish scripture, I'd want assurance that this is not simply another screw-up by Mattie of the Two Asses.
The idea that Jesus ever resided in Nazareth appears first in Matthew, at 2:23, along with the first ancient mention that there was anything like a town there. Matthew writes that this change of residence fulfilled a prophecy.
2: 23 He thus arrived and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”
So, there it is; no ifs ands or buts, Mathhew has confused something from the Jewish Bible with a geographic reference. The word is never definitely attested as ever having been used in a geographic sense before Matthew. (Ironically, Matthew never depicts anybody calling Jesus a "Nazarene," as Mark had.)
There is no prophecy that matches closely. What Matthew is confusing may not be "Nazirite." Phonetic neighbors include nezer and netser (crown, "from the root"). Both appear in Jewish Bible passages that might be messianic prophecies.
The main reason to associate residence in someplace called Nazareth with a historical Jesus is that Matthew misread Mark, and his misreading stuck. The evidence is pretty clear that this wasn't an innocent misreading, that Matthew invented the idea that Jesus lived in Nazareth to beef up Jesus' status as someone who was foreseen by the Jewish prophets.
Even if we knew there was an established town in Galilee called Nazareth, there would be very little reason to think that Jesus ever lived there, although all four Gospels would agree that he had at least visited there.
IanS
There are current threads where your questions are on topic, where I have already addressed those issues, and to which I have provided a link here. That is all.
Sorry to have been unclear, dave.
Fortunately, HansMustermann explained the implications of the Koch type tombs in their post!
Apparently those Koch type tombs were used by the inhabitants of Japha, which was located about a mile from the tomb sites and the present city of Nazareth.
Josephus reports Japha was wiped out by Trajan in 67 CE (Wars 3, 7.31) http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-3.htm
It's horrific reading, so I use a spoiler for Josephus' account of the taking of Japha
31. About this time it was that Vespasian sent out Trajan against a city called Japha, that lay near to Jotapata, and that desired innovations, and was puffed up with the unexpected length of the opposition of Jotapata. This Trajan was the commander of the tenth legion, and to him Vespasian committed one thousand horsemen, and two thousand footmen. When Trajan came to the city, he found it hard to be taken, for besides the natural strength of its situation, it was also secured by a double wall; but when he saw the people of this city coming out of it, and ready to fight him, he joined battle with them, and after a short resistance which they made, he pursued after them; and as they fled to their first wall, the Romans followed them so closely, that they fell in together with them: but when the Jews were endeavoring to get again within their second wall, their fellow citizens shut them out, as being afraid that the Romans would force themselves in with them. It was certainly God therefore who brought the Romans to punish the Galileans, and did then expose the people of the city every one of them manifestly to be destroyed by their bloody enemies; for they fell upon the gates in great crowds, and earnestly calling to those that kept them, and that by their names also, yet had they their throats cut in the very midst of their supplications; for the enemy shut the gates of the first wall, and their own citizens shut the gates of the second, so they were enclosed between two walls, and were slain in great numbers together; many of them were run through by swords of their own men, and many by their own swords, besides an immense number that were slain by the Romans. Nor had they any courage to revenge themselves; for there was added to the consternation they were in from the enemy, their being betrayed by their own friends, which quite broke their spirits; and at last they died, cursing not the Romans, but their own citizens, till they were all destroyed, being in number twelve thousand. So Trajan gathered that the city was empty of people that could fight, and although there should a few of them be therein, he supposed that they would be too timorous to venture upon any opposition; so he reserved the taking of the city to the general. Accordingly, he sent messengers to Vespasian, and desired him to send his son Titus to finish the victory he had gained. Vespasian hereupon imagining there might be some pains still necessary, sent his son with an army of five hundred horsemen, and one thousand footmen. So he came quickly to the city, and put his army in order, and set Trajan over the left wing, while he had the right himself, and led them to the siege: and when the soldiers brought ladders to be laid against the wall on every side, the Galileans opposed them from above for a while; but soon afterward they left the walls. Then did Titus's men leap into the city, and seized upon it presently; but when those that were in it were gotten together, there was a fierce battle between them; for the men of power fell upon the Romans in the narrow streets, and the women threw whatsoever came next to hand at them, and sustained a fight with them for six hours' time; but when the fighting men were spent, the rest of the multitude had their throats cut, partly in the open air, and partly in their own houses, both young and old together. So there were no males now remaining, besides infants, which, with the women, were carried as slaves into captivity; so that the number of the slain, both now in the city and at the former fight, was fifteen thousand, and the captives were two thousand one hundred and thirty. This calamity befell the Galileans on the twenty-fifth day of the month Desius [Sivan.]
Does Paul ever mention Nazareth?
From what I can find so far, no.
Nor, if I've understood correctly, is it mentioned in the OT.
I know it's mentioned in two of the gospels:
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth
, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
(Luke1.26,27)
And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth
, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; because he was of the house and lineage of David:
(Luke 2.3,4)
But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth
: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.
(Matthew 2.22,23)
And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth
. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
(Luke 2.39,40)
It's all rather puzzling, unless it's possible neither Matthew nor Luke knew the area, or only knew of it after Nazareth had a built-up population at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt.
It may be of some relevance to your discussion to see how Mark uses the place-name Nazareth (1:9) and the epithet Nazarene (1:24, 10:47, 14:67 and 16:6).
Mark doesn't say that Jesus resided in Nazareth. He "came from" Nazareth of Galilee when he was baptized (John was otherwise servicing people from Jerusalem and elsewhere in Judea, 1:5). The verb used in Greek often expresses the physical action "to arrive somewhere."
When Jesus visits home (chapter 6), it is not identified as Nazareth. The Marcan titulus doesn't say "Jesus of Nazareth," just "King of the Jews."
Whenever "Nazarene" is used, it is as an epithet by someone who is not an associate of Jesus (an unclean spirit or his host, a blind man, Peter's accuser, and the man in the not-quite empty tomb). There is nothing about the contexts that points to geographic intent.
"Nazir" is a broad term for consecrated or vow-taking. I don't see any reason to think that Mark confused "Nazarene" with "Nazirite," a specific kind of vow-taker. He may simply have been coining a Greek version of a new term for what Jesus was - somebody who dedicated himself to God ("Nazir"), but in his own way (not Nazirite as such).
The unclean spirit is the only one who uses the epithet in direct address, speaking to Jesus. The unclean spirit also addresses Jesus as "holy one of God." That this dual address is the first appearance of the term reinforces the impression of a new word being defined for the reader, with the information woven into the dialog.
Any word incorporating nazir is unavoidably going to "sound like" Nazareth, at least a little. That doesn't mean that Mark was confused about this. Matthew, who was confused even about where babies come from, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish.
Why would Mark include the detail that when Jesus came to John, he had just been in or at Nazareth of Galilee? I don't know, Mark doesn't explain. Galilee-Judea contrasts are one of the engines of the story. Why not just say Galilee, then? I still don't know, but this is evocative:
Jesus' father is nowhere in Mark. Maybe he died, and Jesus buried him just before he consecrated the remainder of his life to God's work. Middle age crazy would explain a lot.
But there could be any number of other reasons for an author's choice to include a bit of local color.
Thanks for bringing your knowledge to the table, eight bits!
At the end of the day, I have the impression the last phrase of your post is as close to the truth as we'll get on an internet forum.
I understand that Markan text is a later interpolation, so it might have been included to harmonise Mark with Matthew and/or Luke.
ETA
I haven't gotten around to the Nazarene information.
I'm still trying to grasp that 'Jesus of Nazareth' is a fiction.
There never was such a person hailing from that place.
...Personally, knowing that Mark is a very different book from Matthew, and that Mathhew simply makes up things to conform to his misunderstandings of Jewish scripture, I'd want assurance that this is not simply another screw-up by Mattie of the Two Asses.
The idea that Jesus ever resided in Nazareth appears first in Matthew, at 2:23, along with the first ancient mention that there was anything like a town there. Matthew writes that this change of residence fulfilled a prophecy.
2: 23 He thus arrived and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene.”
So, there it is; no ifs ands or buts, Mathhew has confused something from the Jewish Bible with a geographic reference. The word is never definitely attested as ever having been used in a geographic sense before Matthew. (Ironically, Matthew never depicts anybody calling Jesus a "Nazarene," as Mark had.)
There is no prophecy that matches closely. What Matthew is confusing may not be "Nazirite." Phonetic neighbors include nezer and netser (crown, "from the root"). Both appear in Jewish Bible passages that might be messianic prophecies.
The main reason to associate residence in someplace called Nazareth with a historical Jesus is that Matthew misread Mark, and his misreading stuck. The evidence is pretty clear that this wasn't an innocent misreading, that Matthew invented the idea that Jesus lived in Nazareth to beef up Jesus' status as someone who was foreseen by the Jewish prophets.
Even if we knew there was an established town in Galilee called Nazareth, there would be very little reason to think that Jesus ever lived there, although all four Gospels would agree that he had at least visited there.
...
This gets stranger all the time.
Apparently there was no place in the area for Jesus to visit except Japha.
Had the gospel writers made Japha = Nazareth?
Too much confusion for the moment.
Off to make a cup of chrysanthemum tea, highly recommended by tai chi instructors to clear the mind.
The chief problem with the "harmonization" theory is that Mark simply doesn't say that Jesus ever lived in Nazareth, just that Jesus was there before coming to John. There is nothing in Mark to support that anybody lives there.
It seems odd, then, to "explain" a phenomenon that hasn't been established to have occurred. Odder still to demand an explanation for a non-phenom:
Yet another strike against the presence of "Nazareth" in this verse originally is that the writer of Mark never explains or apologizes for the identification of Nazareth as Jesus' hometown in his gospel
Why would Mark explain or apologize for something that he never wrote?
There must be some name for this effect, where a later version of a story is retrojected onto an earlier one. We see it in the Feeding of the Five Thousand. John shows Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes, the Synoptics say that the crowd ate, so some people conclude that the Synoptics say that Jesus fed the crowd the multiplied the loaves and fishes. But they don't.
In any case, Matthew is the first known report that Jesus, or anybody else, lived in First Century Nazareth in Galilee. Matthew is also the first known report of other things that didn't happen, such as Mary having a baby before she had sexual intercourse.
And on a very small note, verse 1:9 is likely to be Jesus' first appearance in Mark, and so it does not call for a definite article. The supposed earlier appearance, Verse 1:1, reeks of scribal heading or title matter, added to the author's text for the identification of the manuscript. I was very surprised to read that part of the analysis without at least a reservation being noted.
... round two
This gets stranger all the time.
Apparently there was no place in the area for Jesus to visit except Japha.
Had the gospel writers made Japha = Nazareth?
Maybe, but the deadend is that 1:9 is the one and only time Mark uses the word Nazareth. It's a place, it's in Galilee, Jesus was there at least once... and that's all Mark wrote. We know how later writers used the word, but that doesn't help us with what Mark meant.
Even the phrase "Chrysanthemum tea" sounds mind-clearing.
There have been many interesting issues and questions raised in this thread (in fact, I have wondered about these same points myself for several years now), accordingly I suggest that those so interested to read the new book Zealot in order to help one address these points.
This book sure helped me sort out many of these issues, therefore I am sure that it can help others to sort out some of these issues as well.
There are current threads where your questions are on topic, where I have already addressed those issues, and to which I have provided a link here. That is all.
OK, well I don't want to want to waste any more time arguing about this, and it seems you don't want to either. Good.
But we have to be clear that you cannot get away with claiming a theory saying Jesus did the things in the gospels, without ever being able to produce any evidence to show that he did any such thing at all.
Other threads are no more or less appropriate than this one when it comes to the need for evidence. And it seems you have zero evidence to support your belief that Jesus did any of the things described in any gospel. Amen (but … footnote).
Footnote - in contrast, however, it does seem there is perfectly clear, real, direct and testable evidence to show that the gospel stories of Jesus were taken from the OT, as well as from the influence of other mythical-god stories introduced into that region from about 300BC by Greek & Persian culture, and then later also via Roman influence.
eight bits!
Harmonisation, as a theory, sounds great, but is, as you say, merely speculative. How could we ever really know what motives the author of that interpolation had?
What seems to be 'sure' is that Mark 1:9 can be considered a later interpolation or re-write or retro-fit, if you will and that means, yes, Matthew is the first to claim Nazareth was inhabited by anything than bones during the governorship of Pontius Pilate.
By a strange twist of fate, long after the massacres of the First Jewish War and the Bar Kochba comes to the Nazareth Basin famous visitor in a later century (St Helen )and a veritable theme-park arises on the spot.
A spiritual Knotts Berry Farm, if you will, complete with Mary's Well and a church built on top of several Koch-type tombs.
@Crossbow- could you sum up what your recommended book has to say on the subject of Nazareth, please? I'm slowly gathering source material on the subject and would appreciate anything new!
@Crossbow- could you sum up what your recommended book has to say on the subject of Nazareth, please? I'm slowly gathering source material on the subject and would appreciate anything new!
First of all, Jesus was real person who did in fact exist. As for me, for some time I doubted that Jesus even existed since I thought that he was an amalgamation of several different present and past religious leaders/speaker/teachers/what-have-you over the centuries. But now I am convinced that Jesus was in fact a real person.
Second of all, Jesus did consider himself to be the leader of powerful movement that would:
kick the foreigners out of Israel,
get rid of the powerful and corrupt Jewish leaders who got rich and powerful by cooperating with the Romans,
and get the Jewish people back to their traditional roots by getting rid of the rich and corrupt religious leaders.
So when Jesus talked of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, this is the sort of thing he was referring to.
Third, once all the above was done, then Israel would need a king, and Jesus expected that he would be one to become that king because he considered himself to be the ‘Son of Man’.
Fourth, about the time that Jesus was around and for a few decades later, Israel was under a rather brutal occupation by the Roman Empire which would kill anyone that threatened their rule. And since Jesus, and his numerous followers, did threaten Roman rule, then the Romans killed him in the manner that they killed many such people, with crucifixion.
Fifth, for whatever reason, there was still a rather strong following of Jesus for some decades after his death. However, as in many human activities, his following factionalized. There were the traditional and insular Jesus followers who were led by his brother James which preached poverty, charity, that Jewish people were the people chose by God, and so on. Then there were other followers from outside of Israel who taught a much broader message inspired by people such as Paul who did not know Jesus personally, but claimed some sort of spiritual connection with him all the same.
These latter followers did a great deal to tell Jesus stories which celebrated him as a divinity (immaculate conception, performing miracles, rising from the dead, Jesus being the Son of God, and so on), and at the same time making the Roman occupation look as if it was rather beneficent while making the Jewish leadership/populace look rather villainous.
Sixth, add to that schism, the terrible Roman repression of Israel in about 70 CE, then it is easy to see that the latter view of Jesus is the view that has largely prevailed throughout history.
First of all, Jesus was real person who did in fact exist. As for me, for some time I doubted that Jesus even existed since I thought that he was an amalgamation of several different present and past religious leaders/speaker/teachers/what-have-you over the centuries. But now I am convinced that Jesus was in fact a real person.
Second of all, Jesus did consider himself to be the leader of powerful movement that would:
kick the foreigners out of Israel,
get rid of the powerful and corrupt Jewish leaders who got rich and powerful by cooperating with the Romans,
and get the Jewish people back to their traditional roots by getting rid of the rich and corrupt religious leaders.
So when Jesus talked of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, this is the sort of thing he was referring to.
Third, once all the above was done, then Israel would need a king, and Jesus expected that he would be one to become that king because he considered himself to be the ‘Son of Man’.
Fourth, about the time that Jesus was around and for a few decades later, Israel was under a rather brutal occupation by the Roman Empire which would kill anyone that threatened their rule. And since Jesus, and his numerous followers, did threaten Roman rule, then the Romans killed him in the manner that they killed many such people, with crucifixion.
Fifth, for whatever reason, there was still a rather strong following of Jesus for some decades after his death. However, as in many human activities, his following factionalized. There were the traditional and insular Jesus followers who were led by his brother James which preached poverty, charity, that Jewish people were the people chose by God, and so on. Then there were other followers from outside of Israel who taught a much broader message inspired by people such as Paul who did not know Jesus personally, but claimed some sort of spiritual connection with him all the same.
These latter followers did a great deal to tell Jesus stories which celebrated him as a divinity (immaculate conception, performing miracles, rising from the dead, Jesus being the Son of God, and so on), and at the same time making the Roman occupation look as if it was rather beneficent while making the Jewish leadership/populace look rather villainous.
Sixth, add to that schism, the terrible Roman repression of Israel in about 70 CE, then it is easy to see that the latter view of Jesus is the view that has largely prevailed throughout history.
Hi Crossbow,
A few comments:
There is a huge number of books based on speculation about the nature of an HJ. The authors of these books claim that they have some unique insights into the nature of the HJ because of their great study and analytical abilities to find truth in a morass of ambiguous, uncorroborated and highly unreliable writings.
The fact is that there is no contemporaneous writing about the HJ. The only author that wrote about the HJ, that even knew somebody that may have known the HJ is Paul. There is absolutely no information available about how any of the other NT authors may have known of Jesus. Except for Paul, all of the NT authors were displaced in time, language, distance and probably culture from the hypothetical HJ. In addition, the Gospels in the NT are obviously highly unreliable works with regard to their possible historical accuracy because they are written like they are fiction. Often incidents are described where the Gospel author seems to just have some magical power to step into an incident and record the details. ETA: The straightforward explanation for the apparently magical ability of the Gospel authors to record details of events for which there is no obvious person responsible for recording the events is that the Gospel writers just made stuff up.
A secular individual might have a notion that the supernatural elements can just be excised from the Gospels and there is an underlying story that is plausible,. That is not what the situation is. The supernatural is woven through the Gospels in an inextricable way. Even when Jesus does something that might not be exactly supernatural he is still displaying almost supernatural powers of insight into the situation.
As you may be well aware, there are not four independent sources on the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Luke and Matthew just copied Mark for much of their narrative and then they attached bits to their narratives that are just obvious fiction. The gospel of John is the last Gospel to be written and is generally considered to not being of any value as a source of reliable information about the HJ.
In short, there is no reliable information about the life of the HJ available. No amount of studying and speculating is going to be able to overcome this gap and produce a story about the HJ that can be verified. That has allowed thousands of people to write books with HJ theories that can't be rejected and that can't be proved. When there are no facts available garbage in, garbage out applies.
First of all, Jesus was real person who did in fact exist. As for me, for some time I doubted that Jesus even existed since I thought that he was an amalgamation of several different present and past religious leaders/speaker/teachers/what-have-you over the centuries. But now I am convinced that Jesus was in fact a real person.
Second of all, Jesus did consider himself to be the leader of powerful movement that would:
kick the foreigners out of Israel,
get rid of the powerful and corrupt Jewish leaders who got rich and powerful by cooperating with the Romans,
and get the Jewish people back to their traditional roots by getting rid of the rich and corrupt religious leaders.
So when Jesus talked of the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, this is the sort of thing he was referring to.
Third, once all the above was done, then Israel would need a king, and Jesus expected that he would be one to become that king because he considered himself to be the ‘Son of Man’.
Fourth, about the time that Jesus was around and for a few decades later, Israel was under a rather brutal occupation by the Roman Empire which would kill anyone that threatened their rule. And since Jesus, and his numerous followers, did threaten Roman rule, then the Romans killed him in the manner that they killed many such people, with crucifixion.
Fifth, for whatever reason, there was still a rather strong following of Jesus for some decades after his death. However, as in many human activities, his following factionalized. There were the traditional and insular Jesus followers who were led by his brother James which preached poverty, charity, that Jewish people were the people chose by God, and so on. Then there were other followers from outside of Israel who taught a much broader message inspired by people such as Paul who did not know Jesus personally, but claimed some sort of spiritual connection with him all the same.
These latter followers did a great deal to tell Jesus stories which celebrated him as a divinity (immaculate conception, performing miracles, rising from the dead, Jesus being the Son of God, and so on), and at the same time making the Roman occupation look as if it was rather beneficent while making the Jewish leadership/populace look rather villainous.
Sixth, add to that schism, the terrible Roman repression of Israel in about 70 CE, then it is easy to see that the latter view of Jesus is the view that has largely prevailed throughout history.
On the Nazareth issue:
Thank you for the various responses.
It seems like the case is stronger than I realized that Nazareth was not an inhabited town in Palestine at the time of the hypothetical HJ.
This section of the Wikipedia article struck me as interesting, but I wasn't quite sure what to make of it:
In English translations of the New Testament, the phrase "Jesus of Nazareth" appears seventeen times whereas the Greek has the form "Jesus the Nazarēnos" or "Jesus the Nazōraios. "[15] One plausible view is that Nazōraean (Ναζωραῖος) is a normal Greek adaptation of a reconstructed, hypothetical term in Jewish Aramaic for the word later used in Rabbinical sources to refer to Jesus.[16] "Nazaréth" is named twelve times in surviving Greek manuscript versions of the New Testament, 10 times as Nazaréth or Nazarét,[17] and twice as Nazará.[6]
Depends on which book. Mark never conflates the terms. And there's no confusion in Matthew, either. Its author says flat out that his "Nazarene" means somebody from Nazareth. See 2:23. He believes that a prophecy is at stake. Matthew is often wrong, but never in doubt.
A further etymology note is that Luke, in Acts 24:5, attests a plausible Greek speaker (proto-lawyer?) with high-ranking Jewish clients calling Paul a Nazarene (as the ringleader of the Nazarenes). That suggests that either it was a Jewish-Greek term for members of Paul's sect, or perhaps Paul's own name for the group, (but not in his surviving epistles, though.)
This would make sense if Nazarene meant what Mark's unclean spirit seems to suggest the term meant for Mark, a holy person of God who is not a Nazirite. That sounds like Paul's estimate of himself and what he tells his Gentiles they can become. It also might be a sarcastic parody of Paul's inflated rhetoric by those who think ill of him, or a recollection that the term applied to Jesus, the focus of Paul's sect. Anyway, someone not from Nazareth is being called Nazarene.
Although Acts is later than Mark, if this use of the term actually happened, it would have been uttered before any Gospel. That lends some weight that the first use of Nazarene as a geographic term was Matthew's goof. It also opens the possibility of folk etymologizing or anachronism, calling Jesus a Nazarene because that's what his followers were later called.
Hi Crossbow,
A few comments:
There is a huge number of books based on speculation about the nature of an HJ. The authors of these books claim that they have some unique insights into the nature of the HJ because of their great study and analytical abilities to find truth in a morass of ambiguous, uncorroborated and highly unreliable writings.
The fact is that there is no contemporaneous writing about the HJ. The only author that wrote about the HJ, that even knew somebody that may have known the HJ is Paul. There is absolutely no information available about how any of the other NT authors may have known of Jesus. Except for Paul, all of the NT authors were displaced in time, language, distance and probably culture from the hypothetical HJ. In addition, the Gospels in the NT are obviously highly unreliable works with regard to their possible historical accuracy because they are written like they are fiction. Often incidents are described where the Gospel author seems to just have some magical power to step into an incident and record the details. ETA: The straightforward explanation for the apparently magical ability of the Gospel authors to record details of events for which there is no obvious person responsible for recording the events is that the Gospel writers just made stuff up.
A secular individual might have a notion that the supernatural elements can just be excised from the Gospels and there is an underlying story that is plausible,. That is not what the situation is. The supernatural is woven through the Gospels in an inextricable way. Even when Jesus does something that might not be exactly supernatural he is still displaying almost supernatural powers of insight into the situation.
As you may be well aware, there are not four independent sources on the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Luke and Matthew just copied Mark for much of their narrative and then they attached bits to their narratives that are just obvious fiction. The gospel of John is the last Gospel to be written and is generally considered to not being of any value as a source of reliable information about the HJ.
In short, there is no reliable information about the life of the HJ available. No amount of studying and speculating is going to be able to overcome this gap and produce a story about the HJ that can be verified. That has allowed thousands of people to write books with HJ theories that can't be rejected and that can't be proved. When there are no facts available garbage in, garbage out applies.
Well, speaking of garbage in, garbage out, I suggest that you read the book for yourself before dismissing so lightly.
The author does provide citations independent of the Bible which do mention Jesus.
And the author goes to great lengths to explain how the Gospels were written well after the fact and by people who did not know Jesus personally, and the other facts which are decidely lacking. However, even with the lack of hard data, I still belive that the author makes some very good conclusions due to his extensive research and considerable effort he has put into this work.
And finally, one correction to your posting ...
Paul did not know Jesus personally. Instead, Paul claimed to know the spirtual Jesus since this Jesus appeared to Paul in the form of a vision.
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