The Jesus Myth, and it's failures

[pakeha]

Sorry, my mistake.

Are you asking about the town of Nazareth? Because it was definetly in existence at the time of Pontius Pilate.

No worries, Crossbow.
And yes, several of us are discussing the existence or not of Nazareth in the biblical narratives
Nazareth was definitely in existence at the time of Pontius Pilate?
Why do you think so?

 

[Crossbow]

No worries, Crossbow.
And yes, several of us are discussing the existence or not of Nazareth in the biblical narratives
Nazareth was definitely in existence at the time of Pontius Pilate?
Why do you think so?

I think that Nazareth was definitely in existence at the time of Pontius Pilate because archaeological evidence shows that Nazareth was in existence long before Pontius Pilate ever showed up. Specifically:

http://www.nazareth-israel.com/nazarteh-history

Nazareth in Ancient Times


The city of Nazareth was a small and insignificant agricultural village in the time of Jesus. It had no trade routes, was of little economic importance and was never mentioned in the Old Testament or other ancient texts. Archaeological excavations indicate Nazareth was settled continuously from 900 – 600 BCE, with a break in settlement until 200 BCE, from which time it has been continuously inhabited.

...

 

[pakeha]

Thanks for your reply, Crossbow.
It's very interesting to see what the Nazareth tourist agency has on their website.
We've been discussing the archeological digs and the interpretations of their findings here.

 

[Crossbow]

Thanks for your reply, Crossbow.
It's very interesting to see what the Nazareth tourist agency has on their website.
We've been discussing the archeological digs and the interpretations of their findings here.

Well, even tourist groups work with archaeologists.

For example, I have a subscription to 'Archaeology' magazine and it always has ads for tourist type archeology events.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, I prefer to take my archaeological information from less biased sources than a tourist trap. I mean, if you believe tourist traps, there was an actual vampire called Dracula and he lived in a castle which the historical Vlad Tepes actually only attacked at some point.

If you actually read the actual data published by the Israel Antiquities Authority you'll see that the actual papers make far less spectacular claims than what you see in the press releases, and even those in turn are far less bullcrap than what the Nazareth religious tourist trap does.

E.g., about the recent supposed house from the time of Jesus the actual archaeologist only made the claim that it's from the Roman era, and the attached hideout is actually from the second Jewish War, i.e., 2nd century CE. The whole "may have been the very house where Jesus grew up" is BS from a press release, not what the archaeologists actually said.

That said, you may have noticed before that some of us aren't in a mood to accept anything just because someone said so, even if that person may or may not be an authority. After all, if we were to just trust authorities about stuff they can't support but just said so, we'd also have to believe that Jesus was the incarnated Son Of God and he died and resurrected for our sins. We have not just distinguished theologians from Irenaeus and Origen and Augustine to the modern day ones all agreeing on that, but also an uninterrupted line of Popes saying so. And hey, the Pope isn't just the ultimate authority because he talks to the holy ghost, but under certain circumstances a Pope CAN'T be wrong. He says so, see?

There are some archaeological finds, and we'll gladly discuss those, but, yeah, that's how it goes.

 

[eight bits]

Now that Hans has explained Nazareth for us... backtracking a bit:

davefoc, et al.

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.

Isn't "almost supernatural" a lot like "almost pregnant?"

Uri Geller and Paul, Superman and Jesus

Cultures differ in theories of magic. Most posters here live in a culture where individual gifts are a usual explanation of woo. Uri Geller bends spoons, he doesn't teach you how to bend spoons.

Retrojecting Superman onto a First Century Jewish tzedek isn't going to work. Paul wanted everybody to bend spoons, thanking Jesus for showing us all what God can do for us.

Example stories of personal power, with(out) being a special person

IRL, I can walk around with a battery-powered computer. With it, I can solve problems in seconds that no human being who doesn't use computers can solve in a natural lifetime. Nevertheless, there is not much unusual about me personally. My computational excellence inheres to the time I live in, not to me personally.

An earlier version of the story, told in 1980, say, would have begun "I can sit at my desk..." My time performance would be hours, not seconds. My computational excellence would still inhere in the times, not in me personally. However, I would be much more of an unusual person, to have my very own computer when few people did, and few could use one anyway.

Generalizing: the less widely available a capability is perceived to be, the more special is anybody perceived to have access to the capability. The capability itself needn't inhere in any user of it. Both statements are independent of the absolute "wow-ness" of the capability available for use, although my press agent may choose to portray me as both special and highly wow-capable, depending on whether I am pursuing a Pauline or Gellerine business model.

Applying the examples to Jesus stories

Paul's story is that everybody, really everybody, can profit from the magic that the Jewish God is handing out. It is counterproductive for his Jesus to be different in kind than everybody else. Jesus is a hero, and heroes are good for business, but you can be a hero, too.

Time passes and the amount of magic that the Jewish God is handing out turns out to be paltry. Paul's people die just like everybody else. Change the business model or you're out of business.

The new version of the story should explain why magic worked well for Jesus, but not for you. Now, for the first time, there is a reason for Jesus to be different in kind from everybody else, rather than just really good at what anybody can do. Earliest Jesus was a man of God, then God's right hand man, then God's right hand. Post-canon, he is God. (By an amazing coincidence, the apostolic successors weren't as good at magic as the apostles, who themselves weren't as good as Jesus. The successors' successors sucked at magic, but were gifted at word play.)

Reading Mark after reading the Nicene Creed is a different experience than reading Mark back when the yet-to-come Nicene Creed would be blasphemous. Living readers may need an act of will to remember that Mark's Jesus is not Mark's God. John's Jesus is close to being John's God. Orthodox Nicene Jesus, nowhere in the New Testament, is exactly God.

 

[Crossbow]

Well, I prefer to take my archaeological information from less biased sources than a tourist trap. I mean, if you believe tourist traps, there was an actual vampire called Dracula and he lived in a castle which the historical Vlad Tepes actually only attacked at some point.

If you actually read the actual data published by the Israel Antiquities Authority you'll see that the actual papers make far less spectacular claims than what you see in the press releases, and even those in turn are far less bullcrap than what the Nazareth religious tourist trap does.

E.g., about the recent supposed house from the time of Jesus the actual archaeologist only made the claim that it's from the Roman era, and the attached hideout is actually from the second Jewish War, i.e., 2nd century CE. The whole "may have been the very house where Jesus grew up" is BS from a press release, not what the archaeologists actually said.

That said, you may have noticed before that some of us aren't in a mood to accept anything just because someone said so, even if that person may or may not be an authority. After all, if we were to just trust authorities about stuff they can't support but just said so, we'd also have to believe that Jesus was the incarnated Son Of God and he died and resurrected for our sins. We have not just distinguished theologians from Irenaeus and Origen and Augustine to the modern day ones all agreeing on that, but also an uninterrupted line of Popes saying so. And hey, the Pope isn't just the ultimate authority because he talks to the holy ghost, but under certain circumstances a Pope CAN'T be wrong. He says so, see?

There are some archaeological finds, and we'll gladly discuss those, but, yeah, that's how it goes.

Wow! You sure do take things personally.

I was just trying to point out that the town of Nazareth did in fact exist well before the time of Pontius Pilate, and there is a good bit of data to support that fact.

Therefore, I suggest that you address that issue as opposed to getting worked about the Papacy, press releases, arguments from authority, and so on.

 

[calebprime]

I've been listening to talks and interviews with Dr. Richard Carrier -- young turk atheist-skeptic and sort-of-mythicist.

The subject of the existence of Nazareth just came up in this one around 21-23 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Gs-LUqv-M

(Go to 22 minutes, you'll get the idea.)

The gist: An inscription exists from the 70's listing the towns that took in the priests dispersed when the Temple was destroyed, and Nazareth was among the names. If it existed as a going concern in the 70's, it probably existed a few decades before that.

"...so clearly it was named by Jews of the time and not by Christians..."

However, he goes on to say that the prophecy that Matthew refers to is not about this town, so in a sense, the existence of Nazareth doesn't prove that there was a Historical Jesus from there.

?sp Nazariah is not Nazareth, in short.

Also relevant: Then they go on to talk about the tourism "pilgrimage" industry.

 

[eight bits]

caleb

However, he goes on to say that the prophecy that Matthew refers to ...

Nobody knows what prophecy Matthew was referring to. Tnere are a variety of candidates, based on phonetic similarities to the term he uses for "Nazarene"

It's nice that there likely was a Nazareth, but there is still no textual support for Jesus having resided there before Matthew. We know that Matthew can deprive Mary of a sex life and supply Jesus with a second ass when he thinks there is a prophecy to fulfill (in both those cases, there wasn't, but at least we think we know what he read wrong). What's having Jesus spend a few years in Nazareth, after allegedly returning from Egypt and before moving to Capernum?

So,

the existence of Nazareth doesn't prove that there was a Historical Jesus from there.

That works out nicely, because there is little reason to think that a historical Jesus would have been from there. The Jesus of faith, for some faith's attitudes towards scripture, is another thing. The Jesus of the Nazareth tourist agency - no suspense at all.

 

[pakeha]

davefoc


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.

It's a tangle.

Thanks for such an interesting reply on the subject.

Well, even tourist groups work with archaeologists.

For example, I have a subscription to 'Archaeology' magazine and it always has ads for tourist type archeology events.

Here's a link for more information about the Nazareth tourist project, Crossbow:
http://www.nazarethmyth.info/scandalsix.html

Wow! You sure do take things personally.

I was just trying to point out that the town of Nazareth did in fact exist well before the time of Pontius Pilate, and there is a good bit of data to support that fact. ..

Could you post up your sources for that assertion, please?
No one doubts Nazareth existed in the Bronze Age and we're talking specifically about during Pontius Pilate's governorship.

I've been listening to talks and interviews with Dr. Richard Carrier -- young turk atheist-skeptic and sort-of-mythicist.

The subject of the existence of Nazareth just came up in this one around 21-23 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Gs-LUqv-M

(Go to 22 minutes, you'll get the idea.)

The gist: An inscription exists from the 70's listing the towns that took in the priests dispersed when the Temple was destroyed, and Nazareth was among the names. If it existed as a going concern in the 70's, it probably existed a few decades before that.



However, he goes on to say that the prophecy that Matthew refers to is not about this town, so in a sense, the existence of Nazareth doesn't prove that there was a Historical Jesus from there.

?sp Nazariah is not Nazareth, in short.

Also relevant: Then they go on to talk about the tourism "pilgrimage" industry.

Yes, the tourism trade has been brisk ever since the Empress Helen's day.
I'll have to hunt out that inscription Dr Carrier mentioned since I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else (so far).
I'd have thought that horrific massacre in Japha (67 CE) Josephus chronicled, not to mention the koch-type tombs at the Nazareth site from the second half of the 1st century preclude any sort of Jewish settlement on that particular site.
Time to investigate more!

 

[pakeha]

I ran down the reference via Dr Carrier's blog
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/3522/comment-page-1?wpmp_switcher=mobile&wpmp_tp=1
" For the original publication of this inscription see Michael Avi-Yonah, "A List of Priestly Courses from Caesarea," Israel Exploration Journal 12.2 (1962): 137-39. And for a good summary of the best case made for the later date of this priestly resettlement, by someone who then goes on to argue that the inscription's content actually in fact predates Jesus (!): Uzi Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee (2009), pp. 404-20.]"

Salm also mentions it, according to an editorial note to the blog entry
"[Editorial Note: Salm certainly knows the inscription exists, BTW: he discusses it in The Myth of Nazareth, pp. 275-78, though he argues tendentiously there, simply assuming the late dates are correct for the priestly resettlement and giving no good reason why we should agree. But at least he mentions this crucial piece of evidence and tries to deal with it there. Salm's overall position is that Nazareth was founded (and named) by Jews in the late first or early second century (Salm agrees no Christians could ever have been settled there until much later: p. 278). Notice the potentially poor logic of this: what are the odds that Christians would invent the name of a fake town in Galilee and the Jews would then go on to independently found a town in Galilee with exactly that same name? I think probability is against Salm here. Quite heavily (unless we grant certain assumptions: see comment). But that's a needless digression here, since Salm doesn't make this argument in the anthology.]"

Thanks for giving me the heads-up to find this, calebprime!

 

[davefoc]

... Salm's overall position is that Nazareth was founded (and named) by Jews in the late first or early second century (Salm agrees no Christians could ever have been settled there until much later: p. 278). Notice the potentially poor logic of this: what are the odds that Christians would invent the name of a fake town in Galilee and the Jews would then go on to independently found a town in Galilee with exactly that same name? I think probability is against Salm here. Quite heavily (unless we grant certain assumptions: see comment). But that's a needless digression here, since Salm doesn't make this argument in the anthology.]"

Thanks for giving me the heads-up to find this, calebprime!

Do I understand your point here correctly?
There is evidence that the town was called Nazareth in the late first or early second century and it was named by Jews. When the NT authors made a reference to it as existing in the mid first century there is a good chance the Christians were referring to a real town that just hadn't come to be very well known yet, otherwise how would the Jewish inhabitants have known to name their town Nazareth.

Assuming I understood your point, it seems like there are a few alternative explanations besides wild coincidence that does seem unlikely enough to be, for practical purposes, impossible.

1. Perhaps the town took the name of the movement?
2. Perhaps the NT authors heard of the town and incorporated it into their works without realizing that it didn't exist in the time frame they set it?
3. And of course, maybe the town really did exist in the early first century.

So it sounds like we have come back to about where we were:
1.Good evidence that the town didn't exist in the mid-first century.
2. Some contrarian archeological findings that suggest otherwise but which are suspect for a variety of reasons.
3. Ambiguities as to how the word is used in the original Greek as to exactly what was intended.
4. An unlikely possibility that the NT authors were correct to use the word both as the name of a town and the name of a movement.

And then the new kid on the block: your argument. So what do you make of all this now?

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, nobody said that it was necessarily founded after Matthew.

The easiest way to reconcile that is that it was founded after the destruction of Jerusalem, sometime in the early 70's. Or possibly even in the 60's, as the Roman army in that war seriously targeted the civilian settlements and would produce the masses of displaced people that would result in people taking refuge in new places. Matthew then heard of the place name and added it to his story because it sounded like what would let him "fulfil" yet another prophecy, while the brief mention in Mark can be a later interpolation, because it's pretty much out of nowhere and doesn't really connect to anything else. Remember that the first manuscript we have of Mark is circa 250 CE.

Second, these things were interpolated all the time, and new miracles and pericopes and fulfiled prophecies were added to them. There is nothing to say that Matthew's Nazareth can't be one of those things.

The other thing that isn't mentioned as much as it probably should is that the dating of the gospels is very much based on conjecture and pretty much asserting the earliest possible dates instead of giving intervals like historians do for everything else. And those intervals are very wide actually. In fact the only real upper limit is Irenaeus, circa 180 CE.

Now I'm not saying that the gospels are necessarily written in the 2nd century. (Though Luke for example dedicates his books to some guy who incidentally has the same name as a 2nd century bishop who negotiated with Irenaeus to form that church coalition that would become catholicism, and where incidentally Luke was selected as one of the canonical texts. Funny coincidence that.) Just that one can't really exclude it either.

 

[pakeha]

You're streets ahead of me, dave.
I'm still pondering data that can lead to an answer to my question- did Nazareth actually exist in the hypothetical Jesus' time!
I'd LOVE to have a theory, rather than questions and on-line sources.
I've yet to determine the inscription to which dr Carrier refers is regarded as authentic or if the mention of Nazareth is a pius or otherwise interpolation from anytime up to the 3-4 century, when the location was turned into a tourist trap, as the coins found in Mary's Well attest.

To tell the truth, dave, I'm still in the process of getting a feel for the geographical context of the place.
So it's early days yet to have a theory.

Anyway, HansMustermann, much faster off the mark than I'll ever be, wrote:

...The easiest way to reconcile that is that it was founded after the destruction of Jerusalem, sometime in the early 70's.

Sounds easy, but isn't.
Remember those koch-type graves (post 50CE) preclude a Jewish settlement there, much lessa refuge for refugee Temple priests.

Matthew heard of the place name and added it to his story because it sounded like what would let him "fulfil" yet another prophecy, while the brief mention in Mark can be a later interpolation, because it's pretty much out of nowhere and doesn't really connect to anything else. Remember that the first manuscript we have of Mark is circa 250 CE.

This sounds about right, Hans.

Second, these things were interpolated all the time, and new miracles and pericopes and fulfiled prophecies were added to them. There is nothing to say that Matthew's Nazareth can't be one of those things.

Yes.

The other thing that isn't mentioned as much as it probably should is that the dating of the gospels is very much based on conjecture and pretty much asserting the earliest possible dates instead of giving intervals like historians do for everything else. And those intervals are very wide actually. In fact the only real upper limit is Irenaeus, circa 180 CE.

An excellent point, Hans. And we know there WAS a Nazareth at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt, from the archeological evidence.

Now I'm not saying that the gospels are necessarily written in the 2nd century. (Though Luke for example dedicates his books to some guy who incidentally has the same name as a 2nd century bishop who negotiated with Irenaeus to form that church coalition that would become catholicism, and where incidentally Luke was selected as one of the canonical texts. Funny coincidence that.) Just that one can't really exclude it either.

A good point, Hans. Would a Theophilus by any other name...

Still, perhaps the Nazareth question is a will-o-the-wisp, a fitting enticement for cranks and amateurs!
It interests me because it is, as far as I know, one of the very few things in the NT of which we can determine the truth other than by the assessment of surviving literature.
Off to learn more.

ETA
An amusing aside.
Uzi Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee (2009)
sells for just under 200 USD on Amazon!

 

[IanS]

Example stories of personal power, with(out) being a special person

IRL, I can walk around with a battery-powered computer. With it, I can solve problems in seconds that no human being who doesn't use computers can solve in a natural lifetime. Nevertheless, there is not much unusual about me personally. My computational excellence inheres to the time I live in, not to me personally.

An earlier version of the story, told in 1980, say, would have begun "I can sit at my desk..." My time performance would be hours, not seconds. My computational excellence would still inhere in the times, not in me personally. However, I would be much more of an unusual person, to have my very own computer when few people did, and few could use one anyway.

Generalizing: the less widely available a capability is perceived to be, the more special is anybody perceived to have access to the capability. The capability itself needn't inhere in any user of it. Both statements are independent of the absolute "wow-ness" of the capability available for use, although my press agent may choose to portray me as both special and highly wow-capable, depending on whether I am pursuing a Pauline or Gellerine business model.

I don’t think a computer analogy like that works. It’s actually the complete opposite of what happened in the Jesus story.

In your computer example you have a piece of technology (developed earlier by tens of thousands of people who in any case knew all about it at least 30 years before you obtained it) with which you amaze an ignorant public … but where 10 years later that same public, now more educated, fully understand that your computer was not magic and not a miracle … it really does do what you showed it to do, but it was not a miracle.

The exact opposite happened in the Jesus case. In the Jesus case people in the 1st century believed that not just Jesus, but all sorts of people could perform miracles all day long. Unlike your computer analogy, in 1st century CE there were lots of miracle workers, and everyone was certain that miracles were true. Then, as people slowly became more educated, by the 20th century, science had shown everyone that the miracle stories were untrue and never even happened at all (that’s the opposite of what happens in your computer analogy).

The other huge difference is that in the Jesus case, nobody who wrote about it ever saw any miracles from Jesus. None of them even ever saw Jesus! They were in all cases only telling stories about legends of Jesus from earlier times. Whereas in your computer analogy you are proposing that you actually do have the computer and you really do show it to amazed people … that’s not what happened in the Jesus story.

If you want to make an analogy of that sort with the Jesus story, then you have to be telling people how you have some amazing physically impossible supernatural device, but telling them that you cannot actually show it to them or demonstrate it, because you claim to have had it in the past and it’s no longer available for anyone to check what you have claimed.

 

[pakeha]

I've been surfing for information about that inscription dr Carrier mentions in a podcast posted up by calebprime

...Tuccinardi reveals that E. Jerry Vardaman—a Southern Baptist archaeologist who claimed to have found microscopic writing on Roman coins attesting to Jesus’ birth in 12 BCE—was the actual discoverer of the critical fragment of the Caesarea inscription. Many other suspicious circumstances attend it’s discovery, such as conflicting and missing reports, another “lost” fragment of the inscription, and confusion at the excavation site. Furthermore, the fact has recently come to light that no synagogue existed in the area—strongly suggesting that a plaque bearing the names of priestly families could never have existed there at all. It turns out that this solitary Roman epigraphic “proof” for the existence of Nazareth may be a hoax. —R.S.

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/index.html

Neither the first nor the last, if true.
Here's an image of the inscription'sreconstruction based on the three fragments found in Caesaria


More on the subject can be found here:
http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2013/06/10/is-the-caesarea-inscription-a-forgery/

...Majority opinion now holds that the northward movement of priests (from Judea to Galilee) to which the inscription purportedly witnesses occurred after the Bar Kochba revolt (132-35 CE), not after the first revolt as some conservative scholars (but apparently Carrier too) argue. Even if the minority opinion were honored, however, the Caesarea inscription certainly does not affect the existence of Nazareth at the turn of the era. It is too late in every sense. A movement of the priestly family of Hapises (Hapizzez) after 70 CE would simply show that priests were among the first settlers of the new town. We have, after all, a modest amount of material from Nazareth that could date to late I CE. (The vast majority of evidence is later.) However, we have no evidence at all which necessarily dates before 100 CE (The Myth of Nazareth, p. 205). Of the hundreds of recovered objects from the Nazareth basin, only two stone vessels could date to the first century BC. It is quite possible, however, that these “earliest” artefacts date as late as II CE.

Tuccinardi's article (translated) can be read here:
http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2013...aesarea-inscription-and-the-hand-of-god-pt-1/

What do I make of this thus far?
It's looking more and more as though the figure of Jesus of Nazareth is a fiction.

 

[IanS]

Do I understand your point here correctly?
There is evidence that the town was called Nazareth in the late first or early second century and it was named by Jews. When the NT authors made a reference to it as existing in the mid first century there is a good chance the Christians were referring to a real town that just hadn't come to be very well known yet, otherwise how would the Jewish inhabitants have known to name their town Nazareth.

Assuming I understood your point, it seems like there are a few alternative explanations besides wild coincidence that does seem unlikely enough to be, for practical purposes, impossible.

1. Perhaps the town took the name of the movement?
2. Perhaps the NT authors heard of the town and incorporated it into their works without realizing that it didn't exist in the time frame they set it?
3. And of course, maybe the town really did exist in the early first century.

So it sounds like we have come back to about where we were:
1.Good evidence that the town didn't exist in the mid-first century.
2. Some contrarian archeological findings that suggest otherwise but which are suspect for a variety of reasons.3. Ambiguities as to how the word is used in the original Greek as to exactly what was intended.
4. An unlikely possibility that the NT authors were correct to use the word both as the name of a town and the name of a movement.

And then the new kid on the block: your argument. So what do you make of all this now?

If it were not for the highlighted "contrarian archaeological findings", then what evidence would there be for any place called Nazareth, except the explanation that the entire idea was a mistake from gospel writers who misunderstood and mistranslated the meaning of earlier OT words like "nazarious"?

IOW, to put it very simply - it seems to me that the source of the gospel idea that Jesus had come from a place called Nazareth, was most likely just yet another mistake arising from their reliance on using OT prophecy to create the Jesus stories ... they thought certain passages in the OT had predicted his coming from "Nazareth", but that was just a complete misunderstanding about what the original older Hebrew versions of words like "nazarious" actually meant (probably all complicated and fuelled by the gospel writers relying on mistranslations in the Greek versions of the OT, such as the Septuagint).

 

[pakeha]

^
Yes, you are very likely right, IanS.

I'm posting up what I find on the Caesarian Inscription because I find it an intriguing example of biblical archeology in action.

The discovery of that fragment "A", the one which includes the letters NZRT, was made by Dr Vardeman in 1962.
Dr Vardaman is well known for his dating of Jesus' birth to 12 BCE, using some microletters he found on some Roman coins as evidence.
Here's dr. Carrier's assessment of that finding.

This is certainly the strangest claim I have ever personally encountered in the entire field of ancient Roman history. His evidence is so incredibly bizarre that the only conclusion one can draw after examining it is that he has gone insane. Certainly, his "evidence" is unaccepted by any other scholar to my knowledge. It has never been presented in any peer reviewed venue,[8.1] and was totally unknown to members of the America Numismatic Society until I brought it to their attention, and several experts there concurred with me that it was patently ridiculous.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html#Vardaman

So the question arises: Would the man who tried hoax the world about the 'microletters' try to hoax the world with a false archeological find? Tuccinardi writes

Given the available evidence now at our disposition—physical, written, and photographic—it is possible to compare the three fragments ostensibly found in Caesarea in a more scientific manner than has occurred before, in order to verify the correctness of the commonly held view that these three fragments were part of a single marble plaque.

According to the dimensions of fragments A and B as published by Avi-Yonah (153 x 124 mm and 145 x 140 mm respectively) it is possible to precisely compare the vertical dimensions of the two fragments, yielding a ratio of 1.06 (153:145). This ratio has now been reconfirmed by new photographs of the fragments taken this summer at the Ralli museum in Caesarea, where fragments A and B are preserved.

A grid can be constructed with horizontal lines spaced 20 mm apart—this is the exact spacing between the lines on fragment B (see figures 1 and 2 below). When such a grid is superimposed on the fragments, a major problem immediately becomes evident: the gross incompatibility of line spacing between fragment A and the other two fragments.

Tuccinardi comes to the following conclusions

In only one of the above six cases are two fragments tolerably compatible: in Figure 2, fragments B and C are in approximate agreement as regards both character dimension and line spacing. We can conclude, then, that the possibility exists—considering only these two criteria—that fragments B and C derive from the same marble plaque.

However, in no case is fragment A—the critical fragment containing the word “Nazareth”—compatible with either B or C. One can argue, of course, that the line spacing on the right side of the plaque was—for whatever reason—double that of the left side of the plaque in lines 17 to 20. That, however, appears to me to be a wholly unreasonable argument which no unbiased scholar would make.

It is thus possible to confidently conclude, on the basis of character dimension and line spacing, that the much-touted fragment A discovered by Vardaman in 1962 is not compatible with either fragment B or fragment C. —Enrico Tuccinardi

My first impressions are that the Caesaria Inscription, while giving fantastic insights into biblical archeology, isn't necessarily a smoking gun piece of evidence of Nazareth's existence in the first half of the first century CE.

Salm gives his own take on Tuccinardi's paper here, for those who are interested
http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2013/07/21/new-light-on-the-caesarea-inscription-pt-1/

 

[eight bits]

Nazareth

First, thanks to pakeha for really digging in on that inscription.

I have no problem with davefoc's summary, except to clarify that "the NT authors" means "some NT authors." Neither Paul nor Mark conflates the epithet with a place name, or says that anybody lived in Nazareth in Jesus' time. Also, Paul's fellow epistle writers don't seem to mention the issue, either.

A place need not be regularly inhabited (Death Valley), nor have well defined or unvarying boudaries (Boston's Back Bay), in order to have a name. There seems to be high confidence that there was something nameable at Nazareth in Jesus' time, if only a cemetery. There is no reason that Jesus' itinerary from his residence to John's baptismal base couldn't be said to have passed through Nazareth.

Mark is in the hook for no more than that. We don't know why Mark wrote his book. It can't be suprising that we don't know why he included a bit of local color, with one word used once.

IanS

If you don't accept the analogy, then fine. But at least criticize its Ian-shortcomings that bear on what it was an analogy for: the difference between an aspect of human performance which inheres to the person and an aspect which inheres to the times in which the person lives.

Earliest surviving Jesus stories were about a man who lived in times when miracles were once again possible, as they had been said to be possible long before The plot of the earliest stories is that this Jesus showed other people how to take advantage of the times they all lived in. The magic inheres to God, and is available because God chooses this time to enter history again.

As time passed it became obvious that the First Century wasn't special as far as magic goes. The stories then came to incorporate explanations of why the big magic came and went so quickly, and why you should join anyway Literary Jesus acquired a superhuman quality that explained both: he's different from you, and he's the kind of guy you want on your side.

In the Jesus case people in the 1st century believed that not just Jesus, but all sorts of people could perform miracles all day long.

It is obvious that you and I disagree about something, and yet you make statements like this, which restate the core of my argument with approval. If you do not see that what you wrote supports the observation that Jesus wasn't depicted as magically special compared with other people in the early works, then I can only shake my head in wonder.

The other huge difference is that in the Jesus case, nobody who wrote about it ever saw any miracles from Jesus.

Same comment. That's my argument. The first writings we have, written years after Jesus died, don't show Jesus exhibiting any distinctive miracle capability until his ghost appears. In Mark, in what we have that might survive from his pen, even that much isn't on the page.

... you have to ...

I have noticed that your writing consistently exhibits phrases like this. You're are a discussant. Other discussants don't "have to" do anything on your say-so. This particular instance is ironic, since it is clear that my analogy failed to communicate with you. I don't "have to" repair it to make the point you imagine. I had no intention of making that point at all.

 

[IanS]

IanS

If you don't accept the analogy, then fine. But at least criticize its Ian-shortcomings that bear on what it was an analogy for: the difference between an aspect of human performance which inheres to the person and an aspect which inheres to the times in which the person lives.

Earliest surviving Jesus stories were about a man who lived in times when miracles were once again possible, as they had been said to be possible long before The plot of the earliest stories is that this Jesus showed other people how to take advantage of the times they all lived in. The magic inheres to God, and is available because God chooses this time to enter history again.

As time passed it became obvious that the First Century wasn't special as far as magic goes. The stories then came to incorporate explanations of why the big magic came and went so quickly, and why you should join anyway Literary Jesus acquired a superhuman quality that explained both: he's different from you, and he's the kind of guy you want on your side.


It is obvious that you and I disagree about something, and yet you make statements like this, which restate the core of my argument with approval. If you do not see that what you wrote supports the observation that Jesus wasn't depicted as magically special compared with other people in the early works, then I can only shake my head in wonder.


Same comment. That's my argument. The first writings we have, written years after Jesus died, don't show Jesus exhibiting any distinctive miracle capability until his ghost appears. In Mark, in what we have that might survive from his pen, even that much isn't on the page..

Well there is certainly a misunderstanding there. However, the misunderstanding here is yours.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that I had earlier been arguing with you to say that the miracles attributed to Jesus were unique or especially amazing. If you care to check any of my earlier posts I think you will find that I've never said any such thing. I'm well aware that all sorts of people were claimed to have performed miracles in biblical times.

The miracle claims are not (and never were) the specific reason for thinking Jesus might only have been mythical. They do of course add to that possibility, because there are so many of them; such that if we remove all the miracles and their story settings etc., then there is really very little left of any "Jesus as messiah" story. But the main reasons for doubting the existence of Jesus, are various other factors as described numerous times before (I don't think I need to repeat all that again?).

I have noticed that your writing consistently exhibits phrases like this. You're are a discussant. Other discussants don't "have to" do anything on your say-so. This particular instance is ironic, since it is clear that my analogy failed to communicate with you. I don't "have to" repair it to make the point you imagine. I had no intention of making that point at all.

You are reading too much into that particular wording, and adding 2 + 2 together to get 14. All that sentence of mine says is that if anyone wanted to make a computer analogy of that sort comparable to the Jesus miracle story, then the analogy would need to be one in which you/anyone tell the audience that quote “you have some amazing physically impossible supernatural device, but telling them that you cannot actually show it to them or demonstrate it, because you claim to have had it in the past and it’s no longer available for anyone to check what you have claimed” … that’s more analogous to what happened in the biblical stories of Jesus, where people were told the wondrous stories through the gospel writing (inc. Paul’s writing), but where Jesus was no longer available to prove the truth of any of it, and neither was any other witness available either.

This (again) is not a personalised argument between us, anyway. So lets not take it way off topic going down a route like that. All I’m saying to you in my earlier post, is that your computer analogy is not actually comparable with the Jesus story (it‘s essentially the direct opposite of what happens in the biblical Jesus story).