To be honest, I'm not even sure I'd say that Jesus of Nazareth is the real man, because there are all sorts of problems with Nazareth even existing at the time. It seems to be a colony which only appeared after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The Nazareth origin seems to originate with Matthew, as an explanation for why Jesus fulfils the prophecy of being a nazoraios, and doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in Mark, outside of a later interpolation.
I suppose we could talk about Jesus The Nazarene, which is what Mark talks about.
Whatever "Nazarene" meant, it was very likely not a place of origin designation. As I keep saying, "the Nazarene" was not the construct you'd use to say "X from Y" in Greek. You'd use "X [ton] apo Y", i.e., literally "X from Y". Mark himself when he wants to give a place of origin to the dude who buried Jesus, says "Ἰωσὴφ ὁ ἀπὸ Ἁριμαθαίας", i.e., "Iosef o apo Arimathaias", i.e., "Joseph FROM Arimathea". Heck, Matthew too, after arguing that Nazareth is why Jesus is called "the nazoraios", actually doesn't use that when he wants to say "Jesus of Nazareth". In Matthew 21:11 he uses the normal "Iesuos o apo Nazareth" construct. John too uses "apo" for origin in John 1:44 for "Philip from Bethsaida" and again in 1:45 for "Jesus from Nazareth", in 11:1 for "Lazarus of Bethany", and in 19:38 for "Joseph of Arimathaea", and in 21:2 for "Nathanael of Cana".
Only for Jesus a construct like "Jesus The Nazarene" is supposed to be a place of origin designation... and even the author of that claim, forgets it and uses the more normal one a couple of pages later.
So wherever that historical Jesus dude was -- IF he even existed at all -- we'll probably never know, but probably not from Nazareth.
Well, several points here.
First up is this idea of interpolations. If anything falls into the area of "speculation", this is it, the idea that you can explain away all things you don't like in the text by claiming - on the flimsiest of grounds - that it is an "interpolation". This soon leads to blatant circularity, e.g. in the letters of Paul. As paul is not known to know anything about Jesus (allegedly), when he does reveal such knowledge, this is just dismissed as being "interpolation", with the classical example being his account of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 13 (this account, similar but identical to that in the synoptics, also reveals a knowledge of betrayal, nighttime setting and thus, one can see, at least some version of a passion narrative.
The point here is that the ms tradition of the NT is relatively huge. This includes not just the papyri, but the later families of mss, many of which witness to independent earlier lines of transmission. Given this textual richness, it's hard for interpolations to escape being recorded. Indeed, the two classic examples - the PA (woman caught in adultery) and the end of Mark - appear as such in the mss.
It's simply not true that whether or not something is an interpolation is a toss-up. Every new ms that is found that agrees with the reading is extra evidence that it is not one.
Talk of interpolations - unless backed up with better evidence than "it seems a bit odd" or whatever - is thus empty. I would not be thought to discourage it!
In *this* instance, the matter is worse, because what is being talked about is something in Mark that is not copied by Matthew. The bit in Mark is Mark 1:9
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
In Matthew's version is
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John.
The undistinguished argument here is that "if Nazareth had been in Mark, Matthew would have copied it".
Quite apart from the fact that this relies on understanding the motives of an author (Matthew) who can be seen elsewhere to vigorously edit his sources, the main problem here is that it fails to take into account the context of the Matthew passage, and its relationship with that of Mark. Essentially, Matthew has enormously extended Mark by the addition of the Infancy Narrative. As as result, he has already placed Jesus in Nazareth. He does not need to do it again.
The argument that he "would" have left Nazareth in is thus feeble. Given that Matthew often edits strongly, why wouldn't he have put in Nazareth here even if Mark didn't have it (which is what he is alleged to have done in the first place?). It simply doesn't stand up.
In addition, there are other indicators in Mark that Jesus was from Nazareth.
For a start, Mark refers to Jesus' "hometown" in Mark 6:1, in a passage deliberately paralleled and contrasting with that describing Jesus' trip to Capernaum. So thus Mark does not think Jesus is from Capernaum (but he is from Galilee, as stressed several times). If Mark didn't know, why not simply make a name up (after all, he is alleged to have made everything else up as well!). In fact, given that Mark has *already* referred to Nazareth, there is no need for him to say again where the hometown was.
Second, in the Denial scene with Peter, nazarene is used in a clearly patronymic sense. Try re-reading this passage with nazarene meaning not "from Nazareth in Galilee" but as some sort of mystical title.
Mark 14
66 While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. 67 When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him.
“You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus,” she said.
68 But he denied it. “I don’t know or understand what you’re talking about,” he said, and went out into the entryway.
69 When the servant girl saw him there, she said again to those standing around, “This fellow is one of them.” 70 Again he denied it.
After a little while, those standing near said to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.”
71 He began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know this man you’re talking about.”
And of course, Matthew clearly reads Nazarene in Mark as a patronymic as well.
But the main problem is that the whole argument takes a far too narrow view of what Aramaic place names were like and their grammar, and how this might be dealt with by a Greek transcriber (i.e. it caused them a load of trouble). In addition, it also takes far too narrow a view of Greek patronymics, which are themselves variable, as they are in English.
It is like someone calling me (correctly) a "Colcestrian" and someone else arguing that this cannot mean "from Colchester" as I should be called a "Colchesterian" if so.
What about Mary Magdalene, for example? Ἦσαν δὲ καὶ γυναῖκες ἀπὸ μακρόθεν θεωροῦσαι ἐν αἷς καὶ
Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ Ἰακώβου τοῦ μικροῦ καὶ Ἰωσῆτος μήτηρ καὶ Σαλώμη (Mark 16:1)
Mary the Magdalene!
All the forms seen in the gospels - nazareth, nazaret, nazara, nazarene, nazoraios etc - can be seen to revolve around the different appearances of the Aramaic root. The best reference for this is Ruger 1981, ZEITSCHRIFT FUR DIE NEUTESTAMENTLICHE WISSENSCHAFT UND DIE KUNDE DER ALTEREN KIRCHE 72, 257-263, which is to be sure a formidable paper in German, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew! This very scatter, rather than representing some sort of weird usage, thus indicates that the evangelists were using sources that ultimately sourced in Aramaic (at least when it comes to these names): this is precisely the spread expected. I think what floats around on the internet about this sort of thing is ultimately poorly informed and tendentious.
Because that is, essentially what you do when you take the NT books as the sources to argue that Jesus existed.
