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What I find interesting and confusing in your presentation on Nazareth is the quote: "Origen lived within a day's journey of the future site of Nazareth...
I'd say that it is alluding to present day Nazareth.
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So, what you are saying is that there was a tradition that Jesus came from Nazareth BEFORE Origen lived near where the currently identified site would be built later.
First century followers of the man-god would have been aware of the Nazareth link from their traditions but I doubt they would have has the ways and means to go looking for it. Origen might be in a position to look but, armed with the Gospels and perhaps looking for a city with a synagogue... found only a few agricultural buildings.
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Isn't all this demonstrates that the site currently identified is wrong?
Why? Sorry old bean but I don't see how you are getting there from the Origen link.
The fundy has a guy literally walk on water. literally raise a person from the dead. Die himself, wake up, and fly away. And we go round and round about some dusty town? Its funny. It also tells us something about humans.
...but, my old frog, the thread isn't about the Christian man-god. It's about whether or not the Gospels are historically accurate. I personally think that Nazareth has been done to death in the Historical Jesus thread and I hoped that any reference to Nazareth would stay there. My fault for mentioning it here I suppose but I did so only to say that the other thread has more or less concluded that Nazareth, if it existed at all, was no more than a farm or two and not the city described by the Gospels thus proving that the gospels are wrong.
Hopefully people will move on to something else here now...like the Nativity farce or one of the other daft things in the Gospels.
What I find interesting and confusing in your presentation on Nazareth is the quote: "Origen lived within a day's journey of the future site of Nazareth for many years but was unable to find such a city, eventually concluding that the Gospel references to Nazareth should be interpreted figuratively or mystically.
Nazorean roots of Christianity"
So, what you are saying is that there was a tradition that Jesus came from Nazareth BEFORE Origen lived near where the currently identified site would be built later. Isn't all this demonstrates that the site currently identified is wrong?
I would question this idea of the tradition that Jesus came from Nazareth somehow predating the foundation of the town later on.
Though it does depend how much later. If it was founded a few decades after the Jewish war, it would still predate the Gospels and the writers would assume he came from there. If we go with the argument that it doesn't get a mention until a century or so later, the tradition would predate the Gospels.
And the tradition is a solid one. Even when I became familiar with argument that the place isn't referred to by contemporaries, I knew that all four writers (but not Paul, as I recall - I'll look that up) called Jesus 'of Nazareth'. I was first looking that these suggestions of alternative derivation really meant 'The Nazarene' and referred to his policy and followers. But I had and have some doubts about that, and I reiterate that I am inclining to Nazareth' being a district before a town was built there. And of course would get its name from there.
Yes there is no mention of Nazareth or Nazarene in the OT or in Paul. I think that's significant. Nor is there a mention of 'Nazarene' anywhere but in Matthew
Mat 2:23And 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.
Which is at the end of his Nativity where originally a Judean family it explains how Jesus ended up in Nazareth and was known s a Nazarene. And I like how Matthew tries to make it look like fulfilled prophecy, even though, as I say, it isn't in the OT at all.
...but, my old frog, the thread isn't about the Christian man-god. It's about whether or not the Gospels are historically accurate. I personally think that Nazareth has been done to death in the Historical Jesus thread and I hoped that any reference to Nazareth would stay there. My fault for mentioning it here I suppose but I did so only to say that the other thread has more or less concluded that Nazareth, if it existed at all, was no more than a farm or two and not the city described by the Gospels thus proving that the gospels are wrong.
Hopefully people will move on to something else here now...like the Nativity farce or one of the other daft things in the Gospels.
...old frog... like that one. I don't mind at all the Nazareth q. coming up here as I am still seeing if I have kept notes from that discussion with Eusebius. I am hoping not to have to trace each claim down yet again. And if Arach fails to comprehend the point and purpose of the thread, let him go and bother someone else.
Ah.... I do owe Arach an apology.
" Hopefully people will move on to something else here now...like the Nativity farce or one of the other daft things in the Gospels." I think that is after all reasonable. Sorry. Even though I think the Nazareth question does have importance that isn't immediately obvious.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-12-2016 at 06:29 AM..
According to Matthew, Herod tried to kill newborn 'Messiah' by having all the male children two years old and under bumped off in Bethlehem and its environs.
It's pure invention. Herod was guilty of many crimes, including the murder of several members of his own family but such as Josephus, who delighted in listing Herod's crimes, do not mention what would have been Herod's greatest crime. It simply didn't happen and is yet another historical inaccuracy of the Gospels.
It's likely written to draw a parallel between Jesus and Moses who, surprise, surprise, also had a miraculous escape from the hands of a Pharaoh. The OT says that the extermination of the new-born male children of the Jews was decreed by the Pharaoh to stop the growth of the troublesome Jews, which he saw as a threat to Egypt..
Matthew simply copied the story.
No matter, it makes for a great prayer in the BCP for December 28, Holy Innocents Day:
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your (the) rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Non-believers can disregard the religious references and still agree with the base sentiment of the prayer.
To the point of the thread, in many ways, the title question just doesn't matter, unless you need it to matter for argument's sake from either extreme position of completely false or completely true.
To determine how credible it is, you need a reference to compare with.
Which part of humans history written down 2000 years ago can be considered credible, and why?
Show us and with the original copies written in tablets or scrolls, as they were written before paper was invented.
God has to convey the theology of salvation through a religion because;
1) religious documents can be more trackable or survivable
This is due to mass amount of publishing. Mass of religious people will keep at least a copy of a holy book. In contrary, no one is actually seriously keeping a history book. Thus a theology can convey across history from the point before paper was invented till now.
2) supernatural events are not kept by humans as part of their history
No humans in history (i.e. 2000 years ago) seriously record down a theology as a whole for it to convey as a theology
3) no secular media will seriously record the deeds of someone claimed to be a prophet or a messiah
Tons of humans claim to be a prophet or a messiah on a daily basis. Who cares to record each of them as a book. In the case one of them is true, then only God who sent him will find the right persons to write about a true prophet or messiah
No matter, it makes for a great prayer in the BCP for December 28, Holy Innocents Day:
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your (the) rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Non-believers can disregard the religious references and still agree with the base sentiment of the prayer.
To the point of the thread, in many ways, the title question just doesn't matter, unless you need it to matter for argument's sake from either extreme position of completely false or completely true.
That's a good point. Even if not true it's a useful teaching point. But there are others, I could list them but you simply can't mention Cawnpore these days, and Fort Pillow doesn't go down all that well either. It is my contention that the massacre of innocents pales in comparison to the thousands of children gassed at Auchwitz or firebombed en masse in Dreden. And since it isn't even rue (on all the best evidence) it seems almost insultingly perverse to single it out, and of course turned into a trick for topping up the religious brainwashing by making a prayer of it.
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Originally Posted by Hawkins
To determine how credible it is, you need a reference to compare with.
Which part of humans history written down 2000 years ago can be considered credible, and why?
Show us and with the original copies written in tablets or scrolls, as they were written before paper was invented.
God has to convey the theology of salvation through a religion because;
1) religious documents can be more trackable or survivable
This is due to mass amount of publishing. Mass of religious people will keep at least a copy of a holy book. In contrary, no one is actually seriously keeping a history book. Thus a theology can convey across history from the point before paper was invented till now.
2) supernatural events are not kept by humans as part of their history
No humans in history (i.e. 2000 years ago) seriously record down a theology as a whole for it to convey as a theology
3) no secular media will seriously record the deeds of someone claimed to be a prophet or a messiah
Tons of humans claim to be a prophet or a messiah on a daily basis. Who cares to record each of them as a book. In the case one of them is true, then only God who sent him will find the right persons to write about a true prophet or messiah
We have done this before and it is the dicussion on how we asess old historical writings, how we verify them and what parts we accept as credible and what parts we dismiss as invented.
I mentioned particularly the rain miracle in Sallust's Jugurthine war. We must reject that, but the rest of it passes without much comment.
Tacitus'' Boudiccan speech is generally considered invention, yet the account of the revolt of the Iceni is considered sound enough.
We can, and should, assess the gospels the same way as they function well as a (biographical) historical record even if that wasn't the intention. And we have the benefit of four comparable versions plus some contemporary historical background.
It is not only much more feasible than with - say - the histories of Bronze and iron age Greece to decide what it credible (and I don't mean not miraculous) and what is not, but in view of the amount of influence it has on Western (if not global) society, it is essential that we do so. Which is off course, why believers regularly suggest to us that we can never succeed and we should give up trying (and how often have we heard that sentiment? ).
My line is that, for some reason I can't fathom, the obvious starting point has been ignored, and Bible scholars, Theist or not, have approached it with the same fallacy that bedevills all theist apologetics - assuming it is true as a given and then looking for evidence to support their own particular interpretation of who Jesus was.
You have already seen the method applied to the nativity and . If that stands up, then by golly, it is a test case for the method and applied to the rest of the Gospels works as well or better. It certainly does for the announcement in the Nazareth synagogue.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-12-2016 at 08:28 AM..
That's a good point. Even if not true it's a useful teaching point. But there are others, I could list them but you simply can't mention Cawnpore these days, and Fort Pillow doesn't go down all that well either. It is my contention that the massacre of innocents pales in comparison to the thousands of children gassed at Auchwitz or firebombed en masse in Dreden. And since it isn't even rue (on all the best evidence) it seems almost insultingly perverse to single it out, and of course turned into a trick for topping up the religious brainwashing by making a prayer of it.
.
I would disagree that making people aware of the victims of injustice is nothing more than religious brainwashing; unless, of course, one stops at saying the prayer and takes no further action as part of one's religious convictions.
Of course the tale of the Slaughter of the Innocents pales in comparison to those subsequent, historically-verifiable horrors, as well as things that are happening in real time right now. I suppose you are right that it is perverse to single out this one tale, but the fact remains that it is part of the story of a particular faith. To an outsider not part of that faith, it's not a valid point, or it's at the least a pretty weak one, from which to begin a conversation about injustice, but inside a religious tradition, it can be. If you have people who have always heard the Herod-killed-the-babies story but never thought beyond what it could mean on a wider scale relevant to their own lives and their role in the world, it could very well mean more than a person outside of the tradition would assign to it.
If the end result is that more people care about injustice, does it really matter to you that they got there by a story you consider trivial?
To the point of the thread, in many ways, the title question just doesn't matter, unless you need it to matter for argument's sake from either extreme position of completely false or completely true.
...but it should matter Oh Mighty Queen.
If the important things in the gospels are false (miracles, crucifixion, resurrection etc) then Christianity is false...and that should be important to you.
Good post. Yes. The tradition of Nazareth in the gospels is there. But was it a village or a district? I think there are hints that it could be the latter. You make a good point that they could have used an existing village as a starting point for a post AD 70 town, but after a devastating war - Sepphoris and Jotapa no longer existed - could they simply not have have built a new town?
It's highly unlikely that a priestly family would escape the ravages of the War to build a brand new village (and a village it was - not a city) - it's more probable (and that's the name of the game with historical research) that they moved to an existing village for safety and to begin again.
The timeline doesn't match either. Matthew and Luke are both aware of the Nazareth tradition, and they wrote their Gospels in the 1st Century: Luke around 85 CE and Matthew around 80-90 CE. Both Matthew and Luke derive much of their material from Mark, and also from Proto-Lucan and Proto-Matthean sources, which date some time before their Gospels obviously. That the Nazareth tradition concerning Jesus would have arisen late is unlikely, due to the timeline above. They would not need to jump through so many hoops with Bethlehem for a late tradition. They could have just said "Nazareth? Ah, who cares?" It obviously had some validity to it. The key is with their Bethlehem shenanigans. They could have saved themselves a lot of work if they had ignored Nazareth. But they didn't.
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Originally Posted by Rafius
Yet nearly all of them do. It is their general MO, that's why it's called Bible Archaeology. Do you know of any Bible archaeologist admitting that the evidence disproves the Bible. I certainly don't. But I do know of many that deliberately lie, mislead and misrepresent the evidence.
I don't deny his academic credentials but then...we have many eminent scientists that believe in a 6 day 'creation'.
As I said, you have a strange notion of Biblical scholars. It is THEY who have been actively engaged in the higher and historical criticism that has dethroned the Bible as an inspired and infallible book - for several hundred years now. I can't give you a history of academic scholarship here, but you would do well to do a little research on the current state of the field. The majority of the points against the historicity of the Gospels have come from "biased" Biblical scholars and archaeologists!
There may be idiot scientists who believe in a six-day Creation, but I can guarantee that you won't find hardly a single Biblical scholar who does!
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Originally Posted by Rafius
You are arguing against a strawman old thing. The evidence suggests that some kind of tiny settlement was being established there in the late first century. Could it be that the family moved there in order to establish a settlement where there wasn't one? It's possible isn't it.
See above, my response to Transponder.
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Originally Posted by Rafius
To which Jewish sources do you refer?
See my first post in this thread where I cited several of them, which you can look up. It doesn't sound as if you've done that much research on Nazareth if you missed those very important sources - no offense.
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Originally Posted by Rafius
Well...that isn't a city is it? Had the gospels described Nazareth as a tiny, insignificant, dung heap with about 400 inhabitants, we wouldn't be having the discussion...but it doesn't.
Nazareth was a little crappy village - that's the whole point of why people laughed at the idea he came from Nazareth. It was NOT a big city.
Anyways, I have absolutely NO stake in this Nazareth thing, but I do think it's a poor argument that can easily be shown to be poorly argued. If you want to make your case against the historicity of the Gospels, then I'm all for it. But Nazareth is not the way to go, as any evidence against it is an argument from silence - despite the very loud archaeological evidence we have for settlements since 300 BCE.
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like that one. I don't mind at all the Nazareth q. coming up here as I am still seeing if I have kept notes from that discussion with Eusebius. I am hoping not to have to trace each claim down yet again. And if Arach fails to comprehend the point and purpose of the thread, let him go and bother someone else.
