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The evidence that Nazareth exists today and your very own words that it was repopulated, suggest that the "supposed" lack of evidence to support Biblical Nazareth is rather moot.
There are other kinds of refutations at that site.
People that do not want to believe can dismiss evidence that exists for why others still believe.
You haven't read the thread have you. Please do so and you will see that the verifiable archaeological evidence we have for a 'Nazareth' shows that there was a settlement there until the 4th century BCE when it was likely destroyed by the Assyrians. Then there was nothing there other than a farm or two until the mid to late 1st century - early second century CE with the main re-population coming after the destruction of the temple c70CE. Even what you have highlighted in red is telling you that families went there to settle AFTER the destruction of the temple. That would be after 70CE. The fact that there was a village there after 70CE does not mean that there was one there for your man-god to have come from in 1CE.
Now please read the discussion here and the debunking of Bible apologetics such as you gave in your link before jumping in with stuff that has already been discussed. You are of course welcome to add something new but your post simple gives the same old apologetics that have been discussed ad nausium.
Despite Pneuma putting up a sturdy defence of the Priestly families inscription, I am am still not sure about it. In any case, all we have is one house dug into a hillside, which looks more farm than carpentry workshop. On balance, the jury is still out on Nazareth (and referring to the Gospel mentions is a totally circular argument - the Bible, I believe never mentions Nazareth, nor does Paul) and some confirmatory archaeology is still needed for or against a Nazareth before 30 A.D.
On balance, the jury is still out on Nazareth (and referring to the Gospel mentions is a totally circular argument - the Bible, I believe never mentions Nazareth, .....
Correct old chap.... well other than the Gospels of course. Nor is it mentioned by any contemporary historian. Nor was it included in the list of settlements of the tribes of Zebulon which mentions twelve towns and six villages. Nor is it mentioned among the 45 cities of Galilee that were mentioned by Josephus. Nor do we find it in the list of 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud.
As we have discussed at length my dear old toad, if there was anything there for the Christian man-god to have come from, it certainly wasn't a 'city' with a synagogue....and the verifiable archaeological evidence presented so far shows not much more than a farm.
I did read that you needed 5-600 people to justify a synagogue. So you are looking at a 'village' of a couple of hundred houses. It shouldn't be too hard to find them - it they're there! Indeed, if they weren't.. apart from the embarrassment of having a holy site in the wrong place (1) ...it could be somewhere else nearby. But the inscription would suggest that the priestly families didn't settle in the existing village of Nazareth or it would have been in the same place. So that would mean it wasn't inhabited when they arrived.
The more of the 1st c levels of Nazareth are dug for drains or Internet cables and no more houses are found, the less likely it looks. Of course, if we find the footings of five, fifteen or 20 homes in early 1st c date occupation -levels, Nazareth is back on the map and Bible believers will be rubbing our face in it
P.s to make this more than a lot of chat, I'll look over this point and maybe a few points about the crucifixion which is, as I said like the anointing at Bethany...I'm doing it!! I'm doing it!!!....hosanna procession and temple punch - up, True, though the gospel writers evidently wish it wasn't since they took such pains to rewrite, amend and fiddle the text to make it fit their beliefs more than what appears to have happened.
Jesus was crucified. That at least is reliable. It was the fact of his crucifixion that was the first Embarrassment for the Jewish Christians. So with Paul, it was an atonement (by his obedience to death) of Jesus the messiah for the disobedience of Adam and thus by his obedience, wiped out the death -sin of the fall. Not Just Like That, of course, otherwise there is no point in being a Christian - as I have mentioned to the UR types (2). You had to get your membership first. The entry fee that suited Paul was faith in Jesus.
This was his own thesis and preference developed from the simple apostolic following of the messiah - probably John, first, and then when Antipas executed him, Jesus (3) and when he was executed...no, not James, who was simply steward of the apostles until the King should return. Jesus was still alive in heaven iin the spirit, in which form (as Paul says) he "first appeared to Simon" and not to the women at the tomb, which is simply Matthew's invention, contradicted by Luke and John, both.
I was going to go on about Paul's agenda of sidelining the Jewish Law, partly because Gentiles would never wear it and partly because he didn't observe it himself (4) but I was going to go on with how a suffering servant became Lord of the Universe and also look at the crucifixion, so I don't want to go too far off track.
The common trait is the Evolution of Jesus from a meat puppet driven around by the spirit that had occupied him at the Baptism and then left his body on the cross, nipped over to the temple to get its suitcase and vacated, tearing the veil in his divine passage of departing Wind.
While the idea in Mark and Matthew that Jesus recited the Psalm on the cross is absurd (5) the passage reflects the idea of the spirit abandoning Jesus. Originally I think it just said he gave a cry and 'died'. This would not do for Luke, who adds a resigned acceptance - very much moving on from the Apostolic idea of the decamping Shekinah to the Pauline idea of the Suffering Servant. John goes even further with an announcement of transition to Glory.
And this was why the gospels were written - not originally to prove that Jesus had risen from the dead. Originally that was a belief in the head and the less said about it the better. Only later was the urgent need felt to have a the "Proof" of a solid body resurrection - still with the wounds in, for identification - (6) (I do note the strong tradition of an empty tomb - yes, that is a puzzle. I could easily come up with some invented 'explanation'' but I prefer not to) but to prove that the crucifixion was not a failure, but a success. Originally messianic obedience forging a new covenant, and then the atoning blood being turned into a sacrifice, which then became more important in imagery and could be Gentile as much as Jewish, with Jesus himself replacing the Temple and sacrifices. This is why Jesus is shown as saying that 'something more than the temple is here'. It also meant that the 'sacrifice' had to be during Passover, which it Evidently wasn't. This causes a problem with Timing, with Jesus eating the Passover (when the slaughtered lambs were eaten), the day before he as the 'Paschal lamb' was himself killed. And in John it becomes quite ridiculous, with every blasted event happening on Passover.
Because this is what the Gospel Jesus becomes - a Pauline Christian, and one that would have rather appalled Paul (no pun intended, I swear) with Paul's unimportance of the Mosaic law - and even hindrance of the Law - to salvation, endorsed in a way he would have approved (and the Gospel playing of ducks and drakes with the mosaic law, Observances and scripture is no worse that Paul's in Romans, where OT text become not much more than an analogy or subtitle for Paul's own ideas and are in no way support for them) turned into a damning of the Jews to rejection by Gd and vilifying them in every way possible.
But the Other embarrassment - that the crucifixion was Roman was the Other reason the gospels were written. II have said it often enough, but the whole arrest and trial, while originally being done by Pilate - and if the High Priest was involved, it was as part of Pilate's administration - had to be blamed on the Jews.
(1) like the site of the crucifixion and sepulchre.
(2) rather like to sortagod agnostics - if there is an Intelligent Creator - so what?
(3) and that is why the Baptism was written, to explain to everyone that the baptist was Not the messiah, he was, if not a very naughty boy, unfit to lick Jesus' feet, and the whole episode is to have Jesus, apparently submitting to John actually being divinely rubber -stamped as the Real messiah, and John is made to grovel in the various contradictory ways we saw with the nativities and the resurrection.
(4) there is a revealing passage in Ephesians possibly where his assertion (in Romans) that the Law did not apply to Gentile believers, but was incumbent o Jewish believers, becomes Faith in Jesus excusing even Jews from observing the law. Which of course excuses himself and he can play the Jew to win over Jews and the Gentile to win over the Greeks. Damn' isn't that what the Josephus faker said? 'Won over many of the Jews and many of the Greeks'?
(5) though being is Aramaic first made me think that was true and original, but finding it was a quote, I think it is invented.
(6) after all, if Jesus had appeared in a body without the wounds in, they would simply say it couldn't be him. Let's face it, they all seemed to have trouble remembering what he looked like.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-02-2017 at 06:29 AM..
Reason: the usual tidy up...sloppy, sloppy...
May I invite you to read the book: Christianity's Dangerous Memory by Diarmuid O'Murchu. (if you already haven't)
It is subtitled: A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus.
I wrote this mini-essay on my Facebook:
The "Kingdom of God" is a lie.
Throughout my theological studies, this three-word phrase has always been a stumbling block. It never made any sense.
Judaism never spoke of a "Kingdom of God." They spoke of a "City of God," whereby all the faithful would be comfortably sealed in by the city's walls, and everyone else would be outside bitterly complaining of their fate.
Diarmuid O'Murchu finally put my questioning to bed in his book Christianity's Dangerous Memory (A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus).
Jesus despised the "Kingdom" of any sort and especially the "King," as each of these concepts smacked of Roman domination and the Jewish Sanhedrin kissing ass.
The problem lies in translation from Aramaic to Greek. In Greek, "basileia tou theou" is translated as "Kingdom of God." But that is not what Jesus said.
Jesus said "malkuta," which is formed from the Aramaic root word "kut," which in turn means empowerment: power with and not power over. According to O'Murchu, Jesus wanted empowerment with mutuality.
Jesus was not trying to found a new religion. He was trying to get people back in a relationship with their God. The empowerment of mutuality was not one of a God sitting on a throne with ITs minions doing all kinds of rites to please IT. Rather, it is a hand-in-hand relationship with God. God and humans together in the circle. God in humans, and humans in God.
When Jesus said the "malkuta" has come, he was talking about the breaking of Earthly chains with the invented three-tiered cosmos that many still adhere today as the absolute truth (a higher plane, usually referred to as heaven; the Earthly plane; and the lower plane, usually referred to as hell). He was talking about returning to the reality of walking, talking, eating with, sleeping with, and living life with a real living God present on and in the Earth as opposed to somewhere "out there in a metaphysical or spiritual plane."
Now, what's the bottom line?
We have been lied to for nearly 2,000 years. We have accepted this antiquated, unnatural hierarchy of a king, feudal lords, and serfs. We have been forced to worship this horrible, mean, exacting, angry--must I go on?--God to merit some kind of afterlife reward. We have bought into an everlasting circle of physical and mental torment.
Every time the real truth or reality pops or rears its beautiful head, the intelligentsia controlling us and basically the world tries to cover it up, distort it, or eradicate it.
You haven't read the thread have you. Please do so and you will see that the verifiable archaeological evidence we have for a 'Nazareth' shows that there was a settlement there until the 4th century BCE when it was likely destroyed by the Assyrians. Then there was nothing there other than a farm or two until the mid to late 1st century - early second century CE with the main re-population coming after the destruction of the temple c70CE. Even what you have highlighted in red is telling you that families went there to settle AFTER the destruction of the temple. That would be after 70CE. The fact that there was a village there after 70CE does not mean that there was one there for your man-god to have come from in 1CE.
Now please read the discussion here and the debunking of Bible apologetics such as you gave in your link before jumping in with stuff that has already been discussed. You are of course welcome to add something new but your post simple gives the same old apologetics that have been discussed ad nausium.
Kind of hard to say that the gospel account is wrong when Nazareth existed and they testify to it being there. How could they testify to Jesus being from Nazareth if Nazareth wasn't there?
The archaeological evidence shows that Jesus grew up in a small village, Nazareth, about four miles from Sepphoris, a prominent city in the early first century C.E. This city had a Greco-Roman look, complete with paved, columned street, but its inhabitants were observant Jews. The evidence further shows that Nazareth was linked to a network of roads that accommodated travel and commerce. The quaint notion that Jesus grew up in rustic isolation has been laid to rest. The youthful Jesus may well have visited Sepphoris, whose theatre may have been the inspiration for his later mockery of religious hypocrites as play-actors.
Since I know Him & the power of His resurrection, I can say I do not believe you, because I know Him.
Are the gospels historically credible? There are non-christian sources testifying that indirectly supports the gospel somewhat.
If anybody out there wants to know God personally, then ask God the Father to reveal His Son to you, and then learn of Jesus Christ in the King James Bible and may He help you find rest for your souls.
Seven building from before A.D 70? Yes, but are they of early 1st c date? There are some tombs claimed to serve as houses if you roof them over, but the date of those is debated. If 6 more houses dated to 1 -30 A.D have been found I would be happy to know it.
The reference to a crucified man is confirmation - not of crucifixion - that was well known - but of the use of nails. None of that of course really supports Jesus, even as a historical figure. It does not support Gospel reliability at all.
May I invite you to read the book: Christianity's Dangerous Memory by Diarmuid O'Murchu. (if you already haven't)
It is subtitled: A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus.
I wrote this mini-essay on my Facebook:
The "Kingdom of God" is a lie.
Throughout my theological studies, this three-word phrase has always been a stumbling block. It never made any sense.
Judaism never spoke of a "Kingdom of God." They spoke of a "City of God," whereby all the faithful would be comfortably sealed in by the city's walls, and everyone else would be outside bitterly complaining of their fate.
Diarmuid O'Murchu finally put my questioning to bed in his book Christianity's Dangerous Memory (A Rediscovery of the Revolutionary Jesus).
Jesus despised the "Kingdom" of any sort and especially the "King," as each of these concepts smacked of Roman domination and the Jewish Sanhedrin kissing ass.
The problem lies in translation from Aramaic to Greek. In Greek, "basileia tou theou" is translated as "Kingdom of God." But that is not what Jesus said.
Jesus said "malkuta," which is formed from the Aramaic root word "kut," which in turn means empowerment: power with and not power over. According to O'Murchu, Jesus wanted empowerment with mutuality.
Jesus was not trying to found a new religion. He was trying to get people back in a relationship with their God. The empowerment of mutuality was not one of a God sitting on a throne with ITs minions doing all kinds of rites to please IT. Rather, it is a hand-in-hand relationship with God. God and humans together in the circle. God in humans, and humans in God.
When Jesus said the "malkuta" has come, he was talking about the breaking of Earthly chains with the invented three-tiered cosmos that many still adhere today as the absolute truth (a higher plane, usually referred to as heaven; the Earthly plane; and the lower plane, usually referred to as hell). He was talking about returning to the reality of walking, talking, eating with, sleeping with, and living life with a real living God present on and in the Earth as opposed to somewhere "out there in a metaphysical or spiritual plane."
Now, what's the bottom line?
We have been lied to for nearly 2,000 years. We have accepted this antiquated, unnatural hierarchy of a king, feudal lords, and serfs. We have been forced to worship this horrible, mean, exacting, angry--must I go on?--God to merit some kind of afterlife reward. We have bought into an everlasting circle of physical and mental torment.
Every time the real truth or reality pops or rears its beautiful head, the intelligentsia controlling us and basically the world tries to cover it up, distort it, or eradicate it.
Now,that's an interesting post. While I no longer believe that the gospels were translated from Aramaic (thogh 'Abba' and the recitation of Psalms on the cross are),the term 'Kingdom of God' might very well have been an apostolic term, because for a 1st c Jew, a messiah could not be diivorced from the 'revolutionary' aspect that you refer to.
There is even a token Zealot - Simon the Canaanite (which means that he came from Galilee, really). And I wonder whether this is part of the Gospel process of splitting the Jewish messianic Jesus from the divine Christian Jesus? As I recall, were there not two Judases? Judas-not-Iscariot (as per John) and Judas the betrayer - son of Simon the zealot?
Kind of hard to say that the gospel account is wrong when Nazareth existed and they testify to it being there.
Only if you believe that the Gospels are true and accurate...and those of of us that have bothered to research the subject via verifiable evidence rather than ;faith', know that they are not. If you have any verifiable evidence to add to this thread that proves there was a 'city of Nazareth' for your man-god to have come from then please present it. I and others would love to see it.
Quote:
How could they testify to Jesus being from Nazareth if Nazareth wasn't there?
Same as they testify that there was a Quirinian census before 6CE when there wasn't. The Gospels testify to a lot of things that didn't happen. You can read about it in this thread.
I repeat, not that it will do much good with someone like you but there is little to no evidence that there was a city with a synagogue, or a town or even a village there at the alleged time of your man-god. There is verifiable evidence that there was a settlement there c4th century BCE. It then disappeared following the Assyrian invasion of the area (likely destroyed by them). There are then no significant archaeological finds in the are until the mid 1st century CE to early 2nd century. There has been ONE house found that has been dated to the 1st century and that is all. The evidence tells us that, if there was any Nazareth, it was nothing more than perhaps a farm with an outlying house or two.
Quote:
Since I know Him & the power of His resurrection, I can say I do not believe you, because I know Him.
Of course you don't believe me...and that is because truth is not your agenda.You work on 'faith' and no amount of verifiable evidence will convince you. You have invested too much time and effort in your belief to have that all spoiled by FACTS. I know that and I am not so deluded as to think that someone like you will change your mind and subscribe to what is actually true rather than what you want to be true but... these forums are full of people the read and never comment and many of them, like me, subscribe to what is historically proven rather than subscribe to proven superstitions. Those are the people I speak to in order to show that the fireside stories of ancient goat-herders are not necessarily true.
Quote:
Are the gospels historically credible? There are non-christian sources testifying that indirectly supports the gospel somewhat.
..and there you go again! Even after I gave you a list of all the debunked so called 'secular evidence for Jesus' that included all the characters that your apologist site gives...you STILL post it. It even gives the Testimonium Flavianum again as 'evidence for Jesus!! I simply shows that you just aren't reading the refutations of you claims. Seriously dude. If you want to be taken seriously the LAST thing you should be posting as evidence for your Jesus is the Testimonium Flavianum.
As for the Talmud which your apologist site puts forward as 'evidence for Jesus'; do you even know enough about the subject to realise that the Talmud says that your Jesus learnt black magic in Egypt, was a bastard son of Roman soldier, was conceived during menstruation, burnt his food, had 5 disciples and was stoned to death in Lydda. If memory serve me well. I think it also says that his mother was a wh*re and that both her and Jesus are now frying in hell.
Do you still want to use the Talmud?
Quote:
If anybody out there wants to know God personally, then ask God the Father to reveal His Son to you, and then learn of Jesus Christ in the King James Bible and may He help you find rest for your souls.
Perhaps you don't realise that there are many, many non-believers on this forum that did just that for many, many years. Nothing happened.
Another interesting book is called Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Aslan.
If I sum up what Reza was trying to say is that Jesus himself was a Zealot, but not a run-of-the-mill Zealot. He had heard of or seen bandits/Zealots/king wannabes take control or come close to taking control of the Temple and Jerusalem. They all lost their heads. Jesus tried a different tact: a religious conversion/revival. If he could convince the people themselves to reject the Temple and re-establish the "good ol' religion" of Judaism, then people would be free. Note that he waived any idea of kingship: that would mean certain death before he accomplished whatever mission he set his foot upon.
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of Jesus from a meat puppet driven around by the spirit that had occupied him at the Baptism and then left his body on the cross, nipped over to the temple to get its suitcase and vacated, tearing the veil in his divine passage of departing Wind. 
(6) (I do note the strong tradition of an empty tomb - yes, that is a puzzle. I could easily come up with some invented 'explanation'' but I prefer not to) but to prove that the crucifixion was not a failure, but a success. Originally messianic obedience forging a new covenant, and then the atoning blood being turned into a sacrifice, which then became more important in imagery and could be Gentile as much as Jewish, with Jesus himself replacing the Temple and sacrifices. This is why Jesus is shown as saying that 'something more than the temple is here'. It also meant that the 'sacrifice' had to be during Passover, which it Evidently wasn't. This causes a problem with Timing, with Jesus eating the Passover (when the slaughtered lambs were eaten), the day before he as the 'Paschal lamb' was himself killed. And in John it becomes quite ridiculous, with every blasted event happening on Passover.