spin

First fact you need to consider, Nazareth was not in the earliest layers of the gospel tradition. No single instance of the town name can be placed with the core of the gospel literature. Not even the mention of Nazareth in Mk 1:9 gets support from any other gospel.

In Luke the name Nazareth doesn't appear outside the birth narrative, so the town name was clearly part of one of the last major efforts on that gospel. The only certain use of Nazareth in Mt is 21:11, which is a re-written section of Mark.

Second, the relationship between nazarhnos and Nazareth is far from transparent, while nazwraios, found in all sources except Mark, is even further removed from a direct connection with Nazareth. These terms need explanation and that explanation is hardly imaginable in relation to Nazareth. I'd relate nazarhnos to the Hebrew word which gives us "crown" and nazwraios to the notion of being "dedicated to god", from which the notion of Nazirite comes.

Third there is good evidence that the earliest form of the name in the gospels was not Nazareth, but Nazara, see Mt 4:13 and Lk 4:16. There is also small but early textual support for Nazara at Mt 2:23. Now unknown Nazara can be derived linguistically as a back-formation from Nazarene, which must be taken as a gentilic (ie derived from a population of some sort) and one asks "gentilic of what", to which the theoretical answer comes "Nazara".

As yet no town called Nazara has been uncovered and may not have been known when someone decided to find it in antiquity. What they did find though was something similar enough to be considered what the name must have been, ie not Nazara, but Nazareth near Sepphoris.

I think this analysis helps us better understand the development of the gospel material.

Your attempt to use Nazareth seems completely contrary to the evidence.

Hopefully you know by now that I am not a mythicist, so I neither hold their views nor find arguments regarding them particularly relevant.


spin

jjramsey

Argumentum ad hypothetical interpolation?

Your argument boils down to saying that nazarhnos and nazwraios would be an irregular way of referring to people from Nazareth, so that is not what they could have meant. Given that irregular forms in languages just aren't that uncommon, this is less than convincing, especially since there is no evidence of a connection between Nazarenes and Nazirites. There's no mention of Jesus purportedly never shaving his head, and we know he was said to have drunk wine.

Both Nazara and Nazaret are in the texts, and judging from this post,

http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p...60#post1577660

the evidence that Nazara is likely to be original just isn't that good.

You are asking me to believe that a linguistic irregularity is less probable than your baroque speculation. Sorry, won't fly.

spin

The evidence is that there is no sign of it in the earliest stratum. You can call it whatever you like. You have to deal with it and not just label it at your pleasure. If you have problems with Mk 1:9 and its lack of support from Mt 3:13, then just consider Mk 2:1, for the writer believes that Capernaum is Jesus's home town, without any explanation needed.

No, it doesn't. It does say though that neither are derivable phonologically from Nazareth, then note that the fact that Nazareth is not in the earliest layers of the gospel suggest that they were around before Nazareth entered the tradition.

Can you show how to derive either from Nazareth on linguistic grounds??

Linguistic evidence is not a trivializing matter.

SO the relationship between Mt 2:23 and Jdg 13:5 doesn't give any connection for the ideas?

You'd like some of the arguments used about the matter in the fathers. I think it was Eusebius who said that Jesus was a Nazirite by nature, so didn't need to have to perform to be one. (If you want it, I'll chase it down.)

P70 is one of those early witnesses I was talking about. There are a few others, all early in respect to the manuscript tradition. Eusebius was mentioned and Origen is another source of the reading. Now as it is strong in Mt 4:13, it makes better sense that it was also in 2:23 so that 4:13 made sense. A change from Nazareth in later tradition is much easier to explain than a change to Nazara, so we have to go with the lectio difficilor.

Sorry, that good linguistics isn't helpful to you.


spin

spin

Oh, jjramsey, I forgot to say that I can give meaningful explanations for the different lexical items being investigated. Find someone else who can supply as complete an explanation of the evidence, including Nazara, Nazareth, Nazarene, Nazwraean, and the other forms lurking in the text tradition.


spin

Peter Kirby

What's the canonical references for spin's take on the "Na"* issue? The explanation of all the evidence? I'd like to see it.

--
Peter Kirby

* Naseret, Nazara, Nazareth, Nazarene, Nazoraean, etc, etc, etc

spin

I'm not exactly sure of what you're asking, but have a look at this to see if it answers your query at least partially.

Have you seen this first in Greek, Peter? Or should it have a "z"?

I ask because given the form in Hebrew/Aramaic, You don't normally transliterate the letter (TSADE) as a zeta, but as a sigma, yet the gospels I thought always use the zeta. This in fact is part of my argument, ie it is very improbable to derive nazarhnos from NCRT (C = TSADE).


spin

Peter Kirby

I could swear I've seen it, perhaps though in Coptic. I'll check.

--
Peter Kirby

jjramsey

From what I can tell, the evidence for this is spotty at best.

Yes. Somebody breaks the linguistic rules because it sounds better. It's not that uncommon.

What relationship?

Jdg 13:5: "for you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor is to come on his head, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines."

Mt 2:23: "There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, 'He will be called a Nazorean.'"

For there to be a connection, you have to beg the question as to whether "nazirite" or "Nazorean" are related.

lectio difficilor is a good rule of thumb, but it is still only a rule of thumb. If it were applied woodenly, Psalm 22:17 would read "Like a lion my hands and feet," which doesn't make much sense.

This has always struck me as a weak argument. There's an obvious reason for the tzade to be transliterated by a zeta. They sound about the same, and in fact, they sound more alike that a tzade and a sigma. Amateurs who didn't know or care about the official or quasi-official transliteration rules could easily have preferred zeta to sigma.

Ben C Smith

Genesis 13.10 mentions Zoar, which is צער in Hebrew and Ζογορα in Greek. (See also the confusion in Jeremiah 48.4.)

(I know you mitigated your statement with normally, but I do think it is important to point out that tsade can sometimes become zeta.)

Ben.

spin

I've picked the bones clean of all the examples of TSADE transliterated as zeta in the attempt to see if there was a reasonable case for NCR being the source for "Nazarene", but it seems unlikely to me. The overwhelming evidence for me is that every single example of Nazareth that I've looked at in Greek -- I only had access to the Tischendorf apparatus -- has the zeta, so there is no trace of variation, which I would have expected if Nazareth were derived from the Hebrew NCRT. You'll note that the one example you give is more commonly with the sigma, shgwr, 7 from 9.


spin