spin

The only thing that is spotty is the term Nazareth as being related to the other terms. The synoptics are the synoptics because they share share many features, mainly textual affinities. But in the case of Nazareth there is no affinity whatsoever.

You were asked to show how to derive either from Nazareth on linguistic grounds. Your response is neither helpful nor indicative of an understanding of the problem.

You need to look at the LXX.

The Alexandrian has for this last term nazeiraios.

This last is nazwraios. It doesn't take that much at all for an eta iota to get badly written.

Obviously they are graphically. However, we are dealing with an important angelically announced birth in both instances. The announcement includes the fact that the child will save ($W(, the "-shua" part of Jesus's name) "Israel" for Samson, "his people" for Jesus (Mt 1:21). In taking nazeiraios as a reference to Jesus, the verb used can become "called", as in Isa 49:6, "..that you should be my servant..", LXX "..that you should be called my servant..", so the change from "shall be" to "shall become" is a natural one.

Based on your knowledge of the thing seen in English. But K)RY is the original text from antiquity and one has to deal with it and not throw it away merely for post hoc reasons.

The analogy is a poor one though. We have Nazara in Mt 4:13 and Lk 4:16. Luke doesn't have Nazareth in the synoptic section of his text at all and the one place it appears in Mt is a rewrite of the Marcan passage. The Mt 4:13 passage assumes that Jesus was at Nazara and that means when 2:23 moves him to a place, that place should be Nazara. In fact there is early evidence for Nazara, as I have pointed out.

Your disparagement of lectio difficilor in this case is unaccountable.

This is refuted regularly by the vast majority of transliterations in the LXX.

You simply wouldn't know what the fact is.

The ancient Greeks who were around at the time and more likely to know, reject your hypothesis most definitively.

It's not a matter of rules. It's a matter of the vast body of evidence as to the behaviour of the translators.

Linguistics is not an intuitive subject for untrained English speakers. One usually has to study the theoretical background to language in a tertiary institution. This is why some English speakers show their inability by assuming that what they don't comprehend can be brushed aside with an attempt at common sense, which of course is not sense because it is based on ignorance.


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Ben C Smith

True. That example (twice) was fairly difficult to find. Took some fancy searching on the BibleWorks Advanced Search Engine.

Is our evidence for Nazareth being spelled with a tsade limited to that Caesarea inscription from century III or IV?

Ben.

spin

This is a good question and I should look into it more, but one source that I'm aware of is the Syriac Peshitta, which uses NCRT consistently for both Nazara and Nazareth. I don't think Nazareth is mentioned at all in the Talmud. There may be some more esoteric uses...


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Ben C Smith

In his 1946 JBL article, The Names "Nazareth" and "Nazoraean", Albright, IIRC, claims that several Christian Syriac sources have NZRT instead of NCRT. He notes an objection to using those sources (which he does not list; he refers to some other study) inasmuch as they are frequently scanning the Greek, but he notes in reply that the majority of the other Palestinian place names in these texts are correct for Syriac, not transliterated from the Greek.

This is the interesting thing. That Caesarea inscription was discovered in the sixties, and Albright was writing in the forties. At that time there seems to have been a real question over the Hebrew or Aramaic form of Nazareth from which the Greek form would have been derived. Albright actually contended at that time, based on the Greek form and a Semitic consonant shift that I do not entirely understand yet, that Nazareth was NCRT in the original.

Ben.

spin

I guess it's a case of fatigue.

I think that it was more the fact that the Greek had the zeta and a minority Syriac sources. I think ha-Notzri fround in the Talmud is another indication along with the Peshitta. I don't know when the name Yeshu ha-Notzri first appeared in rabbinical writing though. I'm led to believe that ha-Notzri was a means of referring to christians, but I've got to get a little more tangible data.

Thanks for the Albright reference. That will be handy for the Na-na-na-na stuff.


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jjramsey

I disagree. You are arguing that by the regular linguistic rules one cannot derive "Nazarene" or "Nazorean" from "Nazareth." Languages, however, aren't always regular, especially when the result of applying the regular rule is something that arguably doesn't flow well. Plus, we've got some interesting issues with deriving Greek from Hebrew words, especially when the derivers are not necessarily fluent in both languages and may corrupt either the Greek or the Hebrew. The opportunities for rule-breaking are many.

You are arguing that this linguistic irregularity is a good reason to think otherwise baroque trajectories from "Nazarene" or "Nazorean" to "Nazareth" are plausible, when a far more banal explanation--that language sometimes simply is irregular--is at hand.

spin

Linguistics deals with observed phenomena. Its rules are not prescriptive, they are descriptive of what happens. Every linguistic change happens for a reason. With enough data one can track that reason.

It is precisely in the area of transference from one language to another that we get very tangible evidence through the written record of the state of the languages involved, of the linguistic perceptions of the writer.

"[B]aroque" is an odd word to use when there is nothing in the gospels to advocate any other trajectory. All we have are the predilections of the KJV translators who substituted "of Nazareth" for nazarhnos and nazwraios. They seemed not to care that when you added a suffix to a feminine word it is necessary by all the biblical evidence to maintain, or worse insert when not there, the feminine "-T": wife Y$H, my wife Y$TY, so if one considered Nazara as some sort of defective form of Nazareth, the gentilic should still be nazarethnos or nazaretaios, etc.

Language change is far less irregular than you are equipped to understand. Banal explanations can only be known when you know what banal is in the particular case. A linguist who has studied English would know that no word starting with sk- is from Anglo-Saxon, so we can see "sketch" and know that it wasn't Anglo-Saxon in origin. In fact it came to use via Dutch from Italian "schizzo". Where other Germanic languages have the sk- sound, Anglo-Saxon has an sh- instead. This makes it banal to point to doublets in English when Old Danish or another Germanic language provide one of its sk- words, so we have ship and skiff and of course you can understand where skipper comes from; we have shirt and skirt, shrub and scrub, etc. Other such situations can be seen with Norman and later French influence giving us ward/guard, warden/guardian, war and guerrilla, etc. If you have the knowledge you can adjudge something banal.

A long vowel such as the omega in nazwraios comes from somewhere. It doesn't just spontaneously generate. I've shown elsewhere that the change from Hebrew TSADE to Greek zeta is both rare and not regular even for the particular word (as in the case of Zoar), yet every case of the Nazareth complex in Greek has a zeta while the Hebrew name has a TSADE.


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jjramsey

You mean other than the gospels indicating by context that nazarhnos and nazwraios did mean "someone from Nazareth," and the lack of any implication that Jesus had any of the features of a nazirite?

Try saying nazarethnos or nazaretaios aloud. Not everyone would find it a mouthful, of course, but I can see why someone might smooth things out by dropping the "t".

But corruptions can and do happen, and rules get broken, especially among people who were never formally taught grammar, which would include a lot of early Christians.

spin

Where exactly? Are you trying to rerun Mt 2:23, which

Here's Eusebius Dem. Ev. 7.2.41ff"

"But the ancient priests, who were anointed with prepared oil, which Moses called Nazer, were called for that reason Nazarenes, while our Lord... needed no human unguent... because He naturally had the qualities it symbolized, and also because He was called Nazarene from Nazara."

I've warned you not to try your own brand of "common sense". You don't know what's involved so you have no common sense on the issue. This is not English. Try to say Qessalonikewn (Q = theta, w = omega [long o]) which is six syllables with a double "s" both to be said. What about afarsaQaxaioi (Q = theta, x = ch as in loch), Apharsathchites in Ezra 4:9? Do you need more?

The changes we are dealing with happen at a speech community level, not the individual level. The change might not be conscious, but it is by necessity consensual. The whole community has to use it. Languages change because of "corruptions", but they are predominantly systemic corruptions. When the Normans learn French they had difficulty with an initial /gw/ so they dropped the /g/, as in guard/ward. It was not just one individual. It had to be the majority of the community which then dragged the rest along with it. Conversely, Russians have trouble with simple /h/ so they use a /g/ instead, so a name like Reinhold becomes Reingold, or Harry becomes Garry. See the problem with the irregular individual change you seem to be proposing?


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jjramsey

That is at least one place where it is made clear that nazwraios meant "someone from Nazareth," yes.

A side note: Eusebius is talking about priests, not nazirites. More importantly, Eusebius is not simply recording an understanding of "Nazarene" that appears to date from the first century. Rather, he is imposing his fourth century strained interpretation of the text onto these first century documents. That says a lot about Eusebius but not a lot about the texts.

And it is very clear that the Christian community did consent, since nazarhnos and nazwraios did come to mean "someone from Nazareth." We are only talking about when that happened.

Here's an interesting question. If nazarethnos or nazaretaios are the proper ways of referring to someone from Nazareth, then how come I haven't seen you cite manuscripts where nazarethnos or nazaretaios is present? I would think that if nazarhnos and nazwraios were considered incorrect, then at least some scribes would have "corrected" them to nazarethnos or nazaretaios, much as, according to you, "Nazara" was "corrected" to "Nazareth."