spin

Do you disagree that 2:23 is the glue that attaches the birth narrative to the bulk of the Marcan source material? That should put it later than the bulk of the text, unless you want to argue for an incoherent mess of terms that conflict with each other -- nazarhnos, nazwraios, Nazara, Nazareth, along with the Matthean acceptance of Capernaum from the Marcan source being where Jesus had his home.

Many responses here have been saying, "you aren't dealing with the rest of the text", when I'm saying if you don't deal with the local context you won't understand any of the text. It doesn't matter what the rest of the text says until you come to terms with the meaning that can be extracted from what you are specifically reading. This is the first task. Then the rest of the text can be brought into the fray.

No, I'm not. Nazara came into the Matthean tradition after the community lost nazarhnos.

Why do you disagree? What do the two uses of Nazara in these distinct works directly have to do with each other?

Step 1: Matt lost nazarhnos when the Marcan source was worked over.
Step 2: Nazara came into circulation, requiring a response from the Matthean community which already knew of Capernaum from Mark.
Step 3: The community's solution was to accept both, understanding that Jesus moved from one to the other.
Step 4: nazwraios reached the Matthean community (either from outside or was born in the community from the Samson birth in Judges).

Why simply omit nazarhnos when you can replace it with nazwraios? Because the latter didn't exist in the tradition when the former was omitted.

No. That's irrelevant. People refuse to do the job of analysis of the text. They cloud the discussion by bringing in issues whose relevance they cannot defend. Working from the information in Matt 4:12-16, I think there is sufficient evidence to say that

1. Zebulun and Naphtali are used as a functional synonym of Galilee;
2. Capernaum is placed (by a lake) in Galilee/Zebulun&Naphtali
3. Nazara is placed outside it.

You must deal with the significance directly derivable from the local text before you try to analyse it in a wider context.


spin

Ben C Smith

That was not intentional. In our original exchange I wrote:

Mark 1.9 or Matthew 21.11.

I gave lots of evidence (Gennesareth and Genesara, for example); you simply rejected it.

There is no nutshell presentation as far as I can remember. The following two arguments of mine were part of our entire exchange:

1. Nazareth can easily lead to the variant Nazara.
2. Nazara can easily lead to the gentilic Nazarene.

Therefore, using the gentilic Nazarene does not have to imply that an author does not know that the corresponding place is or can be called Nazareth any more than using the gentilic Dutch implies that an author does not know that the corresponding place is or can be called the Netherlands.

I will be happy to clear up any outstanding issues of simple (mis)understanding between us, but I do not plan to revisit our prior debate again, which can be found amongst the older threads. I started to participate on page 1, but our debate did not really get underway until about page 3.

Ben.

spin

Fine.

Mark 1:9 isn't in Matt. Besides Matt indicates it wasn't in Mark originally. Given that Matt features Nazara twice, 21:11 becomes a candidate for later scribal normalizing.

And the other stuff was also dealt with.

Can it? What makes you think it can? Because you've found disparate forms getting messed up in Greek? (Unlike Nazara, these don't point to a tradition, just to textual errors.) What Semitic evidence do you have from before the gospels were written that supports your claim?

Then, if Mark actually had Nazareth, how could the Matthean writer opt for Nazara? Mark didn't of course. The Marcan writer thought Jesus had his home in Capernaum and Matt only has "from Galilee" in 3:13, a strange omission if the source actually had "from Nazareth of Galilee", seeing as Galilee is only a region and provenance was usually of a town.

We agree on this. Without the first though, the second has no effect.

From the Greek form Nazaret or the Semitic form NCRT? If the former then you have to show that it came first -- the little available evidence indicates that it didn't. If the latter, you simply have no evidence and a huge phonological problem for such a conjecture.

I work with 100 posts per page.

I can understand why you wouldn't want to revisit our prior debate again. You started with Gennesar and hoped that you could get away with linking it to Gennesaret without Semitic support. Then you tried to cloud the issue by bringing in an unrelated form Kinneret as though it supported what you wanted with Gennesaret. Somewhere we breezed through singular and plural (eg Ramah, Ramoth), various orthographic errors, and a host of other unrelated apparent parallels. No way to show how the writers of two separate gospels could opt for inserting the form Nazara into the body of their gospels: two unrelated passages (Lk 4:16, Mt 4:13 -- & 2:23) testifying to a Nazara tradition, which would have little sense if Nazareth had already been in the gospel tradition.

The benefit of Nazara being outside Galilee in 4:12-16 is that it helps indicate that Nazara was in the Matthean community tradition prior to the arrival of nazwraios, for 2:22-3 now knows that Nazara is in Galilee, so that 2:23 is later than 4:13. I could only guess before at the chronological relationship between Nazara and nazwraios.


spin

Ben C Smith

Your own response will do:

It is all on that other thread, for better or for worse.

This from someone who recently accused me of bias in using the term admit.

Ben.

ynquirer

Fine. As you’re leaning toward the argument that the writer of Matthew 4:12-16 does not recognize Nazara as being in Galilee, you could perhaps tell me what is the reason why the writer of Mat 2:23, who says that Nazara is a town in Galilee, and the writer of Mat 4:12-16 may not be the same person.

spamandham

...because Matthew shows signs of layers of editing. I agree with spin on the approach that you have to try to determine what something says in these texts in as localized a manner as possible for that reason. If a localized reading contradicts a broader reading, the localized reading is preferred until shown to be incorrect. This is difficult to do for me at least. My instinct is to read it as if it were written by one author at one sitting.

As an example of this layering, some scholars propose that Matthew is actually a rework of Mark (part of the Farrer hypothesis), meaning that Matthew necessarily would have at least 2 layers. However, Mark also shows signs of layering, suggesting that Matthew as we know it may have many more layers. That being the case, we can not a priori expect consistency between different portions of the text, making arguments based on such consistency tenuous.

spin

I'm sure you'd admit it was true.

"[A]ccused"? If stating the obvious is an accusation...

Isn't "Zebulun and Naphtali", in the Isaiah prophecy, a synonym of Galilee and isn't Galilee in the prophecy parallel with "Zebulun and Naphtali" added by our writer? Hopefully, I've explained the epexegetical use of kai at the start of 4:13 (to make clear what has been said), so do you still have difficulties with my analysis of 4:12-16 and the placing of Nazara outside Galilee? If so, on what grounds based on the passage itself? If not, doesn't it mean that the use of nazwraios came into the gospel tradition later than Nazara?


spin

Ben C Smith

Probably.

How would you translate it epexegetically in this case?

Ben.

spin

A rough English approximation? --

12 When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. 13 That is, leaving Nazara, he went and dwelt in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— 14 to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah

Make sense?


spin

Ben C Smith

Do you have any examples of kai used in this way in similar constructions? The example I remember you giving, to serve and to give his life, is not parallel, and I do not think the kai there is epexegetical at all; a person can both serve and give his or her life, and that seems to be exactly what Jesus is saying.

Ben.

ETA: I should add for the sake of clarity that I am not disputing that kai can sometimes be used epexegetically. However, in my experience (not exhaustive by any means) it is usually not all that hard to identify such a usage, and such a usage would never have occurred to me in Matthew 4.13. Furthermore, the kai in this case precedes the entire clause, exactly what we would expect of a simple conjunction. If pressed I could produce literally hundreds of examples of a simple conjoining kai at the beginning of a clause (or sentence), followed by a participle and (eventually) a finite verb; what examples are there of this construction where the kai is epexegetical? (And no, I do not think hundreds is an exaggeration; a scan of a simple BibleWorks search for 'kai + *@vp* convinces me I could easily list hundreds.)