Ted Hoffman

I just checked Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament, 1969. p.27-33.
He refers to and relies on Bagatti in Ritrovamenti nella Nazaret Evangelica he also refers to excavations done by B. Vlaminck in 1895, Prosper Viaud's excavations of 1907-1909 and especially Bagatti's 1954-1955 excavation when the 1730 Church was demolished.

This falsifies Carrier's claim that "None of the books anyone has cited here contained any references at all to any archaeological reports on Nazareth"
Unless Carrier would like to clarify what he means by "archaeological reports on Nazareth"

I am suprised that, unlike Carrier, J. Finegan, J. Reed, J.D. Crossan, J.P Meier, Meyers and Strange, William E. Arnal, all reference Bagatti and do not cite any archaeology finds of permanent structures in Nazareth in the first century. They all mention the silos, the pottery of Roman and Byzantine Period and so on. And these lead them to conclude that Nazareth was a small village.

But Carrier finds "insurmountable evidence that there were numerous permanent structures [in Nazareth in the first century]". I would kindly like to know this "insurmountable evidence" since Carrier states that the "calcite column bases" do not qualify as "iron clad proof of a 1st century synagogue".

The Photo of Nazareth in P. 27 in Finegan's book also shows Nazareth was surrounded by hills.

Since I have cited TDNT and a Greek-English Lexicon that concur that there is a linguistic problem with respect to Nazareth, I hope Carrier will reconsider his comments.

Carrier: Forgive me, but I am unfamiliar with this. Are there any commentaries or scholars that support this interpretation?
I think that the semitic scholar Joachim Jeremias would disagree with it.

Richard Carrier

All this below is on Nazareth, which has little to do with the BBCh debate.

Maybe so. Look: I am staring at the darned photos right now. I am looking at Bagatti's topography. I am looking at the rock houses, ritual immersion pools, everything, cut along the slope: every single thing that has ever been excavated from Nazareth has been excavated along the slope of a hill. If anyone says the contrary, they are definitely misinformed--or misstating the facts, or misleading you with ambiguous wording and careless omissions.

Unless you intend to argue that all these photos are fabrications, and Bagatti is a liar, the case is closed: Nazareth was built "on" a hill, in the sense that it resided down the slope of a hill. Everything else, about what a "basin" is and whether there are other hills, and so on, is a totally irrelevant discussion--the only relevant point here (which you seem to have lost track of) is that it is incorrect to claim that Nazareth was not built on a hill. Now, you can "interpret" Crossan and gang as saying this, or as not saying this. I don't care. All I care about are the actual facts: and the actual facts are that Nazareth was built on a hill. End of story.


Wrong. This is Crossan falling into shoddy wording and argument again. Bagatti says no such thing. To the contrary, Bagatti makes clear that his excavations were extremely limited and could not ascertain the borders of the town. And only two tomb areas have been found--one dating before Jesus, and the other dating after the 6th century. The problem is this: we don't know what was located in the 1st century where the 6th century tombs were built. It is possible those carved spaces existed in the 1st century (you can't date when rock is cut), but if so they were not then used as tombs. Stop. Think about this for a minute this time before jumping into conclusions.

The second necropolis was not a necropolis in the 1st century. I will repeat myself: The second necropolis was not a necropolis in the 1st century. Stop. Think about that for a moment this time. Ask yourself: how can Crossan claim the 1st century town was confined by a cemetery that didn't even exist! That's what I'm talking about. You didn't understand me. Hopefully you now get my point. I just don't trust Crossan's scholarship. Everywhere I turn I find him making bogus claims and faulty arguments. This is just one example. Maybe the 1st century town did end where that Byzantine necropolis was erected five hundred years later. We don't know. It is impossible to know. Therefore, Crossan is wrong to claim to know this.

But don't get me wrong: I am not trying to argue that Nazareth was any bigger than a small town with 200-400 inhabitants in the 1st century (it might have been bigger, but statistically that is unlikely given the actual nature of our finds there--e.g. water supply, agricultural space, etc.). But those who try to argue for a maximum of 200 are using faulty reasoning, by conflating historical periods.


I will repeat this for the last time: there is no way to argue what someone "would" do to make a Greek adjective out of an Aramaic word. I said this before. But you guys keep ignoring me. Everything spin tries to argue is pure conjecture--therefore, no conclusion can be based on it. In essence, any conclusion that relies on his conjecture as a premise is itself mere conjecture. And conjecture does not get us to the truth. The fact remains: nazarhnos is an acceptable adjective form of Nazara / Nazaret, and would have been recognized as such by any speaker of Koine. Anyone who argues the contrary is wrong. And all other debate about "other" ways such an adjective could have been formed is irrelevant to this point. It does not matter if the adjective could have been formed other ways. All that matters is that Mark and his readers would recognize and accept nazarhnos as an adjective of Nazaret, just as they would recognize and accept Hellhnos as an adjective of Hellas, and for the same phonetic reasons.


Here you guys play a shell game, trying to use Matthew to convict Mark, and using a completely different word form at that--one never used by Mark. That doesn't work--especially since Matthew alone claims to have found a prophecy that explains the detail, a point curiously absent from Mark (who simply states this as a casual fact). Thus, Matthew's form of the word derives from whatever (now lost) prophecy he claimed to have found. Yes, I agree, Nazwraios is very unlikely to be an adjective of Nazara or Nazaret, but note that Matthew doesn't exactly claim it is: he claims the prophecy said Nazwraios and then he "interprets" this to indicate birth at Nazareth. That's not a trivial point: because it is exactly what Mark doesn't do. So you can't use Matthew's word game to argue that Mark didn't say what he did.

We all know how fast and loose Matthew twists his prophecies to fit Jesus. This case is no different. Yet why would Matthew have to twist these prophecies, if he was simply inventing the facts they predicted? If he were simply inventing, he could invent exactly what the prophecy said, and thus not have to cheat. In this case, for example, he could invent a town called Nazor or Nazora. The only thing preventing him is the insurmountable problem that his source, Mark, already said it was Nazareth. If Mark had not said that, then Matthew would not have said it, either. It would never even occur to Matthew to even think of the word or town of Nazareth--unless, again, everyone knew this already, and so Matthew was stuck having to explain the truth, which therefore prevented him from inventing what he needed. Thus he tried to pass off a prophecy of a Nazwraios as a prophecy of a guy from Nazareth. Cheating, yes. But the only reason for such a cheat is to explain what Matthew couldn't invent: an origin at Nazareth.

Now, that does not mean the case is closed--it only means this line of argument is a dead letter. For there could still be some other reason Mark, for example, invented an origin at Nazareth, thus creating the claim that Matthew then had to "explain."

I still have not seen any good theory--or indeed any theory at all--in this thread as to why Mark or anyone would invent an origin at a town called "Nazareth." But off this thread I know of only one intriguing theory: Eric Laupot's argument is worth looking into, that Nazarene derives from Nezer, and thus the prophecy Matthew had in mind was Isa 11:1, "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch (nezer) shall grow out of his roots." Nazareth would then somehow be an Aramaic compound from nezer (all the more useful as a symbol if there was an actual town named "of the branch"). But this theory still has several problems. Relevant to this thread: it has the problem that this theory does not explain Nazwraios.

The facts are these:

(1) Nazarene is a valid constuction.

(2) Mark uses no other.

(3) No other gospel author uses this construction except Luke, who uses it only in two passages (one obviously from Mark, the other plausibly reworked from Mark, or if not, then probably from another earlier source--the Emmaus source, which I suspect was Markan in approach, i.e. a symbolic parable not intended to be history, but which Luke mistook or tried to pass off as history).

(4) There is no valid reason to believe Mark did not write Mk. 1:9.

Therefore, Mark, the first gospel, has no knowledge of Nazwraios, and no knowledge of a prophecy predicting Jesus' home town. Mark simply states his town as a plain fact, and then uses an acceptable adjective to identify Jesus by home town later on.

Now, this leaves the heavy use of Nazwraios after Mark: Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts all employ it, and employ only this (not Nazarene). Thus, after Mark, everyone changed the adjective, and changed it to one that doesn't make linguistic sense in context. Why? Your theory is (I think) that this was the original word, and that it means something other than "from Nazareth" (though I haven't seen anyone explain what it means, I agree it probably must mean something other than this). But if this was the original word, why does Mark know nothing about it, even though he wrote the first gospel, which even Luke and Matthew used? So your theory faces a problem, and therefore remains a conjecture, not a proven theory.

Is there another explanation? Yes. Suppose the prophecy Matthew refers to was indeed Isaiah 11:1 (or some lost work or version of an OT text that actually contained the word Nazwraios). Once this "prediction" became ideological currency, everyone might want to use the predicted term (some may even have started using it of their community, in the same way "Christian" came to be used). Thus, Nazwraios is a late development, not an original or early development. When Mark wrote, there was no Nazwraios. This theory has its own problems, but they are no worse than your theory.

There is yet another possible explanation: the Nazwraios prophecy (whatever it was) was indeed an early and original element of the creed (in the same way the rest of the OT was used to "discover" facts about Jesus). Then Jesus came along--from Nazareth. Someone put 2 and 2 together and started claiming (before or after his death) that the Nazwraios savior prophecy predicted this Jesus. Yes, the fit is awkward (as we can see clearly even in Matthew), but we know these guys had no problem with making awkward interpretations of OT texts into "predictions." And indeed the awkward fit is evidence in favor of this theory: as I said before, if Jesus didn't actually come from Nazareth, why would anyone invent an origin at Nazareth from Nazwraios? Why not from a fictional Nazor or Nazora? Why any origin at all? Why would a prophecy that the savior would be a nazoraian suggest to anyone a savior from a town called Nazaret? These are difficult questions--for any theory except this one. In contrast, this theory faces no problems at all--the only fact it doesn't explain is why Mark never heard of Nazwraios (a detail that argues for theory number two above).

Can we know which of the three theories above is correct? On present evidence, no.

Stalemate.

So you can't get anywhere with this line of reasoning--least of all to convict Mark 1:9 as an interpolation.

However, if one can make a good ABE for mythicism (as Doherty at least does by a small margin), then this ABE would justify the inference that an origin at Nazareth must have been contrived symbolically for some reason, even if we can't yet figure it out. But actually demonstrating the symbolic meaning, in a way that explains all the weird evidence above better than any alternative, would make Doherty's mythicist case even stronger. I am all for finding that solution. So far, as far as I know, no one has. Laupot has come the closest, but his theory still faces some unsolved problems.


No, I am not saying that. See how you keep misunderstanding me? I never said "huge" structures. Nor did I say there were roads or anything like that. What I have said is only this: there were many permanent structures (carved from the living rock, and not just tombs, but houses and ritual spaces and storerooms and/or workrooms), and there is evidence of an inexpensive 1st century stone synagogue (whose size cannot be determined, but was surely on the small side).

Finally, we cannot say "there was no X in Nazareth" because we have not excavated more than a fraction of the town. We can say "there is no evidence of X in Nazareth" but that does not entail "there was no X in Nazareth." Thus, any argument that requires the latter proposition is fallacious. Only arguments that formally follow from the premise "there is no evidence of X in Nazareth" can be valid (and when you do the logic right, you will see the arguments that derive from this premise are far weaker than what has been asserted here).

Moreover, any argument that uses the premise "there is no evidence of a stone synagogue in 1st century Nazareth" is false (because there is such evidence, even if it is not decisive), and any argument that uses the premise "there is no evidence of permanent structures in 1st century Nazareth" is false (because there is no doubt that there were: we have excavated numerous permanent structures carved from the rock itself--again, not just tombs, but housing spaces, storerooms or workrooms, and ritual areas).

Instead of trying to paint this issue as black and white and radicalize my actual position to an extreme straw man, listen to what I actually write. Please.


The distinction is a modern one, and therefore irrelevant. The word "polis" is a political category, and does not correspond to what we mean by "city." No ancient text, in or out of the NT, claimed that Nazareth was a "city" in the modern sense of a metropolis. The term "polis" was routinely applied to small villages in antiquity. Even the ancient term "metropolis" designated a political category, not the size of the settlement, though for social and political reasons I am not aware of any village being granted the title metropolis, so we can infer that any place called a "metropolis" was a "city" in the modern sense (i.e. a large urban area with monumental architecture, etc.). But no one called Nazareth a metropolis, or any word at all relevant to the issue (like the Latin urbs).


No one says there was. No ancient text, in or out of the NT, claims there was a "cliff" at Nazareth. The "brow" of an ordinary hill (like the one Nazareth is built on) could be cut or built upon to provide the Mishnaic requirement of a height of two men, for hurling the condemned. In other words, no cliff is intended by the word "brow," or required by the law or the context.


This is settled: it was built on a hill. I have confirmed it visually and from archaeological reports. To be built on a hill does not entail being built on the top of a hill--it only requires being built on a hill, and being built down the slope of a hill is being built on a hill.


Again, no one said anything about a "cliff." As to whether there was a brow suitable for satisfying the Mishnah law, yes, I have seen that in photographs: the brow of Nazareth's hill is steep enough that it would be simple to produce a height of ten to twelve feet (all that was required by the law) with a mound of stones or a wooden platform (or by cutting into the hill itself), and we would not likely have evidence remaining of this, since later construction and erosion would have covered or removed this evidence. Therefore "there is nothing I have seen in Luke or Mark that is contradicted by the physical evidence available."

Just FYI, there is a medieval tradition that puts the "precipice" alluded to in the gospels about a mile out of Nazareth (it is today named after that incident), but this is obvious bunk. The medieval Christians who invented this legend were ignorant of Jewish law and thus had no idea that a mere height of ten feet would suffice, and that Jews often constructed these heights to satisfy the law, and probably no such structures survived into the medieval period (or if they did, the inhabitants were unaware of their purpose--indeed, they may well have seen a pile of stones and just borrowed them for their own buildings). So they picked the most awe inspiring "cliff" they could find nearby and made up a story (never mind that the cliff they chose is almost impossible to ascend and is half an hour's walk from the town!).


The Jewish inscription of the 3rd century identifies it as such, as do Christian gazeteers from the 4th century. Maybe there were slight variations in Greek spelling, but that is normal when converting a name across alphabets. So I don't know what you mean to imply here.


Out of 240 towns, the Talmud names only 63. So why do you expect Nazareth to be included in those 63 but not the other 177 towns? As I said, this kind of argument is nonsense.


As they are silent about most of the towns in Galilee. You seem not to understand that an Argument from Silence requires the expectation of a mention. We have no such expectation. Therefore, no Argument from Silence can proceed. And since Jews apparently were calling the town Nazareth as early as the 70's (as attested in a 3rd century inscription about a late 1st century event), it is not true that "all writings outside the gospels are silent about Nazareth accross centuries" (of course, that statement is literally false, since Nazareth is often mentioned by Christians in the 2nd and 3rd century--so I assume you mean by "outside the gospels" instead "outside plausible influence from the gospels").


Hold on here. Who said I believed any of this stuff happened? You are here doing the same thing Doherty does and that I chastised him for in my review: conflating all historicist theories into the absurd extreme fundamentalist theory, as if there were no other historicist theories. Obviously most historicist theories today actually advocated by real scholars do not propose that any of these events actually happened, beyond what was going on all the time (e.g. exorcism was so common even Josephus describes their activity, and we know there were numerous magi and sorcerers and holy men going around purporting to heal and prophecy). Thus, it is fallacious reasoning to assume that Josephus would mention a town because a "great miracle worker came from there" when no one here is proposing that "great miracle worker came from there." If Jesus was not a great miracle worker, but just another holy man like every other, we could not conclude from anyone's silence that he did not exist or did not come from Nazareth.

Indeed, I'll bet Josephus had never heard of the man. But we can't argue that a man doesn't exist just because Josephus didn't know of him, or didn't think him important enough to mention. Fortunately, Doherty himself does not make such an awful argument in his book. I am surprised to see you attempting it, though.


Which crowds? Do you mean those "thousands"? If so, then obviously--because the story is fabricating the number for symbolic or numerological reasons. There probably were not thousands. But who said there were? The fundies, yes. But who cares about their crackpot theories? We are talking about serious, competent scholarship--what real experts say. And real experts do not say there were thousands following Jesus. Stop conflating fundamentalism with serious historical theories.

Vorkosigan

Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, p131-2.

• The modest architecture and scant building projects from the earlier period leave little evidence, though the site was clearly not planned in an orthogonal manner, nor is there any trace of a paved street across the entire site. Notable in this sense is what has not been found. There is no evidence of any public structures from the Early Roman Period. There is no marble nor mosaics nor frescoes from the period prior to Christian Construction in the post-Constantinian period. There are no public inscriptions whatsoever, instructive of the level of illiteracy and lack of elite sponsors. The only inscription from pre-Christian period is an Aramaic funerary inscription found in the tombs (CII2.988). And Nazareth did not, of course, mint coins, few of which were found duing the Franciscan excavations.
  
  In terms of private space, one of the notable problems is that the later Christian constructions have obliterated any evidence of homes other than the subterranean cisterns, storage bins, and caves. The fact that so little has been found leads to the conclusion that the houses themselves were rather poorly made of fieldstones and mud, with thatched roofs and coverings over caves. The entire area seems to have been preoccupied with agricultural activities. On the outskirts of the village, traces of terracing have been found, as has evidence of a vineyard tower. Inside the village, win-pressing vats with straining depressions, fermenting vats, and depressions to hold storage jars, along with grinding stones and silos are complement by simply locally made pottery and household items, without any trace of imported or fine wares from earlier periods. There are also no luxury items of any kind, though a few stone vessel fragments have been found."

I see nothing here inconsistent with the non-existence of Nazareth as a village. The only concrete evidence is for agricultural processing, which does not require habitation.

In any case I suspect this will all go by the board, as the site is in the hands of a fundy Christian group, so further discoveries are bound to be "made".

Theissen and Merz (The Historical Jesus, p217)

• Crowds of people had already flocked to John the Baptist (Mark 1.5, Luke 3.7 Q; 7.24, Josephus Antt. 18.118). A stereotyped feature of the picture of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is that a crowd (GR: hoxlos???) surrounds Jesus. Usually it is nuetral or positively disposed towards Jesus (cf. 3.7-12;3:20;4.1f;6.34, etc.) The term 'crowd' which often has negative connotations (e.g. in the term ochlocracy), is used positively in Mark. Things only change in the passion narrative: here we have the term which is sued on the one hand for a military 'division' (Mark 14.43) and on the other for the crowd which can be led astray by demagogues and calls for Jesus' death (15.6-14). Perhaps this is an indication that the passion narrative in fact formed an independent complex over against the other traditions. Mark's picture of Jesus cannot be completely unhistorical. Q could have contained references to the crowd (Luke 6.20 Q?, 7.24 Q); however, above all the double saying about Jonah and the Queen of the South presupposes that Jesus has a large audience (Luke 11:31f.Q). As Joh also knows the motif of Jesus' great success with the crowd (cf John 6.5, 14F; 7.48, etc.) and the proceedings of the Sanhedrin presuppose such success, this view could not have arisen without some support in the life of Jesus.

Looking at a few other books at random, EP Sanders seems to take it for granted that 'crowds flocked to him' (p160, Historical Figure of Jesus), Ludemann says that 'crowds' came to him (Jesus Y2K, p691).....

I think it is safe to say that 'real experts' do in fact believe thousands flocked to Jesus. Although they tend to use the term "crowds" as a vague cover.

Dead on.

Vorkosigan

Ted Hoffman

Carrier,

You claimed earlier that you had found "insurmountable evidence that there were numerous permanent structures [in Nazareth in the first century]".

When pressed to present this evidence, you wrote (a) "permanent structures carved from the living rock, and not just tombs, but houses and ritual spaces and storerooms and/or workrooms" and (b) "an inexpensive 1st century stone synagogue (whose size cannot be determined, but was surely on the small side)"

(a) reveals either a misunderstanding, or a trivialization of the meaning of the phrase "permanent structures" in the context in which it was used.
By your argument in (a) - where you are referring to tombs, even a natural shelter formed by an overarching stone is a "permanent structure". Finegan is aware that there were tombs carved from the rock and his book indicates that. I assumed that you knew that "permanent structures" (per Finegan) referred to architectural constructions made of durable material, not sculpured rock. Reed uses the phrase "public structures".

I have only read of a synagogue dated to the third century CE.
Didn't you write that (b) "is not iron clad proof of a 1st century synagogue"? In any case, we are not just interested in first century synagogue, but one that can be argued securely to have been standing before 30 CE in Nazareth. We do not have that. And having these so-called "calcite colums" would be inconsistent with the rest of the evidence, which reveals a small settlement of illiterate people preoccupied with argricultural activities. "Calcite columns" would indicate some degree of advancement in architecture (mining quaries, chisels etc etc - there is no evidence for these). We find very few inscriptions (hence a sign illiteracy). As Reed writes "The fact that so little has been found leads to the conclusion that the houses themselves were rather poorly made of fieldstones and mud, with thatched roofs and coverings over caves. The entire area seems to have been preoccupied with agricultural activities."

And even then, Reed and Meyers and Strange are stretching the evidence. As Vork has stated, evidence of human activity is not evidence of human habitation. People can work in the fields and go back to their homes.

Carrier:
I haven't lost track of it Carrier. But I agree that it is not important to the gist of our discussion. "on a hill" and "in a basin" are both consistent with what is known.

Finegan's diagrams show three tomb "areas". Yes, trivial but there you are.

I get your point. And I did understand you very well. You used Byzantine settlements (Christians) to challenge arguments about Jeiwsh settlements (Hellenistic).
Bagatti (1.29-32) states that they found "uninterruptedly ceramics and constructions of the Hellenistic period (c. 332-63 BCE) down to modern times"
Your earlier argument presumes that some tombs were marked as cementery while the rest were not used as cementeries within the Byzantine period - contrary to Crossan et al, who assume that the tombs constituted necropolies.

As noted above, you seem to be conflating the Byzantine and the Hellenistic period. The Byzantine settlements are not relevant to us because we are interested in the status of Nazareth in the early part of the first century. Not the fourth century.
But if your argument covers the first century, please provide evidence that supports it. Or why it is more probable compared with what Crossan and other scholars are assuming (that all the tombs were placed outside the village).

But you contradict yourself. You claimed "it is probable that the Byzantines started converting living areas to tombs when the original tomb complex became filled".
Then, below, you claim we cannot know.
With all due respect, if we do not know, we cannot state that Crossan is wrong on this. If we dont know, then we cannot comment. You not only comment, you categorically state that Crossan is wrong: you are standing in judgement.

For conflation of historical periods, please see above.

By the way Carrier, you do realize that, on this matter, you are not on the same footing with many scholars. You remember you set a standard for Doherty's ~BBCh with respect to "majority of scholars"?
I wonder whether it still holds, and to what extent.

I will come to your Bayesian formalism in a while.

You stated: "...Anyone who argues the contrary is wrong. It does not matter if the adjective could have been formed other ways. All that matters is that Mark and his readers would recognize and accept nazarhnos as an adjective of Nazaret"
You also write, in a rather contradictory manner, that "Yes, I agree, Nazwraios is very unlikely to be an adjective of Nazara or Nazaret". You need to clarify your position.

Either spin and the scholars I have cited (William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 1957 and Kittel G., Ed.,Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol IV, 1967 etc) are wrong and there is no problem, or there is indeed a problem.

You have implied that there is no problem and that everything is fine and dandy, then later acquiesced to a difficulty, posited different theories to explain it and then declared a stalemate between them.
This is not consistent. If we cannot agree that there is a problem, we have no starting point for the discussion.

Carrier:
spin responded to this as below and you did not respond to it. Though I do wonder how nazarhnos is an acceptable adjective form of Nazara / Nazaret. What would the root word be to be able to sustain all these variants?

I understand Amaleq's frustration because you failed to address the arguments regarding Capernaum being Jesus' hometown even though Amaleq provided two translations that support that. You left spin's argument largely untouched:
Spin:
Carrier:

It is called Textual Criticism. To call it "conjecture" is to caricature if this fine work spin is doing.
Zindler posited the same theory and we ruled it out.
The Isa passage has no zeta or a phonologically proximate Hebrew equivalent so the transition would be difficult to explain. But I am not the expert on this.

Spin wrote regarding it:
Carrier:
In my effort to bring out the contrasts between the alternative positions, I distorted what you said. I apologize for this error. I shouldn't have used the word "huge" in reference to your statements.

The argument is, "archaeological excavations show no X in Nazareth". Have you found archaeological reports that cite that there are certain sites in the Nazareth area that they have beeen constrained to dig?

Of course they cannot dig up the whole town. Huge boulders for example, are unlikely to have swords under them. Rocky areas are also not good candidates for excavation. They have looked at terraces, demolished the church (in 1954) and looked beneath it, they have looked at tombs etc. Reed states that "Christian constructions have obliterated any evidence of homes other than the subterranean cisterns, storage bins, and caves". He does not mention that there are certain ear-marked sites that are yet to be dug.

Does Bagatti mention any? Or what are you referring to?

4th century Christian gazeteers. Of course. Easton's Bible dictionary of 1897 says: "Nazareth...is still identified with the modern village en-Nazirah, of six or ten thousand inhabitants". In a 1912 map of the city around Nazareth, it is called En Nasira. But it is a trivial issue and would be glad to let it rest.
Josephus also wrote (Life of Flavius Josephus, 45) that "the very least of them [these 240 cities] contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants"

Whether or not W. B. Smith, A. Drews and G.T. Sadler, T.K. Cheyne made nonsense arguments depends on what Nazareth is supposed to have been.
And that is why Christians argue that it was a very small hamlet with around 300 people. To make it an insignificant city and explain away Josephan silence.
But the Christians also want to agree that 4,500 people were fed by Jesus as per the gospels, and at the same time argue that Nazareth was a small hamlet. Those were the people Drews et al were arguing with. This hopefully answers your point below:
Whether or not an AfS is valid depends on how one views Nazareth relative to the rest of the villages.

Nobody. I was just explaining the background of the argument.
Could you provide us with a list of "serious, competent scholars"? In NT Sholarship, outside Price, Doughty and not more than handful others, the rest, like Sanders, Wright and Meier, are apologists. Crossan (yes, Crossan) does try to be liberal , just like Fredricksen, Funk, Mack and the rest, but they have all inhaled the deadly fumes of the gospel tradition and it has coloured their vision.

They also employ pick and choose theology. They pick what seems reasonable from the gospels and reject what is not. Crossan even developed a methodology and arranged the sources per stratum. Vork has made a name for himself for his remarkable ability to see through the beautiful tapestry of Crossan's sweet rhetoric, to extract the devils that lurk behind them.

And now, here I am, tussling with you over Acts. More later.

I think you have handled this very well. Thanks.

Vork:
Yeah, they should be asked to vacate the place and allow "real" archaeology to be done.

Amaleq13

I think Mr. Carrier agrees with your second sentence and that is why he feels free to declare Crossan wrong when he not only comments but appears to make a firm assertion without the necessary qualifications given the uncertain nature of the evidence. IIUC, Carrier is saying Crossan is wrong to make the assertion as though it was supported by the evidence.

Ted Hoffman

If the nature of the evidence is "uncertain", then Crossan's conclusions are not wrong, but lack support.
If he interprets the little evidence incorrectly, then he is wrong. If the evidence contradicts Crossan, Crossan is also wrong. My contention is that Carrier faults Crossan based on the manner the tombs were used in the Byzantine era.

Ted Hoffman

To be absolutely clear, Carrier may be right to state that Crossan is wrong to speculate. That is fine. But proving Crossan's speculations are themselves wrong requires contravening evidence - or a demonstration that his logic is flawed. I understood Carrier to be doing the latter (Amaleq appears to have been defending Carrier for doing the former) and Carrier's argument was that "it is probable that the Byzantines started converting living areas to tombs when the original tomb complex became filled" and therefore, not all the tomb areas were necropolies at the same time.

But the problem with Carrier's argument is that Reed's argument (which Crossan merely echoes) assumes a strongly Jewish setting in the Hellenistic period and not a Christian one in the Byzantine period.

The relevance of this is that in the Mishnah, Shekalim 1, one becomes unclean by coming close to a grave, hence graves must be marked with lime. see Numbers 6.6, 19.16, 19.11. This shows an aversion to, or at least superstitious avoidance of graveyards and it is therefore likely that the inhabitants would have sought to have the graves at the farthest ends of the village. In Oholoth one becomes unclean by coming in contact with the stones that seal graves.
So, assuming a strongly Jewish community inhabited the area, the tomb areas would be at the "limits of the village".

So, was Nazareth occupied by people who were strongly Jewish? Finegan indicates that 23 tombs have been found. 18 being of the kokim type which was known in Palestine from 200BCE. 2 tombs contained objects from the first to 3rd century CE. 4 tombs were sealed with rolling stones, the type used by Jews up to 70 AD. Finegan concludes from this that Nazareth was a strongly Jewish village.

Note that this is contrary to Gospel tradition which implies that Nazareth was a gentile area. Remember "can anything good come from Nazareth?" I hope I am not being tedious. I have already conceded that, the argument that Luke is incorrect to claim there was a cliff in Nazareth, is itself false (except for one minor detail below). I also make more concessions below. Carrier argues very well and nailed arguments are nailed arguments.

The discussion on Nazareth, a mere icing, has been protracted, perhaps at the expense of BBCh, which is the cake. But IMO, it is important and I hope Carrier agrees. I checked the International Critical Commentary on Luke, Edited by Plummer A., Rolles D. and Briggs C, 1969.
They write the following regarding Luke 4:29:

• Tradition makes the scene of this attempt to be a precipice, varying from 80 to 300 feet in height, which exists some distance to the S.E. of the town...but modern writers think a much smaller precipice close at hand is the spot. Van der Velde conjectures that it has crumbled away; Conder, that it is hidden under some of the houses. Stanley says that Nazareth is built upon, that is, on the side of, 'a mountain'; but the brow is not beneath, but over the town, and such a cliff is here implied to be found, as all modern travellers describe, in the abrupt face of the limestone rock, about 30 or 40 feet high, overhanging the Maronite convent at the SW. corner of the twon...The town is on the hill but not on the brow of it: the brow is above the modern village...
  
  The whole attempt to put Jesus to death was perhaps an instance of the form of punishment which the Jews called the "rebels beating", which was somewhat analogous to the Lynch Law. The "rebels beating" was administered by the people, without trial and on the spot, when anytone was caught in what seemed to be a flagrant violation of some law or tradition. Compare to John 8.59,10.31 and Acts 21. 31,32.
  Edersheim, in The Temple, p.43, says that in Stephen's case, a formal trial seems to have ended in "the rebels beating"

This must be a very poor commentary because the whacked out reasoning employed by some of those "writers" is not worthy of appearing in a commentary.

But I wanted guidance of the Mishnaic law Carrier was referring to. I did not manage to find it. I am using The Mishnah, Translated by Herbert Danby, Oxford University Press, 1933.

I looked at the Index. There is no entry for "punishment", "lynch law" or "brow". I found entries for "death" and "stoning".

Sanhedrin 7 gives four kinds of death penalty: stoning, burning, beheading and strangling.

There is no option for throwing someone off a cliff.

Stoning is found in Yeb. 8,6, Ketu. 4,3, Sot. 3,8, B.K., 4,6, Sanh. 6,7,9,10, Edny. 6,1 and Nidd. 5,5.

I hope Carrier can point me to the Mishnaic reference he alluded to.

Now, as I approach the BBC let me state that I am impressed by Carrier's clarity of thought and expression. I am also glad that the reference "Doherty and Hoffman" is changing to "Doherty and gang" because I have shown that a number of NT scholars support ~BBCh and therefore, Doherty is not a lone voice in this.

I don't want to botch up this and I hope I am qualified to defend Doherty's thesis, especially in the face of a relentless historian who is as serious as a heart attack.

Let me make some concessions beforehand:
Carrier states:

• Hoffmann likes to advance theoretical entities as if they were facts in evidence. That is not how historians do things. To the contrary, we are specifically told not to argue in such a way. For example, Hoffmann claims that "Preachers in Q" represent an independent "Christian cult." Really? We don't even know who wrote Q, what was really in Q, when Q was written, or what its writers believed! How, then, can this theoretical "community" (for we cannot even claim to know it was a "community," rather than a single person, or isolated tradition shared by many communities) constitute a separate "sect"? We can't even establish that the Q texts were Christian (as opposed to pre-Christian wisdom literature incorporated into the Christian tradition at its origin or afterward).
  
  Hoffmann says "the fact is that the Lost Sayings Gospel Q was used by the evangelists" but so was Daniel and the Psalms and Enoch, none of which are Christian texts. He is simply putting the cart before the horse and assuming Q represents a pre-Christian sect instead of a mystical sayings tradition shared by many Jews that was later "reinterpreted" as being the voice of "the" Jesus "seen" by Cephas and gang. Hoffmann's assumption is no more demonstrable than the other. And unproven theories cannot be used as "facts" to argue a case.
  
  Nor even if Q came from Christ-believers (which is an unproven theory, not a fact) can Hoffmann establish what he wants--that the text derived from any sect that did not derive from Paul or Cephas. He says Q never uses the term "Christ" and excludes a creed, but why does that permit assuming its author did not believe in Christ or the Creed? A list of sayings of the lord is just that: a list of sayings of the lord. It cannot be assumed that such a list would necessarily include a creed, when its very genre is to include moral debates and apocalyptic wisdom instead. Likewise, an author could certainly choose the style of starting each declamation with "Jesus said," and that stylistic choice would not entail the author did not also believe this Jesus was the Christ, or that he hadn't died and risen again. Again, that the author of Q did not believe such things is a theory, not a fact. Again, you can't use theories as if they were facts in need of explanation.

IMO, Carrier has nailed the argument I made. In any case, it wass too tenuous. The highlighted "likes to" above, though, is not warranted.

Carrier writes:

• don't need Acts to argue for BBCh (you will notice it is conspicuously absent from my Bayesian argument above). Nevertheless, Acts does support BBCh, and offers no support for ~BBCh. Conversely, think if the situation were reversed: if Acts clearly represented multiple independent movements and advocated one of them as the true movement, then Acts would be evidence for ~BBCh and against BBCh. Therefore, whatever weight you would give to Acts then, you must also give to Acts now--though in the opposite direction.
  
  In Bayesian terms, the effect of this support is not great, since the content of Acts can still be explained on ~BBCh to a probability greater than 50%, though the probability that ~BBCh would lead to the content of Acts that we have is not 100%, whereas the probability that BBCh would lead to the content of Acts that we have is effectively 100%. I would assign the P(Acts/BBCh) to around 0.99 and P(Acts/~BBCh) to around 0.85 at the most (and that is being generous, e.g. I am assuming Luke had a strong motive to lie and actually did lie and no one caught him in his lie, not even rival Christian sects as far as we know, and I am assuming that all of these things had a surprisingly high probability of transpiring). But Acts is not an isolated fact, so any Bayesian argument must provide a P(E/H) for the total E, and not just E = Acts, and when we do that, the effect Acts has on P(E/H) overall is not great enough to bother (it makes a difference of only a few percentage points).

I agree with this. I think it is reasonable.

Now, onto Tacitus, Pliny and Bayes' Theorem :wave: .

By the way Vork, do you think Q existed? - as a written source I mean. Your off-the cuff opinion. I haven't read Goodacre and Goulder. And haven't found time to read Tuckett.

Vorkosigan

No. The arguments for Q even Q-supporter Tuckett characterizes as "negative arguments." I posted the argument from Beelzebub a while ago, although Andrew came along and sloshed cold water over it by pointing out that the Greek made my argument problematical. Here I think is some suggestive positive evidence against Q from a thread on the Mark-Q overlaps a while back. If you want to start a discussion about Q, we should track down the posts from that conversation/food fight/marital argument Doherty and I had at JM on the issue and post that here. I've been running down the Mark-Q overlaps but I can't seem to find a clear list anywhere.

spin

What I find interesting about Richard's response is that he doesn't actually deal with the Nazareth argument at all, content for example to pass over his error regarding the indication that Capernaum was seen by the Marcan writer as where Jesus had his home. It's strange that the writer thinks that Capernaum was where he lived (while explaining nothing regarding the already mentioned Nazareth) when Richard wants to believe that the writer believed that Jesus came from Nazareth. Why Richard wants to believe that in the face of what is said about Capernaum is still a mystery to me, especially when the Matthean writer accepts the Marcan view that Capernaum was his hometown, explaining, because of an external commitment to Nazareth, that Jesus moved to Capernaum... and thus fulfilled another prophecy.

The next thing Richard omits to tell us is why Matt. doesn't contain reflection of one of Mark's references to nazarhnos. As Richard is quite happy that Matt. plays rough, why doesn't the writer not just change nazarhnos to nazwraios (as Luke has done twice, though, contrary to Richard's opinion, Luke maintains one example of nazarhnos)? Why leave them out, when he has shown quite a willingness to follow his source except when it is either poor Greek or obscure?

What Richard seems to present is a writing of Matt. in one fell swoop, but I argue for a series of steps in the writing. One reflects a first approach to the source, which probably included the removal of obscure materials, such as references to Herodians, the omission of the naked young man, the detail about Abiathar when David ate holy food. Along with these obscurities Matt. left out nazarhnos. (But Richard doesn't seem to have thought about why it was left out, seeing that his writer would understand the reference because he already had Nazareth, didn't he?) But left out these things were. At this point I conjecture that Matt. got its Nazareth material in a second instance, when the birth narrative was added and hence the reference to nazwraios based on a simple error on the word naziraios found in the LXX of Jdg 13 dealing with the birth of Samson.

As to Richard's strawmen ( :rolling: )

Well, no. This is just silly. Are we dealing with people working with the Hebrew text as would be suggested by a connection with Isaiah 11:1? If so, we would expect some knowledge of Hebrew and there is simply no meaningful linguistic process to get from NCR to nazwraios. One would need to explain why one of the root radicals, the tsade, which almost invariably gets transliterated as a sima, ends up a zeta, while there is no long vowel in the original Hebrew to account for the omega in the Greek. If we are dealing with the Greek, then the explanation is simply irrelevant.

This attempt simply doesn't explain the presence of nazarhnos in Mark or its lack in the synoptic material in Matt.

A little extra information about the problem (mainly seen from the Alexandrian tradition):

1. Luke only has Nazareth in the birth narrative, though it does have Nazara in 4:16.
2. Matt. also has Nazara in 4:13, but more importantly at 2:23 three early witnesses, Origen, P70 and Eusebius, give Nazara there as well.

Nazareth is plainly not part of the synoptic tradition. In fact if #2 is correct the only places we find Nazareth are in the birth narrative of Luke and in Matt.21:11. Without the strictly Lucan birth narrative we have three uses of Nazara and one of Nazareth in the synoptics. This certainly does not reflect a solid early tradition supporting Nazareth at all. In fact that one presence of Nazareth is the problematic form, which couldeasily be accounted for by later casual scribal intervention. Nazara, which occurs in both Matt. & Luke early in the Marcan material, give the form priority. Yet it is that form which is plainly derivable from nazarhnos, by 1) assuming that it is a gentilic and 2) removing the gentilic ending to get Nazara.

Much of Richard's musing bears little on our subject due to its giving misplaced importance on the presence of Nazareth in the synoptics. What we actually see is consistent with an initial term nazarhnos as found in Mark. So let me now indulge in some musing as well.

While the Matthean community was first adapting Mark (including the removal of obscurities), other communities have back-formed the name of a home town from nazarhnos, which eventually reached the Matthean community and either then or later the Samson naziraios passage (stating that he will save Israel, with its perceivable play on the name Jesus -- "Yah saves") gets interpreted as a prophecy and is used as the glue for Matthew's birth narrative. At some later stage when the name Nazareth was assimilated into the tradition, perhaps because the town of Nazareth, which either long existed or was founded, came to the attention of the writers who couldn't locate this Nazara and who decided that the two must have been the same place.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Thanks Vork. It is a complex matter. :banghead:
I have been leaning towards this.

Carrier wrote regarding this:
Any reaction spin?