spamandham

Except that it doesn't, which is why the mythical origin idea was invented. The small hamlet speculation does not fit the gospel descriptions of Nazareth.

The gospels describe Nazareth as having a reputation of being a city of ne'er-do-wells. Insignificant hamlets that are so small as to escape both the textual records and archaeological records do not have reputations.

Small hamlets that are so small as to escape such records would be very unlikely house a "crowd" as is described trying to throw Jesus off a cliff in Nazareth, or to house a synagogue, which were very rare in this time period (50BCE to 100CE.) according to Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni, because "Jews during that time were in the habit of visiting the main temple in Jerusalem three times a year as opposed to attending local houses of worship."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/...gue/index.html

The 'small hamlet' idea is clearly contrived for the specific purpose of being untestable.

ApostateAbe

OK. Do you distinguish the passages that are widely agreed to be interpolations by Greek Christians from those that are not? Like I said, the writers of the gospels did not know how big or small Nazareth was. They only knew that it was the identifier of Jesus, because it was the only important thing about the place. The small hamlet theory is chosen because it is most likely given the evidence we have.

GakuseiDon

Here are Richard Carrier's comments from a thread in 2005. I'm not sure whether this is still his view. He goes through the evidence and then concludes (emphasis in the original):
http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives...=59493&page=20

The bottom line: there is absolutely no doubt that Nazareth existed in the time of Jesus. Also, there is nothing I have seen in Luke or Mark that is contradicted by the physical evidence available (i.e. even if we reject the evidence there is, we still have no evidence against what they say was there, while if we accept the evidence there is, what they say was there appears to have indeed been there).

Perhaps one might still dispute whether this town was called "Nazareth" in the time of Jesus, but it is extremely improbable that Christians could have successfully renamed it in time for the Jews to accept it as the town's name in a 3rd century inscription identifying Nazareth as a town receiving priests in the late 1st century. Jews would not let heretics rename a Jewish town after a blasphemous mythic hero's birth place, nor would they accept such a name change even if the Christians persisted. Thus, the fact that Jews had no problem with the name in the 3rd century, in reference to an event that took place there in the late 1st century, argues against the town being called anything other than Nazareth in the early 1st century.

spamandham

From my perspective, the entirety of the Gospels are the work of Greek Christians. :huh:

How can we possibly know what the writers did or didn't know about Nazareth? All we know is what they wrote about it. And in those writings, Nazareth is not depicted as a tiny hamlet, so the 'tiny Hamlet' idea is a contrived explanation.

Once you go down the road of saying that Nazareth was not what the gospels describe, you have stripped the author of his credibility on the matter. It then becomes equally valid to speculate that this same confused author might have confused a later city with an earlier one, or confused a transliteration of a sect name with a residence name, or that maybe the author was not confused at all, but intentionally used a city he knew didn't exist or as Joe Wallack has suggested, used the name of a graveyard.

GakuseiDon

Carrier, in the link above, says this:

Carrier writes: "there is nothing I have seen in Luke or Mark that is contradicted by the physical evidence available"

Toto

GDon: Archaeology is not Carrier's specialty. Please stop recycling quotes from him as if he were the final authority, unless you want to produce something more recent.

If you look for threads on Nazareth (search for Nazareth in the title) the previous discussions on this topic have gone into some depth on the actual evidence available.

spamandham

Sure, but what's at issue is not a conflict of the physical evidence with the Gospels, but rather, a curious absence of evidence. Nazareth is absent in any textual reference prior to the Gospels and there is an absence of archaeological evidence of Nazareth as a city prior to ~300 CE.

It's possible that there was a tiny hamlet called Nazareth, and that the Gospel authors just didn't depict it correctly, but is there any reason we should prefer that conclusion over other alternatives involving a similarly unreliable author?

spin

I personally view the existence of Nazareth as a red herring. If it didn't exist, where did the name come from (considering the evidence that the earliest literary form was Nazara)? The form doesn't reflect a purely literary tradition: obviously we can backform nazarhnos -> nazara, as the former appears to be a gentilic from the latter, but why Nazareth? How did we get it, if there were no source for it. It's easier for me to see a real world correction from Nazara to Nazareth, because at least there was a Nazareth. One usually doesn't improve towards the more obscure.


spin

spamandham

Under the assumption that Nazareth was a real city in the early first century, couldn't we ask the same question in regard to the name of that real historical city? How did people come to call it "Nazareth"?

GakuseiDon

Is there in fact a 'curious absence of evidence'? I'm not an archaelogist, I guess you aren't either, and I don't know anyone on this board who is. We all stand on the shoulders of giants (or at least jump up and down on the shoulders of people who have deluded themselves that they are giants). So, what do the giants say about this, in terms of an unexpected silence? To wit:

1. In what works is Nazareth unexpectedly absent as a textual reference?
2. Where exactly is there an unexpected lack of archaeological evidence of Nazareth as a city prior to ~300 CE?

They aren't rhetorical questions, I honestly don't know. It would be good to establish that there is an issue that needs to be resolved, before attempting to resolve it.