Steven Avery

None of these have any real significance. They are mostly efforts to come up with an argument out of very little and two are only from the skeptic presups. You are welcome to share which one or two you think are really important. Five convoluted, tissue-weak arguments are far worse than one with a little pizazz.

Luke and other Gospel writers list 100-200+ cities, islands, historical places and such accurately. Most cities and towns are pin-pointed archaeologically today (although less so 100-150 years ago) yet some smaller ones, like Nazareth and Cana, are not. By the track record the Gospel accounts have a prima facie historicity when any geographical locale is mentioned, to anyone using common sense. And not one locale really has a substantive case for non-existence. Not one. (This Nazareth canard became the skeptic cause célèbre.) And on top of that all the Gospel writers agree on Nazareth. The idea that they all were fabricating one town, the place mentioned frequently as the home of Jesus, is skeptic fluff-nonsense.

So all that is more than sufficient without some overwhelming geographical problem being referenced (e.g. if the NT had said "Sepphoris of Judea" or "Nazareth of Judea" one might say oops, major problem). And any attempts to find such problems anywhere are only in the modern-version minority text, such as the pig marathon. And even those don't involve Nazareth.

On top of that, if you really needed more, you have the Caesarea Maritima reference, totally independent of the Gospels. Confirming a first and/or 2nd century Nazareth in Galilee.

So then the Nazareth mythicists have to have a theory for the coincidence of how a city was fabricated by Gospel writers - and then the Jews initiated a new city with the same name in the same region locale as indicated in the book of the rejected Messiah. Yoiks.

(Yes, I asked Rene Salm about this and did not get a coherent response. You are welcome to try.)

And there is a Julius Africanus reference through Eusebius that has to be part of le grande conspiracy. Maybe a DSS reference too but really the whole enterprise of claiming "non-existence" is so silly that more is totally unnecessary. The all-gospels NT references are far more than sufficient, since there are no difficulties (big city, wrong region, conflicting geography, etc). Yet for any still struggling the Caesarea Maritima reference should convince even the most hardened skeptics to drop a nonsensical claim of non-existence.

On the supposed negative side the only one you mention of real potential significance, as I pointed out above, is Josephus. However he omits a lot of smaller towns and never claims to be giving a complete map of Galilee. His omission would only be important if the NT had pictured Nazareth as a metropolis.

The only reason this discussion goes on and on is because (1) and (2) above get mixed. Common sense is often lacking, and clear logic in argumentation as well. Of the historicity of Nazareth there is no doubt, unless you are looking to make a case against the NT out of basically nothing.

Now, you are welcome to spend trillions of bytes discussing Bagatti and Pfann and this and that but they really are side-issues. The historicity of Nazareth is not dependent at all on pinpointing its locale, nice as that would be.

As I said, I think it is very possible that the town was not in the Nazareth basin that was given the 4th-century identification. However all that is simply an auxiliary question to historicity, the constant raising of which shows only the utter desperation of the skeptic crew when trying to come up with an attack against the NT historicity and geography.

Shalom,
Steven

Casper

I thought I would comment on the site in question. It seemed to have an air of denigration rather than enlightenment. I don't know how to explain that really except that I find the same sort of thing in Archaya S' screeds, whom I notice is listed as a prominent source for the material it contains.

Not a good sign IMO.

spin

No, it's somebody who studied the subject long enough ago to have lacked a lot of more modern approaches to archaeology. This doesn't change the fact that you are merely headhunting, when you should be being more critical. Modern archaeologists tend to pull the legs of the work of earlier archaeologists, especially those of the pre-Kenyon era. You'll note, I said "For his time he was as much of an expert as anyone."

I've listened to a few archaeologists rip de Vaux apart, but for his time de Vaux was proficient.


spin

spamandham

The skeptic position arrose as result of these, not the other way around. I certainly can't convince you they are significant if you choose to declare they are not.

...and they talk about dead men being raised, people walking on water, etc., not to mention that Mark contains several geographical blunders, and there are also anachronisms and historical errors, so what's one more mistake?

There's one key difference between Nazareth and all these other cities, which is that the author thought he required a city of Nazareth in order to demonstrate the fulfillment of prophecy. I see no reason to rule out poetic license in a story filled with magic and fantasy.

Your argument is completely spurious. You might as well argue that since there are thousands of ordinary events duly recorded in the Bible, therefor all ordinary claims are true as well. Actually, I think that IS your position if I recall.

The nonexistence of Nazareth is not an extraordinary claim. All that's needed is a reasonable argument that fits the evidence. The nonexistence of Nazareth is more parsimonious than its existence, if you do not assume the Bible was intented to be a historical document.

What else would you expect considering they are all based on a single prior source?

This is the only substantiative point you've made. I'll have to dig into this one.

spamandham

So after investigating this a bit, it seems that the reference in question is actually dated to the 3rd/4th century, and the reference refers to events from the 2nd century after the Hadrianic war. But, this time frame (3rd/4th century) coincides with the time frame in which the the well known as "Mary's well" was discovered. An interesting question then, is which came first, the inscription, or the discovery?

The inscription aids the case for a 1st century Nazareth, but not much, considering it's hundreds of years after the fact.

So far then, your case consists of the gospel records, this inscription from ~300 years after the time in question, and the declaration of "Mary's well" by Empress Helena from that same time period.

Solitary Man

To spare everyone else from doing the same amount of work discovering this, do you have a citation for your conclusions?

Ted Hoffman

You got a point there.

spamandham

It appears to be discussed in "The Historical Jesus", by J.D. Crossan, which I think is the same reference praxeus is using. ("appears", because I haven't read the book) .

duretti

Cheers guys.

My main interest is really the rise of christianity, and how it occured. The claims of how the church rewrote history are what really interest me.

I'm a bit out of my depth following the discussion, but as I understand it:

1. The sites spottiest claim is that nazareth didn't exist in the first century.

2. Going (as I do) by burden of proof resting on the positive claim, the total evidence for a first century nazareth is:
a) the gospels
b) some guy in the third century

Plus all the places ken claims evidence for nazareth should have shown up, but it didn't?

Jack the Bodiless

It seems pretty clear that the modern "Nazareth" is NOT the one described by Luke (built on a mountain, with a cliff that Jesus was to be thrown off). Which leaves three possibilities:

1. The modern Nazareth existed in the 1st century, but Luke was wrong about its geography.

2. There was no Nazareth in the 1st century.

3. There was another Nazareth elsewhere in the 1st century.

Thus, it seems entirely reasonable to speculate that Nazareth was "invented" later, and even an early reference to Nazareth might be referring to the hypothetical "other Nazareth". And if Luke was merely writing fiction, the whole issue seems moot... who really cares whether the fictional event was set in a real town or not?