S.C.Carlson

I might not using it any technical sense, but just that I thought his connection of Matt 2:23 to Jg 13:5 was a little too arbitrary for my taste.

Goulder argued that Matthew took �?αζι�?αῖον ἔσται ("he will be a Nazirite") of Jg 13:5, manipulated it according to a "Jewish tradition that the vowel letters yod and waw might be interchanged for 'interpretative' purposes" to get �?αζω�?αῖος ("Nazorean"), modified the ἔσται ("he will be") to κληθήσεται ("he will be called") since Jesus was really a Bethlemite, but then failed to complete the logical and use the real gentilic for Nazareth, �?αζα�?ηνός ("Nazarene") because "that would be obvious cheating"! So, Matthew backforms �?αζω�?αῖος ("Nazorean") into �?αζω�?ά ("Nazora"), and reasons "there is no place called Nazora, but Nazara is close enough to pass muster."

Well, if "obvious cheating" were a problem, the author of Matthew was already too far down that path to be worried about it.

As for being a "problem in any source hypothesis," it just means that Goulder's failure to persuasively account for Matt 2:23 is not a fault of his source theory. Matt 2:23 is in special Matthew and accounting for it is a difficulty in every source theory.

Stephen Carlson

Ted Hoffman

Thanks Stephen. That was helpful.