Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

I found a comment by Carrier on the "Debunking Christianity" board from 2009 (my bold below):
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspo...stence-of.html

Josephus says there were hundreds of cities in Galilee. He names only a fraction. The last argument is therefore a non sequitur (typical of Nazareth ahistoricity nonsense circulating on the web, don't fall for this stuff). The first argument is refuted by an inscription of the 3rd or 4th century A.D. establishing the existence of Nazareth as a haven for refugee priests after the Jewish War (and that can only mean the first war, since the temple was then destroyed and unmanned, not later). This inscription was erected by Jews (not Christians) decades before Helena, and certainly reflects data from the 1st century (I can't imagine where else it would have come from).

Your middle claim could be true (some peer reviewed discussions of late seem to concede the possibility that there is no definite evidence of an early 1st-century Nazareth), though there is a difference between not having evidence and the town not being there. Personally, I find it hard to believe the town would suddenly appear and get that name just in time to take in priests after the first Jewish War (entailing a narrow window between 36 and 66 A.D. for its founding or renaming, but if it could happen then, why not earlier?). I know Salm has arguments against all this, but they don't seem that strong to me (in his book, in fact, all he has are mere possibilities, and some quotations of Schürer, a long-dead historian whose assertions were often vague and speculative and whose work has been rendered largely obsolete by more recent scholarship on the 1st century and Judaism). I leave it to the experts to debate the matter. Until there is a consensus against an early 1st century Nazareth, we should be skeptical of claims to the contrary.

I don't think that Carrier sees Salm as a crank, but as an amateur with interesting ideas that are often speculative.

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Not sure if he has got anything specifically from Price, but the core of Carrier's argument apparently borrows from Doherty's celestial being idea. It will be interesting to see how they differ.

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml where another of these totally non-existent Professors opines about Jesus.

At least, Ehrman doesn't know of the existence of any Professors who want to examine the historicity of Jesus.

Originally Posted by Philip Davies

The new collection of essays Is This Not the Carpenter (or via: amazon.co.uk)¹ represents something of the agenda I have had in mind: surely the rather fragile historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth should be tested to see what weight it can bear, or even to work out what kind of historical research might be appropriate. Such a normal exercise should hardly generate controversy in most fields of ancient history, but of course New Testament studies is not a normal case and the highly emotive and dismissive language of, say, Bart Ehrman’s response to Thompson’s The Mythic Past (or via: amazon.co.uk) shows (if it needed to be shown), not that the matter is beyond dispute, but that the whole idea of raising this question needs to be attacked, ad hominem, as something outrageous. This is precisely the tactic anti-minimalists tried twenty years ago: their targets were ‘amateurs’, ‘incompetent’, and could be ignored. The ‘amateurs’ are now all retired professors, while virtually everyone else in the field has become minimalist (if in most cases grudgingly and tacitly). So, as the saying goes, déjà vu all over again.

* * *

... Still, both history and theology converge on a proper answer to this: the historical Jesus will always be a fabrication, and the search for him antagonistic to true religious belief. Yet some peculiar literal-minded historicist brand of (largely Protestant) Christianity finds impossible the temptation to replace the icons of Orthodoxy or statues and images of Roman Catholicism with the One True Image of the Lord: the Jesus of History. The result: poor history and, dare I say, even poorer theology.

Originally Posted by outhouse

My conclusion of Nazareth after a few years of study, is that it was more or less a jewish work camp for the oppressed labor force to help build Sepphoris

Part of my evidence is the word Tekton which in this time properly translates to day laborer. Reed states these were displaced people who lived a life below poverty, and with the negative comments of Nazareth in the NT it makes sense, that displaced people who were the poorest of the oppressed lived there in squalor, pretty much forced to work in Sepphoris to eek out a miserable life after the taxation of romans, the crooked Pharisees, and the crooked land owners who also exploited the jews....

Originally Posted by outhouse

thats because he busted her chops so bad, due to some of the worst historical work ever done on the subject

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Ehrman says in his book that Luke made up those speeches in Acts. He cites them because they indicate an early belief that Jesus only became "son of God" after his death and exaltation. This is a Christology counter to Luke's own, so Ehrman calls it an exemplar of an authentic pre-Lukan belief, but does not say they are actually authentic speeches. merely representative speeches.

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Outhouse, Thomas Verenna has come a long way since his Rook Hawkins days. Probably worth a relook.