Juststeve

Yes, for the most part, and I appreciate the courtesy with which you’ve conducted yourself during this conversation.

Steve

aa5874

I am not here to convince people ONLY to show my position and the DATA that was used to support my position.

There is just NO evidence external of the Gospels and apologetics for a CITY called Nazareth.

And if we examine gMatthew it will be noticed that the so-called Messiah Jesus did NOTHING, ZERO, in Nazareth or ONLY the non-historical baptism in the River Jordan and the non-historical Temptation by the DEVIL in a WILDERNESS is recorded before he left Nazareth.

The very first time the author of Matthew mentions the CITY of Nazareth is the very LAST verse of gMatthew 2. 23.

The next time the author mentions NAZARETH is in Matthew 4.12 when Jesus has left the CITY of Nazareth and now supposedly lived in Capernaum because of another so-called prophecy.

Matthew 4.12-14 So, from the time he arrived in the CITY of Nazareth to the time he left we KNOW nothing of his life in the CITY itself. ZERO. And in about one year after he moved to Capernaum he would be crucified.

Virtually all of the supposed life of Jesus in the CITY of Nazareth, minus about a year and the time in Egypt, cannot be accounted for in gMatthew.

The theory that there was a CITY of Nazareth is extremely weak during the days of Pilate since not even one event surrounding Jesus can be directly placed in Nazareth.

The baptism of Jesus with the DOVE and the Holy Spirit was in the river jordan and the temptation by the DEVIL was in a wilderness.

What did Jesus do in the CITY of NAZARETH?

Not one thing.

spin

Just to be spiteful, I changed the six to a seven. :devil:


spin

Petergdi

How many cities and towns does Josephus say were in Galilee?

How many of the cities and towns of Galilee does Josephus mention by name?

If the answer to the first question is much larger than the answer to the second question (and it is), what does that tell you about the significance of not mentioning a certain place?

Peter.

aa5874

It really does not matter if Josephus did not mention every single city, town, village, or cave in Galilee.

What is significant is that Josephus who lived in Galilee does NOT help to show that there was a CITY called Nazareth.

A theory is NOT usually supported by one single piece of DATA and not every piece of information has the same weight.

So far the evidence for NO CITY called Nazareth during the time of Pilate is better than the evidence that there was a city called Nazareth.

1. There were NO prophets in Hebrew Scripture who claimed the Messiah Jesus would live in the City of Nazareth.

2. There is NO mention of a CITY called NAZARETH in Hebrew Scripture.

3. Josephus a Jewish writer who lived in Galilee mentioned cities, villages and and even a cave in Galilee did NOT mention a city called Nazareth.

4. In the NT Jesus did NOTHING in Nazareth although he should have lived there from chilhood to at least the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius or for about 25 years.

5. The author of gMatthew is not credible. This author made claims about Jesus that are known to be fiction.

gurugeorge

Did Matthew conceive of the entity he was talking about as a failed Messiah (and hence he was making excuses for him)? That's a bit of mind-reading right there.

I rather think it's obvious that "Matthew" was making a case that he was a successful Messiah, in fact THE Messiah.

But who was the "he" in question? Was this "he" someone who "Matthew" had known personally (or knew people who knew personally - i.e. a historical human being), and "Matthew" was showing that this person had been foretold in Scripture; or was this "he" an entity he believed had existed on the strength of Scripture?

Big difference.

Juststeve

guru:

I don't think the author of Matthew knew Jesus personally. I don't think any of the Gospels were written by eye witnesses. I think Matthew was written about 80 of the common era and was based in large part on Mark plus other sources, verbal and perhaps written if Q was real.

No, I don’t think he considered Jesus a failed Messiah, that’s my characterization. I’m pretty sure though that he knew Jesus didn’t succeed in the anticipated sense and was trying to shore up his credentials with passages from the Hebrew Bible.

When I was young my Rabbi told the class that when Messiah comes it won’t be necessary to check out his credential in the Bible. It will be obvious to all the world that the Messiah has come. He was talking about the Jewish Messiah though, not the Messiah in the sense Christians claim for Jesus.

Steve

spin

So, Juststeve, do you accept the notion that before Jesus was believed to have come from Nazareth, he was believed to have lived in Capernaum?

Mk 2:1 clearly states his home was there.

Mt 4:13 feels the need to move him from Nazareth to Capernaum.

When the Lucan writer rewrites Mark he turns the unnamed hometown rejection scene from between the raising of the little girl and the mission of the twelve to prior to the Capernaum material, naming the unnamed hometown "Nazara" in the process and rejecting the Capernaum home tradition.

Gospel	(rejection)	Capernaum	Girl raised	(rejection)	Mission
Mark	-	1:21ff	5:35-43	6:1-6a	6:6b-13
Luke	4:16-30	4:31-37	8:49-56	-	9:1-6

The funny thing is that when the hometown rejection (referring back to the events at Capernaum) was moved before the Capernaum scene, it still contains the secondary reference to Capernaum, making 4:23b anachronistic. The forward placement of the hometown scene along with its Lucan clarification that Nazara was where Jesus grew up and the removal of mention that Jesus was at home at Capernaum is certainly aimed at a different solution to the problem Matt resolved regarding the two homes by moving Jesus from Nazara to Capernaum.


spin

stephan huller

Hi I have just read what appears on this page about this debate. I am not sure if the name Marcion has appeared in this discussion but as I accept the Marcionite recension as the earliest gospel narrative it is worth noting that the tradition makes no reference to Nazareth. Ephrem makes clear the passage read 'Bethsaida' rather than Nazareth for Luke 4.16 - 30.

It is worth noting that the Marcionite gospel and the Diatessaron version of the story known to Aphraates have a strange docetic character (he passes through the crowd clearly because he has no physical reality). Aphraates allusion in Demonstration II reads:

And he showed the power of his majesty when he was cast down from the height into the depth and was not hurt.

The editors of Aphrahat rightly saw an allusion to 4:29f. The Arabic Diatessaron however follows the canonical narrative much closer:

and they rose up and brought him to the brow of the hill upon which their city was built that they might cast him from its summit but He passed through among them and went away.

The point of course is that the docetic character of Jesus is still present but the story has been greatly modified from Aphrahat and the Marcionite original.

I think Nazareth was an invented place name to distract from the esoteric meaning of the titles Nazarene or Notzrim. Ancient people were identified as 'from somewhere' i.e. 'Paul from Pittsburgh' the fact that Jesus wasn't really from anywhere as a problem (since the older tradition believed that Jesus was a heavenly hypostasis).

Doug Shaver

Prove it. Quote anybody arguing against Jesus' historicity who says that the gospel details of Jesus' life actually do match messianic prophecies in the OT.