Mathetes

Not sure how this fits in the whole thing, but the Septuagint has ...ἡγιασμένον ναζιÏ?αῖον... in Judges 13:5, with an iota.

Judges in the Septuagint

So if you are right and the iota changed to an omega, that did not happen through the Septuagint, but through some other way directly from the Hebrew.

spin

As I tried to indicate this is an orthographic problem with the written Hebrew of the period: it was hard to tell the difference between YODs and WAWs. They were both usually downward strokes though the WAW was longer than the YOD. The length was irregular during the period which concerns us.


spin

Vorkosigan

Brown (Birth, pp209-10) writes:

And so most of the questioning has centered on the form Nazoraios, which has its clearest analogy in adjectives referring to sects or parties, e.g., Saddoukaios and Pharisaios, "Sadducee, Pharisee"; and indeed in Acts 24:5 Christians are called "the sect of the Nazoraioi." This fact has led to the suggstion that Jesus was called a Nazorean, not beause he came from Nazareth, but because he belonged to a pre-Christian sect of that name. Disputable evidence is found in later Mandaean writings for a group related to JBap's movement calling themselves nasorayya, "Observants" and in later Church fathers for a pre-Christian group called Nasaraioi. However, all of this is very speculative and perhaps unnecessary. Such highly competent Semitists and exegetes as Albringht, Moore, and Schaeder, in their articles cited in the bibliography, argue on purely philogical grounds that the form Nazoraios is quite defensible as a derivation from Nazareth, if one takes into account dialectal phonology in Galilean aramaic. Nevertheless, if one accepts as coorect Matthew's contention that Jesus was called a Nazorean because he came from Nazareth, Sanders, "Nazoraios," is correct in insisting that this does not exclude a secondary messianic association of the term and that it was remembered precisely in the form Nazaoraios (not Nazarenos) because of that secondary association. Thus, the following theories, though often presented as alternatives to the Nazareth theory, need not be so."

Brown then goes on to discuss the possibility of derivation from Nazir and Neser

Here's a discussion of the problem on the ANE list (some unrelated stuff got stuck in there):

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DI...998/v1998.n112

Ted Hoffman

Thanks spin,
I dont know if "Matthean tradition" has any real meaning because, to my knowledge, Matthew used Mark as unfashioned wood: he copied Mark, moved events, corrected what he thought was as wrong, omitted what he thought was inappropriate, and shaped the euangelion to suit his theological agenda.

The word "tradition" assumes a pre-existent set of oral or written concepts that have been transmitted over time. We have no evidence for that with respect to Matthew. Or do we?

Your revision of the three steps seems fine to me.

Good. But we need a time frame. In order for the hypothesis to be complete.

You are right. But damn.

He leaves "Mark's tradition that Capernaum was Jesus' home town ". I dont know whether that is equal to "he accepts Mark's tradition that Capernaum was Jesus' home town". Because their side-by-side existence creates an inconsistency. The human mind does not sit well with dissonance so I think its implausible that he "accepted" it. Thats why Goodacre's editorial fatigue, with a modified meaning, can explain the presence of the two traditions in the same text. Or we can chalk it up to sloppy interpolation, hurried or incomplete interpolation, hostile passage (a passage that isnt easy to alter - I made this up etc.

I have taken the liberty to share some of Zindler's response so here goes.

Zindler's Response

"I am not certain what the discussion of "gentilics" has to do with Price's brief discussion of Nazirite vs. Nazorean on the pages cited. As far as I can see, Bob is merely reflecting the century-long scholarly consensus that the two words have nothing to do with each other etymologically. "Nazirite" comes from the Hebrew root NZR, spelled with a zayin, whereas Nazorean/Nazarene/Nazara/Nazareth derive from some other, unagreed-upon Hebrew or Aramaic word. While opinions differ as to the actual source word, most scholars have argued that it had to have been spelled not with a zayin but rather a tsade, in order to account for the word Notsri (Christian) in Hebrew and equivalent names in the other Semitic languages.

The question as I see it is not whether "Nazorean" or "Nazirite" is a gentilic, but rather how and why these terms came into being and how they were used in antiquity. While the term Nazirite is well documented, its usage well understood, and its etymology is probably beyond question, the same can not be said about the Nazarene cluster of words, none of which is known before the NT.
Nazareth as a place is unknown outside the NT in the first centuries BCE and CE.

So, whence came the Nazarene words? I am quite convinced that they all derive from the Hebrew word NETSER (shoot, sprout, branch) and refer specifically to the use of that word in Isaiah 11:1: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch (netser) shall grow out of his roots."
(Archaeological support comes from the murals on some earliest Christian church walls, which show pictures of detached branches, clearly representations of verse 11:1.)

It is perhaps of interest to note that the Isaiah Targum version of this verse does not use a cognate Aramaic word for netser, but rather renders it as Mashiach (=Messiah=Christ). It seems clear that the Targum writer imbued the term netser with messianic color when he read it in his Hebrew Vorlage.
When we consider the fact that Epiphanius claims that before Christians (literally "messianists") were called Christians they were called Jessaeans, clearly the branch from the roots of Jesse of Isaiah 11:1. Epiphanius also must have spelled "Jessaeans" in the same way as "Essenes" (parallel to Nazoreans vs. Nazarenes) in that he relates the Jessaeans to the Therapeutae of Philo, and most scholars equate the Therapeutae and Essenes.

I have argued that "Jesus of Nazareth" was originally just two Aramaic titles, not a name at all: Yeshua' Netser, meaning "the Savior, the Branch," and that Jesus of Nazareth is a literary construct derived from Isaiah 11:1. I have dealt with this problem in two popular-type articles available on the American Atheists Web-site <www.atheists.org>. "Where Jesus Never Walked" deals with the non-historicity of Nazareth in the first century. "How Jesus Got a Life" deals with the transformation of Yeshua' Netser into Jesus of Nazareth. You may wish to read these if nothing more than to understand better my position.

There are many points crying out for more detailed examination. For example, spelling variants in earliest manuscripts are probably very important for inferring etymologies. The Syriac texts of the gospels and Isaiah need to be scrutinized for etymological clues. More needs to be learned about Aramaic/Syriac dialects to understand the perplexing vowel shifts that affect the Nazarene words. The a/o ambiguity in the Masoretic pointing system is also probably relevant, but I can't immediately think through all the implications.

Concerning the formation and use of gentilics, we must never forget that real languages rarely conform to the rules and expectations of grammar books and text books. The great Oxford English Dictionary is a model for the description of an actual language living and evolving. Unfortunately, we have far to little material surviving from antiquity to be able to do the same for Aramaic, Hebrew, or even (to some extent) Greek. Koine was an extremely polymorphic phenomenon as far as I can tell, and there are many questions that may remain unanswered forever."

Since Spin's hypothesis draws from the Alexandrian text (P70/P. Oxy. 2384, IIRC), I have encountered criticism that the Alexandrian text is corrupt. On further enquiry, I got these:

Arguments about The Unreliability of the alexandrian text

a) readings mostly from two oddball texts that disagree with each other and most all other manuscripts
b) 95%+ of the Greek manuscripts are Byzantine
c) the alex manuscripts themselves are scribally corrupt (cross-outs, changes, redactions,etc)
d) the paradigms of textual criticism that raise them up are flawed, and there is historical evidence that the paradigms themselves were accepted for the purpose of lifting up the alex
e) generally the ECW and the Aramaic give a lot of early support to the supposed late Byzantine readings, even the papyri, although from Egypt, often support Byz readings.
f) alexandrian readings are often illogical, inconsistent and inaccurate
g) even within a true textual criticism paradigm, the byzantine readings would still be taken (Professor Maurice Robinson)

Ted Hoffman

I had earliet posted:
I have since been alerted that this is incorrect. I had in mind Meier's citation that Nazareth experienced a "refounding" in the 2nd century BC as appears in Marginal Jew, Vol 1, p. 300-301 where Meier cites a paper by Meyers and Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity.

spin

1) writers come from communities; you don't get lone penmen.
2) I wouldn't assume that only one person is responsible for any of these texts or their redactions. I don't use "he", but "they".

If anyone can go beyond the relative chronology I've set out, I'd be happy to know about it, but the evidence suggests that we don't have the pegs to hang it on, ie no precise time frame.

If the writer(s) didn't accept it, why not do what Luke does and edit it out?

I don't know what you said to him, but the discussion on gentilics was that one cannot conclude from the suffix that a word indicated a sect or group. Itt was simply a gentilic suffix.

He's in no position to include nazwraios in the list. We only have it in nt Greek, so he is going beyond the evidence into his own belief. In fact nazwraios can't be justified as part of it at all.

I agree with this relating to those terms, excluding nazwraios.

(and nobody said either was a gentilc term, just that they had gentilic suffixes.)

This is one of the two terms I have advocated as the sources of nazarhnos, which I have no doubt about. The other you will be aware id NCR (same spelling) indicating "to observe, keep, watch" (as in the law).

This name "Jesus of Nazareth" was not original to the synoptic gospel tradition. We have to wait for the second redaction of Matt or the redaction of Luke till you get it. Perhaps we should be referring to Jesus the Nazarene ihsous o nazarhnos as we find for example in Mk 10:47.

I don't have access to other Syriac texts but the Peshitta is not helpful at all reducing all the variants into one linguistic perspective.

I don't see much here. The think that needs to be confronted is where the omega in nazwraios came from and I don't think the transliteration process into Greek can be any clearer. The omega is almost certainly from a WAW. It's not a matter of pointing at all.

All in all though it seems that there is a lot of substantive agreement between us. I do however separate nazwraios from the others (and relate it to NZYR, but for the rest they are all connected to the Hebrew NCR.

The one thing that hasn't been discussed is the fact that all the forms in Greek have a zeta, although the vast preponderance of words with tsade transliterated into Greek have a sigma. I've given examples of exceptions, but in this complex of words it is not the exception but the rule to use a zeta.

There is a well-honoured analysis in textual studies which says that the more difficult reading is the one to follow. The scribal tendency is to smooth out differences, not create them. There are many odd forms in the Alexandrian tradition which help us understand the earliest text. People prefer things to be smooth, but it's counter the real world. The Alexandrian text tends to be mainly reflected amongst the earliest of manuscripts.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Unless there is a comitee from each community that comissions a writer to write their collective opinion, its risky to assume that the opinions of one unknown, unnamed author represents homogeneous ideas of a concrete group.

Look at patristic writings and so on - the writers are people who hold certain ideas and they seek to influence their communities by promulgating the ideologies they hold through persuasive articulation and argumentation.
In most societies in antiquity and pre-enlightenment years, many people didn't openly espouse and express specific ideologies - they watched the spectre of opinion leaders challenging opposing traditions, then they chose and followed or talked about them at the fireside.

Maybe Matthew was an opinion leader from where he hailed from. Opinion leaders, who are often more enlightened than those around them often embrace new, non-traditional ideas.

I believe redactors work in isolation and dont consult communities about what to redact and what to leave intact. Buy "they" is applicable wrt multiple redactors.

The argument is, there are many possible explanations for an unexpected failure to edit out a word other than acceptance of the word. I believe there are other incongruous things that Luke 'failed' to edit out. It wouldnt mean he accepted them.

Is NESTER and NCR the same word?

spin

Patristic literature as we have it is after most of the nt writing and does not represent the same genre of literature. We have moved from anonymous, collaborative literature dealing with how communities manifested their cultic beliefs to individual intellectual efforts commenting on what came before and what that meant to the present.

I find it is wiser to work with a they, in order not to make assumptions about the writer. The more we concentrate on the work, the fewer mistakes we make with such assumptions -- unless you can find a way of learning things about the writers from other means than the way they write.

Redactors reflect the knowledge of the community.

Let's go with the way Matt handles it. At the end of chapter two Jesus is sent to Nazareth. In 4:13 he is packed off to live in Capernaum. If Matt doesn't accept it, why does Jesus get sent to Capernaum?

Boyo, you need to pay more attention. I've said that the "C" I use in this transliteration is the Hebrew letter tsade (notice the first two letters and their order?) Let's take NCR and substitute a digraph "ts" for the "C" and we get NtsR. Now Hebrew of the era didn't have vowels, they only wrote consonants, so there are a number of possibilities as to how they may have manifested the word, but let us assume, and there is some reason to, that the common inserted vowel in such a situation is an "e", so let's do that nowNetseR. Got it?


spin

rlogan

Been following this with great interest. It has not changed a core position for me - that Nazareth was selected as another "close enough for Jesus" pseudo prophecy fulfillment.


The final redaction supports that thesis in Matt 2:23

And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.


It is not necessary that the prophecy be quoted correctly. Look at all the other cases of prophecy taken out of context, distorted, and mistranslated. Sloppy is the rule. The masses are not checking up on their work. Nobody can read.



When all is said and done with respect to the "three-step" hypothesis being constructed here, a place name is substituted for a word that means something else. It is related to a prophesy that is not a place name.


The only challenge I can think of to this thesis is a weak one - that there actually was a Jesus from Nazareth. If so, that does not change at all that the prophecy sluts distorted a prophecy. There isn't one about nazareth. And since Nazareth wasn't much more than a cemetery, Jesus of Nazareth doesn't hold much water.


If the word originally started out as either "branch" (of David/Jesse?) or "Keeper", we still have Jesuis being constructed out of HB material. It is a little more complicated getting to Nazareth, but the thesis does not change.


What other motivation could there possibly be for the final redaction to Nazareth?

Ted Hoffman

Yeah.
Ya know, there once was Robert Nester Marley. And there was the Rastafarian movement.

You got me.

I do wonder though...how come the Matthean community had to rely on Mark 98% for what to write?