archibald

But....but...I thought...you liked history? :wave:

Seriously though, I only responded to it because someone else seemed to raise it, and suggest it may not have existed. I wasn't even sure why they did myself.

If you like, you could consider it part of my curiosity about how people reason. Thinking it likely Nazareth did not exist at the time (for whatever reason).....would not seem to be a particularly good position, for me.

And I can't say I'm particularly taken with citations of Rene Salm either. Not after having spent some time browsing him.

maryhelena

You are mixing up two gospel stories here - adding a birth narrative to an earlier gospel which did not have a birth narrative. Stick with gMark - and gJohn - and you don't have to come up with arguments against a nativity story in Bethlehem. Don't add assumptions - is that not your clarion call here?

Without a birth narrative - without gMatthew and gLuke - it's pure assumption to assert that Jesus was born in either Bethlehem or Nazareth. The earlier Jesus storyline does not say where he was born - that's it folks - no place of birth in gMark and gJohn.

maryhelena

Yep, I like history

In the case of Nazareth - I simply don't find arguments over whether it existed or not to be relevant to debates over the historicity of JC.

MCalavera

Matthew and Luke depend on Mark in various passages. They're connected.

That's not a new assumption.

We have Matthew and Luke for the birth narratives which are shown to be fabrications.

Doesn't mean we don't have those birth narratives.

You didn't get it at all, so join the club of those who don't get it.

archibald

It doesn't seem quite as simple as that to me maryhelena.

The question still has to be asked, why Nazareth, in a fiction about a messiah. Why not Bethlehem?

(I do believe he was only 'supposed' to 'come out of Bethlehem', so the birth thing may be a distraction)

archibald

Now you're just repeating yourself unnecessarily, given what I said. Which was to agree.

maryhelena

Your right there - I don't get what on earth it is you are trying to say...

Christianity, early christians, were able to function, for some time, prior to any notion of a birth narrative in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a later addition. (and Marcion was having nothing of it - and cuts the Bethlehem nativity out of his version of gLuke). So, do a Marcion and cry foul re Bethlehem - fabrication and all that....You are still left with Nazareth and no gospel statement that Jesus was born there.

maryhelena

:notworthy:

MCalavera

Why do you think they survived in the beginning without the Bethlehem doctrine?

Could it be because Jesus was historically from Nazareth?

Atheos

I read your post carefully. I'm non-committal on the HJ/MJ issue. There are elements of the story I'm convinced are fictitious but I'm not in any way opposed to the possibility there could have been a historical core behind the legend.

However I see two glaring problems with your argument as presented here.

1. You have yet to address the very real possibility that "Nazareth" was the result of inadvertent word play as the legend propagated orally. This is a very likely and parsimonious explanation of the evidence. Being a "Nazarene" had nothing to do with geography. Instead it was accomplished by complying with a particular lifestyle regimen. It would only take one person along the way to be unfamiliar with this detail for the word to become a place of origin for the subject of the legend rather than a descriptive lifestyle choice. This possibility is heavily supported by the very real fact that "Nazareth" as a place is never mentioned in history until these legends have had several decades to gestate orally.

2. This explanation still doesn't address all the evidence. it only addresses the evidence contained in the canonical gospels + acts, all of which are likely to be inbred. There is no argument from either camp that by the end of the first century CE people were talking about "Jesus of Nazareth." There is also no argument that many of these same people were asserting that this individual walked on water, healed blind people, raised the dead and floated off into the sky to disappear in the clouds. In this case we have obvious fabrications alongside possible truisms. The mere fact that there was no "Theological Purpose" in this man being from Nazareth does not obviate the possibility of a neutral claim being appended to the core set of beliefs through the mechanism described above. Add to that the very real dearth of evidence that there was a place called "Nazareth" during the time in question, alongside the silence of any earlier christian writings on the issue and there remains a strong possibility that the legend of Nazareth developed in a parasitic fashion alongside the legend of Jesus. To me this seems the more plausible, parsimonious and overall simplest explanation.

Finally, whether or not this city ever existed and whether or not this man was claimed by some to be from it is quite possibly trivial beyond measure. It does nothing to bolster or undermine a historical Jesus core.