aa5874

Well, what folly from Ehrman.

"Paul", supposedly the earliest writer, did not even say Jesus lived in Nazareth and Paul mentioned Jesus Christ over 300 times.

Ehrman is employing logical fallacies.

Ehrman must know that the Gospels can be stories of a character called Jesus of Nazareth and has nothing whatsoever to do with an actual person living in Nazareth.

And the very Gospels which claimed Jesus lived in Nazareth did NOT described Jesus as human which is PRIMA FACIE evidence that we are dealing with a story rather than history.

There is NO doubt that Jesus of the NT could NOT have lived in Nazareth based on the very description of Jesus of Nazareth, the Child of a Holy Ghost and a woman.

Ehrman KNOWS that he needs Credible external evidence from antiquity for Jesus of Nazareth instead of dabbling in false dichotomies.

Toto

Without reading the thread, I can tell you that these are not "mainstream" thinkers. They are participants on an internet debate board.

Mainstream thinkers entertain different hypotheses of history all the time without getting bent out of shape.

This is primarily the case where the "mainstream" has its own ideological agenda.

I have tried to explain why the evolution-creation debate is completely different, but you keep repeating this. Creationists have no logical arguments and resort to lying and pseudologic to disguise the fact that they have a purely religious agenda. Mainstream scientists might get angry, but they can construct a logical argument based on evidence to defeat creationism.

In the historical debate, the mainstream engages in as much, if not more, bad arguments, and does not have the evidence to defeat its challengers. The mainstream has more in common with creationism than with scientists promoting evolution.

You can't even get that right. They believe that Jesus was from Nazareth because it is embarrassing and they have invented this criteria of embarrassment that they like to use. There is no plausibility to it, and it is based on taking the gospels as historical documents.

Plausibility seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

ApostateAbe

Yes, I remember that thread. Spin knows the Koine Greek, which offers him a rhetorical advantage over those who don't know the language. In the end, of course, the strength of the respective arguments count for the most, not merely the learnedness of those who argue.

The key evidence, that spin takes to be in his own favor, are the variations of the spellings of "Nazareth" and "Nazarene" found throughout the gospels. spin takes these variations of spelling as countering the expectation that "Nazareth" emerged from a centralized Christian tradition, and he claims that "Nazareth" was therefore a late addition to the tradition.

It is a non sequitur, however, and in fact the multiple attestation counts for a strong argument that the tradition was original to the founders of the Christian myth. We don't expect many traditions to make the same assertion independently.

So, how do mainstream thinkers explain the variations in spelling? It actually already fits what we believe about the gospels--they were all ultimately sourced from oral legends that went from Aramaic to Greek without any easy standard of transliterating--the two languages had starkly different methods of pronunciation. This means that a single obscure name in Aramaic can have many different pronunciations when it goes to Greek. If Nazareth were a large city like Jerusalem, then the authors of the gospels would simply consult other texts to find out how it is normally spelled. But, for the name of an obscure rural town in Galilee that has never been written in Greek, then we would actually expect many different possible spellings for "Nazareth" and "Nazarine," and that is indeed what we find.

spin does not seem to have anything to say about that argument, unfortunately, except for insults and dismissals.

Those arguments have to do with spin, specifically, but the argument that Jesus really was from Nazareth is grounded in the multiple gospel accounts that say that Jesus was from Nazareth, without any known Christian interest that Jesus should have been from Nazareth, except of course for an alleged messianic prophecy that the community of the gospel of Matthew apparently made up. It was a small rural town that hardly anyone knew about, and other early evidence indicates that there was some prejudice against it (John 1:46). Further, it fits the bigger picture of Jesus, his disciples, and John the Baptist being rural Galileans. So, the hypothesis that Jesus really was from Nazareth meets the criteria of explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility and less ad hoc.

Toto

It would be more accurate to say that archaeology cannot identify Nazareth. There were no signposts or government buildings. The site that is taken to be Nazareth was in inhabited at various times, but has no evidence of habitation during the early part of the first century.

There are very strong financial motives for everyone in the area to think that Jesus lived there, so tourists will come.

PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

This is a pretty good argument.

Might I suggest that the capitalization of certain words doesn't add to the argument. Capitalization of words is a little like shouting, it is good for getting somebody's attention, but makes paying attention to arguments harder.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Toto

It offers the advantage of knowing what he is talking about.

Multiple attestation requires different independent sources. Why doesn't Paul know anything about Nazareth? Why does Nazareth only enter the Christian myth so late?

He's like those scientists who insult the creationists who don't know what they're talking about.

Abe, you are running on without a shred of logic. You can't use the gospels to prove the gospels.

ApostateAbe

If Nazareth existed in the second century CE, and a myth or a fictional account written in the first century refers to it, then it most certainly existed in the first century CE. It would be kind of analogous to a text of Pride and Prejudice known among historians in 4000 CE referring to the town of Brighton in the early 19th century, and they have archaeological evidence that Brighton in southern England existed in the 20th century. You conclude that either Brighton existed in the 19th century or it was founded in the 20th century on the southern coast of England being inspired by that story. Both are possible, but one possibility is far more probable than the other.

dog-on

What if it existed after, say, 50, but the post 70 writers didn't know it?

Toto

This does not follow. And we don't know that Nazareth existed in the 2nd century except for an inscription that is much later.

How can you judge probability? Especially if it looks like Brighton/Nazareth was built up as a theme park to attract tourists who are Jane Austen fans/Christians?

ApostateAbe

"Multiple attestation requires different independent sources. Why doesn't Paul know anything about Nazareth? Why does Nazareth only enter the Christian myth so late?"

Well, we don't actually know whether or not Paul knew about Nazareth. The most we can conclude is that we don't have any of Paul's writings that contain a mention of Nazareth. If we were expected to have such writings, then maybe that point would be significant. The gospels were the first biographical sketches of Jesus, and of course that is where we would most expect the hometown of Jesus to be mentioned.

"Abe, you are running on without a shred of logic. You can't use the gospels to prove the gospels."

Huh. That is a weird thing to say. I am explaining the myth, and you can't explain the myth without the myth.