Riverwind

I have been there and the modern Nazareth is certainly built on mountians!

Steven Avery

Hi Solitary,

Google will find a lot. ("Caesarea Maratima" Nazareth inscription) and here are two good posts on IIDB, March 2006, the first two paragraphs, by mens_sana (the third paragraph of the first post gets into the Nazareth locale, on which YMMV).

mens_sana
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...95#post3286495
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...15#post3288115
Caesarea Maritima inscription re Nazareth split from If you believe in a HJ...

Philosopher Jay asks some reasonable questions however overall there is nothing that casts any real doubt about this indicating a 1st and/or 2nd century Jewish city of Nazareth in Galilee. A very hard row to hoe if one thinks the Christians fabricated the city in the 1st century . And that is why I got no substantive response to this question from Rene Salm (how and why did the Jews coincidentally set up a supposed new town with the same name as that of the home town of the rejected Messiah) . None is possible. Well maybe you could come up with some super-convoluted and fanciful conjectures, a very poor base for supposed non-existence or non-historicity.

Anyway a realistic approach would never raise this Nazareth historicity issue since all the four Gospels agree, they are extremely reliable on such issues and beyond that there are no Nazareth geographical or physical anomalies for concern, not even in the alexandrian error-laden text.

However it is understandable to a point that a skeptic would request outside collaboration (considering the Josephus silence) to still their unease, their concerned minds. And the Caesarea Maritima inscription gives that in spades, mas que suficiente (dayenu).

Oh, the most interesting question is actually whether this priestly-refugee movement would have been after 70 AD (destruction of the Temple) or after 130 AD (Bar Kochba rebellion). You will see two different views on that and both views can have reasonable historical support. If anyone thinks they can help with that question, please share away.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Riverwind

If Nazareth did not exist in Jesus time, then what are the explanations for why Luke would have written what he did, considering people could have discovered the truth? Why does this seem to be a question the last century or two when much archaeological evidence may be gone or buried under layers of earth under the vast spread of white multi-storied apartment buildings built on the rolling mountain top that is modern Nazareth?

Ted Hoffman

Nazareth is not the only place whose location was unknown (if it was indeed unknown). Golgotha, the allegedly empty tomb, Arimathea, Gethsemane, Dalmanutha - nobody knows where they are. Welcome to the New Testament.

spamandham

Going just by pictures, it looks to sit in a valley surrounded by rolling hills, but I've never been there. Are there cliffs there?

spamandham

You are merely assuming that the SINGLE gospel, upon which all four are based, was written as a historical record, rather than a work of period fiction/legend.

What is your basis for assuming that stories filled with fantastic accounts were written as historical records rather than something else? Even though the Gospels contain some actual history, and some actual geogpraphy, that doesn't imply they were intended to be historical. Most fictional stories contain some actual history and some actual geography, including Homer's works.

Solitary Man

Why not? Is there something in the text that says we should take it as something other than history? Do we dismiss all of the Iliad because of its fantastic accounts? What do we keep? What is lost to history that we can only assume once existed? Do we turn lost history into myth? Is that really appropriate?

Yes, which is why many scholars take what Homer says about geography seriously. We need critical minds, not dismissive minds.

Solitary Man

PS - forgot about Q? traditions? paul? what?

Riverwind

I suppose it depends upon what you think of as a cliff, but from what I saw, I'm sure there are places where one could be thrown from a precipice.

In one place we visited in modern Nazareth, where there was a 1st century olive press, there was a very steep and rocky hill, one you certainly couldn't just walk up upright.

spamandham

All ancient documents have historical value, but that isn't the same as saying the author intended them to be historical accounts.

Sure, the Iliad contains actual history, and actual geography, but it also contains fictional history, and fictional geography. This is expected considering it's a legendary story.

If Mark is a legendary story as well, the author would be expected to invent nonhistorical aspects and fold them in... things like, a guy walking on water, or people being raised from the dead, a virgin birth, etc. If this were simply the result of mythmaking, it makes little sense that it all follows a pattern established in the Jewish scriptures. You would expect it to be less cohesive. On the other hand, if it were written as fiction, you would expect it to be pretty much what we see.

It seems the pro-Nazareth crowd is summarily dismissing the salient points of the argument, in favor of an argument from consequences.

Nazarreth is not an incidental city listed as an asside. It plays a central role.

If the result of holding ancient documents to the same standards we hold modern documents is that we have to give up a lot of cherished beliefs, then oh well. I have never seen anyone give anything but the same argument from consequences you are giving, as to why we should have virtually nonexistent standards regarding ancient texts. People make shit up. Is this a new phenomenon, or it reasonable to conclude ancients did it as well?