andrewcriddle

NO NOT AT ALL

Sorry for being misleading I was trying to transliterate Hebrew
(CH) represents Chet
(TZ) represents Tzadi
(TH) represents Tau

as I said the ONLY doubtful letter in Nazareth is the initial N

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

The article does not make explicitly clear Avigad's grounds but I can't see what else they could be
Given that the inscription is claimed on other grounds to date from the 3rd or 4th century it is unlikely (if this is true) to be associated with a 5th century rebuilding of the synagogue.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi andrewcriddle,

This is extremely helpful. Thanks.

Can you tell us what fragments 2 and 3 say?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

It might be safest of course to give the letters one at a time by their names, but there is a standard internet transliteration system of Hebrew into ascii:

)BGDHWZX+YKLMNS(PCQR$T
) = alef (sometimes represented with an apostrophe >'<)
B = bet
G = gimel
D = dalet
H = he
W = waw
Z = zayin
X = chet
+ = tet
Y = yod
K = kaf
L = lamed
M = mem
N = nun
S = samek
( = ayin (sometimes written with a forward single quote >`<)
P = pe
C = tsade
Q = qof
R = resh
$ = shin/sin (sometimes written with two separate symbols -- & = sin --, but ancient Hebrew only used one letter)
T = taw

This means one transliteration letter equals one Hebrew letter as originally written.

Nazareth would then be NCRT.

The "TH' for taw is derived from the Greek theta which was often used for taw in Greek transliterations of names and the simple "T" makes for clarity.

(Ancient Hebrew didn't use anything other than the letters alef, waw and yod to indicate any vowels. Hence transliterations with vowels often seen aren't in fact transliterations, but modern pronounceable representations of the words.)


spin

Jake M

more about it here
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

What it seems to come down to is that the original translation was Jesus the Nazarene, but it became mistranlated into Jesus of Nazareth. Years later and perhaps ever centuries after the NT texts were written, an actual town called Nazareth was built and came to be based on the mistranslation. So Nazareth is sometimes considerd to be "The town that theology built"

spin

Mishmarot [M$MRWT] are what get called courses.


spin

Magdlyn

Thanks for all the Hebrew stuff, spin.

spin

People aware of my views on Nazareth probably know that whether or not the town of Nazareth existed is irrelevant to the gospels. The Hebrew town is called NCRT with a tsade (C) as the second letter and the LXX shows that a tsade was predominantly transliterated into Greek with a sigma and in the few cases where a zeta was found there were also occurrences elsewhere of the same term with a sigma.

We should therefore expect a Hebrew town called NCRT to have its name transliterated into Greek as NasareQ, but it invariably isn't. This indicates that Nazareth is not derived (at least directly) from the Hebrew place name. (Elsewhere I have explained that an earlier form Nazara, a name derived as a contraction of nazarhnos, was influenced by the Hebrew town name, so that "Nazareth" was born. This suggests that NCRT existed early enough.)


spin

mens_sana

Unfortunately, the Hebrew font did not reproduce. I also have photos of the shards, taken from the article


In the course of excavations undertaken at Caesarea by The Department of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, with the assistance of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and the Department for the Improvement of the Landscape and Restoration of Historic Sites of the Prime Minister’s Office,1 fragments of a Hebrew inscription were found. Because of their exceptional interest it has been decided to bring them to wider notice in advance of the fuller publication.

Fragment A. Slab of dark-grey marble, 153 by 124 mm. And 24 mm. thick. It contains four lines, broken off at both ends. The letters are 23-25 mm. high in lines 1-2, 16-20 mm. high in lines 3-4 (Pl. 13A). The reading, which presents no difficulty, is: .. ��*../..��*../ ../ ��*..

The fragment was found in area D of the excavations,2 in a trench 5 m. wide across an elongated elevation parallel to the sea-shore and in the vicinity of the synagogue area. The material from sector D IV, where the fragment was found, was mainly Hellenistic, but included some traces of Late Roman and Byzantine.

Fragment B. Greyish marble, 145 by 140 mm., 24 mm. thick. Three beginnings of lines at the left, each 20 mm. high; margin 120 mm. wide to the right (Pl. 13B). The three lines begin with the same letters: ../../..

Fragment B was found in area F,3 70 m. south of area D. It was found reused in the marble pavement of a Late Byzantine room; among the other paving stones was part of a synagogue chancel screen, showing an ethrog and a lulah.

A third fragment, picked up on the surface at Caesarea,4 reads: [ ] [] / []  [] / []  []

It seems that the three fragments formed part of one and the same marble slab, inscribed with a list of the priestly courses (1 Chron. 25:7-18) in their order, together with their surnames and the name of the locality to which they had moved after the destruction of the Second Temple. A fragment of a similar inscription: ….. /…. /… was found in Ascalon,5 proving the prevalence of this custom of commemorating the courses in the Palestinian synagogues. We can therefore complete the Caesarea fragments thus:

The 17th course Hezir] MA[MLIAH
The 18th course Hapizzez NAZARETH 6
The 19th course Pethahiah AKHLAH Arab
The 20th course Ezekiel [MI]GDAL Nunaiya
For an attempt to restore the whole inscription, see Fig. 1.

Liturgical poems originating in Palestine in the sixth to seventh centuries A. D. have preserved the complete list of the priestly families and their seats, which has been elucidated and commented on by Prof. S. Klein.7 The present fragments prove that the custom of relating the order of courses to the order of Sabbaths dates back at least to the third to fourth centuries;8 the use of the order for calendar purposes is attested for the Dead Sea sect and was certainly borrowed by it from orthodox Jewry.

The various implications of this find as regards synagogal liturgy and decoration will be discussed by the author in the full publication now being prepared. 9
. . . .

1. The Excavations were directed by the writer, with the assistance of Mr. A. Negev, Professor J. Vardaman of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mr. E. Oren, Mrs. Rachel Hakhlili, Miss Mira Shpilberg, Mr. A. Ovadiah.
2. Prof. J. Vardaman was in charge of this section.
3. Mr. E. Oren was in charge of area F.
4. A photograph was published by S. Talmon: The Calendar-Reckoning of the Sect from the Judaean Desert, Scripta Hierosolymitana 4 (1958), p. 171; a drawing in B. Mazar et al., ed.: Views of the Biblical World IV, Jerusalem, 1961, p. 257.
5. E. L. Sukenick: Three Ancient Jewish Inscriptions from Eretz-Israel, Zion 1 (1926), pp. 16-17 (Hebrew); S. Klein, ibid., p. 20. Prof. Klein proposed to read _ _ _ _ _ _ . In view of our inscription it seems preferable to understand this fragment: _ _ _ _ _ . Cf. also E. L. Sukenick: The Synagogue of Hamath-Gader, Jerusalem, 1935, pp. 156-157; J. B. Frey: Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum, II, Roma, 1952, No. 962.
6. This is the earliest mention of Nazareth apart from the New Testament and the pilgrims’ texts; it is the only mention so far known in any inscription.
7. S. Klein: Beiträge zur Geogr. U. Gesch. Galiläas, Leipzig, 1909; iden: Neue Beiträge, Wien, 1923, pp. 47-48. Sefer ha-Yishuv, Jerusalem, 1939, pp. 168-173, esp. p. 172.
8. I owe this date to my colleague, Prof. N. Avigad.
9. To be published in Hebrew in EI 7. An English edition is also in preparation.

mens_sana

“Nazareth exhibits archaeological remains from the Middle Bronze II, Iron II, and late Hellenistic periods, but its heyday was in the Early Roman period.” (This is the period of the Herodian tombs, located outside the village per Jewish law.) (OEANE, V.4, p. 113)

“The sequence of occupations at Nazareth follows: (1) Middle Bronze tombs; (2) scattered Iron II remains; (3) Late Hellenistic to Early Roman caves with domestic installations, some used as late as the Byzantine period; (4) a third-century CE, or later, ritual bath; (5) a large public structure, interpreted by the excavator as a Jewish-Christian synagogue; and (6) a fifth-century church with a monastery attached, perhaps the structures seen by the Piacenza Pilgrim in 570 CE.”
Nazareth is mentioned in the poem Mishmaroth (l. 18; see Michael Avi-Yonah, “A List of Priestly Courses from Caesarea,” Israel Exploration Journal 12 [1962]: 137-139, pl. 13) as the settlement place of the priestly course of Hapizez, following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. This is repeated in a Byzantine inscription found at Caesarea that contains the priestly courses.” (OEANE, V.4, p. 114)

I have been unable to locate the Mishmaroth 1.18 reference above in an English translation. However, I did locate the reference below (4Q321), a Dead Sea Scroll fragment which refers to the priestly course of Happizzez, so we have a Happizzez connection starting with Chronicles, repeated by the DSS fragment, repeated again by the shards from Caesarea with the aside that Happizzez relocated to Nazareth, and finally in Mishmaroth 1.18.*


Mishmarot -- http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Reso...Texts/dss.html

Line 8 of the translation:

8.[in it {the second month}. On the fifth {day} in {the week of} Huppah {which falls} on the nine]teenth in the third {month}; and duqa[h] {is} on the six[th {day} in {the week of} Happisses {which falls}


* Searching for Happizzez is annoyingly complicated by the fact that there are a number of variant spellings involving different numbers of p's, different numbers of z's (and use of s's instead of z's), and z-s variants in the final letter. :frown: