Ben C Smith

Scratch this example of name inconsistency as part of my argument against name consistency?

You asked for evidence that the -t could be dropped from a place name and the vowel retained; I gave you Chenara from Numbers. You called that a one-off, and asked for evidence that this kind of thing was more than a scribal aberration, that it was or became part of the tradition; I gave you Genesara from Pliny.

Pliny is obviously referring to the lake known as Gennesareth, Tiberias, the sea of Galilee, Chinnereth, what have you; he even gives quite good estimated figures as to its dimensions. He claims that many (plures) call it Genesara.

Gennesareth and Genesara (both attested) are exactly parallel to Nazareth and Nazara (also both attested) with regard to their endings.

Where is Gennesar? What does that name refer to?

I am indeed interested in the rest of the argument. But one thing at a time. It is now clear that Nazara could indeed be a legitimate variant of Nazareth, at least so far as the ending is concerned. This damages your this-could-not-have-happened approach. The matter of the tsade yet remains, and I do not yet know if I will be able to solve it quite as niftily as the matter of the feminine ending. That is, I reiterate, your best argument.

You yourself have already argued that Nazara is a back-formation from Nazarene. If an invented Nazara is plausibly a back-formation from the perceived gentilic name Nazarene, it stands to reason that Nazarene is plausibly a genuine gentilic name from an actual Nazara.

You cannot simultaneously argue that Nazarene leads naturally back to Nazara and yet deny that Nazara leads naturally forward to Nazarene.

And I do not know yet whether the gentilic came from the Hebrew or from the Greek. I am not sure it will matter in the long run, since our first examples of all these Nazarene names come from the Greek.

Ben.

spin

It is not an inconsistency, that's the problem. Meshallum and Meshallemoth existed separately. It has nothing to do with what you are trying to argue for. It's like trying to make some general case about linguistic changes from the names Ted and Eddie, or Liz and Lisa and Betty and Ellie.

Pliny worked from texts, not from people.

You would be a tad more convincing if you had a writer using Gennesaret in Hebrew or Aramaic and the Peshitta certainly won't help you.

All the evidence you've evinced is for a movement from Gennesar to Gennesaret. Hey, you could argue that Nazareth is just a late development and that Jesus of Nazara should be correct.

Somewhere where there was a river in the north of Galilee.

It's not really a one thing at a time issue. It's watching you take the desperate cases as the ones that need to work.

You've got a long way to go with the loss of the -t.

I get to watch you doing this "one thing at a time" thingy again. It's not of course just the formation of a word, it's understanding how word-formation fits into the evolution of the evidence. Of course, one can go from a Nazara and get a Nazarene, otherwise the back-formation couldn't work.

See above.

Oh, obviously from the Greek. If it came from Nazara in Hebrew or Aramaic it would have the feminine -t inserted anyway, so you'd be wasting your breath over the Nazarene from Nazara scenario if not in Greek. If not from Nazara but the Hebrew word NZR, it would still be a Greek formation, though if it weren't for the omega nazwraios could come from NZR in Hebrew or Aramaic.

As we are only really using the gospels as source materials, you're probably right. The Hebrew is only behind the Greek to supply significance in one shape or another.


spin

Ben C Smith

Hi, spin.

I see little new in the above on the Genesara matter, so I will let that part of it rest for the moment. Next I would like to take a look at the big picture that you kindly supplied in list form. I intend to critique it, detailing both strengths and weaknesses, and then to offer one of my own (I will even point out what I perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses of my own model).

That should make your day, since we will be away from the one-at-a-time argumentation for a while.

But my schedule is strapped right now. It may be a day or two before I can get to it.

Cheers.

Ben.

spin

I'll wait for something relevant on it.

Again, I'll be waiting.


spin

jjramsey

Come to think of it, I can think of a good reason for scribes to not try to "correct" nazarhnos or nazwraios. If it is acceptable for a Greek speaker to drop the final sounds of a place name before adding -hnos or -aios, then there would be no motivation for a scribe to add back the "-t". This wouldn't conflict with spin's objection, provided that he is only objecting that Hebrew speakers creating gentilics wouldn't drop the "-t".

A word about the descriptive versus prescriptive grammar. spin is right in that teachers are the ones who tend to prescribe grammar outright. This is probably why the educated tend to have better grammar. The teachers instruct on proper vs. improper usage, while among the uneducated, grammar is learned more informally, with less opportunity for error correction. This is why, for example, one sees "ain't" instead of "isn't" or "done gone" instead of "went" among the lower classes. (I leave it as an exercise to the reader why this doesn't exactly help spin's case. )

spin

This just helps the case that a Hebrew gentilic for Nazareth is not preserved in the gospels. If you'd like to claim that "Nazarene" in Mark is a term people in the gospel used for Jesus, then you are claiming that they spoke Greek.

At the same time you show no inkling as to why we have the different forms, nazarhnos and nazwraios.

I enjoy apologists who are prepared for whatever compromise is necessary. Please continue.

I'm glad you've come to your senses and dropped that silly prescriptive grammar stuff. Too bad you didn't get the notion of auto-correction within a speech community, ie if you get something wrong other people will continue with what they know and usually you'll get it right eventually.

"Ain't" has a long and venerable history. It's longevity is worth noting against your misguided ideas about language change.


spin

ynquirer

spin has argued cogently in this long, very interesting thread and established a couple of sound points. Yet he endeavors to exact from the reader more compulsory a conclusion than he has argued for.

First and foremost, he has shown that Nazara is more plausible a source than Nazaret(h) for a Greek gentilic Nazarhnos. Definitive proof for this IMO is comparison with Gadara - Gadarhnos. Both Nazara and Gandara are places close to each other in Palestine, the latter well attested in Polybius, Strabo and Josephus; and both are indeclinable names, for otherwise the normal gentilics would be Nazaraios and Gadaraios. And last but not least, Matthew himself writes twn Gadarhnwn (8:28), which is proof that he thought Gadarhnos to be a valid gentilic from Gadara. (h = eta, w = omega)

The second point spin has established is that, provided that a) Nazara and Nazaret(h) are together present in the gospels, and b) Nazaret(h) exists as a real place while Nazara does not, there is a case for the theory that Nazara came first and then, by way of mystification, Nazareth was substituted for it later on as a source for Nazarhnos. What I think spin takes for granted too easily is the belief that he has proven the theory beyond a reasonable doubt. Actually, the boot in on the other foot.

Matthew is my evidence. He mentions Nazara, then he mentions Gadarhnos as a valid gentilic from Gadara, so establishing the whole framework for Nazarhnos being a valid gentilic from Nazara, and - what does he do? He just drops every mention to Nazarhnos and introduces the strange word Nazwraios in its stead. If he wished to mystify by back-formatting Nazara from Mark’s Nazarhnos, does his procedure make any sense?

To end with, if spin has given jjramsey, Stephen and Ben a hard time to prove that Nazarhnos could possibly be a valid gentilic from Nazaret(h), now the hard time will be for him to prove that Nazwraios could possibly be a valid gentilic from Nazara.

jjramsey

Only in the sense that it remove one of the arguments against it. You still have to argue that Hebrew speakers could not and would not drop the "-t".

AFAIK, that is trivially true, since, -hnos is a Greek word ending. But we were talking about whether a Hebrew or Aramaic speaker could have dropped the "-t" when forming the Greek gentilic, not what the Aramaic speakers used amongst themselves when speaking in Aramaic.

For our purposes, I would consider auto-correction a form of prescription, that is, a way of enforcing right grammar vs. wrong grammar. More to the point, you are going far beyond the evidence in saying that I "didn't get the notion of auto-correction." Rather, I was observing that there is more likely to be drift and mutation of grammar where it has not been formally enforced. To put it another way, auto-correction doesn't work quite as well as formal prescription.

Ben C Smith

This is a good point, and this is why, IMHO, spin has to split Matthew up into at least two layers. He has to separate the person who rid his Marcan source of the term Nazarene from the person who introduced the explicit connection with the term Nazoraean. As the text of Matthew stands right now, Matthew knows too much, as it were.

More anon.

Ben.

spin

Why not give me an example of a Hebrew feminine which doesn't reinsert the -t when a suffix is added and you might have a minimal chance of making sense.

They insert the -t.

Thanks for your clarification.


spin