hjalti

I was just reading a colossal thread on another forum, where a fellow member of FRDB was informing people of the nuances of the whole "Nazareth" thing.

I found it amazing how hostile these fellow atheists were to spin's very detailed and in my opinion, convincing, case.

Where does that hostility come from? I think some of it is just a knee-jerk reaction because spin doesn't think that we can say with confidence that Jesus was a historical person, and thus everything he says must be wacky.

But it made me wonder if any of the big names in Nt. studies actually question this Nazareth thing. So I was wondering: How many of the big names say stuff like: 1. It's certain that Jesus was from Nazareth. or 2. The whole Nazareth thing isn't certain (see for example spin's writing).

Here's what Bart Ehrman says:

Vorkosigan

Link?

ApostateAbe

Mainstream thinkers, I believe, really do tend to have hostile knee-jerk reactions against those on the fringe who promote what mainstream thinkers perceive to be very unlikely hypotheses of history. The mainstream thinkers see their own probable models getting assailed by those with ideological agendas, and they don't leave their emotions out of the arguments. I see it a lot in the creation vs. evolution debates. You might expect that the creationists are the emotional bunch. But, actually, the evolutionists are among the most hostile angry insulting organized squad of rhetorical soldiers that I have ever seen on the Internet. Why? Well, because evolutionists very much tend to have the strong certainty that looks to be extremely reinforced by the evidence, and the creationists have only an unbelievable religious tradition.

They believe that Jesus was from Nazareth seemingly because that is the hypothesis that explains the New Testament accounts of Jesus being from the town of Nazareth, despite the apparent interest in Jesus being from a town that instead seems to fulfill prophecy (Bethlehem). It is a hypothesis that has plausibility, and it requires no ad hoc explanations. Spin's hypothesis, on the other hand, does not have plausibility and is not much expected from the evidence. It is merely ad hoc speculation.

hjalti

Here you go. I think it's around pages 100-250 (for the record, I did not read all that stuff!)

hjalti

Vorkosigan

Oy ve. That thread is on page 750.

ApostateAbe

Should I explain?

hjalti

Please do! I might be mistaken, but I think I read a thread here some time ago where spin was trying to explain this all to you.

Sarai

It's been a while since I did any reading on this topic, so my info might be out-of-date. If so, please feel free to flame me for it. As I recall, the most significant points for the "no Nazareth" stance were: 1) Archaeology has NOT been able to conclusively show that the village of Nazareth existed in the mid-1st century. It seems to have come into being in the 2nd. 2) That the "of Nazareth" designation came about to explain the Greek word "Nazoraios" (I may have that transliterated incorrectly) which was more or less a nonsense word. So the author invented a place name for it to reference.

I don't know much about this site, Nazareth: The Town That Theology Built but you might find something worthwhile there.

Regards,
Sarai

dog-on

Numbers 6...

and that's....the rest of the story...