Chili

Don't forget that Mary was from Nazareth which is the isolated city of God in Galilee where Mary does her work in good faith. Mark does not know about the city of God. Mark is just mechanics and movement but is not aware of the mover behind the movement.

When Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capurnaum he became the conscious role player in his own liberation stage after John had prepared the way for him, which really is no more than intuit reinforcement in the mind of Jesus. Remember here that John and Jesus were bosum buddies existing in the same mind of one man wherein John was born from water in the subconscious mind and Jesus from fire in the conscious mind.

Chili

Obviously without Mary there is no Nazareth because she contains Nazareth as the city of God to become the ancient part of the New Jerusalem after Jesus is raised (except that she moved to Rome where she was welcome). In this sense can it be said that Jesus was the Alhpa (Mary) and the Omega after he was raised, and thus also the old and the new.

spin

I mentioned Mark merely as a backgrounder for Casper, who was digressing from the o.p. Here I am interested in understanding what the current text of Mt 4:13-14 means. So further in the Marcan direction won't help the o.p.

Only to reintroduce it? We see that the Matthean writer represents a community that uses Mark as a literary source, cleans up the language, removes the obscure, and augments the text from other literary materials, even maybe adds prophecy fulfillment to bolster the tradition. This is not a knower of things but a shaper of received tradition. The Matthean community is very happy with Nazara and Nazorean (perhaps even Nazareth, but that is not clear). If they were known, why omit Nazareth or Nazarene from his source, rather than do what the community does elsewhere, ie clean up?

Again, the focus is on Matthew. And hopefully, whether Nazara was seen by the community as being in Galilee when 4:13-16 was elaborated.


spin

spamandham

I must be missing something.

The emphasis here in regard to the 'prophecy' is to have Jesus go to Capernaum, which is 'by the lake' close enough to Zebulun and Naphtali to count as fullfilling the prophecy. The only implication for Nazara then, is that it was not close enough to the lake (modern Lake Tiberias/ancient sea of Galilee) by Zebulun and Naphtali to count.

I don't see any implication that Nazara was not in the region known as Galilee

andrewcriddle

This may be quite wrong, but I'm wondering if Matthew located Nazareth at the same site as later tradition but regarded it as part of Issachar not Zebulun.

Andrew Criddle

the_cave

That's just what I was about to ask--or, rather, I was wondering whether Matthew thought that Galilee was larger than Zebulun and Naphtali alone. It looks like it may have been, but I don't know for certain myself.

I don't think Matthew has to have had any particular location in mind, though perhaps he knew there weren't any "Nazara/-et(h)"s near a body of water, and perhaps not in Zebulun and Naphtali either, and therefore it wasn't good enough for fulfillment of the prophecy.

(spamandham, the issue is that Zebulun and Naphtali pretty closely coincide with the Galilee area, so that if Nazareth was not in Zebulun and Naphtali, then where was it? I think spin is right to observe that the author seems to be think that Nazareth was not in Zebulun and Naphtali.)

andrewcriddle

IIUC the Galilee of NT times included part of the territory of Issachar and Asher as well as Zebulun and Naphtali.

Andrew Criddle

spin

First you need to see how these terms Zebulun and Naphthali are used. The territory they are cover is listed in Joshua 19 and together describe the extent of Galilee. The citation from Isaiah states that we are dealing with Galilee.

The lake is in the land of Zebulun and Naphthali, ie Galilee. Nazara isn't.


spin

spin

1. If Joshua was an indicator of the two territories, the southern border of Zebulun is transcribed by a line basically from Jokneam to Mt Tabor. Nazareth is north of that.
2. The text doesn't talk of Nazareth, but of Nazara.

Your response would suggest that you are inclined to my reading of what the text is saying!


spin

spin

Yet the Matthean reference talks of Zebulun and Naphthali, as well as Galilee, which suggests that nothing else is involved in Galilee.

15 "Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, along the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—

This isn't Zebulun, Naphthali and Issachar.


spin