Ted Hoffman

Another weakness...the final result is disjointed with the rest of the theory. No real etymological path so, my diagram, which purports to show a path, is a spurious explanation for the origin of Nazareth.

That means that the theory cant account for how Nazareth came to be used. At best, it explains to us that some redactors got confused and arbitrarily, without any linguistic or etymological basis, decided to use Nazareth.

To be sure, I repeat spin's earlier argument:
Now, how about that huh?

spin

Wrote the keynote phrase for I.I.:

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds.


If you look at Matt there's another 11 chapters of material. If I understand you, I don't understand.

What exactly does this relate to?

On how Nazareth came to be used, what about folk etymology, how about sound similarity? Both were popular.

Edited to note Ted Hoffman's addition!


spin

Ted Hoffman

You do. My question is - why rely on Mark - why the deference? Did the Matthean community lack confidence in what they knew? Why crib Mark's work?
Why not simply write their own tradition and have it compete with Mark's?

My point is, if we replaced Nazareth with "Nazwarithe" your two phase redaction theory will not need alteration. Because the theory doesn't account for Nazareth in the first place - not philologically, not etymologically.

In fact, since nazarhnos and nazwraios have nothing to do linguistically with Nazareth, we can replace Nazareth with any word that sounds close to Nazareth and the theory wouldn't need revision. No?

Let me just lay it out in full:

"Despite Nazareth's obscurity (which has led some critics to suggest that it was a relatively recent foundation), archaeology indicates that the village has been occupied since the 7th century B.C., though it may have experienced a "refounding" in the 2nd century B.C. For the problem of the various spellings of the name (Nazareth,Nazara, Nasarat), see Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City,NY; Doubleday, 1977) 207-8; also Freyne, Galilee From Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 382-82 n.21. In the four Gospels, two different adjectival forms of the town's name are applied to Jesus: "Nazarene" (Nazarenos) occurs in Mark (4X) and Luke (2X);"Nazorean" (Nazoraios) occurs in Luke/Acts(8X), John (3X),Matthew(2X). Some Scolars have raised the possibility that at least the Nazoraios form originally referred to a pre-Christian sect which Jesus belonged. However, along with W.F. Albright and other noted Semitists, Brown holds that the derivation of Nazoraios from the name Nazareth is defensible on purely philological grounds (Birth of the Messiah, 209-10).

The modern town of Nazareth most probably preserves the location of ancient Nazareth. As Robert North has observed ("Biblical Archaeology,"NJBC,1216), in a holy land where various sites fight over the honour of being the Biblical Capernaum or Cana, a good argument for Nazarath's claim is that it has virtually no rival. Nazareth is located roughly 35 miles from the sea of Galileee and some 20 miles from the Mediterranean...The ancient village probably occupied about 40,000 square metres and at the time of Jesus the population would have been somewhere between 1,600 and 2,000. Most of the houses in the village were probably made up of small groups of rooms located around a central courtyard, though some houses seem to have had two strories. For all this, see Erick Meyers and James F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis and Early Christianity (Nashville:Abingdon,1981)56-57."
J. P. Meier, Marginal Jew, Vol I, p.300-301

If anyone can lay ther hands on the Meyers and Strange pages, Raymond Brown, W.F. Albright and the Robert North paper, please share with me.

spin

Probably because Mark was a lot of their tradition, ie they received Mark and absorbed it as a waystation on the road to finished Matthew. We don't know what was around before Mark, but such a treasury of jesuine ideas must have been a great help to the writers of Matthew, so why shouldn't they use it? -- it told a lot of the story. It's just that it needed fixing up for style and further additions to the tradition.

Oh, I see. It was never meant to account for the existence of Nazareth directly. It was to account for what we see in the gospel of Matthew, based on observations from Mark. It is only the phonological similarity which brought Nazareth into the mix, it was only marginally different from the back-formation nazara.

I think nazarhnos and Nazareth are probably related linguistically, coming from the same Hebrew verb NCR. It's just that their paths didn't cross directly. Only when Jgs 13:7 "he will be a Nazirite (LXX naziraios)" was seen to be a part of the messianic message of the HB that it needed interpreting, which led to Nazareth. (I find no problem with the spelling of Nazaret: many spellings were phonetically based and some transcribers heard a theta others a tau. The problem is Nazara, which I've tried to address.)


spin

Ted Hoffman

Thanks spin. I guess I will PM you for any further questions.
Now, somebody with the above sources - please?

andrewcriddle

Passages on Nazareth from Raymond Brown 'Birth of the Messiah'

pps 207-8
Although shown by archaeological investigations to have been occupied continuously since the seventh cwentury BC Nazareth is never mentioned in any pre-Christian Jewish writing, a lacuna that is unfortunate since there is a problem in the NT about the form of the name. Of twelve NT occurrences the name appears ten times as Nazareth or Nazaret (most frequent) and two times as Nazara (Matt 4:13 Luke 4:16) If the latter instances reflect the Q source common to the two Gospels then the one reference to the town in Q would have been in the form Nazara a neuter plural form but understood as a feminine singular in Matt 4:13 (See the same confusion about Hierosolyma 'Jerusalem' which is neuter plural in Matt 4:25 but a feminine singular in 2:3). The Nazara form appears also in the first non-biblical Greek reference to the town by Julius Africanus a native of Palestine writing ca 221 (Eusebius Eccl Hist I vii 14). These facts have led some scholars to suggest that Nazara is the older form of the name but Albright has argued that the form Nazaret(h) gives evidence of the retention of the feminine 't' ending common in Galilean place names. When the name finally appears in post-Christian Hebrew writings (eighth century it appears as Na(tz)rat(h). If there was a tzade (sade) in the Hebrew/Aramiac form of the town's name it is curious that this should appear in the Greek form of the name as a zeta (z) for the normal transcription should yield a sigma. (s-Nasareth) Yet there are exceptions eg the land called u(tz) in the Hebrew of Job 1:1 appears in some LXX mss as oz and the (tz)o'ar of Genesis 13:10 appears as Zogora in Greek copies of Jer 48:34 (LXX 31:34) Moreover we may be dealing with a peculiarity of the Palestinian Aramaic dialect wherein a tzase (sade) between two voiced (sonant) consonants tended to be partially assimilated by taking on a zain (z) sound. In the Jerusalem church lectionary reflecting Christian Palestinian Aramaic pronunciation the name of the town appears as Nazorat(h) This form cannot be dismissed as a retroversion from Greek for the names in this version of Scripture usually have a correct Aramaic form (Allbright)

pps 209-10
Nazorean derived from Nazareth

Philologists have questioned the correctness and even the possibility of such a derivation but it is certainly one that Matthew accepted. No contrary interpretation of 2:23 is possible In discussing the point we should distinguish two gentilic adjectives applied to Jesus in the NT Nazarenos 'Nazarene' which occurs four times in Mark twice in Luke but never in John or Matthew and Nazoraios 'Nazorean' which occurs eight times in Luke/Acts three times in John and twice in Matthew (the same variance occurs in the Greek adjectives for Essene Essenos is more frequent in Josephus and Essaios in Philo) There is a certain equivalence in the usage of the two adjectives eg in the story of Peter's denial where Mark 14:67 has Nazarenos Matt 26:71 has Nazoraios. Some scholars like Kenard argue that neither adjectival form should come from Nazaret(h) he would expect Nazarethenos or Nazarethaios. But a larger group of scholars recognise that Nazarenos at least is derivable from the place name especially if it had the form Nazara discussed above (Parallels are offered by Magdalenos and Gadarenos derived from Magdala and Gadara)

And so most of the questioning has centered on the form Nazoraios which has its clearest analogy in adjectives referring to sects or parties eg Saddoukaios and Pharisaios 'Sadducee and Pharisee' and indeed in Acts 24:5 Christians are called the sect of the Nazoraioi. This fact has led to the suggestion that Jesus was called a Nazorean not because he came from Nazareth but because he belonged to a pre-Christian sect of that name. Disputable evidence is found in later Mandean writings for a group related to JBap's movement calling themselves na(tz)orayya 'observants' and to later Church Fathers for a pre-Christian group called Nasaraioi. However all of this is very speculative and perhaps unnecessary. Such highly competent Semites and Exegetes as Albright Moore and Schraeder argue on purely philological grounds that the form Nazoraios is quite defensible as a derivation from Nazareth if one takes into account dialectal phonology in Galilean Aramaic.

(Brown gioes on to say that even if Nazorean is derived from Nazareth this doesn't exclude other secondary associations)

Andrew Criddle

(NB I've simplified and slightly changed Brown's transliteration, but I don't think it should cause problems)

Ted Hoffman

<soaks Andrew Criddle with wet kisses>
Thanks, thankee youu.

Ted Hoffman

Spin wrote:
A claimant responds:

"" btw, the harder reading (lectio difficilior) principle is used for some of the most ludicrous arguments, and is way overdone, or more precisely proclivi lectioni praestat ardua (the harder reading is to be preferred)

The concept of the harder reading principle essentially presupposes errancy, so we reject it as a paradigmic base, it only became fashionable in Bible version circles in the late 18th century, and the folks who foisted in on the scholarship were essentially unbelievers. I alluded a bit to you of the history of how that type of stuff came to fashion, there is an interesting early quote I think from Westcott which makes it clear that he was looking to justify his a priori rejection of the Textus Receptus text.

Does the harder reading principle have *any* application ? I have seen a very small smidgen of discussions where it could be thrown into the mix sensibly. As one very minor aspect.

To the point that the alex manuscripts often have the harder (which generally means ----- errant, mistaken, historically or geographically or grammatically wrong) reading I will simply add a hardy amen.. those harder readings arose from the incompetent alexandrian scribes who made some of the most scribablly corrupt (cross-outs, double-letters, missing spaces, "corrections",etc ) manuscripts ever seen. Read the description of the Sinaiticus manuscript by Dean John Burgon. This was one of the key issues involved in my moving away from modern version alex texts and literally or figuratively throwing them away."

spin

The notion that Nazara may be "the older form of the name" cannot explain a change to Nazaret.

The exceptions to the transliteration rule tsade -> sigma I've already pointed out but the universality of Nazareth with a zeta is still disturbing. While Zo`ar is often rendered in the LXX with the sigma, Nazareth is always with a zeta, which is unexpected.

Albright:
In the Jerusalem church lectionary reflecting Christian Palestinian Aramaic pronunciation the name of the town appears as Nazorat(h) This form cannot be dismissed as a retroversion from Greek for the names in this version of Scripture usually have a correct Aramaic form

Albright, never one for historical processes, could say this, but as usual we don't get any justification behind the pronouncement.

I would like to see the argument that explains how they explain the long vowel omega in nazwraios. Although I don't have access to the later Mandaean literature, I'd bet a crate on the "o" of natsorayya being a short vowel inserted for simple promunciation purposes and, because writers refuse to represent the omega in English texts, they don't appreciate the phonological problem of justifying the omega.

Imagine the words "cyst" and "ceased", or "pip" and "peep": in a non-regional accent the only major difference between each pair is the length of the vowel, the second of each pair having a long vowel. You always hear the difference. The difference between an omicron and an omega is length and the user hears the difference: one might hear the difference between the English "cot" and the American "caught" as length only, the second being long. It's a simple but effective difference, so one needs to understand, when the Greek used an omega, it was for a different purpose from an omicron. Brown shows no interest in the problem.

He writes:
Such highly competent Semites and Exegetes as Albright Moore and Schraeder argue on purely philological grounds that the form Nazoraios is quite defensible as a derivation from Nazareth if one takes into account dialectal phonology in Galilean Aramaic.

I would like to see recent argumentation for this, because I don't think it will wash.


spin

spin

Talking about ludicrous: "The concept of the harder reading principle essentially presupposes errancy". Actually differing readings presuppose errancy. It has nothing specifically to do with the notion of a "harder (or more problematic) reading". We are dealing with conflicts in the diverse textual traditions. Each conflict must be dealt with separately and no sweeping generalizations such as the one above which condemns the Alexandrian tradition ("errant, mistaken, historically or geographically or grammatically wrong") will have any effect on this. The earliest pap.s that we have are usually Alexandrian, as is the case with big collections. No belittling of the tradition or sidelining of it will change the fact that one has to deal with all its forms not just the ones that one can conveniently explain away as possibly scribal errors. One expects that errors will occur early in the transmission of traditions, especially when the scribe is generally less well prepared, then one finsd with standardization that there are fewer errors. The fact that there are generally fewer errors in the Byzantine tradition speaks for its lateness.

We must therefore pay close attention to the differing forms of the Alexandrian tradition, especially when they are substantive issues and not just orthographic differences or the like. I think that your claimant has not been too fair in dealing with the differences, being too willing to explain away rather than explain.


spin