Clivedurdle

That is why I asked the question - is the name of a sect or a father or a trade more or less likely than a place?

Peter Kirby

The form "Jesus of Nazareth" is actually rare, especially after the New Testament, until the modern period. The form "Jesus Christ" and other theological titles are more common.

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Peter Kirby

Doug Shaver

From the casual research I have done, it seems likely to have originated as a sectarian name but at some early point was misconstrued as a reference to his home town.

spin

You and I know that Jesus original home was Bethlehem, right?

Mk 1:9 says nothing of Jesus's "original" home. It just says he came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan, as in from one place to another.

That is merely your assumption. The text, as is, only gives Nazareth as the point of origin for his coming.

That's just post hoc.

I guess that explains the errors in the texts we are examining.

You are avoiding other facts.

Fact: Mark says Jesus had a home in Capernaum.

Fact: Matt using Mark as a source, yet aware of the Nazara tradition, moved Jesus from Nazara to Capernaum.

Fact: Luke using Mark as a source, yet aware of the Nazara tradition, has eliminated Capernaum home town from the tale to "smooth out wrinkles". The writer has even moved the rejection scene which he identifies as at Nazareth, so as to place it before a reference to Capernaum, though not smoothing so completely as this reference to Capernaum points to the earlier one.

(We therefore have two different approaches to a cover up due to two conflicting hometown traditions.)

Fact: Luke does not use Nazareth in the body of the synoptic part of the gospel, which starts with the introduction in 3:1 the start of the Jesus narrative of the person who would announce Jesus, giving at the same time the introductory historical context with all the political players of the time.

Fact: Matt features only one indisputable reference to Nazareth, ie 21:11, the start of a long insertion in a Marcan pericope about the triumphal entry. This addition includes Q material, as can be seen in the Lucan handling, though Luke doesn't contain this reference to Nazareth.

(We can conclude that this reference to Nazareth was not in the early gospel traditions.)

Fact: nazarhnos was available to the Matthean writer through the Marcan source, yet every Marcan reference to nazarhnos was omitted in Matt, so, if the writer knew about the Nazareth tradition, he didn't make any connection between Nazareth and nazarhnos.

(We may conclude that he didn't know about the Nazareth tradition at the time of the omission.)

Having left their original context and become part of a tradition they were free for reinterpretation within that developing tradition. Grammar has nothing to do with the matter. Grammar is not prescriptive as you insist. Grammar explains the way things work, not how you want them to work.

No. I don't want you to believe that they are grammatically irregular. You have to believe that they were. I want you to believe that had been derived from Nazareth, such a derivation doesn't follow any other examples of similar derivations.

I want you to believe the evidence which indicates that Nazareth is late in the tradition development, ie after the tradition already had nazarhnos.

They have to perceive it as an irregularity when presented with the state of the tradition at the time of their work.

I see no reason for you to make false claims.

I claim that they were not originally terms which referred to someone from Nazareth. In fact I gave you a trajectory for how they came to be used as gentilics. It's not a matter of "shouldn't" but "didn't". The one issue you clutch is just one indicator.

No, by my reasoning, they have come, at the end of a long development to mean what you want them to mean from the beginning of that process.

(As can be seen in the gospels themselves and later theological reflection)

I've pointed to false and folk etymologies which feature similar circuitous routes. Can you explain why "butterscotch" has nothing originally to do with Scotland when it is clearly now an item produced in Scotland? Can you explain how "crap" came to be associated with Thomas Crapper if it was not originally derived from his name?

You are simply fighting the tide of linguistics, by arguing that "crap" despite it having been used before Crapper did what he did was so derived.


spin

gstafleu

Do we find "Jesus of Nazareth" anywhere?

So so far we (Matthew through Luke) we have either "Jesus the nazorean" or "the nazarene Jesus." With John we start to hit pay dirt, tough:
Koine experts please correct me, but I think "τον απο ναζαρεθ" means something like "him from Nazareth."

But then:
So only one "of Nazareth." Now this is only looking at things translated as "Jesus of Nazareth." We also have:
"Jesus the prophet from Nazareth." And there are more mentions of Nazareth in relation with Jesus. All in all a mixed bag.

Gerard Stafleu

spin

I have dealt with this extensively in the archives and am currently giving a small belt of it in the "Therefore Jesus did exist" thread. I have said that Nazareth is not a part of the synoptic tradition, nor is it a part of the Q tradition. It is clearly later in the developing tradition. The term nazarhnos was already part of the tradition, though Matt. omits it totally, indicating that the writer didn't have Nazareth available to make the connection obvious.

Dear moderators, do you think you could split off the Nazareth discussion from the "Therefore Jesus did exist" thread and splice it here in order for there not to be two separate discussions of the subject going at one time? Thanks.


spin

Toto

*merged*

If anything was omitted, PM a moderator to fix it.

jjramsey

No, it's a very natural reading of the text that many Christians had made, including the Christians who used Mark as a source for their own gospels.

Yes, it does, which is why a lack of variant texts with "corrections" from nazwraios to nazaretaios is suspicious. Why are there "corrections" from Nazara to Nazareth and vice versa, while nazaraios remains untouched?

Your conclusion does not follow from your facts. One can also conclude from these facts that Matthew made explicit what Mark vaguely implies: that Jesus came from Nazareth and made Capernaum his "base of operations," so to speak. Luke simply remains as vague as Mark on that point.

We can conclude from this that Luke had little reason to mention Nazareth itself in the body of the text, and we can conclude from this that you are using the phrase "only one indisputable reference to Nazareth" in a way that implies more uncertainty than actually exists. Your conclusion is a leap beyond the evidence.

We may conclude that Matthew preferred nazwraios to nazarhnos. Again, your conclusion is a leap beyond the evidence.

Grammar has both a descriptive and a prescriptive element.

If nazarhnos and nazwraios don't "follow any other examples of similar derivations," then they are grammatically irregular. Maybe you didn't mean to, but you might as well have said, "I don't want you to believe that they are grammatically irregular, but rather I want you to believe that they are grammatically irregular."

This is a false analogy. None of those examples of false etymologies involves the meaning of the word having changed because of people becoming aware of the false etymology. Neither "butterscotch" nor "crap" have a grammatical form that is supposedly inconsistent with the false etymology.

andrewcriddle

Even without Mark 1:9 I don't think Mark represents Capernaum as Jesus' Home Town. (It is where Jesus is currently living but not IMO where his folks live.)

In Mark 3:19/20 Jesus goes home presumably to Capernaum compare 2:1

Mark 3:21 Mark 3:31 This seems to imply that Jesus' worried family have travelled from some other town/village to confront him in Capernaum.

Andrew Criddle

spin

No-one is claiming that Jesus was still living with his family.

They came to where Jesus was. I can't see the problem, Andrew.


spin