vsop44

Show this article to your relatives you might score some points there but as mentioned above the bible unearthed is also a very good read .

http://www.library.cornell.edu/colld...st/jerques.htm

Steven Avery

Hi Diog.. Not sure what this means (they didn't sell olive wood gifts to tourists?), nor the relevance.

What we do know is that there is a confirmed Jewish village at that time (some say it would be 135 AD but that makes little difference) totally separate from New Testament and Christian accounts.

Whether the site at that time was in fact the various archaelogical sites about four miles from Sepphoris is a secondary matter. First and foremost, we know there was a villlage, the evidence from expression has trumped the previous ultra-weak evidence from non-Christian silence.

It is truly amazing that the skeptics and mythicists still carry on such a Don Quixote windmill battle against Nazareth. And tis truly an indication of how desparate they are in their battle against the NT that not only such an argument would have ever been developed, but even after positive refutation archaelogically it still comes up again and again. In fact the argument is silly even without any corroborative archaelogical evidence, since the NT accounts themselves would provide more than enough historicity to any but the most seared reasonings.

Mini-kudos at least to a couple of skeptics who realized this long ago. Lowder and Carrier come to mind.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Diogenes the Cynic

"Battle against the NT?"

Charioteer

Hi praxeus, I'm new here and don't mean to step on well established toes but I'm curious about this evidence you keep bringing up for the existence of Nazareth during Christ's lifetime. It appears to me that the real significance of this information is that it points to a early record of Nazareth being a real city. The problem is, at least in my view, the experts in this case cannot agree on the date. Now if they can't agree on a date then how can I accept either possibility as accurate.

I'd like to also point out that even given the earliest date, 70 AD, we still have no evidence that it was a city in Jesus' lifetime. Four decades late does not early evidence make

Do you have a link where I could learn more about this?

Mountain Man

It seems that the way he wrote it was very hard for you to understand. I'll put it in simpler terms for you: Nazareth did not exist UNTIL 70 CE. (some say 135 CE.) That means Nazareth did not come into existence until 35 to 100 years AFTER THE ALLEGED TIME OF JESUS. Was that easier for you to understand?BFD. Just because some village existed does not mean all the tall tales about that village are true.ROTFLMAO! You have yet to present any evidence, let along proof, to support any of your claims.

RPS

"Despite Nazareth's obscurity (which had led some critics to suggest that it was a relatively recent foundation), archeology indicates that the village has been occupied since the 7th century B.C., although it may have experienced a 'refounding' in the 2d century B.C. " Meier, A Marginal Jew--Rethinking the Historical Jesus, (Vol. 1)(Anchor Bible, 1991), pp.300-301, citing Meyers and Strange, Archeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity, (Abingdon, 1981), pp.56-57. See also Barnett, Behind the Scenes of the New Testament, (IVP, 1990) p.42 ("After the Jewish war with the Romans from AD 66-70 it was necessary to re-settle Jewish priests and their families. Such groups would only settle in unmixed towns, that is towns without Gentile inhabitants. According to an inscription discovered in 1962 in Caesarea Maritima the priests of the order of Elkalir made their home in Nazareth. This, by the way, is the sole known reference to Nazareth in antiquity, apart from written Christian sources.... ...Some scholars had even believed that Nazareth was a fictitious invention of the early Christians; the inscription from Caesarea Maritima proves otherwise."

gregor

IIRC, an argument against a city earlier than 70 CE is that Josephus failed to mention it in his listing of cities. Then we get into the whole "absence of evidence" dichotomy.

RPS

Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament (Princeton University Press 1992) pp 44ff.:

"The oldest known human life in the region of Nazareth is attested by the skull found in 1934 by R. Neuville in a cave about one and one-half miles southeast of the city, a skull which may be older than that of Neandertal man. In Nazareth itself a complex of burial caves was found in the upper city in 1963, in which there was pottery of the first part of the Middle Bronze Age (Revue Biblique 70 [1963], p. 563; 72 [1965], p. 547). Down in the area of the Latin Church of the Annunciation there was certainly an ancient village of long continuance. Archeological investigation in and around this church was conducted by Benedict Vlaminck in 1892, by Prosper Viaud in 1889 and 1907-1909 and by Bellarimo Bagatti in 1955 and thereafter when the previously standing eighteenth-century (1730) church was demolished to make way for the new and larger Basilica of the Annunciation (No. 49). The area under and around the church, as well as at the Church of St. Joseph not far away, was plainly that of an agricultural village. There were numerous grottoes, silos for grain, cisterns for water and oil, presses for raisins and olives, and millstones. While the silos are of a type found at Tell Abu Matar as early as the Chacolithic Age (Israel Exploration Journal 5 [1955], p. 23) the earliest pottery found in them here at Nazareth is of Iron II (900-600 B.C.). Vardaman calls attention to the characteristic large jar with a small 'funnel' beside the mouth; this appendage, though designed like a funnel, is simply attached to the shoulder, and does not actually pierce the wall of the jar (for an illustration of this jar, see Bagatti in DB Supplément VI, col. 323, Fig. 601). Other pottery of the site comprises a little of the Hellenistic period, more of the Roman, and most of all of the Byzantine period. Of the numerous grottoes at least several had served for domestic use and had even been modified architecturally for this purpose. One of these, where walls were built against a grotto to make a habitation, under the convent adjoining the Church of the Annunciation. Twenty-three tombs have also been found, most of them at a distance of something like 250 to 750 yards from Church of the Annunciation to the north, the west, and the south. Since these must have been outside of the village proper, their placement gives some idea of the limits of the settlement. Eighteen of the tombs are of the kokim type, which was known in Palestine from about 200 B.C., and became virtually the standard type of Jewish tomb. Two of the tombs, one (PEFQS 1923, p. 90) only 60 yards from the other (QDAP 1 [1932], pp. 53-55) 450 yards southwest of the Church of the Annunciation, still contained objects such as pottery lamps and vases and glass vessels, and these date probably from the first to the third or fourth centuries of the Christian era. Four of the tombs were sealed with rolling stones, a type of closure typical of the late Jewish period up to A.D. 70. From the tombs, therefore, it can be concluded that Nazareth was a strongly Jewish settlement in the Roman period."

Steven Avery

Thank you RPS.

And thanks to many of you for proving my point on this thread. Gudanov, please note that often skeptics will hold on the most absurd arguments, as long as they are a possible kvetch against the historicity of the New Testament.

Here is a comment they perhaps can close this aspect of the thread and we can go back to the original question.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel.html
The Rest of the Story (1999) - Jeffery J. Lowder
I agree with Strobel that Nazareth probably existed. Even Earl Doherty, a secular humanist who denies that Jesus ever existed, writes, "It is impossible to 'establish' that Nazareth did not exist in the early first century, since no one tells us this fact. And ... no one makes statements or offers other evidence which would lead us to draw such a conclusion." Moreover, the existence of Nazareth is simply not intrinsically improbable. Therefore the gospels do not require independent confirmation on this point; the gospels alone are sufficient historical evidence to make it probable that Nazareth existed in the first century. When you add the Caesarea Maritima inscription to a little common sense, (e.g. most of the towns in Galilee are unnamed in Talmud and Josephus) the nouveau-Nazareth arguments become simply a reflection of a very peculiar type of scholastic and intellectual blindness.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Amaleq13

"Four of the tombs were sealed with rolling stones, a type of closure typical of the late Jewish period up to A.D. 70."

It should be noted that this is the exact opposite claim about the evidence made by Amos Kloner in BAR: See this post.

According to Kloner's article, the rolling stones were atypical until after 70CE. The four found are the only round tomb doors guarding tombs dated earlier and all four belong to elaborate tombs belonging to wealthy families.