the_cave

It doesn't make sense for someone living in pre-Exilic Judah to describe Galilee to King Hezekiah as "beyond the Jordan". But we know that portions of Isaiah were composed during the Exilic period. What if Isaiah 9:1 (or 8:23) were modified during this time? Then "beyond the Jordan" would explain to someone living in Mesopotamia where Galilee was.

As for the Septuagint, who knows--I don't even know what Ptolematic Galilee looked like.

Matthew, at any rate, seems to be speaking from the eastern side of the Jordan, maybe even northeast. He's almost paraphrasing, so he might have chosen whatever phrasing made the most sense to him.

spin

Dave moved to Colorado. He left Wichita to live in Boulder.

or, better,

Dave moved to Colorado. He left Wichita to live in Boulder on Route 119 in the Centennial State, in order to fulfill the prophecy that the people in the Centennial State would see a great wuss.

The Matthean writer has added the material about Zebulun and Naphtali. All you are doing is once again ignoring it. You've merely tried to obfuscate the initial part and then repeated the same unanalysed stuff that pays no heed to the fact that Zebulun and Naphtali has been mentioned twice, once by the prophecy and once by the gospel writer. And you basically ignore this fact. You just don't want to know why the writer deems that it is so necessary that he had to reiterate it, so that you don't miss his point. Whoosh, Ben C, straight over your head.

Jesus moved to Capernaum to fulfill a prophecy about Zebulun and Naphtali. "No, he didn't," you say. "The prophecy was about the great light." It is as well, but the move is to explain how the people of Zebulun and Naphtali come to see the great light and it is the move to Capernaum by the sea in Zebulun and Naphtali: that move is the fulfillment of the prophecy about Zebulun and Naphtali. Jesus is the great light seen in Zebulun and Naphtali. The prophecy isn't fulfilled by his going to Nazara or being in Nazara, but his leaving Nazara and going to dwell in Capernaum. That's how the people of Zebulun and Naphtali get to see the great light.


spin

andrewcriddle

Reading on its own without reference to information outside Matthew seems to mean ie without reference to material outside Matthew the passage seems both to affirm that Nazara was in Galilee and claim that Capernaum rather than Nazara fulfilled the Isaiah prophecy.

The problem is how to expand this in the light of information outside Matthew. The obvious interpretation is that Nazara is in Galilee but not in Zebulun or Naphtali, the problem obviously is that the traditional site of Nazareth is (just within) Zebulun. The other interpretation is that both Capernaum and Nazara are in Zebulun-Naphtali but that for other reasons the move from Nazara to Capernaum is needed to fulfil the prophecy. In one way this is clearly true ie Capernaum is by the sea and Nazareth isn't, however I feel that there should be more to it than that. I have suggested earlier in this thread that "Galilee of the Gentiles" refers to "Upper Galilee" and I still think this possible, the problem is that it seems unclear on further investigation that Capernaum really was in "Upper Galilee" (the border may have been slightly North of Capernaum).

I'm not sure how to resolve this. Matthew does IMO clearly put Nazara in Galilee, however there does seem to be a clash betwen the traditional site of Nazareth in Galilee (In Zebulun-Naphtali) on the one hand, and the claim that a change of residence from Nazara to Capernaum is necessary to fulfil the Isaiah prophecy about Zebulun-Naphtali. One suggestion found in some commentaries is that in order to fulfil the prophecy Jesus has to be based both in Zebulun and Naphtali. Having him grow up in Nazareth (Zebulun) and move to Capenaum (Naphtali) fulfils this. I'm not sure how plausible this is.

Andrew Criddle

spin

I previously supplied the following based on a sentence supplied by Ben C.:

Dave moved to Colorado. He left Wichita to live in Boulder.

This is a partial analogy for what Mt 4:12-13 is doing. It makes simple sense and is in no way awkward, yet you wouldn't want to try to claim that Wichita was in Colorado, would you?

However, the following sentence is simply awkward:

Dave moved to Colorado. He left Denver to live in Boulder.

You look at the wrong thing and therefore find a problem. There is no problem in the text in my reading. The move to Galilee is the move from Nazara to Capernaum. This is a move to Zebulun and Naphtali which was Galilee. The move to Capernaum fulfills the prophecy about Zebulun and Capernaum.

The problem comes when you want Nazara to be in Galilee. That's got nothing to do with Mt 4:12-16.


spin

andrewcriddle

The problem I have with this is that Jesus is previously apparently somewhere in Judea, probably in the "wilderness", anyway somewhere in the vicinity of the preaching of John the Baptist. And apparently what we would now call "Of No Fixed Abode"

If you are suggesting that that is what the tradition behind Matthew 4 meant by "Nazara", ie that the move from Nazara to Capernaum means that Jesus is leaving wandering in the Judean wilderness and is settling down for a time by the sea of Galilee, then it seems rather speculative. (You may feel the same about some of my posts in this thread.)

In any case I don't see any trace in Matthew of the idea that "Nazara" is a village or township somewhere in Judea.

Andrew Criddle

spin

I didn't mention Judea in relation to Nazara. I did say from Mt 4:12-16 that there is no room for Nazara in Galilee. The move to Capernaum is the move to Galilee.

Between the baptism and the move to Galilee there's the temptation, which involved the wilderness, the holy city and a very high mountain, so there's no hint where Jesus's "fixed abode" may have been prior to the move to Galilee other than in the name Nazara.

Something seems to have happened in the tradition between the time when the Matthean writer removed all the references to nazarhnos from his Marcan source and the writing of Mt 4:13-16, ie it received the notion of Nazara. (I can't imagine that someone would have removed nazarhnos if they knew about Nazara: the relationship would have appeared obvious.) This means the writer needed to reconcile the fact that the literary tradition (from Mark) has Capernaum as Jesus's abode and the fact that the current tradition knew of Nazara. Mt 4:13-16 is a wonderful solution. I'm sure it would have seemed a logical necessity of being "correct".


spin

the_cave

I agree that Mt 4:13-16 is trying to reconcile Nazara with Capernaum. But what else are you saying? I also find it plausible that Matthew took "Nazarene" and turned it into "Nazara"--is that what you are saying? Otherwise, where do you think Matthew got "Nazara"?

spin

Think of these steps:

1. The Matthean community receives a version of Mark.
2. It adapts Mark to the traditions of the community. This includes fixing up the Greek and getting rid of obscurities and unacceptable (ie perceived as erroneous) elements. (Out goes the obscure nazarhnos for example.)
3. As the Matthean community's tradition develops, though external input from itinerant preachers and contacts with other communities, the literary gospel is updated to reflect the changes in the tradition at the time of the updating. Once the literary tradition exists, changes to it tend to be ad hoc, as changing scrolls involves rewriting as one copies. (Nazara creeps in, for elsewhere it would seem nazarhnos was more productive. The Lucan community seems not to have had too many problems with nazarhnos. It could be that Nazara was generated from nazarhnos as a logical understanding of the word.)

spin

ynquirer

Equating Upper Galilee with Galilee of the Gentiles is manifestly wrong. It is the other way around, at least in accordance with the Talmud of Jerusalem.

According to Mishna Tractate Shebi’it M 9:2-3, “all places in which sycamores do not grow are regarded as upper Galilee,” while “all places in which sycamores do grow are regarded as lower Galilee.” Thus, Upper Galilee seems to be a name for the Galilean highlands, where the sycamore tree dies when it freezes, while Lower Galilee denotes her lowlands.

The Sea of Galilee and Capernaum, as being roughly at the level of the Mediterranean Sea, are naturally located in Lower Galilee. The distinction is useless to interpret Matthew 4:12-16, though. If I mentioned the borderline between both Galilees at Bersabe (according to Josephus) it was solely on account of the Galilean highlands being right in the center of the region, which is indicative of Bersabe being in the center as well and evidence that tribes other than Naphtali and Zebulon (according to Joshua, ch.19) were supposed to have received land in Galilee.

Also I disagree with Ben’s contention that Nazara (according to Mathew 4:12-16) can be inferred to be in either the land of Naphtali or the land of Zebulon. I regard with the highest respect your suggestion that Nazara/Nazaret/Nazareth was in Zebulon while Capernaum was in Naphtali. Yet, if so, what was the necessity for Jesus to move from one place to the other? It is doubtful that Zebulon of the highlands could reasonably be ascribed to Galilee of the Gentiles, I grant. Yet, this is immaterial to the effect of fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy: the prophet equates Galilee of the Gentiles to Naphtali plus Zebulon, and the rhetorical equation as proposed by so high an authority is heavier than any factual evidence. Therefore, if Jesus moves to Capernaum the sole reason is that he didn’t fulfil the prophecy in Nazareth. In this, spin is fairly correct.

However, spin has not yet explained why one must scrap the lands of Asher and Issachar, that is, Galilee not of the Gentiles as possible locations for Nazara/Nazaret/Nazareth. (Ooops! Surely spin cannot read my posts because I am in spin’s ignore list?) spin has said that Galilee of the Gentiles was Galilee without the Jews. Yet, this is just a description of his belief, not an explanation, which is still wanting. BTW, as such a belief, it is rather feeble: does it mean that the light had to come from the Gentiles? Isaiah, at one of his infuriated moments, might have thought so. But – Matthew?

The fact that Nazareth is one-and-a-half miles to the north-east of Japha proves nothing, sorry. Borderlines in central Galilee, among the lands of three or perhaps four different tribes, must per force have followed capricious tracks. Thinking that spatial nearness excludes the possibility that they belonged in the lands of different tribes is bad probability theory. Actually, the boot is on the other foot. Japhia (the name for Japha in Joshua 19:12) was nothing other than a marker of the borderline, so that the borderline could possibly have run between Japhia and Nazareth – why not?

A priori, there is a fifty-percent likelihood of Nazareth falling either side.

andrewcriddle

Could you clarify please?

I entirely agree that Upper Galilee included the Northern Highlands of Galilee, and I have, (on reconsideration), doubts whether Capernaum was in Upper Galilee.

What I'm not sure about is whether you are saying that "Galilee of the Gentiles" meant Lower Galilee in which case I would disagree. ("Galilee of the Gentiles" in 1 Maccabees seems to mean the area adjacent to Phoenicia which is Upper rather than Lower Galilee) Or whether you are saying that "Galilee of the Gentiles" meant Upper Galilee and did not include the area near the Lake of Galilee such as Capernaum in which case you may well be right but I'm not sure.

The problem is that the Northern part of the Galilee and the Highlands roughly correlate as do the Lowlands and the Southern part. The Rabbinic writings seem to divide Upper and Lower Galilee on the basis of their elevation whereas Josephus seems to divide them on a North-South basis. On Josephus' basis the Northern part of the Sea of Galilee could possibly be in Upper Galilee, although on reconsideration the boundary in Josephus seems to be a few miles North.

Andrew Criddle