Vorkosigan

A poster sent me this website

http://essenes.net/naz01.htm

which suggests:

• "Galilee is the name of the sea or lake by which the entire territory was known. In more ancient times this water was known by a different name, but by the time of Jesus it had also acquired the title of the Sea of Gennasaret. Exactly when this name was first bestowed we do not know, but the earliest reference to it in scriptural writings seems to occur in the first book of Maccabees, where the RSV "Common Bible" gives it this name. In the Greek Septuagint itis rendered as "Gennesar".
  
  If, as we have done earlier, we consider not so much the literal word, but rather the sound it expresses - and speech or sound always comes before its written expression - it is not a large step from "Gennesaret" (sometimes spelt "Gennesareth") or "Gennesar" to "Nazaret", "Nazareth" or "Nazara". Hebrew and Aramaic contain many letters whose pronunciation is of a guttural kind which can sound to foreign ears like a number of alternative letters in their own tongue. Allowing, as is clear we must, for such differences of rendering, the Hebrew-Aramaic sounds which fall into this category, together with differences in local dialect such as already mentioned in the case of Peter, it is not unreasonable to postulate that Nazareth and Gennesaret are one and the same place. We know that a town or city called Nazareth may not have existed in Jesus' day, but we do know that Gennesaret did."

One might add that Josephus also called the SoG "Gennesaret" so the Gospelers could well have sourced it from there...

Any comments?

Haran

Seems more likely to me that it is related to the word for sea of Galilee in the Old Testment, although this has been disputed (what hasn't, huh? ):

×›×*רת - Kinnereth (HB)
χεννεÏ?εθ, κενεÏ?εθ, inter alia - Chinnereth (Bach 'ch'), Kenereth (LXX)

These appear to relate to the city, by the same name, located on this sea.

Haran

Hmm... Anyone know why the 'nun' is showing up as a black diamond with a white question mark inside it, followed by an asterisk?

fta

Browser issues, probably -- the Hebrew font displays ok in IE but not in Firefox for me.

Vorkosigan

That looks like a possibility too, although in essence the suggestion is the same. But if that is true, then where does the "Nazara" come from in Mark's "nazarhnos?" Yet an even more worn down form?

Anat

I recall a Talmudic reference to Ginossar - explaining the name as 'because it is like the gardens of princes (ganei sarim)'. Can't remember if it was supposed to be the name of a town or a larger area. The Talmud refers to the Sea of Galilee as 'the sea of Tiberias' but it obviously had some other name earlier.

Could Genessaret have been derived from Geshur somehow?

What is the oldest mention of Kinnereth? (Supposedly the lake was named so because it is shaped like a lyre. Some people have imagination.)

spin

I think it's extremely unlikely that gennhsareQ has anything to do with Nazareth. First, one has to somehow get rid of the full first syllable, gen, remarkable enough, but then in the Greek there is already a very different long vowel in the next syllable. How is it that a word which could manifest an eta in one form could have an alpha in another form. Very difficult to explain. Finally the earliest form is found in 1 Macc 11:67 as gennhsar and we are further away again. This last form is reflected in the Vulgate at Mt 14:34, Gennesar, and in the three appearances of Gennesareth in the Peshitta, gnsr. It is hard to get Nazareth from here.

The relationship between Kinneroth (knrwt, which apparently means "harps") and Gennesareth as the name for the sea seems too close for coincidence, but begs explanation.


spin

the_cave

One thing I would like to note is that the assertion that Origen isn't aware of a Nazareth seems to be false. He does speak of a "mystical" interpretation of it, but betrays no ignorance of the existence of a place somewhere which he thinks corresponds to Nazareth (and he shouldn't, since it appears there was in fact a place called Nazareth by the second century.) I guess I should make clear at this point that of course this doesn't say anything about the existence of a first-century Nazareth, or where it might have been located. Not really all that important, I guess, but I thought I'd toss it in.

[Heavily edited in order to make qualifications]

Diogenes the Cynic

Doe anybody know the basis for the identification of the modern arhaeological site of Nazareth, Is there actually any proof that this site was called Nazareth in the 2nd century?

andrewcriddle

IIUC there is no proof that the traditional site of Nazareth was called Nazareth in pre-Constantinian times. (There seems to be evidence from a 4th century Hebrew inscription at Caesarea that there was a place in the Galilee called Nazareth from at least the 2nd century CE but that is a different matter.)

However the site appears to have been almost unanimously accepted as the true location of Nazareth from the time of Constantine onwards.

Meier in 'A Marginal Jew' Vol 1 p301 comments following Robert North 'in a Holy Land where various sites fight over the honor of being the biblical Capernaum or Cana a good argument for Nazareth's claim is that it has virtually no rival'.


Andrew Criddle