ApostateAbe

Yes, but I typically ignore spin. Thank you.

spin

It's hopeless.

TedM

Sorry. Seemed like that is what you were trying to communicate. The terms zeta and sigma mean nothing to me, so your points easily get lost. Sure I get your conclusions, but don't understand the 'why' behind them.

Of course I am not talking about the English words which are phonetically similar, but their Greek counterparts. If they both have "Naz" and sound like "Naz" then I guess I've missed the thrust of your argument, which I suppose would be something like this: "Yes, Nazareth and Nazirite both have Naz in them but no one would ever derived the word Nazarene from Nazareth even though they would derive it from Nazirite".

If Nazirite and Nazareth could be linked phonetically, then if Nazirite can link to Nazarene, so too could Nazareth through its link to Nazirite, if not phonetically.

spin

As I said.

For another repeat with crayons...

Hebrew has these letters (among others),

• tsade (like /ts/ as in guts) and
• zayin (like /z/ in fez).

The Semitic town name Nazareth features a tsade (/ts/).
The Hebrew word for "Nazirite" features a zayin (/z/)

The Hebrew letters are transliterated differently into Greek:

• tsade -> sigma (like /s/ in "hiss", not "his") and
• zayin -> zeta (like /z/ in fez).

The transliteration of tsade is remarkably consistent.

This means that Semitic town name Nazareth should look like "Nasareth" in Greek. It doesn't. Instead, it looks like the base word for "Nazirite".

"Nazirite" as a source explains the phonological form of the Greek Nazareth better than the Semitic town name Nazareth can.

The phonology of "Nazirite" is the more likely source for Nazareth than the original name for the town.

(Definitely the last attempt.)

Common sense is useless outside common situations.

Minimalist

But that was not my point, Abe. Calling it a "source" and then being unable to present it as such is a problem. Joseph Smith claimed to have Golden Tablets that he translated but later lost.

Mormons accept such nonsense on "faith." I won't speak for you but I consider such a position to be total bullshit.

ApostateAbe

Most of us accept the existence of Q, but I can work with those who don't for the purpose of this argument. I can state this instead for you:

According to the earliest biographical sources of Jesus (Mark, Matthew and Luke)...

aa5874

Your claim is unsubstantiated. There is no actual evidence of a 'Q' document in antiquity.

Please present your data to show "most of us accept the existence of 'Q'.

TedM

Thanks. If I understand you now, what you are saying is that the 'z' sound in the Greek word for Nazareth is not likely to have come from the Semetic word for Nazareth, but IS likely to have come from the Hebrew word for Nazirite.

The issues/confusion this last explanation immediately raised for me are:

1. I don't know why you say "Semetic" for one word, and "Hebrew" for the other.

2. I don't know why you are focused on only one letter in the word. Are all the rest consistent with the source being either one, or do the other letters also pose problems?

3. The question is whether there was both a town and a 'sect' that shared a similar name, and whether that town could translate to the Greek for Nazareth. It appears that all you have concluded is that there wasn't a town that would have been named "Nazareth". If Nazareth is derived from Nazirite, there could still have been a Hebrew town named Nazirite or perhaps something similar that uses the 'zayin' found in Nazrite, no? How does your conclusion discount the possibility of a town with some Semetic name OTHER than Nazareth?

aa5874

1. If Jesus, the Son of the Ghost, was not born in BETHLEHEM then the Gospels are NOT credible.

2. If Jesus was NOT a Son of a Ghost and was born in Nazareth the Gospels are NOT credible.

3. The existence of Nazareth does not mean Jesus could not have been born in Bethlehem.

4. The existence of Nazareth does not mean Jesus was not a Myth.

Nazareth is irrelevant to the actual existence of Jesus just like the existence of a city called Rome does not mean Romulus and Remus did exist.

The myth Romulus was the founder of Rome who ascended to heaven in Plutarch's "Romulus".

The stories of Jesus of Nazareth are either fiction or mythology.

Arguments that Jesus was born in Nazareth and not Bethlehem only suggest the Gospels are fiction.

spin

It's a village in Galilee and I find it unclear whether the name that has come down to us was originally in Hebrew or Aramaic, so calling it a Semitic name hedges the bet, ie it can't be wrong, though more general, which shouldn't be a problem.

The one letter is a sufficient issue to remove the original name of the town from the discussion.

There are other difficulties, first with the consonant ending, in that usually when you add a suffix to a feminine noun in Hebrew it should bring out the underlying feminine marker /t/ at the end, so that the gentilic should be נצרתי (NTsRTY) which would be Nazaretene (or similar) instead of Nazarene, though a tortuous trajectory has been constructed that could just allow no feminine marker in Aramaic, but that discussion is over data that doesn't reflect any solid chronological indicators. And further the second vowel is unexpected from a Hebrew rendering of the name surviving from the 3rd/4th c. (from Caesarea Maritima) which would be NaTsRaT.

Sticking with the tsade -> zeta problem is the clearest, most difficult phonological problem scholars need to deal with.

Though I haven't commented about a town named "Nasreth", already referred to from an inscription from Caesarea Maritima.

The Semitic town name in English would look somewhat like "Nasreth", which could mean a place with a lookout or watchtower. And doesn't derive from the source of "Nazirite".

It doesn't. It means that none of the names Nazareth, Nazara, Nazarene and Nazorean spring from it.

The trajectory I've given elsewhere is as follows:

[T2]1. Jesus is likened to Samson as the savior of his people, the holy one of god.
2. Like Samson he is given the epithet Nazirite, which in one LXX version it looks very similar to the form of Nazarene, which became used for Jesus.
3. Later, Nazarene became interpreted as a gentilic derived from a place after the time of the writing of Mk. Hence, Nazara (Mt 2:23¹, 4:3, Lk 4:15).
(3a. Around this time, the gentilic "Nazorean" appears, see Mt 2:23, apparently independently and still with a zeta.)
4. Nazara is abandoned for Nazareth, as the Lucan birth narrative and Mt 21:11 indicate. This may have been because of an acquaintance with the real place, Nasrat.

¹ as the earliest evidence shows and not Nazareth.[/T2]