Is the presence of Nazareth in the New Testament an anachronism?

[ChadwickHenryWard]

I've heard it claimed a handful of times that the town of Nazareth where Jesus lived and preached did not exist at the time of the events described in the Gospels. The town, which is today located in northern Israel, was supposedly not founded until as much as a hundred years after the events in the Gospels. The suggestion, I suppose, is that this throws doubt on the authenticity, veracity, and reliability of those New Testament documents which put Jesus in that place - either because they were written long after the events by people who weren't there, and thus lacked the proper historical and geographic knowledge to avoid the mistake, the parts of those texts which mention the town were altered much later for unknown reasons, or the town was mythical at the time of the writing, but later had its name attached to a small village.

The problem is that I have never been able to find any scholarly opinion on the matter. I am led to wonder where the origin of the claim lies, and if it has any veracity. Has anybody here ever heard such a thing before?

[Angry Dragon]

1. Does it really matter??

[RC]

2. Yeah, it does.

Add more evidence that Jesus did not really exist. if true.

[Angry Dragon]

3. I will tell you a story

There was a man that went around preaching about a different way to live.
His name was Bill, but we will call him Jesus.
Or people just got the name wrong or people just heard the name wrong
The message is more important than the name.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

14. Personally, I find it interesting.

If it is anachronistic, I find it interesting that that fact is not more widely discussed.

Beyond that, if we are to ask the question, "Should we live our lives in the way prescribed by the Christian Bible?" the matter is of great importance. Some very specific claims are made about what happens after we die, and how our actions in life affect our lot later on. Such a glaring error, if real, in the books that tell us how to act to get to heaven, cannot help but throw doubt onto the veracity of the other claims therein.

For my part, I've already found the answer to the above question to be a resounding "no," but for reasons other than the history and geographic knowledge (or lack thereof) of the Gospel authors.

[Leontius]

26. The best I have been able to find is there was no town as

we would call it but a small group of dwellings have existed on the site for quite some time and was probably know by that name.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

42. That's just semantics.

Either a community of humans were dwelling there, or they were not. The claim that I am interested in verifying (or debunking) is that there was no such community, in that place and time, bearing the name "Nazareth." There are plenty of questions about the veracity of the story of the life of Jesus as it is told in the Gospels, but I am interested in this question in particular.

[Leontius]

52. The latest archaeological evidence shows that there was a

settlement there at the time the Gospels refer to. The WELCOME TO NAZARETH: HOME OF JESUS CHRIST sign has not been found at this time.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

53. Well. that's pretty good.

I guess it's possible that the name was only added later, but the simplest explanation would be that it's on the level. Thanks.

[spin]

4. There is also the question of why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem ...

for a census.

Census of Quirinius

***snip***

The first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke comprise a birth narrative that is unique to this gospel. Luke's birth narrative emphasizes Jesus' humble humanity, and it depicts Mary and Joseph as lone travellers far from home because of a census:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (Luke 2:1-7 —NRSV)

This passage has long been considered problematic by Biblical scholars, since it places the birth of Jesus around the time of the census in 6/7, whereas the Gospel of Matthew indicates a birth during or just after the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, nine years earlier.<16> In addition, no historical sources mention a worldwide or even a Roman-controlled world census which would cover the population as a whole; those of Augustus covered Roman citizens only;<17> and it was not the practice in Roman censuses to require people to return to their ancestral homes.<18>...emphasis added

Modern scholars tend to explain the disparity as an error on the part of the author of the Gospel, concluding that he was more concerned with creating a symbolic narrative than a historical account,<19> and was either unaware of, or indifferent to,<20> the chronological difficulty. The Gospel associates the birth of Jesus with that of John the Baptist, in the time of King Herod's reign.<21> The same author, in Acts of the Apostles, associates the census with the much later revolt of Theudas, see also Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles.

[The Magistrate]

5. This Passage, Sir, Can Be Shortened, And With Profit, To 'The Author Lied'

"Modern scholars tend to explain the disparity as an error on the part of the author of the Gospel, concluding that he was more concerned with creating a symbolic narrative than a historical account,<19> and was either unaware of, or indifferent to,<20> the chronological difficulty."

[spin]

9. The gospels sometimes remind me of stories about George Washington ...

Facts & Falsehoods About George Washington

Did George Washington have wooden teeth?

He had false teeth, but they were not made of wood. As a matter of fact, the materials used in his false teeth were probably more uncomfortable than wood. In one set of teeth, his dentist, Dr. John Greenwood, used a cow’s tooth, one of Washington’s teeth, hippopotamus ivory, metal and springs. They fit poorly and distorted the shape of his mouth.

Did George Washington chop down a cherry tree?

Probably not. The story was invented by Parson Mason Weems who wrote a biography of George Washington shortly after Washington’s death. Since so little is known about Washington’s childhood, Weems invented several anecdotes about Washington’s early life to illustrate the origins of the heroic qualities Washington exhibited as an adult. Introduced to countless schoolchildren as a moral tale in the McGuffey Reader textbook, the parable has become a persistent part of American mythology.

Did George Washington throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River?

No. This myth is often told to demonstrate his strength. The Potomac River is over a mile wide and even George Washington was not that good an athlete! Moreover, there were no silver dollars when Washington was a young man. His step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, reported in his memoirs that Washington once threw a piece of slate “about the size and shape of a dollar” across the Rappahanock River near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Rappahannock River at the site of the Washington family homestead today measures only 250 feet across, a substantial but perhaps not impossible distance to throw.

Did George Washington wear a wig?

No. Even though wigs were fashionable, Washington kept his own hair, which he wore long and tied back in a queue, or ponytail. He did, however, powder his hair as was the custom of the time.
http://www.mountvernon.org/content/facts-falsehoods-about-george-washington-0

At least we have better records about George Washington than we do about Jesus.

[humblebum]

8. The disparity is explained by the difference in the length of a year,

which is never accounted for by biblical critics. The year was 360 days long in those days, so when you are talking about a difference of only few years, that needs to considered. This is not 2011 according to the calendar used back then.

This would be 2038 if there were 360 days in a year.

[The Magistrate]

10. Actually, Sir, The Julian Calender Had 365 Days To A Year, And Leap Years

But no one expects factual accuracy from you.

[humblebum]

16. Yes but the Biblical calendar being used at that time was based on

a 360 day year - the old Hebrew calendar, therefore, a discrepancy

[The Magistrate]

18. No One Reckoned Back By That, Sir, But By the Standard Calender Of the Empire

As it had been since about 50 b.C.E. or so.

As usual, you really have no idea what the facts are in a matter you feel compelled to comment on.

[humblebum]

21. The calendar that had been employed in writing Scripture had

been the 360 day Hebrew calendar, long before Rome existed, and the Jews did not adopt the ways of Rome. All of the Scriptures are recognized as being recorded using the Hebrew Calendar.

[The Magistrate]

23. Dream On, Sir

Even here, you have no idea what you are talking about. Calenders are important business, and you cannot have the appointed days straying too far from the things they mark. The Hebrew calender at that time was kept regular by the insertion of a thirteenth month every three or four years, as dictated by the Temple priests, and thus over time averaged to the solar year calenders in allocation of time by count of days. There was a complex reform of this method some years after the destruction of the Temple, adding seven months regularly to selected years over a cycle of nineteen years. But at neither point would your claim that a reckoning over any period of years by standard solar years would be out of phase with a tally based on the Hebrew reckoning be correct.

As to what year would be employed by authors in the New Testament, these seem to have been mostly Romanized Jews or even Greeks; either year could have been used. But again, it does not matter to this point; reference is made to points in time that do not coincide by any calender.

[humblebum]

24. Actually it makes all the difference in the world when one is debating

a difference of only a few years, which is the case here AND clearly there is a discrepancy that even you cannot account for. Some biblical writers could have been using the old 354 day year with every 40th year being a leap year. Bottom line is that there is NOTHING certain about the exact time. So if you say that there is a discrepancy of 5 or 6 years in order to make a point - you are blowing smoke. Many variables.

[dmallind]

25. You are, I suspect intentionally, missing the point.

It doesn't matter a flying fig what year the Jews called it, because scripture does not name the year, but instead names events. We know from ROMAN (hence consistently dated) sources that Herod, Quirinius and the (completely different from as portrayed) Augustan census were in widely separated years.

[humblebum]

30. It makes a huge difference when the writers of scripture were using

one particular calendar over another. Especially when one is looking back 2000 years and attempting to be accurate within only a few years. Added to that, there are quite possibly variables yet to be recognized. Simple fact. There IS no proof.

[Leontius]

32. The calendrar is not the issue, the census is.

[dmallind]

38. One more time - THEY DIDN'T USE YEARS!

They timed the story around events we know full well were not contemporaneous with each other, dated by reliable consistent historical records. At the very least it means that the people who wrote these stories were far enough removed that neither they nor their audience could be expected to remember major events and when they happened - which makes them obviously unreliable hearsay.

If I wrote a story about something that happened when Nixon was President, that happened simuultaneously with Malcolm X's assassination and featured people seeing Star Wars, how reliable would I sound even to not very well informed people?

Now sure if we substitute a story about something in the administration of James Polk, concerning the British starting the occupation of Hong Kong, and having people refer to Il Trovatore by Verdi, I could no doubt make it believable to a mostly ill-educated audience without easy access to historical references, but how likely am I to be able to tell accurately of conversations and domestic affairs of that time that have not hitherto been scrupulously documented?

[The Magistrate]

40. Exactly, Sir

The accounts of the man's birth are, on their face, fabrications,or better still, as it always preferable to use fewer syllables, they are lies.

[dmallind]

44. sorry - "using fewer syllables" and I don't get along ;) nt

[The Magistrate]

46. This Might Change Your Mind, Sir

Mark Twain On 'Cooper's Prose Style'....

http://www.llumina.com/mark_twain_on_cooper.htm

[dmallind]

57. Sadly, people such as myself have two unwholesome options

Those writers whose ability spans the huge but forsaken gulf between minimal and mediocre can be Dickens without the talent, or Hemingway without the talent. Frequently, as in my case, we do not even make the choice ourselves consciously. By education, by early reading choices, by peer reinforcement snd by temperament I inevitably became the former.

The taste in such things is both regional and cyclical. Despite the damnation of purple prose by the great mass of American semi-intellectuals and academics, there are plenty of esteemed modernists and poastmodernists who know the joy of throwing in an adverb or three, or even a subordinate clause now and again. Neither Eco nor Rushdie will die unappreciated. I will, admittedly, but that's that damn talent thing again.

[The Magistrate]

29. Always Fun, Sir, To Watch a Man Digging when He is In A Deep Enough Hole Already

Facts are not your strong suit:that is the one thing you have convinced everyone here of....

[humblebum]

31. And ad hominems ARE your strong suit. You could not carry on without them. nt

[The Magistrate]

34. Some People Just Stick Out Their Chins And Beg, Sir....

"The bleatin' o' the kid incites the tyger...."

[humblebum]

35. Then quit begging. nt

[The Magistrate]

36. Thank You For the Laugh, Sir: One Does Not Often See An Adult Try 'I'm Rubber, You're Glue!'

[Goblinmonger]

64. That's not an ad hom

He isn't substituting the person for the argument.

But don't let what fallacies really are get in the way of you spouting them off.

[Leontius]

28. So the Jews of that time had no calendar of their own, interesting

history you have there.

[The Magistrate]

33. The Answer, Sir, To 'What Is Two Plus Two?' Is Never 'Thursday'....

This comment was addressed to a person who initially claimed that when people reckoned back from the present to dates in a Biblical account, they were always in error because a 360 day year was used, not a 365 day year. The fact is that a 365 day year was already in general use throughout the Roman world. After this person replied with some ill-informed quibbling, the facts of how the lunar Hebrew year was harmonized with the solar year were pointed out, which again makes hash of his claim there would be a great discrepancy in reckoning back from the present to dates of that time.

[humblebum]

37. When you are attempting to reconcile to calendars, as you are doing,

it makes perfect sense that there would be a minor discrepancy of a few years, especially looking 2000 years back. Of course, we know that the Jews were fully romanized - NOT!

[The Magistrate]

39. Again, Sir, You Drive On-Lookers To the Conclusion You Have No Idea What You Are Talking About

When a calendar is regularized by periodic adjustment, the greater the span of time examined, the less error would be expected. In the Testamental period, in any given space of two or three years, the Hebrew and the Roman calenders might have been out by up to several weeks; in any given twenty year period, either calender would have reckoned just about the same number of days passed over the preceding two decades. The number of days reckoned over two thousand years would be strikingly similar, whichever method was employed. Your original contention was that people reckoned back without taking account of the employment of a 360 day calender, and so were off by five days a year which, over two thousand years, would amount to a discrepancy of many years. Which it would, if that lunar calendar had not been routinely adjusted to maintain conformity to the solar calendar of 365 days, and if anyone outside the Hebrew faith had employed their calendar in calculating the years from Augustus to the present day. Basically, you simply engaged in a reflex action to epater those silly mean atheists, and as generally does happen when you try this, it has blown up in your face, because you have little grasp of facts or logic.

[humblebum]

48. As I have stated before, you are no historian. There is a huge

irony being overlooked here. Atheists continually question the authorship of various books of the Bible, without any firm knowledge of who did, in fact, write the books, or their character, and yet you can sit at your computer and tell me that you have a firm grasp of the biblical timeline without any doubt. What a crock.

[The Magistrate]

49. Damn, Sir, But You Knock Stand-Up Professionals Into A Cocked Hat Sometimes

Your quarrel in this particular matter is not with me, merely with arithmetic, and people who set out to fight simple arithmetic always lose. You made a claim about calculation of dates in the past made by working back from the present. That claim was false, and it was demonstrated that it could only have been made in the first place by someone who did not know how the Hebrew calender actually functioned. You moved on from that by attempting to argue with simple addition and multiplication, things any ten year old is expected to have down cold, and recognize a true result in.

You are now moving on to make a claim about some amorphous group called 'atheists', that you state for a fact have no knowledge of the internals of the Bible, and therefore cannot be allowed to make comment on them, or be taken seriously in comment on them.

This is going to be fun....

[humblebum]

50. As I said you are no historian, rely on ad hominems, and obfucate

by making false claims, such as, "therefore cannot be allowed to make comment on them." Never stated it, nor implied it.

[The Magistrate]

51. That is 'Obfuscate', Sir: "Don't Write Naughty Words On Walls that You Can't Spell...."

It does not surprise me you do not stand by all the clear import of many of your comments, especially when called on them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSwjuz_-yao

[spin]

11. However why would someone who was not a Roman ...

be asked to journey to the home of his ancestors for a census? Why would he take a 9 month pregnant woman with him on the trip?

edited for typo

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Why would a 9-month pregnant woman get on a plane for a 9 hour flight?

OMG!

Trig is The Second Coming!

[cleanhippie]

41. Because neither event actually happened?

They are both fabricated tales?

:shrug:

[ChadwickHenryWard]

45. Isn't it illegal for a woman more than eight months pregnant

to fly on a plane? That aside, isn't it against the policy of the airlines? They open themselves up to litigation if that woman goes into labor.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

43. Which of the two dates is inaccurate?

That is, did Herod live for nine years longer than the date given above, or did Quirinius come to power nine years earlier than stated? What caused the error in calculation?

[Goblinmonger]

12. Because if Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy

he needs to come from a specific lineage.

[spin]

13. Exactly. (n/t)

[laconicsax]

55. Which he doesn't if he's the Son of God

I've yet to get an answer for how Jesus can be in David's line if Joseph wasn't the father.

[Goblinmonger]

56. Shhhhh

You're thinking too hard.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

60. I always thought that those two parts of the story were written by different people.

Let's take the genealogy in Matthew (the shorter one, which has Joseph the son of Jacob, not Heli.) Immediately afterward we are told that Joseph is not in fact Jesus's father. I have always interpreted this as being written by two different authors. The first thought it was more important that Jesus be descended from David (as per prophecy.) Rather later, somebody comes along who believes that Jesus was in fact begot by the Holy Ghost; however the Gospel of Matthew says that Joseph begot Jesus. That has to be changed. Rather than cutting out the first sixteen verses, one can be inserted in the margin to the brief effect that Jesus was fathered by the Holy Ghost. Thus what we see today.

[laconicsax]

65. Some "inspired" work.

[Thats my opinion]

78. There are obviously,no accurate genealogies

either of Jesus or anyone else from that era. The purpose of so-called heritage lists is not to tell history but to make a point. In Matthew it is to say that Jesus was an authentic descendant of Abraham--the first Hebrew. For Luke it was that Jesus was the archetype human being--from Adam. None of those who collected and published these lists had reciting history in mind. That was not their purpose--and to try and read falsehood into them is to be totally unaware of what they were about. This was a common literary devise in the ancient world.

[laconicsax]

79. That raises a question.

If Jesus is the product of a union between God and Mary, why is his adoptive father's heritage at all relevant?

[ChadwickHenryWard]

80. I've never undertood the claim that

just because a story in the Bible was made up does not mean that the intention was to deceive. Let's take the example of Matthew. He wants to show that Jesus is descended from Abraham, and to do it he invents a genealogy. Our belief in his contention is predicated on the strength of the genealogy he has provided. Unfortunately, he knows this information to be untrue. How is this anything other than deceit?

I would further question the ability of the ancients to deal in "archetypes." Whatever Luke's motivation in tracing Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, we cannot suppose that he had command of ideas that only came about in the modern or post-modern period.

In addition, in relation to your claim "none of those who collected and published these lists had reciting history in mind" - I would like to know how you know such a thing. I mean, I know that their works are not historically accurate, but how do you know that they didn't expect anyone else to believe it?

When I point out that stories such as the garden of Eden, the Flood, or the Exodus never occurred, I'm often met with the rebuttal that the stories are only "symbolic." This is a modern view of the works, however. For centuries, everything contained in the Bible was the inerrant word of god, and to say otherwise was hazardous to one's health. I think it is erroneous to impute a modern view of Scripture onto those who originally knew the work.

[Thats my opinion]

82. Good questions

You sound like a person who is wide enough read to understand the nature of literature in the ancient world. There were no novels or short stories and very little historic recording. Probably Josephus "Antiquities" is the closest we can come. But he starts in Genesis and has no more hard data than does anyone else of the era. One thinks of Homer's telling of a series of wars There was a great variety of other writings produced to tell stories and to offer people entre into events, without detailing the events themselves. These were not fiction or lies, but a way to address important persons and events. In no way did the writers believe they were fooling anyone with made-up fabrications. Some of these writing approximated our "reportage" and some were simply settings without historic underpinnings. The gospel of Mark probably comes as close to historic accuracy as any of the other gospels. He leaves out most of the things you might call lies. No shepherds, no Bethlehem, no virgin birth, no wise men or a star. etc.

You might know that the notion that the Bible was the inerrant word of God is not found until the fundamentalist around Princeton a century ago produced the theory. While the Bible was held in reverence as having a direct connection between a people and their God, it never had the position as does the Qur'an which was said to be dictated by the angel Gabriel (who got it from God) into the ear of the prophet, and it is literally God's words. The Bible never was thought of that why.

Sorry for the didactic nature of this post, but I thought you might appreciate clearing up a couple of points.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

17. We can say with confidence that the census never happened.

It is not mentioned in any of the biographies of Augustus, nor on any of the monuments listing his accomplishments in life. Further, there are no physical records surviving from the massive collection of written data that would necessarily have accrued from such a Herculean undertaking. This, combined with the departures from Roman census procedure mentioned above, solidly rules out the possibility of the claimed census ever having occurred. One explanation is that the Gospel author needed his Messiah to be born in Bethlehem in order to comply with prophecy, so he changed the story a little bit to put the pregnant Mary there at just the right time. This raises the question, however, of why the author did not simply have Jesus born in Bethlehem from the beginning, grow up there, live there, and preach there. Instead we have this insistence that he came from a place called "Nazareth." One explanation for this is that a real man named Jesus was born, lived, and preached in a real place called Nazareth. But I have also heard, from different quarters, that there was no such place in existence when the story supposedly occurred. This makes deciphering the matter a lot messier.

[The Magistrate]

19. Again, Sir:This Passage Can Be Shortened, and With Profit, To 'He Lied'

"He changed the story a little bit to put the pregnant Mary there at just the right time."

[ChadwickHenryWard]

59. That the lie occurred is uncontroversial.

I'm more interested in why it was necessary. If the story was made up from the beginning, why not just have him be born, live, and preach in Bethlehem? He must have been born, lived, and preached in Nazareth. But some claim that there was no such place, which brings us back to the suggestion that the whole story is made up from the beginning. Which is it?

[The Magistrate]

63. Yet It Is Not Generally Called A Lie, Sir

Which is the point of interest for me. A tremendous variety of euphemism is deployed in discussions of these matters, to avoid the simple words 'lie' and 'forgery', though these are the most appropriate words for fabricating a story, or elements of a story, and then, as was often done, attributing the result to a person other than its actual author.

One thing to remember is that the Gospels were not really attempts to present an honest history of events; they were all prepared to buttress particular theological positions, and in different times and in response to different pressures and arguments. The first of them contains no nativity tale at all; Matthew follows giving a genealogy and making the claim of birth at Bethlehem; Luke follows with a tale of how the birth came to occur at Bethlehem in the first place. The sequence suggests a desire to nail down the claim of Davidic descent and birth in 'David's city' which were considered necessary attributes for anyone to be considered the Messiah. Perhaps this owed to some skepticism concerning the claim encountered by proselytizers, or expressed by doubters within the congregation, or perhaps it simply is intended to give the congregation's members an ever more luxuriant wallow in reflective glory, or perhaps it simply reflects the common practice of liars to embroider further the longer they tell their tale.

[okasha]

84. The journey to Bethlehem may be a mistunderstanding

on the Greek author's part. There was also a Bethlehem in Gallilee, a few miles from Nazareth and also extremely small, that may well have been Joseph's home town. And if there were something irregular about Mary's pregnancy, he may well have taken her there to get her out of the local gossip circuit until the buzz died down. (The most obvious "irregularity" would be Joseph's and Mary's failure to wait for the wedding to have sex. There's also the persistent story about a romance with a Roman soldier named Panthera and the ugly possibility of rape when Sepphoris, only 4 miles from Nazareth, was destroyed in response to the rebellion which followed Herod's death in 4 BCE.)

[safeinOhio]

6. Suggested reading

Misquoting Jesus, Bart D. Ehrman.

Shows lots of mistakes made over a couple of thousand years in the versions of the bible we now have. Great book.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

47. I've wanted to read that book for a long time.

I heard the interview Dr. Ehrman did with Terry Gross on NPR when the book first came out. It was fascinating.

[Viva_Daddy]

7. You might try using a search engine on the subject

It's been awhile since I did so and, unfortunately I didn't keep the link sources. From what I recall there is no mention of the town in the entire Old Testament. Josephus, who was a commander of the Jewish rebels living in Galilee, recounts his travels around Galilee seeking recruits for the rebellion and never mentions the name Nazareth. It is my understanding also that no town named Nazareth was ever "identified" until the Empress Helena (Constantine's mother)had a "vision" in the area that told her "this is the place". She also had "visions" that supposedly told her where Jesus was born and where he was crucified and where he was buried. That's about it.

Some scholars have speculated that the name of the town came from the Gospel writers' misunderstanding that Jesus was called a "Nazerine" (a small sect within ancient Judaism, not a town). But they never explain how, if that got that bit of information wrong, why we should trust them regarding the other "information" they give.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

27. I'm not sure I understand.

So assuming that Jesus was a member of the "Nazarine" sect, that means that the town of Nazareth did not in fact exist when Jesus lived? It comes from the failure on the part of the Gospel authors to understand the term "Nazerine?" What about the existence of the town today? If I understand correctly, that was the result of a different town being mislabeled in the fourth century?

[emcguffie]

20. I think maybe the confusion came from Jesus being a Nazarite, if I've spelled it correctly.

That was a sect of some sort. And "Jesus the Nazarite" eventually came to be misunderstood to mean that he was from Nazareth, which he wasn't, because it did not exist when he was born.

I have a book somewhere.... My bookshelf fell all off of the wall, however, and it would be difficult to find it. I tried. Can't find it. There's a zillion books with "Jesus the Nazarene" in the title.

[dmallind]

22. More likely a corruption of Nasorean, but the gist is sound. nt

[emcguffie]

75. Yeah, I couldn't find the book, so didn't remember the spelling.

At least in English it sounds the same.

[struggle4progress]

54. Archaeologists: Jesus-Era House Found In Nazareth (NPR 2009)

December 21, 2009

Archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.

The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from Roman invaders, said archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority ...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121724812

[dmallind]

58. There is an Indian Mound a mile or two from my house

If I find historical documents referring to its 12th Century chief, purporting to be eyewitness accounts, and referring to him as being from my town by name, which was founded in 1812, are they likely to be reliable? The mound is certainly there, it's certainly a Mississippian cultural find from around about the 12th century, and it's certainly in the right town. What could be wrong?

[struggle4progress]

62. OP proposes discussion of claim "Nazareth .. did not exist at the time of .. the Gospels"

This is a region with a very long history, located at the crossroads of empires for many millennia. At present-day Nazareth, remnants of civilization can be found predating the Assyrian conquest. The NPR report indicates that it was inhabited in Roman era also

[Leontius]

66. The site has been occupied since 9000bc there seems to have

been a period after the Assyrian conquest when it was not occupied but the length of that period is not yet determined.

[dmallind]

69. Athens has been settled for millenia. Can Thucydides reliably mention the Gazi neighborhood? nt

[Leontius]

72. What point are you trying to make?

[dmallind]

73. That settlements in the same place don't always have the same name throughout time.

And that therefore questions of anachronistic references to place NAMES are in no way answered by pointing out that the LOCATION was settled.

[dmallind]

67. Yes - just as my town did not exist in the Mississippian era

The ground existed. People lived there, but the town as named did not exist until 1812.

If the gospels mentioned how close Jesus was to the West Bank checkpoints, would that not be an anachronism? Yet people certainly lived on that site and Jesus was supposedly very close to it much of the time.

[struggle4progress]

68. No, there are references to Nazareth before 1812

[dmallind]

70. But not, which is more relevant, any around 20 CE I'm afraid.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

61. So, the answer is a resounding "maybe."

The place that now bears the name was inhabited at the time the story took place. Does that mean that the site is in fact the town described in the stories? Well, maybe.

[Igel]

71. Yeah.

But not about Nazareth.

It's a subtle point in historical linguistics that the first time a word appears in historical documents is almost certainly not the first time the word is used. It's just the first attestation, but there's this strong temptation to say if a word doesn't appear in a document prior to 1115 AD that the word didn't exist before 1115 AD. *This* thinking is the origin of the claim that the NT use of "Nazareth" (and allied forms) must be wrong. It's a logical fallacy.

Sometimes words are borrowed and then attested in a text, and might have been borrowed recently before the text was produced; sometimes they're clearly derived from the proto-language with all the "right" sound changes to say they've always been in the language. If they're borrowed or coined the best you can say is that they were borrowed or coined *before* the earliest attestation, because, well, *every* word has an earliest attestation. Language didn't spring into exist word by word as the words were first written down.

The first extra-NT attestations of "Nazareth" are clearly from around 300 AD, with suggestions of it from around 100 AD. That doesn't mean there wasn't some small berg there or nearby with the name. Just that it wasn't written down. Where I live we have a lot of community names that aren't on any maps. They used to be on some detailed maps 80 years ago, but the podunk villages with those names are long submerged--and if you lived more than a few miles away the very existence of the villages was masked by the proximity of Houston or Spring, TX. We have a lot of maps from 80 years ago; the number of Jewish records from 50 AD are rather few and far between. The number of Roman records dealing with details in Palestine are no more numerous. The claim that since Nazareth isn't documented in 1st century records means it didn't exist turns out to be an argument ex silencio. Those are usually considered fallacious unless there's a really good reason for the document to have existed and to have survived, and the fallacy cuts both ways: You can't usually argue that silence means something didn't exist, nor can you argue that silence means it did exist.

If you think that the earliest attestation of Nazareth *is* the NT record, then it goes back to before the earliest gospels' being written down. That date would still be a matter of controversy because, well, in the absence of the autographs we're stuck guessing about dates. If we have a copy all we can say is that the original is older--although even here we have people assuming that the original must have preceded the earliest copy we have by no more than a year. We can play games with looking at the frequency and distribution of scribal errors and try to do some sort of statistical, clade-based analysis making assumes about the rate of scribal errors per decade but that gets bogged down in a lot of assumptions. The assumptions are risky because the "calibration" is done using scribal errors in a different society, over the course of centuries, with a robust set of originals yielding a robust set of copies over a large area. It means if somebody says that the autograph for Matthew is likely to have arisen in 140 AD, you really want to know what the margin of error is at the 95% confidence level--it's likely to be large, even assuming the assumptions are correct. It's impossible to calculate the margin of error for wrong assumptions.

People quibble over the use of word play, "Nazarene" and "Nazareth." It's like "ObamaCare"--meant as a kind of insult, based on "MediCare"--but now the subject of Obama's playing with it to mean "Obama cares." Obviously, since that's not an academic practice, Obama could not have said it--it must be apocryphal. Yet this kind of things is common in some modern communities and wasn't uncommon in the NT (where are more than a few examples of this kind of word-similarity games). It's just not so common in academia for the last few centuries so we act like it can't exist.

What you're left with is no basis for saying that "Nazareth" is an anachronism. It might be, but if we want evidence for something before we say it's true then the answer's "no." If we want anything that might be true to be labelled "maybe," then maybe. But since we start off assuming the NT has to be a fake (since that's the hypothesis to be falsified, right?), we can't use it as first attestation.

[Thats my opinion]

74. I check with an outstanding scholar

who lives in that part of the world. She has been the Principal of a significant ecumenical seminary consortium,. Here is her report.



"There is evidence of a small rural village on the site of present day Nazareth. Archeologists have uncovered a 2000 year old vineyard with wine press, terraces and watch towers on the grounds of the hospital in which we worked. There is evidence of ancient small dwellings cut into the hillside along the valley floor upon which the town now exists, along with a deep well. Near the well a well constructed Roman bath house has been discovered recently suggesting that there may have been a military encampment. this is disputed by some who say it is probably more Byzantine than 1-2C Roman.

Within walking distance of Nazareth is the large ancient city of Sepphoris (aka Zippori and Dio Caesarea). It was the capital of the Galilee region in the early first century. It is thought that artisans from the nearby villages (including Nazareth and Cana) would have been employed to build and maintain the city. I have attached a replica image of the city for you."

[ChadwickHenryWard]

76. That's pretty helpful.

It seems evident that the place now called "Nazareth" was inhabited at the time of the events described in the Gospels. It's within the realm of possibility that the current name was only added later after the story of Jesus had gained currency, but barring any direct evidence, I think we would be premature in supposing that that was the case. Based on the discussion so far, the simplest explanation seems to be that there is no error made in declaring the place to be the setting of the Gospel stories.

Thanks for your input.

[Thats my opinion]

77. Next month I'll be at the Jesus Seminar annual meeting

and I'll see if I can get additional information.

[Deep13]

81. Oh, the authenticiy of the NT is already in shreds.

I don't know about that specific town.

[okasha]

83. The usual argument agains the existence of Nazareth

is that Josephus doesn't mention it in his list of settlements in Galilee. The archaeology, however, says that the site was in fact inhabited in the early 1st century, which, if you'll pardon the pun, settles the question.

[laconicsax]

85. As has been pointed out upthread...

If we found a 3000 year old reference to Baghdad, we would likely conclude that it was a forgery as Baghdad didn't exist until the 8th century.
Likewise, a document referring to New York in 1640 would be suspect as the city wasn't named New York until 1664.

The issue is not simply whether the region was settled, but also if it was known as "Nazareth" at the time.