Nazareth Did Not Exist Until After Jesus

[EldonG]

Oh, I like this.  :)

Very tasty.  :D

[stromboli]

I got sidetracked from this thread and I apologize. This, from rationalwiki:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Failed_biblical_prophecies

Jesus will be a Nazarene
In the Bible, Jesus is born in Bethlehem but grows up in Nazareth. Matthew credits the Nazareth upbringing as a fullfilment of prophecy:
Matt. 2:23 And [Mary, Joseph, and Jesus] came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene.
Unlike most of the other "prophecies" in this category, we can't even tell which Old Testament passage, if any, Matthew is twisting to fit the story; no OT prophecy seems relevant. It's almost as if he's just flat-out declaring that this was prophecied and hoping no one calls his bluff. Of course, even this one is't too big a stone for apologists to swallow. As web page dedicated to this particular problem puts it: "First, it is necessary to point out that a genuine textual problem only exists if one has exhausted every possibility of interpretation, and there simply is no reasonable explanation that resolves the difficulty."
The most popular Christian explanation is that "Nazarene" is a figurative expression for anyone who is despised or rejected, as Jesus is at various points in the New Testament and the Messiah at various points in the old. Not only is that a heck of a cop-out, but if it's Matthew's intention, then it makes little sense for him to say that Jesus moving to a literal Nazareth is a fulfillment of the "figurative Nazarene" prophecy. A likelier possibility, and one which makes the author of Matthew look less dishonest and/or stupid, is that "the prophets" doesn't mean the Old Testament authors, but some other person or group of people, or an oral tradition. Of course, in that instance the case for a "fulfilled prophecy" is left empty-handed (and it's a catch-all excuse for similar failures).
One potential concept for the misaligned statement was referring to various prophesies that Jesus would be a Branch of David, Jeremiah 33:15 "In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David’s line, who will do what is just and right in the land." The hebrew term for branch is ne·tser and the book of numbers, chapter 6, denotes becoming a nazirite to consecrate yourself to God. This is supported by the note that no pre-christian texts denote a town of nazereth at all, and the etymology in the name originates from that hebrew word ne·tser.

The city of Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament. This is a real problem that xtians have to work around, since we are going by Matthew with no original Jewish prophecy or foreshadowing to provide some form of confirmation. This, from a Christian source:

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matthew-mark/did-ot-prophesy-jesus-coming-nazareth

There is no direct Old Testament citation that prophesies the Messiah would be called a Nazarene. In fact, Nazareth (approx 1800 people at the time of Christ) is not mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament or in the apocrypha. But, we have two possible explanations:

First, Matthew does not say 'prophet,' singular. He says 'prophets,' plural. It could be that Matthew was referring to several Old Testament references to the despised character of Jesus (i.e., Psalm 22:6, 13; 69:10; Isaiah 49:7; 53:3; Micah 5:1). Nazareth held the Roman garrison for the northern areas of Galilee.1 Therefore, the Jews would have little to do with this place and largely despised it. Perhaps this is why it says in John 1:46, "And Nathanael said to him, 'Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?' Philip said to him, 'Come and see.'" So, it could be a reference not to an actual location, but the maligned character of the Messiah even as Nazareth was maligned for housing the Roman garrison, and Matthew was using it in reference to the implied hatred of Christ.

Second, there could be a play on words that Matthew was referring to. In Isaiah 11:1 it says, "Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit." In Hebrew, the word for "branch" is netzer, "NZR" which letters are included in NaZaReth. It seems that Matthew was referring to the branch, the Nazarene, in turn a reference to God's raising up of the Messiah. Clearly, Matthew was not exegeting Isaiah, but it seems he was referring to the Branch.2



More on Nazareth housing a Roman Garrison. This information is taken from the article found at : "is this where Jesus Bates?" "A shopkeeper running a small souvenir business in Nazareth has made a sensational discovery that could dramatically rewrite the history of Christianity. Jonathan Cook reports, dated October 21, 2003.  (Also, http://www.uhl.ac/NazarethVillage/nazareth.html)

"...archaeologists and biblical scholars have been poring over a network of tunnels Shama unearthed under his [Elias Shama's store in Nazareth] shop several years ago.
"The American excavators are convinced that what Shama has exposed is an almost perfectly preserved Roman bathhouse from 2,000 years ago - the time of Christ, and in the town where he was raised."
"The giant bath could only have been built for a Roman city or to service a significant garrison town"
"Either way, we know that under the shop lies a huge new piece of evidence in understanding the life and times of Jesus."
"Freund, of the Maurice Greenberg Centre for Judaic Studies at Hartford University in Connecticut, says the discovery means that historians will have to rethink the place and significance of Nazareth in the Roman empire and consequently the formative experiences of Jesus. It has been assumed that the Nazareth of 2,000 years ago was a poor Jewish village on the periphery of the empire, where local families inhabited caves on the hillside that today contains the modern Israeli-Arab city. On this view, the young Jesus would have had little contact with the Romans until he left Nazareth as an adult; his father, Joseph, one of many craftsmen in the town, may have worked on a Roman palace at nearby Sephori.
But the huge scale of Shama's bathhouse suggests that Nazareth, rather than Sephori, was the local hub of military control from Rome. The giant bath could only have been built for a Roman city or to service a significant garrison town."

So the placing of Jesus in Nazareth has some real problems, because any evidence that indicates a city large enough to hold a synagogue is nonexistent. And further, no synagogue would be built in what was apparently a Roman bath house. Even that is  not a proven fact. Nazareth as Jesus'  town is therefore more than likely fiction.

[aileron]

Yes, so why didn't they just make him be from Bethlehem as well? What I'm trying to say is: What was the point of Nazareth?

I just checked the section you're referring to. I'm still skeptical of this new position on Jesus and Nazareth only because it still doesn't answer the main question I'm throwing here. And after all, Mark mentions Nazareth (Mark 1:9), Matthew mentions Nazareth, and Luke mentions Nazareth.

They apparently mistook the expression Jesus the Nazarine for his place of origin rather than his creed. 

[stromboli]

Yes, so why didn't they just make him be from Bethlehem as well? What I'm trying to say is: What was the point of Nazareth?

I just checked the section you're referring to. I'm still skeptical of this new position on Jesus and Nazareth only because it still doesn't answer the main question I'm throwing here. And after all, Mark mentions Nazareth (Mark 1:9), Matthew mentions Nazareth, and Luke mentions Nazareth.

Right. Because Mark, Matthew and Luke were all written after the fact, not by the apostles themselves necessarily. As in the gospel ACCORDING TO Matthew.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline_04.html

The New Testament Gospels were written between A.D. 65 and 95, though scholars have no way of knowing exactly who the books' authors were. These four Gospels tell similar, but not identical tales of Jesus' life and teachings. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are so similar to one another that they are sometimes called the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John differs the most from the others.

These familiar four were the first Gospels, and their authors may (or may not) have actually witnessed some of the events described therein. In ancient times many other Gospels existedâ€"perhaps as many as 30. Some of them might have been as popular as today's canonical quartet. But the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have survived to become keystones of the New Testament.

Their prominence is due in part to St. Irenaeus, a second-century bishop of Lyon in Roman Gaul and an aggressive enemy of texts and beliefs considered to be heretical. In an attempt to unify the church he declared Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John the only Gospels that Christians should read. For Irenaeus the number four was extremely important: there were four directions, four winds, and he reasoned that there should be four separate gospels as well. Irenaeus and others believed that those four chosen Gospels portrayed the true word of Jesus' life and teachings.

As mentioned in the OP the city of Jarfa was destroyed by the Romans 67 A.D. The area of modern Nazareth was built over the necopollis where the bodies were buried. And again there is the question of meaning- Nazarene means one who is despised or rejected. So not a complete answer, but some more to think about.

[Brian37]

I really hate arguing over people and places being mentioned in ancient comic books. It does not matter if a person or place existed in reality. It still does not make magic real or invisible beings real.

You can see Superman in movies flying around real cities like New York, but that does not make Superman real.

Jesus did not exist, but it would not matter if he did. If you found his DNA tomorrow all it would mean is that a man managed to start a new cult that went on to become a major religion. It would not make magic babies real or surviving rigor mortis possible.

[stromboli]

Welcome back, Brian. Haven't seen you for awhile.

[Brian37]

Hey I just noticed, where the hell did my ABBA avatar go?

[Brian37]

Thanks Strom, been neglecting this site, thought I'd pop in.

[Irrational]

They apparently mistook the expression Jesus the Nazarine for his place of origin rather than his creed.

What is your basis for this? It does not seem to trump the mainstream interpretation in terms of parsimony.

[Irrational]

Right. Because Mark, Matthew and Luke were all written after the fact, not by the apostles themselves necessarily. As in the gospel ACCORDING TO Matthew.

I agree, but so what? My point was to show you that even in the earliest Gospel, Nazareth is mentioned. If you believe your point is more likely to be the valid one, there should be a historical basis for it, especially one that makes your point more parsimonious and, therefore, more reasonable than the mainstream one.

When did the meaning of "Nazarene" as "despised" originate? Does it come from how people from Nazareth were seen?

[Irrational]

I really hate arguing over people and places being mentioned in ancient comic books. It does not matter if a person or place existed in reality. It still does not make magic real or invisible beings real.

You can see Superman in movies flying around real cities like New York, but that does not make Superman real.

Jesus did not exist, but it would not matter if he did. If you found his DNA tomorrow all it would mean is that a man managed to start a new cult that went on to become a major religion. It would not make magic babies real or surviving rigor mortis possible.

How do you know Jesus did not exist?

[stromboli]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

The gospels do not tell us much about this 'city' â€" it has a synagogue, it can scare up a hostile crowd (prompting JC's famous "prophet rejected in his own land" quote), and it has a precipice â€" but the city status of Nazareth is clearly established, at least according to that source of nonsense called the Bible.

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god â€" surprise, surprise! â€" no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios' (see below). More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name. But just what is that meaning and how did it get applied to a small village? The highly ambiguous Hebrew root of the name is NZR.

The 2nd century gnostic Gospel of Philip offers this explanation:

'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...'

â€" Gospel of Philip, 47.

What we do know is that 'Nazarene' (or 'Nazorean') was originally the name of an early Jewish-Christian sect â€" a faction, or off-shoot, of the Essenes. They had no particular relation to a city of Nazareth. The root of their name may have been 'Truth' or it may have been the Hebrew noun 'netser' ('netzor'), meaning 'branch' or 'flower.' The plural of 'Netzor' becomes 'Netzoreem.' There is no mention of the Nazarenes in any of Paul's writings, although ironically, Paul is himself accused of being a Nazorean in Acts of the Apostles. The reference scarcely means that Paul was a resident of Nazareth (we all know the guy hails from Tarsus!).

'For finding this man a pest, and moving sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a leader of the sect of the Nazaraeans.'  â€" Acts 24.5. (Darby Translation).


The Nazorim emerged towards the end of the 1st century, after a curse had been placed on heretics in Jewish daily prayer.

'Three times a day they say: May God curse the Nazarenes'.

â€" Epiphanius (Panarion 29.9.2).


The Nazarenes may have seen themselves as a 'branch from the stem of Jesse (the legendary King David's father)'. Certainly, they had their own early version of 'Matthew'. This lost text â€" the Gospel of the Nazarenes â€" can hardly be regarded as a 'Gospel of the inhabitants of Nazareth'!

It was the later Gospel of Matthew which started the deceit that the title 'Jesus the Nazorene' should in some manner relate to Nazareth, by quoting 'prophecy':

"And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene."

â€" Matthew 2.23.


With this, Matthew closes his fable of Jesus's early years. Yet Matthew is misquoting â€" he would surely know that nowhere in Jewish prophetic literature is there any reference to a Nazarene. What is 'foretold' (or at least mentioned several times) in Old Testament scripture is the appearance of a Nazarite. For example:


"For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."

â€" Judges 13.5.


Matthew slyly substitutes one word for another. By replacing Nazarite ('he who vows to grow long hair and serve god') with a term which appears to imply 'resident of' he is able to fabricate a hometown link for his fictitious hero.

So how did the village get its name?

It seems that, along with the Nozerim, a related Jewish/Christian faction, the Evyonim â€" ‘the Poor’ (later to be called Ebionites) â€" emerged about the same time. According to Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis , Cyprus, circa 370 AD) they arose from within the Nazarenes. They differed doctrinally from the original group in rejecting Paul and were 'Jews who pay honour to Christ as a just man...' They too, it seems, had their own prototype version of Matthew â€" ‘The Gospel to the Hebrews’. A name these sectaries chose for themselves was 'Keepers of the Covenant', in Hebrew Nozrei haBrit, whence Nosrim or Nazarene!

In other words, when it came to the crunch, the original Nazarenes split into two: those who tried to re-position themselves within the general tenets of Judaism ('Evyonim'-Nosrim); and those who rejected Judaism ('Christian'-Nosrim)

Now, we know that a group of 'priestly' families resettled an area in the Nazareth valley after their defeat in the Bar Kochbar War of 135 AD (see above). It seems highly probable that they were Evyonim-Nosrim and named their village 'Nazareth' or the village of 'The Poor' either because of self-pity or because doctrinally they made a virtue out of their poverty.

"Blessed are the Poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."

â€" Matthew 5,3.


The writer of Matthew (re-writer of the proto-Matthew stories) heard of 'priestly' families moving to a place in Galilee which they had called 'Nazareth' â€" and decided to use the name of the new town for the hometown of his hero.

The original gospel writers refrained from inventing a childhood, youth or early manhood for JC because it was not necessary to their central drama of a dying/reborn sun-god. But as we know, the story grew with the telling, particularly as the decades passed and the promised redeemer and judge failed to reappear. The re-writer of the Gospel of Mark, revising the text sometime between 140 and 150 AD, introduced the name of the city only once, in chapter one, with these words:

"And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John at the Jordan."
â€" Mark I, 9.


Ironically, an indication that this sole reference to a town called Nazareth in Mark is a late, harmonization interpolation is to be found in the Gospel of Matthew. Copying the same baptism episode from an early edition of Mark, the author of Matthew makes no mention of Nazareth:

"Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him." â€" Matthew 3.13.


In the Greek New Testament no fewer than eleven variant spellings are used for Nazarene, Nazarean and Nazareth. In total the words occur thirty-one times. Though you would never guess from the English translations, on nineteen occasions Nazarene or Nazarean, not Nazareth, is intended. And in the Gospel of Mark, all four later occurences (1.24; 16.6; 10.47;14.67) the word used is Nazarene, not Nazareth.

Clearly, "Jesus the Nazarene" in the original tale became "Jesus, a resident of Nazareth" in the updated story of Matthew and Luke. Indeed, there are indications that an early layer in the development of Mark favoured Capernaum as the hometown of Jesus (home of the six most prominent disciples, venue for several key miracles, etc.).

We can trace the subsequent elevation of Nazareth in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the writer who emphasizes JC's ties to 'Nazareth.' Luke is the writer who goes out of his way to demonstrate an anti-Capernaum stance. Scholars have concluded Luke was not a Jew himself because of his 'glaring errors in things Jewish'. He also makes mistakes in his geography. He knows little about the place and in his mini-drama describes an impossible incident:

" ... and brought him to the precipice of the mountain that their city was built upon." â€" Luke 4.29.

.....and the rest of article.

About jesus:

http://judaism.about.com/od/judaismbasics/a/Jewish-View-Of-Jesus.htm

Stated simply, the Jewish view of Jesus of Nazareth is that he was an ordinary Jewish man and preacher living during the Roman occupation of the Holy Land in the first century C.E. The Romans executed him - and also executed many other nationalistic and religious Jews - for speaking out against Roman authority and abuses.

Was Jesus the Messiah According to Jewish Beliefs?

After the death of Jesus, his followers - at the time a small sect of former Jews known as the Nazarenes - claimed he was the Messiah prophesied in Jewish texts and that he would soon return to fulfill the acts required of the Messiah. The majority of contemporary Jews rejected this belief and Judaism as a whole continues to do so today. Eventually, Jesus became the focal point of a small Jewish religious movement that would evolve into the Christian faith.

Jews do not believe that Jesus was divine, the Son of God, or the Messiah prophesied in Jewish scriptures. He is seen as a "false messiah," meaning someone who claimed (or whose followers claimed for him) the mantle of the Messiah but who ultimately did not meet the requirements laid out in Jewish beliefs. According to Jewish scripture and belief, the true Messiah (pronounced "moshiach" in Hebrew) must meet the following requirements. He must:

Be an observant Jewish man descended from the house of King David
Be an ordinary human being (as opposed to the Son of God)
Bring peace to the world
Gather all Jews back into Israel
Rebuild the ancient Temple in Jerusalem
Unite humanity in the worship of the Jewish God and Torah observance
Because Jesus did not meet these requirements, from the Jewish perspective he was not the Messiah.

The Christian Jesus does not meet the test that is proscribed by the Jewish faith. Jesus, a Greek translation of of Jeshua (Joshua) was a common name. There could well have been several people who roughly fit the description and were elevated to the status of a Messiah.

Another point. The Synoptic Gospels were written supposedly at the end of the 1st century. But as indicated in the above quoted article, we cannot know how much editing or modification went into the gospels when they were included in the canon; the canon that became the New Testament doesn't get completely formulated until about the 4th century.

The point is that historically Nazareth does not exist until some time after Jesus, was never as described in the Bible, was not mentioned prophetically in the Old Testament and could not have been as christians believe, the dwelling place of Jesus.

[DunkleSeele]

Welcome back, Brian!

Hey I just noticed, where the hell did my ABBA avatar go?

So, there IS a god, after all!

[Irrational]

Ok, let me go through a few of the points made in the link.

The gospels do not tell us much about this 'city' â€" it has a synagogue, it can scare up a hostile crowd (prompting JC's famous "prophet rejected in his own land" quote), and it has a precipice â€" but the city status of Nazareth is clearly established, at least according to that source of nonsense called the Bible.

Keep in mind I'm not arguing that Nazareth was exactly how the Gospel writers described it to be. It might be possible that they added stuff about Nazareth to further their own theological ideas.

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god â€" surprise, surprise! â€" no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

This is an argument from ignorance. A logical fallacy.

The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios' (see below). More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name. But just what is that meaning and how did it get applied to a small village? The highly ambiguous Hebrew root of the name is NZR.

The 2nd century gnostic Gospel of Philip offers this explanation:

'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...'

â€" Gospel of Philip, 47.

This was written long after the Gospels. Why should this be more credible than the first-century texts?

Also, I notice confusion in chronology concerning what term came before what other term. The term Nazarene is based on Jesus being from Nazareth. The term "Nazarenes" plural was applied to Christians after Jesus' death (based on Jesus being from Nazareth).

[MagetheEntertainer]

Honesty I'm the type of person that doesn't even think Jesus ever existed.  When you consider the fact that the only historical reference for him (other then the bible) is made like 150 years after the supposed death of Jesus and that reference was only a comment of the phenomena of jews claiming to have found their messiah.