(September 16, 2013 at 10:09 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Don't swallow the xtian pill that says it's too fantastic not to be true. It's all rather involved and I'm sure DP and Min can fill in the gaps, but the name Nazareth probably derives from Netzer (iirc), meaning root or branch. Basically an offshoot of an earlier sect (the Essenes?) of religious ascetics. Something like that anyway.
By replacing 'city of Nazareth' with 'small obscure hamlet' or similar, you run smack into the wall of JC being an infamous rabble-rouser who pissed off the Romans to the exent they conspired with the Jewish elders to break their own sacred traditions and have him tried and executed on one of their most holy days - pause for breath - while at the same time he was obscure enough to have completely escaped the notice of history.
Apart from which, Josephus never mentions the place yet writes about precisely those tiny hamlets barely a few miles away from the modern city. Didn't he wage a campaign in the area as well? Seems he ought to have noticed.
Now I don't buy into that, I think he was obscure and didn't accomplish anything that the new testament mentions except maybe a small following.If you read the NT in order of it's writing then you start with Thessalonian's 1 and there jesus is this vague moral teacher, then he gets a little more color through the course of pauls letter's until you hit mark, where the miracles start and then they is more and more unitl john.
jesus is like a big fish story, getting bigger and bigger with every telling.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
