RE: Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?
January 1, 2012 at 5:12 pm
(This post was last modified: January 1, 2012 at 5:17 pm by Fpvpilot.)
(December 31, 2011 at 1:13 am)Minimalist Wrote: They did NOT find a village. They found a FUCKING farm. Modern re-enactors are BUILDING what they claim to be a first century village so they can entice gullible xtian morons to come to the site and spend money on phony horseshit. This is a cottage industry in the middle east and separating stupid xtians from their money is one of the few things that Palestinians and Jews agree on. If you are an example of one of jesus' followers he is welcome to you.
For the record: Josephus commanded the Jewish rebels in Galilee during the Great Revolt. He campaigned extensively across the area and cataloged the various settlements he went through trying to whip up support for the rebels. ( Sepphoris, near "Nazareth" never joined the rebellion while the other main city of Galilee, Tiberias, surrendered as soon as the Romans approached.) Josephus withdrew to the town of Jotapata which he defended in a 47 day siege. In spite of the fact that Jotapata is about 2 miles from the site of so-called Nazareth and the Roman siege lines would have practically been sitting on top of it, Josephus never mentions the place. Neither did anyone else and this was 35 years, more or less, after your alleged jesus died...forget being born.
Hi, Minimalist,
Archaeological data actually indicates Nazareth was an agricultural village in the first century C.E. Village and farm are not necessarily exclusive categories. In “Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth Village Farm (1997—2002): Final Report,” Dr. Stephen Pfann specifies that, “The initial evidence concerning the character of the site indicates that the small valley and its slopes likely comprised the property of a single extended family, which produced a variety of crops.” 1
In other words, Pfann is not insinuating this was a small little farm on which only four or five people resided. Rather, it was a single extended family farm. As the article’s title suggests, Pfann and his co-authors, Ross Voss and Yehudah Rapuano, do not deem village and farm to be distinct categories. Pfann concurs that Nazareth was a village—an agricultural village. This clarification is consistent with other scholars’ assessment of Nazareth’s population size, too.
Here are some research findings from the official Nazareth Village web site, which the article you quoted from linked to:
“Our reconstruction model is based on the scholarly consensus that Nazareth was essentially a small Jewish village of approx 500-1000 inhabitants, farming grapes and olives in the First Century. This concept formed the basis of a rating system. The most relevant literary and archaeological sources were evaluated, weighing criteria such as historical, geographical and regional context to Nazareth, reliability and interpretability of source material, etc.”
Concordant with this information, in his monograph Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, archaeologist and Professor of Biblical Studies, Archaeology, and Intro to Religion at the University of La Verne, Jonathan Reed reports the following concerning first century CE Nazareth:
“The entire area seems to have been preoccupied with agricultural activities. One the outskirts of the village, traces of terracing have been found, as has evidence of a vineyard tower. Inside the village, wine-pressing vats with straining depressions, fermenting vats, and depressions to hold storage jars, along with grinding stones and silos are complemented by simple locally made pottery and household items, without any trace of imported or fine wares from the earlier periods. There are also no luxury items of any kind, though a few stone vessel fragments have been found. The pejorative question, can anything good come out of Nazareth (John 1:46), seems apt. It was a small Jewish village, without any political significance, preoccupied with agriculture and, no doubt, taxation.” 2
Mark A. Chancey writes:
“Sepphoris’s neighbor, Nazareth, was just a small village in the first century CE, having been founded some time in the third century BCE. By one estimate, it occupied approximately sixty acres and probably had around 480 inhabitants. It is not mentioned at all prior to the Gospels, and they provide only minimal information about it. All four regard the village as the hometown of Jesus, and John suggests that it was not a notable town.” 3
In addition, Chancey also provides details that reveal Jotapata was not 2 miles away from the Nazareth site. Chancey says, “Jotapata lay to the north of Sepphoris, separated from the city by a ridge and a valley.” 4 This is quite significant, because the Nazareth Village site resides to the south of Sepphoris.
Here is a link to a page containing a helpful map.
In fact, Jotapata was located between 9-10 miles away from Nazareth. Visit this page and this one for details. Archaeologists have discovered more than one hundred arrowheads, catapult bolts, and many ballista stones at the Jotapata site. 5 As far as I have been able to determine, archaeologists have not discovered any similar artifacts at the Nazareth Village site. Surely, one would expect to find such remains, if the Roman siege lines had been practically sitting on top of it. Why have archaeologists discovered military artifacts at the Jotapata site, but not at the Nazareth Village site?
Nothing in the gospels states that Nazareth was a huge city. The Greek word for city, polis, can be translated as: city, the inhabitants of a city, a place of permanent residence, abode, home, city-state, or state. 6 This range of definitions does not rule out a village-sized locale. One might object that village (Greek = kome) is not listed as one of the definitions. This is not a real problem, because as the New Testament scholars Dale C. Allison and W. D. Davies observe, “between polis and kome the NT does not always make a sharp distinction (cf. Mk 1.38 and Swete, p. 27; the LXX occasionally translates ir with kome).” 7 Ir is the Hebrew word for city. Allison and Davies are saying that the Jewish Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint (LXX), occasionally renders the Hebrew word for city as the Greek word for village. This indicates that ancient Jewish and Christian writers did not always draw a clear distinction between the categories of city and village. There was a degree of fluidity between the two terms.
In summary, the most recent archaeological excavations as well as linguistic data indicate Nazareth was an agricultural village in the first century CE. I hope this information helps.
Kind regards,
Fpvpilot
Endnotes:
1. Stephen Pfann, Ross Voss, and Yehudah Rapuano, “Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth Village Farm (1997—2002): Final Report,” in Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 2007 (Vol. 25), 21.
2. Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000, 2002), 132.
3. Mark A. Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 83.
4. Mark A. Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee, 87.
5. Life of Josephus, trans. Steve Mason (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 197.
6. George V. Wigram, The Analytical Greek Lexicon of the New Testament: Every Word and Inflection of the Greek New Testament Arranged Alphabetically and With Grammatical Remarks and Explanations (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1983), 334; Anne H. Groton, From Alpha to Omega: A Beginning Course in Classical Greek. Revised Third Edition (Newburyport, Massachusetts: Focus Publishing, 2000), 404.
7. Dale C. Allison and W.D. Davies, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. I: Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I—VII (New York: T&T Clark, 1988) 274.
