The Lord's Leap. 1 of 2

[BoyntonStu]

Nazareth

Jesus of Nazareth, the major character of the gospels of Luke, Matthew, and John, although is is completely unknown to the writers of the epistles supposed to have been written by St. Paul. (None of the saintly forgers called Paul ever refer to "Jesus of Nazareth.") As the Wizard should have been of Oz, so Jesus should have been of Nazareth. But where was Nazareth in the first century? More fundamentally, was Nazareth in the first century?

Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Hebrew Testament, nor do any ancient historians or geographers mention it before the beginning of the fourth century. The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth. Josephus, who wrote extensively about Galilee (a region roughly the size of Rhode Island) and conducted military operations back and forth across the tiny territory in the last half of the first century, mentions Nazareth not even once -- although he does mention by name 45 other cities and villages of Galilee. This is even more telling when one discovers that Josephus does mention Japha, a village which is just over a mile from present-day Nazareth! Josephus tells us that he was occupied there for some time. Today, Japha can be considered a suburb of Nazareth, but in Josephus' day, I'll wager, the people of Japha buried their dead in the tombs of the unnamed necropolis that now underlies the modern city called Nazareth.



Although the Greek Testament tells us very little about our mythical municipality, it does tell us enough to allow us to conclude that present day Nazareth couldn't be the Biblical city referred to, say, the the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. In that chapter we find a story about Jesus coming back in his "home town" about taking a turn teaching in the synagogue. (Keep in mind that no synagogue ruins datable to the first century have ever been found at the present site.) According to Luke's tale, Jesus' teaching riled everyone up because of its supposed blasphemy, and the natives were going to execute him for that awful crime. Instead of stoning him, the required penalty for blasphemy, verses 28-30 tell us the legally and culturally implausible story that "At these words, the whole congregation were infuriated. They leapt up, threw him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which it was built, meaning to hurl him over the edge. But we walked straight through them all, and went away."

Although this is an obvious fairy tale, it does tell us that wherever Nazareth was located, it was on a hill and that the hill had a cliff high enough that a man falling off it would be killed. The town now called Nazareth, however, until just recently never occupied the top of a hill. Rather for a thousand years or more it has occupied a valley floor and the lower half of the hillside that bounds it on the northwest. Excavations of the top of the Nazarene hill show that it has never had buildings on its top before the twentieth century. Worse yet, there is no cliff which can be identified with the "brow of the hill" from which the Jews sought to cast Jesus down to his death.

Like the White Queen whom Alice met in Through the Looking Glass, Christian pilgrims have always been able to believe six or more mutually contradictory, impossible propositions every morning before breakfast. Unlike the White Queen, however, the Christians have been able to maintain such belief after breakfast as well. Thus, since there is no place suitable for dwarf-tossing let alone messiah-chucking on the hill at present-day Nazareth, entrepreneurial priests, monks, and native guides have staked out other places to show gullible tourists as the place where the Jews tried to jettison Jesus -- while still maintaining the city itself as Nazareth.

Although Jebel el-Qafzeh, a small mountain 2.5 km SE of Nazareth, is believed by the Greek Orthodox to be the site of the attempted deicide, another mountain, several catapult throws west of Qafzeh is believed by the Roman Catholics to be the exact spot. Some people probably believe that both sites are correct, although for some centuries, there has been a tendency to reconcile the contradiction by invention of a new, improved mythology. It seems that Luke was a bit vague and imprecise when he claimed that Jesus walked right through the crowd of Jews and thus escaped precipitation to the ranks of flattened fauna. What really happened, it was discovered, is that Jesus jumped into the air to evade the mob. It is a pity that this took place before the broad jump became a part of the Olympic games, since this jump of Jesus was a doozie. You see, he jumped all the way from Qafzeh, the mountain in the east, onto the mountain several catapult-throws away in the west. Thus, we have the Mount of the Lord's Launching and the Mount of the Lord's Landing.

I'm not making this up, you know. We have written records to prove it. In 1336 Sir John Maudeville checked out the site where Jesus landed after jumping from the crowd. "and soone after he was founden at the fote of an other Mountayne therby where yet the prynte of his holy stappes are sene" -- Maundeville's very words. (Of course, these fossil footprints are at the foot of the mountain rather than on the top. But only a hopeless skeptic would think this a discrepancy.)

Even before Maudeville, in 1283 Burchard of Mt. Sion, a German Dominican (and thus especially trustworthy), certified that "Lord's Leap -- the place where they tried to deject Jesus -- but [where] he slipped out of their hands and suddenly found himself an arrow's shot away on the flank of a mountain across the way -- where this is pointed out, there you can see the imprinted outline of his body and his clothes." As far as I can tell, it's not too far a hike for pilgrims between the footprints and the body print up the hill!

We have already noted that the town today called Nazareth does not fit the place implied in Luke's gospel. Moreover, archaeological excavations at present-day Nazareth -- even though carried out by Franciscan monks and priests who must always be aware of the tourist significance of the real estate owned by their order -- have failed to show the remains of a single building credibly datable to the first century B.C. or the first century A.D. The oldest buildings found seem to date from the last half of the third century, and there is no information to indicate what the inhabitants of those buildings called their village.

To be sure, the Franciscans have pointed to crockery, coins, and other artifacts excavated from beneath the various shrines at Nazareth as proof that the place was inhabited during the first centuries B.C. and A.D. But all these items are compatible with the idea that they were associated with burials, and most items are dated vaguely (deliberately, in my opinion) as from "the Roman period" -- to conjure up images of Pontius Pilate and the first century, even though the Roman period lasted into the fourth century C.E., and even I accept the possibility that the site was settled as early as the end of the second century.

Before the second or third century. -- going back to the Middle Bronze Age -- the site now occupied by Nazareth was a necropolis, a city of the dead. The hillside underlying part of the present city is riddled with tombs and natural caves which for over a thousand years were used for burials. Since Jewish law prohibited cemeteries from being in the midst of inhabited sites, we can be quite sure that there was no Jewish city at the present site in the days when a supposedly Jewish Jesus is supposed to have been running loose there.

Despite these facts, a visitor to today's Nazareth can be treated to a visit to the room in which the Virgin Mary "received" the angel Gabriel. (Now though the perch upon which he roosted is still there, the window through which he flew was blocked up by 1666.) Both the kitchen in which she cooked the meals for the family and Joseph's carpentry workshop are displayed. The room in which Jesus lived after his return from Egypt can also be visited, as well as the places where the Blessed Virgin was born -- there are, of course, several of them, not counting her birthplace file miles away in Sepphoris or her birthplace in Jerusalem. The peculiar thing about all these sacred spots, however, is that they are all in grottoes or caves. My old German Lutheran pastor never told me that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were troglodytes! Perhaps a branch of the Flintstone family! Another peculiar fact about these sites is that they are all within a few yards of cave-tombs, or were themselves used as cave-tombs at one time or another, or both. Since Jewish law prohibits habitation within 150-200 feet of a grave or tomb, we must conclude that the "good Jewish family" into which Christ was born were perpetually in a state of ritual uncleanliness!

That the holy family were cave people is only fitting, however, when we note that Jebel el-Qafzeh, the "Mount of the Lord's Launching," is less than two miles away from the Christ cave. A cave at Qafzeh has yielded a series of Neanderthal-like skeletons dating to the Ice Age, 100,000 years ago. So the Flintstone connection might not be too wide of the mark after all!




Continued..


stU

[BoyntonStu]

To sum up the archaeological evidence from so-called Nazareth, no remains of actual buildings datable to the turn of the era have ever been uncovered, despite the immense amount of excavating and building that have taken place there during the last century. What have been found, in mind-boggling plenty, are cave tombs and grave sites. Until the site was settled some time after the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem in 135 A.D., our would-be holy city was a burial ground, a veritable city of the dead, or necropolis. In the first century, the major town of Japha was only a little over a mile away, and it is likely that its inhabitants found the natural caverns and grottoes of the Nazareth hill an ideal place to bury their dead.

Given, then, that the place now called Nazareth cannot be the biblical site, is there any other place for which tradition from very early times could nominate for the honor of being the childhood home of Jesus? Given the seemingly inexhaustible capacity of religious entrepreneurs to multiply sacred sites and holy relics, it is startling to discover that there really aren't any other candidates.

In this regard, it is extremely interesting that the church father Origen, who lived from 182? to 254? A.D. gave no indication of knowing where Nazareth was, even though he lived in Caesarea, a seaport town just thirty miles from present-day Nazareth! Mind you, it is not that Origen had no opportunity to mention the city. In fact he mentions it a number of times in his attempts to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the gospel stories impacting on the passage just quoted above from Luke1. Curiously, Origen doesn't quite know whether the town should be called Nazareth or Nazara. If there actually had been such a town close-by, when Origen was writing, he could simply have walked over to it and asked the inhabitants how they spelled the name of their town. But it seems clear that Origen didn't think there was such a town at all. To save the gospels from their many mutual contradictions, he had to propose a "mystical" method of interpreting them, and argued that they could not be interpreted literally. Almost certainly, to Origen the geography of the gospels -- including the supposed town of Nazareth -- was just as mystical and insubstantial as the events of the gospels. The first supposed solid reference to Nazareth as a geographical reality is given by the church father Eusebius, also of Caesarea, who wrote during the first decades of the fourth century. His Onomasticon, a geographical listing and description of all the holy places mentioned in the Bible, is often cited as proof of the Existence of a city called Nazareth at the present location at the end of the third century. A careful study of the Greek text of Eusebius' brief and confused mention of Nazareth leads one to conclude that he had never been there himself (even though like Origen he lived only thirty miles away) and was not at all sure just where the place was. Nazareth might as well have been in Mongolia, for all the first-hand information we get from Eusebius!



Enjoy!


stU

Where'd you plagiarize this from?

Yawn. Another repost...

Bob

[BoyntonStu]

Is there anyone out there with any factual evidence that the town of Nazareth was in existance at the supposed time of Jesus?

stU

[Livefire]

Yawn....maybe its cuz we tire of blasting your plagarized material to bits!
Are you even capable of having anything close to resembling an original thought???? Secondly, do you or those people behind those pathetic sites you like to ripoff without giving credit to , dont have a clue how to rightfully examine God's word.....Nonetheless, read this and chew on it for awhile....

Here are a couple of quotes on the archeological data:



"Despite Nazareth's obscurity (which had led some critics to suggest that it was a relatively recent foundation), archeology indicates that the village has been occupied since the 7th century B.C., although it may have experienced a 'refounding' in the 2d century b.c. " ([MJ]A Marginal Jew--Rethinking the Historical Jesus, (vol 1), p.300-301)...cites Meyers and Strange, Archeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity, Abingdon:1981. pp.56-57
Although I do not have the Meyers/Strange work, more detail from it is given by Paul Barnett[BSNT], Behind the Scenes of the New Testament, IVP:1990, p.42:
"Despite the Hellenization of the general region and the probability that Greek was known to many people it seems likely that Nazareth remained a conservative Jewish village. After the Jewish war with the Romans from AD 66-70 it was necessary to re-settle Jewish priests and their families. Such groups would only settle in unmixed towns, that is towns without Gentile inhabitants. According to an inscription discovered in 1962 in Caesarea Maritima the priests of the order of Elkalir made their home in Nazareth. This, by the way, is the sole known reference to Nazareth in antiquity, apart from written Christian sources... (next paragraph) Some scholars had even believed that Nazareth was a fictitious invention of the early Christians; the inscription from Caesarea Maritima proves otherwise."


So enuf of yer nonsense drivel....and if youre going drivel about the site at least give proper credit to the people responsible for said drivel! I bet you were booted out of college for lack of ethics! Plagarism isnt nice!

[jeffmar10]

Stu,

Try looking up Nazarite, and it's definition in the Old Testament. I would go
into details, but I know your not interested. Is there a reason why you are trying to undermine the main objective of this site?

[BoyntonStu]

[QUOTE

Here are a couple of quotes on the archeological data:




"Despite Nazareth's obscurity (which had led some critics to suggest that it was a relatively recent foundation), archeology indicates that the village has been occupied since the 7th century B.C., although it may have experienced a 'refounding' in the 2d century b.c. " ([MJ]A Marginal Jew--Rethinking the Historical Jesus, (vol 1), p.300-301)...cites Meyers and Strange, Archeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity, Abingdon:1981. pp.56-57
Although I do not have the Meyers/Strange work, more detail from it is given by Paul Barnett[BSNT], Behind the Scenes of the New Testament, IVP:1990, p.42:
"Despite the Hellenization of the general region and the probability that Greek was known to many people it seems likely that Nazareth remained a conservative Jewish village. After the Jewish war with the Romans from AD 66-70 it was necessary to re-settle Jewish priests and their families. Such groups would only settle in unmixed towns, that is towns without Gentile inhabitants. According to an inscription discovered in 1962 in Caesarea Maritima the priests of the order of Elkalir made their home in Nazareth. This, by the way, is the sole known reference to Nazareth in antiquity, apart from written Christian sources... (next paragraph) Some scholars had even believed that Nazareth was a fictitious invention of the early Christians; the inscription from Caesarea Maritima proves otherwise."


So enuf of yer nonsense drivel....and if youre going drivel about the site at least give proper credit to the people responsible for said drivel! I bet you were booted out of college for lack of ethics! Plagarism isnt nice![/quote]



This is your plagerized drivel.

The question: Which drivel is 'more better'?

At least you are examining some 'drivel'.

Was you there? Do you know for a certain fact anything? Whose translation do you trust and why do you have reason to rely on it?

stU

Originally Posted by BoyntonStu

Is there anyone out there with any factual evidence that the town of Nazareth was in existance at the supposed time of Jesus?

stU

Is there anyone out there with any factual evidence that Stu has any standing?

Bob

[weishaupt1776]

Originally Posted by BoyntonStu

Is there anyone out there with any factual evidence that the town of Nazareth was in existance at the supposed time of Jesus?

stU

I love it, Stu subtitled his thread w/this quote above w/ "Silence Tells Volumes" as if what he is posting is so heavy duty and mindblowing.
Stu, maybe we are silent because we are tired of you trying to promote your preconceived agenda while pretending that you want to be objective, and posting things which you have no intent on developing conceptually.

Yawn . . .
Keep Barkin'

[BoyntonStu]

Originally Posted by weishaupt1776

I love it, Stu subtitled his thread w/this quote above w/ "Silence Tells Volumes" as if what he is posting is so heavy duty and mindblowing.
Stu, maybe we are silent because we are tired of you trying to promote your preconceived agenda while pretending that you want to be objective, and posting things which you have no intent on developing conceptually.

Yawn . . .
Keep Barkin'

Do you have any factual information to introduce?

stU