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[Huddra]

I believe that just like there was a reason for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6), there was also a reason for Jesus to be from Nazareth. I've always tried to find out why, but what I've read from the Bible instead always seems rather critical of the place, such as John 1:46. Did Nazareth have a bad name? Did anyone prophesy Jesus to be from Nazareth? What do you think please?

[jimwalton]

Luke 1.26-27 & 2.4 state that Joseph and Mary both lived in Nazareth before she got pregnant. It was a small and quite insignificant village of about 300-400 people.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, because of the Roman census, Joseph and Mary had to run for their lives. Instead of going back north, where they would still be able to be hunted, they went down to Egypt for what seems to be a few year. When Joseph was told in a dream that Herod the Great was dead, they felt safe to return, but didn't want to return to the Judean part of Palestine because Herod's son, Archaelaus, was now in power. Joseph had every reason to believe Archelaus would continue his father's reign of terror and murder. Instead of Judea, Joseph and family continued north into the Galilee region. The inhabitants of Galilee were largely Gentile (Mt. 4.15). In Galilee, Archelaus couldn't harm Jesus; Herod Antipas ruled Galilee and Perea, and Antipas was not likely to be a threat to the life of Jesus. So they returned to their home town of Nazareth, which was the town Jesus grew up in.

Nazareth also has some fun word plays in it.

• "Nazareth" was an idiom for a despised and rejected person, just as in our language "Cretan" is a slur for someone boorish and stupid. It fit Jesus's prophetic position of being "despised and rejected by men" (Isa. 53.3).
• "Nazareth" is a close homonym to "Nazirite," which was a term used to describe a person particularly devoted to God (Num. 6).
• The name "Nazareth" means a shoot or branch (Isa. 11.1).

[Huddra]

> Nazareth" is a close homonym to "Nazirite," which was a term used to describe a person particularly devoted to God (Num. 6).

Thank you so much! Do you think the name Nazarene comes from Nazareth? And I'm also reminded of Samson here. He was a Nazarene, wasn't he?

[jimwalton]

Yes, "Nazarene" comes from being from Nazareth, just as "Chicagoan" comes from being from Chicago, or "Londoner" from London.

> And I'm also reminded of Samson here. He was a Nazarene, wasn't he?

Samson was a Nazirite—that's different. In Numbers 6 those who make a special vow to God are called Nazirites. You can read about them there. It's a Hebrew word that means "to separate." It really has nothing to do with the town named Nazareth from which Jesus came, but the author of the Gospel hears what to him is an interesting similarity of sound (a homonym), so he uses it as a play on words to say what he does about Jesus.

[Judo Jude]

> After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, because of the Roman census, Joseph and Mary had to run for their lives.

Why?

[jimwalton]

Herod was not a man who treated rivals kindly. A young but popular competitor, a high priest, had a "drowning accident" in a pool that was only a few feet deep. Enraged at his favorite wife, Marianne, Herod had her killed; he was deceived into having two innocent sons executed, and on his own deathbed Herod had another son executed (admittedly a guilty one).

When he heard that a rival "king of the Jews" had been born (Matt. 2.2-3), he plotted to have the child (Jesus) killed (Matt. 2.16). He sent soldiers to slaughter all the children in the region aged 2 and younger. Joseph had been warned in a dream from God to run for their lives (Matt. 2.13). They went down to Egypt, out of Herod's jurisdiction, to hide out for a time until Herod had died and they could venture back into Palestine.

[Judo Jude]

So Yahweh was going to let Herod potentially kill Jesus and Joseph unless Joseph followed the instructions given to him in a dream?

Haha, geeze.

The book of Matthew is full of fantastical and unbelievable claims, like Matthew 27:52. The entire book inspires skepticism.

[jimwalton]

> So Yahweh was going to let Herod potentially kill Jesus and Joseph unless Joseph followed the instructions given to him in a dream?

Actually, the "potential" doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything. There are always innumerable "potential" situations. Potientiality isn't the problem, it's reality. The logic behind the narrative is (1) to show the maniacal madness in Herod (and by extension all movements that hope to squelch Christianity, including your disdain); (2) the providence of God that doesn't allow Christianity to be destroy; and (3) that God reveals Himself to people in a variety of ways to guide their lives. The narrative shows all of those to be true, and they are realities that experienced daily in history.

> The book of Matthew is full of fantastical and unbelievable claims, like Matthew 27:52. The entire book inspires skepticism.

Actually the book of Matthew has quite a bit of historiography in it, which means that the burden of proof lies on someone who claims that it doesn't. You'd have to prove to me ANYWHERE where Matthew has been proved to be incorrect. ANYWHERE. Time to put your money where you "geeze" is.

Suddenly, posting up a red herring, you've switched gears to Mt. 27.52, no doubt a pet text of yours that you think makes Matthew ludicrous. Here are the questions you must answer:

1. If Jesus has power over death, why is this story impossible?
2. If those who were much closer to the situation historically considered it to be historiographical (the early Church Fathers) rather than symbolic, poetic, or metaphorical.), on what basis do you reject it (other than, "sounds silly to me")?
3. What did Matthew have to gain by making up such a story? It's only brings scoffers out of the woodwork if it isn't true and discredits his own narrative.
4. What other evidences do you have from Matthew's Gospel that the disciples were a bunch of gullible and foolish superstitionalists?

[Judo Jude]

> If Jesus has power over death, why is this story impossible?

First, there is no reason to think that Jesus has such power.

Second, if this event really happened, we should expect to hear about it from multiple sources, and not just the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew.

There's just no reason to believe Matthew's claim, even if you wrongly think the burden of proof is somehow on me to disprove him. It isn't. The burden rests on the claimant, which is the author of Matthew, and by extension, anyone who believes his fairy tale to be true.

> If those who were much closer to the situation historically considered it to be historiographical (the early Church Fathers) rather than symbolic, poetic, or metaphorical.), on what basis do you reject it (other than, "sounds silly to me")?

Dead people don't get up and walk around town. It doesn't happen and never has.

> What other evidences do you have from Matthew's Gospel that the disciples were a bunch of gullible and foolish superstitionalists?

Why are we talking about the disciples? Maybe you're under the assumption that the author of Matthew was a disciple, but there's no reason to think that.

[jimwalton]

> First, there is no reason to think that Jesus has such power.

Actually, every evidence we have of Jesus says that he does. We have the 4 Gospels, which have never been proven to have anything untrue in them. Second, we have Josephus, who said Jesus was known as a person who did wonderful things. Third, we have bowl from the 1st century that archaeologists dug up showing that Jesus had a reputation as a magician. So there is actually every reason to think Jesus had such power, unless you have evidence to the contrary. We follow th evidence. Let me see it if you do, since opinions here don't carry much weight.

> we should expect to hear about it from multiple sources

This is an impossible position to hold. If you're going to stick to this criteria, we have to throw out about 95% of what we know from history. Almost everything we have is from one source.

> and not just the anonymous author of the Gospel of Matthew.

This is also an impossible position to hold, for the same reason. Almost everything we have from history is anonymous. We have no clue who wrote the hieroglyphics on pyramid walls, who wrote the historical records on the obelisks, who wrote Hammurabi's code. These works are also anonymous:

• Aristotle's Poetics
• Plato's Republic
• Aristophanes' Birds
• Livy's The Early History of Rome
• Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome
• Shakespeare's Hamlet
• Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
• Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Should we throw them all away?

Secondly, there are no anonymous copies of Matthew. They don't exist and possible never have. The copies we have say Matthew on them. We follow the evidence.

Third, there are no actual examples in early Christian history of a document known to have been written by someone other than the person to whom it is attributed. We have no evidence at all that early Christianity accepted pseudonymity as a legitimate device. We follow the evidence.

We have to be given a reason to doubt Matthew's Gospel, and there isn't one aside from "it sounds crazy to me." That doesn't cut it; we follow the evidence.

> There's just no reason to believe Matthew's claim

We have every reason to believe Matthew's claim, as I've said. He has never been proved to be unreliable historically, and nothing he has ever written has been proved to be false. So what's your evidence for this claim?

> The burden rests on the claimant, which is the author of Matthew, and by extension, anyone who believes his fairy tale to be true.

This is a cop out. Pure cop out. In a court of law, the burden of truth is with the prosecution, but in a debate, the burden of proof lies with anyone making a claim, no matter what side they're on. I've given you my evidence for Matthew, and you've given me nothing in return but opinion. So the burden rests on the claimant, which in this case is you, claiming, "There is no reason to believe Matthew's claims." So, back it up with your evidence.

> Dead people don't get up and walk around town. It doesn't happen and never has.

How do you know it never has? The resurrection of Jesus has been examined for 2000 years, and there is actually a lot of credibility to the record, and competing alternative explanations don't hold water under examination. So what is your evidence that it doesn't happen? The evidence tells us it has happened (Jesus).

> Why are we talking about the disciples?

Because Matthew was a disciple.

> Maybe you're under the assumption that the author of Matthew was a disciple, but there's no reason to think that.

There's every reason to think that.

1. If someone were to falsify a document to send around with a fake author's name to give it credibility, "Matthew" is not the name they would put on it. Matthew was a tax collector (respected neither by Rome nor by Jews). Matthew faded away from history somewhere after the beginning of the book of Acts. We have no clue what happened to him. Why would anyone in their right mind, if they were trying to manufacture respect, put Matthew's name on a Gospel if he weren't the author? Many names, if we were going to plant a fake name on it, would make more sense (Peter, James, Philip, Andrew).

2. In those days, for important documents, multiple initial copies were made and sent to various locations. From those, multiple copies were made and circulated from each of those regions. So how does one explain that the only name that ever ended up on this Gospel was Matthew, if he weren't the author? The titles of all four Gospels were unanimously accepted over a large geographical area even by the 2nd century.
3. Every indication from the ancient world—every evidence we have, and we follow the evidence—is that Matthew wrote it. There is no indication that his authorship was ever doubted. There is no competing claim for a different author. The Church Fathers unanimously attribute it to Matthew.

4. The book itself has every characteristic of being written by a Levite (Matthew), a conservative-minded Jew concerned about the Law, Judaism, the spiritual history of Israel, and ecclesiastical matters (church rules, organization, etc.). It is thoroughly Jewish, with a level of Greek fitting what we know about Matthew,

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is EVERY reason to think Matthew wrote it, unless you have evidence to the contrary. We follow the evidence. What do you have?