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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Zero0000 (talk | contribs) at 07:05, 15 July 2012 (→Archaeological support for the biblical account?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Nazareth Village

The article links to http://www.uhl.ac/nazareth.htm, describing a visitor center called "Nazareth Village". The official webpage for Nazareth Village is "www.nazarethvillage.com".

The Nazareth Flag

  • Nazareth Flag Nazareth Flag

Can anyone add the Nazareth Flag ?

Strange POV in section on New Testament

The section titled "New Testament References" seems both incorrect and misleading. The details of how this text is wrong lead me to believe that the information presented is deliberately misleading.

Overall, the intent of the three paragraphs leads the reader to the following mistaken conclusions: (1) Translations from Greek to English are mistranslating "Ναζωραιοσ" as "of Nazareth" rather than "Nazarene." Greek words are inflected according to the part of speech in which they are being used. "Ναζωραιοσ" is an adjective form of the root "Ναζαρεθ" (2) Although Jesus may have lived in Nazareth, that would somehow not make him a Nazarene. The article therefore is refuting content from the New Testament, to wit Matthew 2:23: "And coming he-down-homes into city being-said "Nazareth" (Ναζαρεθ) which-how may-be-being-filled the being-declared through the (prophets) that "Nazarene" (Ναζωραιοσ) he-shall-be-being-called."

The section seems to appeal to obscure information from the original Greek before translation to English, but the assertions made about the Greek are false. Those who wrote this section may be attempting to deliberately mislead viewers.

My thought it to replace the entire section with a brief reference to Matthew 2:23, which explains the significance of the city to NT readers, without addressing the made-up controversy.

I notice the existing section has 3 references. The first is to a series of NT citations organized according to Original Research. The second is to an 1899 source. I submit these are not representative of broad modern thought on the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Heathhunnicutt (talk • contribs) 15:30, 26 December 2011‎ (UTC)

This edit deleted a bunch of material which should have been cited to Dumper. I've restored it and added the citation, the lack of which, I m assuming was the reason for its deletion. If I am wrong, please clarify hat the problem is. Tiamut 18:38, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

transliteration of צ

I changed it from "ts" to "ṣ" as it makes no sense when talking about classical Hebrew to transliterate it with Modern Israeli pronunciations..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.67.156.46 (talk) 12:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Archaeological support for the biblical account?

The other day I had a conversation with a couple of university-level history students, and the question of the reliability of Misplaced Pages came up. One of them made reference to our article on Nazareth, saying that no historian of archeologist outside of some fringe religious groups believes that anyone lived in Nazareth at the time of Christ, yet Misplaced Pages appears to treat it as if the science supports the possibility.

I just finished examining the article and checking the cites, and I have a few concerns.

First, we have "James Strange, an American archaeologist" speculating about the population of Nazareth at the time of Christ, as if the only question is how many people lived there. Following the reference, I found that it is a 1992 article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. That's a Tertiary source. For such a controversial claim, we should have a reliable secondary source -- actual peer-reviewed science.

That "archaeologist" label is also quite interesting.

It turns out that James Strange is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida. His degrees are:

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Rice University in 1959

Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1964

PhD. in New Testament Studies from Drew University in 1970

He is on the editorial board of Biblical Archaeology Review, but I see no evidence that he claims to be an archaeologist.

Next we have the claim that "In 2009 Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre excavated archaeological remains in Nazareth that might date to the time of Jesus in the early Roman period"

Apparently, the source of this is December 21, 2009, news release from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was published in hundreds of newspapers, but the original is here:

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Early+History+-+Archaeology/Residential_building_time_Jesus_Nazareth_21-Dec-2009.htm

Despite the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs claim that this was "Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority" I cannot find any reference to anything published by the Israel Antiquities Authority that mentions this archaeological find, nor can I find any scientific paper published by Yardenna Alexandre or anyone else associated with the excavation.

Finally we have "A few authors have argued that the absence of 1st and 2nd century AD textual references to Nazareth suggest the town may not have been inhabited in Jesus' day. Proponents of this hypothesis have buttressed their case with linguistic, literary and archaeological interpretations, though such views have been called "archaeologically unsupportable".

That last "archaeologically unsupportable" claim appears to come from a book review that criticized the book The Myth of Nazareth: The Town of Jesus, a book that we don't mention at all other than to quote the critic. The rest of the paragraph is completely unencyclopedic; besides the weaseling, Nobody needs to "argue" that the town was not inhabited in Jesus' day. Someone needs to provide a citation from a reliable source that shows that it was.

Unless someone can show me some sort of peer-reviewed science supporting these claims, I must ask whether these claims were inserted into the article in order to make it appear that there is archaeological support for the biblical account. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:46, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Maybe you can suggest to those history students that they study harder. The communique from Yardenna Alexandre can be found on a website run by the Israeli Antiquities Authority here. Not that there is any reason to suspect the MFA would make it up. There seems to be no formal publication yet, but that is not too surprising as it always takes several years. You can check Dr Alexandre's other assignments with the Israeli Antiquities Authority by searching for her at http://hadashot-esi.org.il . Now, reading carefully, the significance of the discovery is that it is the first house to be excavated. Not that it is the first evidence of habitation, since she mentions that nearby tombs from the period were already known. Next, that book review you question was written by Ken Dark of the Research Centre for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, University of Reading, who is a recognised authority on the region. In his paper "Roman-period and Byzantine landscapes between Sepphoris and Nazareth" published in Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 140, 2 (2008), 87–102, there are multiple references to pottery and other Roman-era remains found in Nazareth with citations to the scholarly literature. So if he claims that it is "archaeologically unsupportable" to claim that Nazareth was uninhabited, we are entitled to suspect he is correct. (But of course it doesn't matter what we suspect, since he obviously and amply meets the Misplaced Pages definition of a reliable source.) If a similarly eminent source claiming something else is found, it can be included too. Zero 07:05, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
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