First house from Jesus' time found in Nazareth

[onehandle]

Source: AP

NAZARETH, Israel – Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.

The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about four acres (1.6 hectares). It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from Roman invaders, said archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Based on clay and chalk shards found at the site, the dwelling appeared to house a "simple Jewish family," Alexandre added, as workers at the site carefully chipped away at mud with small pickaxes to reveal stone walls. Nazareth holds a cherished place in Christianity. It is the town where Christian tradition says Jesus grew up and where an angel told Mary she would bear the child of God.

"This may well have been a place that Jesus and his contemporaries were familiar with," Alexandre said. A young Jesus may have played around the house with his cousins and friends, she said. "It's a logical suggestion." The discovery so close to Christmas has pleased local Christians.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_antiquities

[cliffordu]

1. I wonder how soon the tours will start.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. The young Jesus would have had to exist, first

The archeologist should observe the line between science and fantasy.

[chemp]

3. And this is the same type of house

that Huckleberry Finn may have lived in. If he were real.

[zeemike]

22. Hannibal MIssouri is real.

The Mississippi river is real and so were the characters in that he patterned it after his own expediences.
Sam Clemons was a story teller for sure, but in every story is a thread of truth and personal experience.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

4. I thought the same thing...

They should have an unbiased archaeologist doing the excavation, not someone who believes in fairy tales and may misinterpret the data due to their preconceived notions.

[Realityhack]

83. +1 n/t

[onehandle]

6. I don't believe President George Washington existed.

There are no photographs or video of him. And there are no witnesses to his existence either.

The idea of a historical Washington is in a word, impossible.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. There are reliable contemporary documents about Washington

but none about Jesus. There should be, both Roman and Jewish.

[onehandle]

9. Faked.

The founders of our country (whoever they really were) created an iconic first 'President' to sucker us into this whole 'America' thing.

[stopbush]

64. Washington wasn't our first president. Look it up.

[Realityhack]

84. 5 points for Griffindor for knowing that one. n/t

[defendandprotect]

16. Agree . . .. and then there are certainly his slaves ....

[Psephos]

20. You seem as much in thrall to your beliefs as any Christian.

Those who are motivated by faith often condescend to those with different beliefs, and seem not to understand the integral value of skepticism in arriving at factual truth.

Some of the things you said concerning the historical record are factually false. Here's a good, unbiased, nonproselytizing look at the issue: http://www.amazon.com/Human-Christ-Search-Historical-Jesus/dp/0684827255

I'm not a practicing Christian, by the way.

[DavidDvorkin]

23. I am in thrall to not believing in fairy tales, mythology, superstition ...

[Psephos]

24. One set of beliefs in place of another.

I used not to "believe" in ghosts myself.

Until I was visited by one.

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held
dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment."
- Bertrand Russell. Unpopular Essays, "Philosophy and Politics" (1950).

Try the book I mentioned, or another of its kind. It has nothing to do with a religious belief, but rather, the historical record. Very interesting stuff, a realm of history that is largely invisible to the modern eye.

[DavidDvorkin]

26. The plural of anecdote is not data

An experience that you interpreted as being caused by a ghost is not sufficient evidence for the existence of ghosts.

Mythology about the existence of a magical being who walked around in human form in Judea a couple of thousand years ago is not evidence that the fellow existed.

Stories about humans encountering gods and goddesses in ancient Greece are not proof that those beings existed.

[Psephos]

29. I am not referring to a magical being in human form, but rather, a possible real human.

You seem resistant to examination of the historical case about the human named Jesus, and prone to use emotionally dismissive words regarding views you reject. I get that sometimes from Christian friends, too, regarding my skepticism about their dogmas.

You may be quite correct, or not. The case for an historical Jesus may be rejected or endorsed, but neither action is valid without examining the data and findings, and letting the evidence drive the conclusions. It's fascinating to see how the archaeologists and historical forensic investigators have investigated this. Personally, I find the evidence strong but not quite conclusive. Perhaps you would come to a different conclusion. Our justice system uses "beyond the shadow of doubt" as the standard for criminal convictions, and "as demonstrated by the preponderance of available evidence" as the standard for civil suits. Sounds about right to me.

Meanwhile, the anecdote about my ghost experience proves nothing in a scientific sense, of course, because it is not subject to a falsifiable test, nor can it lead to testable predictions. By definition, then, it is unscientific. What it did do was demonstrate to me again that one of the few pieces of actual knowledge I do possess is that I don't know very much, and can't. As Dunsany said, "Man is a small thing, and the night is very large, and full of wonders."

[DavidDvorkin]

31. Others have done the studies for me

Here's a summary from a skeptical site: http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Scholars have studied the question. I'm not interested in trying to reproduce their work, even if I had the time and academic credentials to do so.

[Psephos]

36. I prefer to do my own evaluations.

I've gotten in too much trouble outsourcing. ;)

Scholars have studied the question, as you said. Some are convinced that the evidence shows a historical man beneath the religious stories, others think not. Both camps tend to call each other names, argue meanly or smugly, and generally enjoy what they think are smackdowns of the other side. That is the general pattern one sees when belief systems collide. It's infuriating when someone obstinately and obtusely fails to see things the same way as oneself.

If the evidence was clear and conclusive, the arguments would fade away. But history, like economics, literature, religion, politics, and psychology, does not often enough yield clear and scientifically falsifiable evidence in favor of or against a particular view, and that is why these fields are so susceptible to dogma. A skeptical but open mind is the best tool in such situations.

[DavidDvorkin]

37. The evidence is indeed clear and conclusive

Rather, the lack of evidence that should be there, that would be there if Jesus had existed.

The issue persists because of religion, because there are scholars who let their beliefs and wishful thinking interfere with their scholarship. It's not necessarily dishonesty, but it is willful self-deception.

[onehandle]

38. The same could be said about you.

Your beliefs and wishful thinking interfere with your 'clear conclusion.'

There is little evidence that any one individual existed two thousand years ago.

Did Jesus exist? The correct answer is 'maybe.'

[DavidDvorkin]

39. You're oddly confused

There's ample evidence, for example, that Julius Caesar existed.

[onehandle]

42. And I came really close to citing him as an example of someone who did exist.

Yep. There is evidence that a rich world spanning king existed.

Big surprise.

But 99.999999999% of the rest of the poor schmucks at that time who went from dust to flesh to dust sadly have no records intact.

When I said 'any one individual,' I meant the people without temples and statues. Sorry I wasn't clear.

[DavidDvorkin]

43. We agree about the non-famous, minor people

Of course. The same was probably true up to, say, 100 or 150 years ago. And still is, in parts of the world.

But that's the problem with Jesus. He was far from minor. He would have caught the attention of many people who wrote things down -- politicians, military men, religious leaders, amateur historians/chroniclers.

[onehandle]

44. Assuming he existed (and I'm not saying he did), he was a nobody in his lifetime.

What politicians, military men, religious leaders, amateur historians/chroniclers at that time would these be?

Few are mentioned in what was written about him decades after his death. And I don't know if any of the few ever wrote anything about him.

Communications were pretty limited at that time. Too bad he didn't have Facebook.

He obviously had a circle of followers.

My impression of his life is fairly summed up in 'Life of Brian.' People were looking for someone to make sense of things in a time of invasion and turmoil.

Something happened at that time. Was it one 'prophet?' More than one?

Nobody knows.

It's dust and later people wrote things down.

[Xolodno]

52. Actually you are incorrect on that point....

Just going by the Biblical texts....

He was a localized regional figure that preached to a very defined populace. When he did become popular (and an irritant to the ruling class) he was silenced. And given that his philosophies were "revolutionary" and anti-establishment, makes sense that the establishment wouldn't go through the length of documenting his existence. Amongst Romans (save Pontious Pilate), he was just another Jew. It wasn't until much later his philosophies were espoused to a larger arena by his followers. Hence, the documentation simply isn't going to be there. Even Josephus only gives him minor mention.

[No Elephants]

70. Supposedly, what seems to be a Josephus reference was faked by the Church.

[Xolodno]

78. If memory serves me correctly...

There were actually two references by Josephus....one is most definitely inserted by the church. The other which gives minor mention is by Josephus as the statements are contradictory.

[stopbush]

82. The obviously fake insertion in the writings of Josephus is the Testimonium Flavianum.

Points against authenticity of the TF are:

* The passage contains overtly Christian content
* The overall passage is positive towards Jesus, even if the overtly Christian parts are removed
* The passage interrupts the continuity of the writing
* Jesus is not mentioned in the Table of Contents
* There are stylistic variations from Josephus' style
* The passage is not referenced by anyone prior to Eusebius in the 4th century
* The section on Pilate is similar to another section on Pilate in Josephus' earlier writing The Jewish War, which does not contain the Jesus reference
* Josephus never wrote anything else about Jesus
* The reference is quite small considering the subject matter, and the fact that Josephus wrote more about John the Baptist and other "false prophets"
* Full insertion of the paragraph is more likely than multiple different alterations

The other reference to Jesus is a very fleeting reference made in writing about the supposed brother of someone named Jesus, James:

"the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others" - Antiquity of the Jews, Book XX; Flavius Josephus, 94-100 CE

What is important to note here is that this is a passage that is definitely talking about at least one Jesus, but it is Jesus the son of Damneus. That seems to indicate that the modifying words "who was called Christ" were a later and ham-fisted addition to the original text.

The names Jesus and James were very common at the time that Josephus wrote, but it's conceivable that a religious person looking to "help" the cause of Jesus' authenticity wouldn't know that and would see any mention of any Jesus in a non-Biblical as an opportunity to gild the "independent source" lily. The enthusiasm of the Xian scribes wasn't matched by intelligence, so they forgot to cover all the bases to make their forgeries appear more credible, as outlined above.

[Xolodno]

90. Yet...

Most scholars seem to conclude that portion in Antiquities is authentic. I'm also inclined to believe it's authentic because the passage is very "vanilla". When scribes of that era tampered with the original, they often flowered it up quite a bit, such as the Testimonium Flavianum. For them to leave such minuscule mention is uncharacteristic. If they indeed inserted "who was called Christ" it was shoddy workmanship. They were more likely to state "who is The Christ...<insert bunch of words here>" rather than "who was called".

[verges]

53. Actually. he was pretty minor in his own time.

The Gospels weren't written until long after his death.

[No Elephants]

67. How can you say he was not minor?

A lot of men claimed to be the Messiah. No proof any of them existed, either.

[verges]

47. Using your logic,

it should be possible to assemble a 100% accurate census from historic records of 2000 years ago. So, who were these 50 or so households in Nazareth? You seem to be gauranteeing that there wasn't a child named Jesus who was the son of Joseph and Mary.

[DavidDvorkin]

48. See post #43.

[stopbush]

81. 50 or so households in Nazareth?? Hokum.

[verges]

86. I'm referencing the article.

And much can change in two thousand years.

[AtheistCrusader]

51. A lack of faith is not a form of faith of it's own.

Come now, surely you can cite some evidence that supports that the man, Jesus Christ, upon which one of the largest religions on earth was based, ever actually lived?


It takes a positive step, an act of faith to believe in things that cannot be perceived. To believe in anything supernatural.

It does not take any positive act, effort, or belief to fail to believe in the supernatural. A failure to launch is not it's own form of belief.

[Psephos]

61. Would you apply that statement to those who lack faith in AGW?

You can see why I don't agree with your assertion. It's easy to disprove.

This discussion has nothing to do with a supernatural or divine Jesus. Such things can never be scientifically known, by definition. This discussion concerns a possible human Jesus. The majority of scholarly (vs. theological) classical historians hold that there was such a person. There are some who disagree, of course (and make interesting and credible arguments), but they are the outliers. I suggested some good, nontheological, overviews of this up-thread if your sense of curiosity is stronger than your sense of conviction. ;)

I see a lot of political and religious positions that are based on negation of someone else's position. Those who are primarily motivated by faith generally treat the "apostates" (people with the opposite view) as ignorant, unseeing, contemptible, deserving of calumny, or an impediment to moral progress.

There's plenty of that in the atheist movement. Of course, there's plenty of that coming from religious dogmatists as well. Regardless of the labels used, if it barks, smells, and bares its teeth like a dog, I am inclined to think of it as a dog. Even if someone tells me it's a manx cat.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with taking one's beliefs or antibeliefs as faith. Quite the opposite...there's a lot of good that can come from it. Think of love, for example. Or of the belief that we have a higher purpose than to merely attend to our own needs and wants, others be damned.

I don't know anything about you, but your DU handle suggests that your approach to antibelief is based at least somewhat on faith-like motivations. Perhaps you celebrate the solstice instead of a traditional religious holy day. (I do, at least for the summer solstice.) Perhaps you sometimes feel it's important to convince others of the truth of your views. Perhaps you find it irritating that others choose a different belief pattern than you, especially after you explain to them why that's unreasonable. Perhaps on occasion you even express that irritation with a judgment and a knowing look, or a put-down.

Think about it. When you see these behaviors in others, doesn't it seem clear to you what's behind those behaviors?

[Psephos]

40. Interesting lacuna.

You seem not to realize that the consensus view by most classical historians is that some sort of human Jesus existed. This of course says nothing about any divinity issues, which are de facto unknowable in either a scientific or historical sense.

That lacuna is explainable as a selection bias.

Although I use Wikipedia cautiously, their page on this has good, agenda-free references and links to the scholarship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

[boppers]

66. Hey, I've been "on" that page for years!

Good work being done there, and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus too.

I don't agree with either of the consensus conclusions on each page, myself (Betrand Russel's argument comes to mind, which asserts that if Jesus didn't exist, he wouldn't have followers 50 years later... therefore, Xenu must also have existed since he also has adherents, as does Moroni), but it's nice to see the link.

[Psephos]

79. Nice job - those pages are good sources. :)

I like your Russell allusion, too. Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian stimulated me through much critical re-examination back in the day.

[daleo]

33. It's "beyond a reasonable doubt"

That's quite different than "a shadow of a doubt". We could accept few matters as settled under the "beyond a shadow of a doubt" rule, but quite a few under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" rule. For example, good circumstantial evidence can satisfy a reasonable doubt standard, but not eliminate every shadow of a doubt.

[Psephos]

35. You and I are on the same page. n/t

[No Elephants]

69. History books of the time were anecdotal and much of them was hearsay.

Don't know why people can't just say the truth, namely, "no one knows for certain, one way or the other."

[AlbertCat]

30. One set of beliefs in place of another.

There is a difference in "belief" and TRUSTING the evidence.

Religious people seem to never get this distinction. It's like when Dawkins talks about belief in belief....that that is all there is.

I believe things, and then the evidence ether supports those beliefs or it doesn't and I trust the evidence and change my views.

In this particular case.... there is zero evidence that Jesus existed except for very dubious writings that contradict each other written long after the events. There is no mention of the events described in the Gospels anywhere else... and there should be. St Paul doesn't even seem to have an inkling about Jesus' story.

No, a set of informed decisions based on the current evidence in place of "beliefs".... not "One set of beliefs in place of another."

[Psephos]

34. Spoken like a true believer. ;)

"there is zero evidence that Jesus existed..."

Q.E.D.

[Igel]

54. But that doesn't constitute an argument ex silencio.

That's the problem: One side believes, but the other side disbelieves, which is different from being agnostic on the matter. Anybody not proved to have existed by contemporaneous records can't exist is the assumption--the question of exceptional claims is above and beyond existence.

Plato, Aristotle, Hannibal, Aeschylus, Boudicca, Vladimir I all fall into this category. All are claimed to have existed, sometimes by works attributed to them and sometimes by people talking of them. We have no contemporaneous records of any of them, at least not that I know of. Even Socrates left us no autograph--as though we could authenticate it if he had. Therefore we must not only doubt their existence, but claim that they did not actually exist. Therein lies the fallacy.

My mother and her siblings claimed that our family had land in Virgina in the very early 1800s and that a forebearer living there had been a soldier in the Confederate Army. She harped that her side of the family had left a decade or so after the Civil War and had been cheated out of their inheritance. She was born in the late 1920s. Her grandmother was probably born in the 1870s, but she never knew her. I was told this in the 1970s, a 100 years after the alleged migration northwards, 110 after my maternal forebear's Civil War private-hood, and 170 years after the land was allegedly bestowed on my family. The chain of oral transmission wasn't exactly foolproof.

As a kid who was tired of my mother's ranting about this I denied it. Why would our family have a land grant? What evidence was there? What proof? The best she could do is say her mother, born in c. 1894, had said it--but she wasn't from Virginia and her mother wasn't born in Virginia. And I'd never even seen this alleged grandmother.

When my high school math teacher taught us some simple logic I dropped the denial. It was unproven, but that didn't mean it was false. I had no proof, it was possible, perhaps even plausible. I grew up, and just put up with my mother's annoying ranting. Oh, and I went to college, making non-denial of this claim cheap. And I was taught that many traditions and myths have a basis in fact and can be passed down not just for 100 years, but for 500 or more. They can be fluid, but if acceptance is cost-free, what difference does it make? Moving 3000 miles away made tolerance of this claim absolutely cost free.

Then in the '80s my aunt retired and dug for relatives. She found somebody from the branch of the family that stayed in Virginia and produced a copy of the land grant from 1798 (1797?), a picture of my great-great-(...)-grandfather in his Civil War private's uniform. My childhood denials of this tradition suddenly had a price.

True, my mother still wasn't quite right. The land existed--a fairly large amount, hundreds of acres, in northern Virginia. We even had a picture of the ol' homestead and the family, all dressed in their best finery. The house had two rooms, perhaps three; they were in their work clothes. They were poor, and that was *before* the Civil War. The land was mostly swamp and marsh. And the reason for the exodus is that had the Civil-War guy's kids continued on the land it couldn't have maintained them in the penury they'd been accustomed to. So the truth was there, even if the riches were not.

One could claim that the land, tax, census, marriage, baptismal records were there. Well, yes and no. Even though the area wasn't affected much by the Civil War and the government pretty much stayed intact, most of the local records were lost even though the oldest was 180 years old. Church fires, lost boxes of crap, flooding.

Now, there are records that presume Joshua bar Joseph's existence--greatly embellished, we can assume. But they date from 80 or so years after his alleged death. There's no reason to suppose the non-contemporaneous accounts are utterly false. Even with my mother's account I learned in 11th grade that assuming a claim is false because it's not proven is a waste of time if it's cheap and it has no consequences. My mother's had no consequences; that Jesus existed has no consequences.

The claim that he was somehow God has consequences. But even contemporaneous records probably wouldn't cover that. People want to deny the claim that is cost-free and utterly plausible in order to not have to even deal with the implausible claim. To, just as I did when I was younger, not have to put up with annoying, mindless prattle.

As with Muhammed--with no actual records from then, the earliest records from at least decades after his death--it's pointless to argue that he didn't exist. He may not have had all the properties ascribed to him, but allowing the man to have had existence is fairly cheap.

[Psephos]

62. excellent post n/t

[unc70]

41. Some people are able to believe in "Change"

There is a relatively small number of documents of any type from that period not involving the Roman government, particular those in and around Roman itself. As is always the case, history is based upon what fragments are accidentally preserved.

George Washington, et al are false arguments that would not be adequate for a high school debate team. A more-valid analogy would be to prove the existance of your own ancestors of that time, be they in Britain, France, Italy, Israel, or anywhere else. Can't find any evidence confirming their existance? Well, then how do expect to prove your own? I suppose you think we should just believe you.

Seriously, drop the self-satisfied BS and all the unrecs. Don't get too attached to those recent (just over 200 yo) myths about cherry trees.

How many of you still believe in "Change"?

[LanternWaste]

50. ...or civility.

"I am in thrall to not believing in fairy tales, mythology, superstition ..."

...or civility.

[zeemike]

25. So it is.

And of course that is because of it's proximity in time....paper records will not last long in most cases....they turn to dust.
So how many Roman documents now exist? and what percentage is that of the whole created at the 1st century AD?
If you know that you can figure the odds of a particular document surviving....slim and none would be my guess.
So the lack of evidence is not evidence.

[No Elephants]

71. Yes, but a lot of things were more common by the time Washington lived,

from paper, to writing implements and ink, to the number of people who knew how to write, to newspapers, etc.

When you consider what life was like two thousand years ago versus three hundred years ago, is not at all surprising that only oral histories of Jesus existed, while we have lots of writings and some portraits of George Washington.

And then, we have the fact that Washington led troops and was elected President, but Jesus was an iterinant preacher and/or religious teacher.

[kurtharp]

13. that is a silly argument

How silly. Many hundreds of letters from Washington to others and back indicate the existance of Washington. Documentation from England, France, Dutch and other European countries indicate the existance of Washington. Documentation in the American gvt. indicate the existance of Washington. Writings of those who were contemperaries of Washington and knew Washington are evidence of Washington. Missing cherry trees all over New England are indication of Washington (J/K). Paintings of Washington done of him in person and writen about by the artist is evidence of his existance. The grave plot Washington is in can have DNA compaired to existing relatives indicates the existance of Washington.

No reliable evidence exists of Jesus' existance. None. No writings of him took place in his lifetime. No paintings of him in his lifetime. He made no writings. He is not mentioned in writings of any person or government anywhere in the world while he was alive. Nothing exists of Jeses until roughly 60 years after his "death", and none of this evidence was produced by anyone who actualy met Jesus.

[No Elephants]

72. No paintings? How many paintings from 2000 years ago ever existed, let alone survived until today.

Not many people knew how to write 2000 years ago, let alone had access to paper, ink and writing implements.

So many of these arguments are based upon the facts 2000 years ago in the Middle East being identical to those of today or Washington's time. They were nothing alike, though. Lots of people can trace their genealogy back to the Mayflower, but none can trace it back 2000 years. You cannot draw any sane conclcusion from that inability though. You cannot say, "Therefore, no one alive today had any ancestors that lived 2000 years ago." Yet, people draw conclusions like that about Jesus all the time.

[formercia]

58. Anyway, the Earth hadn't been created yet.

How do you explainTHAT?!!00!0!!

[stopbush]

85. When your only defense for the existence of Jesus is to spout some

pseudo-quantum mechanics view of reality that renders basic human cognition irrelevant through a textbook example of false equivalency, then you've already lost the argument.

On a level, fact-based, reality recognizing playing field, there's no doubt whatsoever that George Washington existed. On the same level, fact-based, reality recognizing playing field, there is no evidence that Jesus existed.

[customerserviceguy]

8. This says that it was from the time the NT says Jesus was there

It is not stating the existence of a Jesus figure for a fact. While I doubt most every facet of the Jesus legend, clearly, there was a time frame in which the story was set. I would imagine that things really didn't change too much give or take a century or two, so representing this house as being from that time frame is not too much of a stretch.

[DavidDvorkin]

11. I was reacting to

the archeologist talking about the young Jesus and his friends playing there.

[alfredo]

19. They found some graffiti that says

" Jesus thinks he's Jehovah's gift to women. "

[DavidDvorkin]

27. Hah!

Although he seemed to prefer the company of men.

[alfredo]

46. and boys if that incident in the garden is of any indication.

[defendandprotect]

15. In repeating this patriarchal myth, it seeks to give authority to it --

[No Elephants]

73. Please don't try to be rational. Any kind of mention of the name Jesus is going to send the

allegedly rational posters here a-flailing.

[customerserviceguy]

77. Good point

While I reject fully the Christian religion, and just about all that has sprung from it, I still acknowledge its existence, and know that it has a history. Perhaps if more people understood that history, they would not be so much in awe of that religion.

[defendandprotect]

14. True . . . I was going to post something like that . . .

:evilgrin:

[jmowreader]

45. 2000-year-old houses can exist, Jesus or no Jesus

I think Jesus was like Paul Bunyan.

Now, there was a man named Paul Bunyan (or the French equivalent, since he was French Canadian), and he was a logger. He was such a great logger people started telling stories about him. As the stories passed from person to person they got wilder and wilder until Mr. Bunyan was forty feet tall and had a huge blue ox as a sidekick.

Same deal with Jesus. A man by that name probably existed and did some good things. As the stories about him went from person to person they got better and better until you've got a guy who can turn water into wine, walk across lakes and feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread. (I think Jesus probably had a few bucks earned by preaching or whatever other business he was in. In the Feeding of the Multitudes, when they found out they needed to get five thousand meals out of two fish and five loaves of bread Jesus sent a few of his men into town to buy food. That's pretty cool all on its own, but it's not really miraculous--anyone with enough money could have done it. The story grew as Jesus' legend grew to become Jesus breaking bread in just a certain way to get a thousand servings, plus leftovers, out of one loaf.)

[stopbush]

63. Nazareth didn't even exist until the 4th century.

And the place people claim is Nazareth bears no resemblance to the city described in the Bible.

More fantasy. I wish archeologists would quit carrying water for the Jesus fantasy It's obvious they want to avoid a heated discussion with the religious nuts.

[No Elephants]

74. Really? How do you know that Nazareth did not exist until the 4th Century?

As far as allegedly having no resemblance to the city described in the Bible, I call bullshit. The Bible does not describe Nazarath.

[stopbush]

80. Read your Bible. It recounts Jesus' return to his hometown,

you know, the incident that spawned the "No prophet is accepted in his own country" saying? Luke reports that Jesus' returned to Nazareth ("And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read." Luke 4:16) but his neighbors weren't too happy with his preaching, "And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff." (Luke 4.29).

But Nazareth is located in a depression, set within gentle hills. It isn't built on a hill at all. The whole region is characterized by plains and mild rises with no sharp peaks or steep cliffs. Exactly what "cliff" is Luke speaking of? There's nothing like that near what has been identified as Nazareth. And some translations of this passage call the hill a mountain and the cliff a precipice, a description that is even more outrageous than those describing a hill and a cliff.

I've seen photographs of what is called Nazareth and the surrounding area. The worst the townspeople could have done to Jesus was to take him out of the town and roll him down a gently sloping hill.

Luke also says that Jesus preached in Nazareth's synagogue, but their are no ruins of any kind that are large enough to have been the foundation for a synagogue. In fact, the best that Catholic archeologist Stephen Pfann could come up with in this excavations of the site in 1962 was evidence consistent with the site being used as a single family farm over many centuries. Yet both Luke and Matthew refer to Nazareth as a city. Not a town, not a village, not an enclave, a city. I know that apologists like to downsize Nazareth to a small town or village to excuse the lack of any archeological evidence for a city, but doing so sort of negates the power of the phrase "Jesus of Nazareth." I mean, if Nazareth was actually a tiny enclave of tents and huts, wouldn't the response to the phrase "Jesus of Nazareth" be "Jesus of where?"

In addition:

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

The first real effort by the church to establish a location for Nazareth happened in the 4th century, when the Empress Helena went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the area of Nazareth she could find nothing but an ancient well – in fact the only water source in the area (which in itself demolishes the idea that Nazareth was ever a 'city'). Helena promptly labeled the hole in the ground 'Mary's Well' and had a small basilica built over the spot. Thus the well site acquired local support to be called the place where the Annunciation took place, and Nazareth acquired its first church.

And that's why I said that the Bible not only describes Nazareth, but that it describes it incorrectly.

[Synicus Maximus]

87. Are you trying to imply that there were no people living in the middle east in the first century CE...

Therefore no houses. The age of the house has nothing to do with rather Jesus lived or not.

[SpiralHawk]

5. "There's no room & no pre-existing pregnancy coverage." - Republicon Homelanders

"Message to Mary & Joseph: Pull yourselves up by your own sandal straps, and get your own damn health plan."

- Republicon Homelanders

[defendandprotect]

17. Birth certificate? Father? Alien?

[SpiralHawk]

21. "What, your Father is not of this world? Get outa here." - Republicons

"We don't need no swarthy aliens taking up warm spaces in our little world."

- Republicons

[No Elephants]

68. They had a great health plan: faith healing.

[MineralMan]

10. I can see it now,

Jesus playing "dodge the inflated goat's bladder" with the rowdy neighborhood kids. Good times!

[AlbertCat]

32. Good times!

"Hey Jesus! Ezekiel kicked the goat bladder out into the lake. Would you walk out there and get it? Thanks."

[Coventina]

12. I don't see anything offensive about this article. No more so

than if an archaeologist was talking about a find from the time of King Arthur, and speculating that it could have been a hamlet he and his followers visited or lived in.

JMHO

[No Elephants]

75. But it mentioned the name "Jesus." That alone makes it offensive to any sane human being.

:sarcasm:

Please see as well Reply #73.

[gaspee]

18. People still believe this stuff?

hehehehe - and this is where mary was when she either went schizo or tried to cover up her affair...

or this is the place later writers about Je-Sus decided to place the woman they decided was his mother when they made up the shit about a maybe-he-existed dude.

A settlement that old is interesting due to age, not some silly made-up story.

[benld74]

28. Jeruselum real estate speculators have already fliped the house for 500% profits

increase=ing the mortage fro a mere 20K to over 700 k in amatter of weeks! Banks are fighting for the chance to own the property!

[Stevenmarc]

49. Here comes Ty Pennington to stick a Mc Mansion on the site the Jesus story is a real heart tugger

[Poll_Blind]

55. And scrawled on the wall in ancient Hebrew, a prophecy...

"I am the son of God and as prophesier for Humanity I foretell: As rocky as these meager dwellings are, so shall a group of musicians, begotten by humble stock, come along and bring rockiness to all. And they shall be called RATT. And their posters shall adorn my home in heaven as they do not here on this wicked earth."



Religion is faith. And I've got faith today. Nyah!

[undeterred]

56. Was it foreclosed?

[formercia]

57. Obviously, someone took a beating on it. n/t

[lonestarnot]

59. cool.

[arcadian]

60. Jesus?

[skoalyman]

65. you should photo shop an electric guitar in the other hand lol

[No Elephants]

76. Saying no figure anything like the one we know about as "Jesus" ever lived requires as much

faith as saying there was a historical Jesus and almost as much as saying the historical Jesus was also divine.

Arguments along the lines of "There were writings about Caesar, but not about Jesus, ergo Caesar existed and Jesus did not" are just incredibly silly. RMA. (Rational, my ass.)


I did not see one post on the thread remarking upon how neat it was that a 2000 year old house was found in that area, and what that might teach us. The threads about archaeological finds of that time are strangely remininiscent of threads that get to be about guns, no matter what the original post on the thread said.

[Zhade]

92. Nice straw man. People are pointing out the utter lack of evidence...

...not stating no one like him could ever have existed.

And they're right. There's zero extrabiblical evidence.

[kwassa]

94. Josephus

most scholars accept at least one of the quotes.

See upthread.

[KakistocracyHater]

88. Nazareth did not exist for several hundred years into A.D. so they made one

finally. I think it was Constantine's Mom. It is SUCH a coincidence that they 'found' this a 'few days before Christmas'. Where is the cliff? The one they tried to run Jesus off of, but he made himself invisible & got away?

[marshall]

89. Just try to appreciate it from a purely historical point of view

Like it or not, that part of the world has had a profound impact on our culture. For almost two thousand years we have been fascinated by it, in the same way Mormons are fascinated by precolumbian America. Both exist without any independent evidence, but art has imiated life and the very act of our ancestors believing in it has had a huge impact on our cultural lives.

[classysassy]

91. The Anti Christian postings

are awful,if you don't believe don't share it with those of us who do.Sometime its better to remain silent and appear to be intelligent than to speak up and erase all doubt.

[Prometheus Bound]

93. Cool. Thanks for posting that.

[hunter]

95. The past is as shifty and as insubstantial as the future...

... in every aspect and at every scale.

The possibilities of the past and the possibilities of the future converge in our present, which is our only reality.

I very much enjoy the debates posts like this set off. We live by our stories: even our most substantial sciences are myth simply because the universe is very big and our brains are very small. Some of these myths bring us substantial rewards, others great destruction.