I sometimes suspect that as a child I was inadvertently wounded by a radioactive train switch which caused me to have the Secret Superpower of Derailment.

This reminds me of a funny clip I saw on TV. Check it out on youtube

The punishment for those violation were death by stoning, by hanging or by decapitation.

I would also like to point out that there are several Xian antisemitic sites on-line that purport to be quoting Talmud, when they are in fact “quoting” falsified or non-existent portions of made-up books of Talmud.

I would like to know where the reference to Talmud above was copied from, to be able to tell you if this is an authentic quote from Talmud.

S(o)B

Yeshu does not definitely refer to one man(Jesus) Yeshu is actually a more commonly used acronym.

For those who know little about Hebrew, the consonants are the only letters. All the vowels appear around the consonants. Thus, Yeshu actually consists of 3 letters (in Hebrew) Yud, Shin, and Vav….. The acronym refers to Yemach Shemo Vezichro…. meaning may his name be erased and forgotten. It is a title given to all those who committed atrocities to Jews. (Hitler for example is always followed by Yemach Shemo V’ zichro)

Furthermore, various texts where Jesus’ domain did not reach as far did not include the surname Hanotzri, the Nazarene… this would imply that it was added in Christian places to try to provide Talmudic sources for Jesus.

Now, in the Talmud, many of you can not find Talmudic references to Jesus, because in the Talmud, many pages were torn out of our holy books nearly two millenia ago for disparaging of Jesus. Now, I hate to see people think less of the Jews for anything the Talmud wrote about Jesus. You must understand, that according to Jewish law, Jesus was deserving for the death penalty for saying that he was the son of G-d. Additionally for being a false prophet, as the Torah says that any prophet who performs wonders and then proceeds to change the word of G-d (which Jesus clearly did) is liable for the death penalty.

Additionaly, to throw off the Christians who murdered Jews in the name of Jesus for mellenia, they often referred to him, not only in the Talmud, but in rabbinic literature as “the other man”

It is inconclusive that there are even Talmudic sources that Jesus existed. http://talmud.faithweb.com/articles/jesus.html and the wikipedia article “Yeshu” provide decent reading material about traditional jewish “sources”

Finally, the whole Jesus thing is kind of a sore spot. When I come into these forums, it is not for my benefit. I am just providing a little information as answers to some questions I stumbled across. Please refrain from teaching me about Jesus. In my opinion (and conventional Jewish opinions) he has not fulfilled any of the Messianic prophesies, and there is no Jewish support for an idea of the second coming. To Jews everywhere Jesus was merely another false messiah that unfortunately attracted a large following from Judaism. You would not believe how many false messiah’s there were in that time period (following the destruction of the Temple)….and since then as well, many of whom attracted their own following.

P.S. Jesus lived during the Second Temple period, and there would be no reason for a messiah anyway.

All other commentaries……(such as the one at come and hear (that name is actually a clever wordplay on a common talmudic phrase))…….. ARE TERRIBLE, and don’t represent all of the (even basic) commentary to go alongside the Talmud. If I devoted a library to the commentary on the Talmud, it would take up a room about the size of your neighborhood walmart.

The problem is far more complicated than that. It is not that you misunderstood me. It is my fault for being deliberately opaque on the subject. I did that for two reasons: 1) because of my lack of knowledge of Greek, I am not settled on a resolution and more importantly 2) because I did not want to travel too far down this rabbit trail. I was trying my best to stay focused on the Talmud issue, and why it includes the Christianized statement “Yeshua the Nazarene.”

I sometimes suspect that as a child I was inadvertently wounded by a radioactive train switch which caused me to have the Secret Superpower of Derailment.

Bystander: Look, Super Derailman! There is a blog entry in which all the comments are in appropriate response!
Me: What?! This cannot BE! I’ll save you, little entry! Take this remote topic! And that non-sequiter!

Bystander: Thanks, Super Derailman. Now the thread is spinning hopelessly off-topic, never to regain its original premise.
Me: No Problem! I am off to insert the Virgin Birth Question on some blog about Predestination! Until next time…

But since we are here…and my Superpower is activated…

The problem initially has to do with the English translation of a Greek document. The translators have imposed their doctrine on the translation, which has caused a blurring of the issue when it comes to “Nazareth.”

When Mark (skipping 1:9 for the moment) refers to a “Jesus of Nazareth” the author used the word ”nazarhnos” The issue is that the translation from the Hebrew Nazareth (NCRT) to the Greek would normally be a sigma not a zeta “z.” It should be “Nasareth” So ”nazarhnos” does NOT mean a person from the town of Nazareth. (That would be ”nazarethnos.” For an English equivalent, a Person from “Nazareth” is a “Nazarethite” or a “Nazarethene.” A “Nazarene” is a person from “Nazara.” If you follow that.)

Simply put, Mark was NOT claiming Jesus came from Nazareth, by virtue of this ”nazarhnos”. It was a term of distinction, (perhaps of a sect, or being separate) not location.

We come to Matthew. This author, uncomfortable with ”nazarhnos” (notice that he does not use it in the parallel story of the Blind Man. Matt. 20:30 Mark 10:47) instead uses the term ”nazwraios” derived from the LXX of Judges 13:5, (”nazeiraios”) to tie Jesus into the birth of Samson. A Nazarite.

At this point, if you have been following, Matthew deliberately removes a problematic term from Mark (as is his habit) and inserts a new term, tying it to both the Samson story and attempting to relate it back to Jesus’ birthplace being Nazareth. (Although ”nazwraios” still does not mean a person from Nazareth.)

Now, if Matthew was reading Mark, and had come across 1:9, why the deliberate removal of the difficult term ”nazarhnos”? Further, why the introduction of the new term ”nazwraios” with the equally deliberate correlation to a town of Nazareth? It would seem that if Matthew had read Mark 1:9, realized Jesus was from Nazareth, the author could have presumed that ”nazarhnos” related to coming from Nazareth and not need the new term.

And, as I already pointed out, Mark never uses this double location as a person identifier AND never uses the term “Nazareth” when referring to Jesus, but rather ”nazarhnos.” To me, the most appropriate solution, recognizing the fluidity of the Gospels in their creation, is to believe that “Nazareth” of Mark 1:9 was added later.

I blame Matthew, of course, but it could have been Luke, or even an oral tradition re-inserting itself from the promulgation of Matthew and Luke. Taken in conjunction with the implication in Mark of a Capernaum home for Jesus, the puzzle seems to fit pretty well together.

Obviously, I am open to further discussion to change my persuasion.

(FYI, Luke uses both ”nazarhnos” and ”nazwraios”, providing either a co-mingled compromise, or no insight in the matter.)

Raises a fascinating question regarding the English translation, doesn’t it? The translators seem, in order to avoid all this confusion and problem, to smash the different terms into “Jesus of Nazareth” despite the obvious difference in the words, and problems with relating it back to Nazareth. Are they using doctrine or historicity as their guide?

Things that make you go hmm….

If you want the short version from someone far more qualified then myself, here is a blurb. On the other hand, if you have a coupla hours to spare, you can review a long thread here to see how it plays out in debate.

If nothing else, I hoped you learned that there is more than one Greek word in play here, and that nothing ever seems to come easy when we discuss the New Testament.

1. Multiple attestation
2. dissimilarity to Jewish AND Christian traditions (not one or the other)
3. Embarassment (the more embarassing, the more likely it happened…for example, Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist)
4. Consistency with the Palestinian environment.
5. I forget the term, but pretty much the last criteria is looking at similar issues and how they have been addressed regarding the previous four criteria.

good analysis guys.

-Justin

I mentioned, I think in another thread, that I’ve heard several bible scholars conclude that there was very likely an historical Jesus, even though there’s no absolute outside proof of that fact.

This – what you bring up above – is one of the reasons for their conclusions. There are a number of odd inconsistencies and even “embarrassing” things in the gospels that would have been “smoothed over” or harmonized away if the whole story of a Jesus character had been invented after the fact.

The Jesus of Nazareth conundrum was one I remember them mentioning specifically. If there hadn’t been an actual person Jesus, and he hadn’t been known historically to come from Nazareth, it makes no sense that they would have included that fact. It “messes up” the rest of the story.

They cited several things like that to support their conclusion.

Justin, I agree with you here, but I think I understand DagoodS’ reasoning – and it is a sticky problem. The whole issue begins with Matthew 2:23, “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” The problem is (DagoodS, stop me if I am misunderstanding you), there is noplace in the Old Testament where a prophecy like that exists. There nearest I have seen is Judges 13:7, regarding the Nazarite vow, but it is not that clear. What is going on? It is a bit of a puzzle.

I guess DagoodS is suggesting one way to solve that problem. If Matthew copied huge portions of Mark, but also included the bogus prophecy concering Nazareth – it might be that Nazareth was not mentioned in the original Mark, but was later re-written into Mark as damage control. DagoodS, stop me if I am wrong here.

I am not convinced by that argument since there are similar references to Jesus being from Nazareth in all four Gospels. Did later editors also include those references into all the Mark, Luke and John as well (Not to mention Acts)? Of the number of references to Jesus being from Nazareth, I count 5 in Mark, 5 in Luke, 8 in John and a few more in Acts. The most relevant for this discussion is Luke 1:26 which describes Gabriel going to the city of Galilee named Nazareth.

I just have a hard time that later editors added Nazareth to all these passages. Maybe it did happen, nothing is impossible, but it seems unlikely to me. This is also one of the reasons I think that Jesus really was, at the very least, a historical character. This remnant of his life seems to have been preserved in all 4 of the Gospels without any plausible way of later harmonization.

I have also read that there is a possibility that Nazareth did not even exist as a town until the 3rd century, since it was never mentioned in Jewish writings until then. But I think it is just as likely that Nazareth could have been a tiny backwater kind of town at the time of Jesus (consider John 1:46).

As far as the possiblility of Jesus being from Capernaum, that is a new one to me. I don’t have an opinion on that matter one way or the other, but am interested to know yours.

Like DagoodS, I don’t have a stake in this matter – but the ‘Nazareth Problem’ is a real puzzle in the Gospels, and it is interesting discussion.