James Randi Speaks: Questioning the Bible
11 min - Mar 6, 2009
James Randi Speaks: Questioning the Bible. Recorded 3/4/2009 at the James Randi Educational Foundation. Lighting, Camera and ...
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JESUS of NAZARETH......oh really? James Randi on Nazareth
by Terry 11 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Terry
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Terry
When I grow up I want to be James Randi!
What a lifetime he has had. He can be very proud of what he has accomplished in the Skeptical community.
His book on Nostradamus was wonderful and so was the one on Faith Healers.
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ssn587
Terry, can't find it now, but i think that you had made a comment on a post about people passing the good books on the Bible and Biblical histroy etal to go to books on REv. and others that have numerous books on that same subject i.e. Rev.
Which books do you recommend for one to study about early christianity it's history and how the bible was written, rewritten etc.? would appreciate any recommendations that you may have.
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Terry
Which books do you recommend for one to study about early christianity it's history and how the bible was written, rewritten etc.? would appreciate any recommendations that you may have.
In not particuar order here are some interesting and informative books that made a big difference in the way I think:
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BurnTheShips
So are you asserting that Nazareth didn't exist in the time of Jesus Terry?
BTS
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Terry
So are you asserting that Nazareth didn't exist in the time of Jesus Terry?
BTS
I'm guessing that Burn the Ships did NOT watch the James Randi clip!! Am I wrong?
Getting a Name
The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios'. More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name. But just what is that meaning and how did it get applied to a small village? The highly ambiguous Hebrew root of the name is NZR.
The 2nd century gnostic Gospel of Philip offers this explanation:
'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...'
– Gospel of Philip, 47.
What we do know is that 'Nazarene' was originally the name of an early Jewish-Christian sect – a faction, or off-shoot, of the Essenes. They had no particular relation to a city of Nazareth. The root of their name may have been 'Truth' or it may have been the Hebrew noun 'netser' ('netzor'), meaning 'branch' or 'flower.' The plural of 'Netzor' becomes 'Netzoreem.' There is no mention of the Nazarenes in any of Paul's writings. The Nazorim emerged towards the end of the 1st century, after a curse had been placed on heretics in Jewish daily prayer.
'Three times a day they say: May God curse the Nazarenes'.
– Epiphanius (Panarion 29.9.2).
The Nazarenes may have seen themselves as a 'branch from the stem of Jesse (the legendary King David's father)'. Certainly, they had their own early version of 'Matthew'. This lost text – the Gospel of the Nazarenes – can hardly be regarded as a 'Gospel of the inhabitants of Nazareth'!
It was the later Gospel of Matthew which started the deceit that the title 'Jesus the Nazorene' should in some manner relate to Nazareth, by quoting 'prophecy':
"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."
– Matthew 2.23.
With this, Matthew closes his fable of Jesus's early years. Yet Matthew is misquoting – he would surely know that nowhere in Jewish prophetic literature is there any reference to a Nazarene. What is 'foretold' (or at least mentioned several times) in Old Testament scripture is the appearance of a Nazarite. For example:
"For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."
– Judges 13.5.
Matthew slyly substitutes one word for another. By replacing Nazarite ('he who vows to grow long hair and serve god') with a term which appears to imply 'resident of' he is able to fabricate a hometown link for his fictitious hero.
So how did the village get its name?
It seems that, along with the Nozerim, a related Jewish/Christian faction, the Evyonim – ‘the Poor’ (later to be called Ebionites) – emerged about the same time. According to Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis , Cyprus, circa 370 AD) they arose from within the Nazarenes. They differed doctrinally from the original group in rejecting Paul and were 'Jews who pay honour to Christ as a just man...' They too, it seems, had their own prototype version of Matthew – ‘The Gospel to the Hebrews’. A name these sectaries chose for themselves was 'Keepers of the Covenant', in Hebrew Nozrei haBrit, whence Nosrim or Nazarene!
In other words, when it came to the crunch, the original Nazarenes split into two: those who tried to re-position themselves within the general tenets of Judaism ('Evyonim'-Nosrim); and those who rejected Judaism ('Christian'-Nosrim)
Now, we know that a group of 'priestly' families resettled an area in the Nazareth valley after their defeat in the Bar Kochbar War of 135 AD (see above). It seems highly probable that they were Evyonim-Nosrim and named their village 'Nazareth' or the village of 'The Poor' either because of self-pity or because doctrinally they made a virtue out of their poverty.
"Blessed are the Poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."
– Matthew 5,3.
The writer of Matthew (re-writer of the proto-Matthew stories) heard of 'priestly' families moving to a place in Galilee which they had called 'Nazareth' – and decided to use the name of the new town for the hometown of his hero.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html
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besty
You couldn't make this stuff up.....oh wait.....
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BurnTheShips
I've watched half of the clip. HE NEVER COMES OUT AND MAKES AN ASSERTION.
He flits about like a butterfly.
And neither are any of you. So grow a spine, and answer my question. Are you saying there was no Nazareth in the time of Jesus?
BTS
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BurnTheShips
Crickets!
The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Jesous o Nazoraios'. More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name.
That explanation is stupid, if you STOP AND THINK!
Millions of Christians today speak......GREEK! (where are our Greek posters?)
The Roman Empire's lingua franca was......GREEK!
Most Christians after the first Century spoke....GREEK!
The liturgical language of Orthodox Christians is....GREEK!
In the NT, Nazareth is referred to as a PLACE!
So how did they mistranslate it, Terry? It was written in THEIR OWN LANGUAGE!
BTS SPEAKS. QUESTIONING THE RANDI:
Randi: "Nothing but a well has been discovered"
Oh really?
Randi: "Fake planted coins"
You can fake coins since they are movable, but structures?
I notice Randi's recording is from 3/2009. As usually ends up happening, archeological evidence piles up.
First Jesus-Era House Found in Nazareth, Israel
AP 12/21/2009
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. 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,
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/79789047.html
Here is what the Bible says:
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.
Randi says there is no cliff in the area from which to throw Jesus off. Therefore, this isn't Nazareth.
Really?
How easily disproved:
The people on top give a sense of scale:
Do you question the questioners, Terry? Are you skeptical towards the skeptics?
BTS
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besty
From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth
Fr. Bagatti uncovered pottery dating from the Middle Bronze Age (2200 to 1500 BC) and ceramics, silos and grinding mills from the Iron Age (1500 to 586 BC), pointing to substantial settlement in the Nazareth basin at that time. However, lack of archaeological evidence from Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic or Early Roman times, at least in the major excavations between 1955 and 1990, shows that the settlement apparently came to an abrupt end about 720 BC, when many towns in the area were destroyed by the Assyrians.
It's a very interesting question and the evidence seems to indicate a small hamlet of a few houses at most in the 1st Century.
