Did the city of Nazareth even exist during the claimed life of fictional jesus?

June 5, 2013

Archaeology vs the Bible (James Randi)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxEJHO8KIXY

Nazareth – The Town that Theology Built by JesusNeverExistd

The evidence for a 1st century town of Nazareth does not exist – not literary, not archaeological, and not historical. It is an imaginary city for an imaginary god-man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k24cQMaJzPk

Nazareth – The Town that Theology Built

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

Jesus was not born in Nazareth

That’s right, the birth place of Jesus could not have been Nazareth. "Jesus of Nazareth" is a fiction.

The evidence on history can be verified or disproved by archaeology. A video by James Randi explains this:

http://www.cobourgatheist.com/index.php/contact-me?id=559:jesus-was-not-born-in-nazareth&catid=136:the-bible

In what town was Jesus born?

Was he born in Bethlehem in Judea, or in Nazareth, or in another Bethlehem?:

Archeological evidence:

Perhaps the most important reason to suspect the accuracy of Matthew and Luke is that Bethlehem in Judea did not exist as a functioning town between 7 and 4 BCE when Jesus is believed to have been born. Archaeological studies of the town have turned up a great deal of ancient Iron Age material from 1200 to 550 BCE 7 and lots of material from the sixth century CE, but nothing from the 1st century BCE or the 1st century CE.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmaswwjb.htm

Archaeologists find oldest artifact to mention Bethlehem, traditional birthplace of Jesus

Here we go again: Archaeologists in Israel have found an allegedly biblically relevant artifact, an ancient seal with the Hebrew word “Bethlehem” on it that apparently dates to the seventh century BCE. Bethlehem, of course, is represented in the New Testament (Mt 2:1) as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Well, that’s clear proof of the baby Jesus! Don’t forget, he’s also “Jesus of Nazareth,” which evidently didn’t even exist as a city/polis when he was supposedly born. Christ’s nativity was located in Bethlehem because that town was purportedly the birth and coronation place of King David, and the awaited messiah was supposed to be from the House of David. Bethlehem is mentioned over 40 times in the Old Testament, so this find is important not to establish the town’s existence in the pre-Christian written record but to push the earliest reference to the seventh century BCE. One of these biblical references in particular, Micah 5:2, serves as a “messianic prophecy”:

http://www.freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/692-archaeologists-find-oldest-known-reference-to-bethlehem-traditional-birthplace-of-jesus.html

The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus [Paperback]

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Nazareth-Invented-Town-Jesus/dp/1578840031/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370477462&sr=1-2

The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/

Rene Salm, The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus. America n Atheist Press, 2008.

Reviewed by Robert M. Price

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/reviews/salm_myth_nazereth.htm

An Essential Nazareth Bibliography

In reverse chronological order, with extensive comments by René Salm

Most important readings are marked with asterisks

(with links, several at the bottom of the page).

For older material, see The Myth of Nazareth pp. 343–55.

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/bibl.html

Nazareth, The City That Never Was

http://www.thenazareneway.com/nazarene_or_nazareth.htm

Jesus of where? A response by Frank Zindler to Bart Ehrman

(In fact, Ehrman nonchalantly comments on page 191, “If Jesus existed, as the evidence suggests, but Nazareth did not, as this [mythicist] assertion claims, then he merely came from somewhere else.”

http://www.freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/76-frank-zindler/685-jesus-of-what-a-response-by-frank-zindler-to-bart-ehrman.html

“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

This seems like a plausible statement from the Gospel according to Matthew. Yet, religious scholars have searched the Old Testament with a fine tooth comb and have never unearthed this prophesy.

"There is, in fact, no record of Narazeth’s existence at that [Jesus’] time…Nazareth is not to be found in any book, map, chronicle or military record of the period so far discovered."—(Gardner, 2007, p. 53)

There exists no epigraphic or archaeological evidence that a city called Nazareth even existed prior to 60 or 70 CE at the earliest, and even if a tiny village did exist, would residence there be what the prophets had in mind to fulfill a messianic prophesy. "It was a tiny rural hamlet. The problem is that it wasn’t known by that name. It was actually a tiny, unnamed collection of about a dozen huts near the town of Gat-Hyefer, and was never known by the name of Nazareth until it was picked by a fifth-century Christian Roman emperor to be Nazareth, because he was embarrassed by the fact that no town by that name actually existed."–Scott Bidstrup, "The Case Against ‘The Case for Christ’.”

http://www.nazoreans.com/nazareth.html

Our related research:

Bible Errors in jesus’ Counterfeit Lineage to Fictional King David. Bogus Blood Lines of Luke and Matthew - The Genealogy Contradictions and Phony Pedigree

http://tmblr.co/ZTwOHxaJCopV

The Nativity Fantasy of the Bogus Baby jesus

http://tmblr.co/ZkpfQtmY7ATB