Saturday, March 7, 2009

Did Nazareth Exist During Jesus' Time?

About a year ago I listened to an episode of The Infidel Guy where he interviewed René Salm about his new book The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus. At the time I thought he made a pretty convincing argument that the evidence of a town called Nazareth was not established long after Jesus' time.

Here is a link to the Infidel Guy show: IG: The Myth of Nazareth

Now, James Randi has read the book and has some things to say about it. With all of the work he has done debunking frauds I would imagine that he has a higher standard for evidence than you or I...unless, of course, he is suffering from confirmation bias! (LOL, I say that tongue-in-cheek)

5 comments:

Thesauros said...

"I thought he made a pretty convincing argument"

Ya, I'll bet you did.

Revenger said...

This is the first I've heard of the fact that Nazareth wasn't even established until well after Jesus' time. But, I can believe that some people desperately want it to have been around Jesus' time. By the way, I love the blog. Care if I link to it from my blog?

Doubting Foo said...

Thanks for the comment... by all means, link away...

Bruce L Grubb said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Randi is presenting a valid argument. Nazareth is at best mentioned ONLY ONCE in the Bible: Mark 1:9. Worse the Greek here is a little unclear and the passage can be just as easily be translated 'And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus the Nazarene of Galilee was baptized of John in Jordan.' and that leaves the very sticky question of what "the Nazarene" means. Acts 24:5 tells us that it is a SECT not a place and Paul was considered its "ringleader" (KJV).