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Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0\u201cAbout\u201d page<\/a>\u00a0states: \u201cPearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn\u00a0his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.\u201d <\/span>His words will be in<\/span>\u00a0blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n Jonathan wrote the article,<\/span> \u201cJesus the \u2018Nazarene\u2019 \u2013 What Is the Prophecy?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[12-5-20]. Then I replied with<\/span>\u00a0Jesus the \u201cNazarene\u201d: Did Matthew Make Up a \u201cProphecy\u201d? (Oral Traditions and Possible Lost Old Testament Books Referred to in the Bible)<\/a> [12-17-20]. Jonathan (the fastest atheist debater in the west) responded to that with<\/span>\u00a0Jesus the \u201cNazarene\u201d: More Prophecy Debate<\/a> [12-18-20]. This is my counter-reply in turn.<\/span><\/p>\n *****<\/span><\/p>\n I showed in my piece that (an analysis of the language and the OT prophecy) that:<\/span><\/p>\n [1.] Nazarene<\/em>\u00a0does not mean someone from Nazareth \u2013 there is confusion over whether it means someone from Nazareth, someone of the Nazirite religious sect, or from the Hebrew word meaning branch; the latter seems the most probable.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And I think that I showed in mine that there is no such confusion.<\/span><\/p>\n [2.] This prophecy is absent from the OT unless it does, indeed, refer to the branch meaning.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This I agree to, so it is not a point of debate. It doesn\u2019t have<\/em> to be, in the case that I laid out. I\u2019m not confined to that. Rightly understood, even the Protestant worldview is not required to find this in the Old Testament, since they acknowledge that the New Testament does cite extrabiblical sources.<\/span><\/p>\n This, then, looks like Matthew is somewhat wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n Really<\/em>? We shall see! Me thinks Jonathan<\/em> is \u201csomewhat wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He provides no balance to this in the context of the analysis I provided other than to invoke JP Holding (I will refrain from giving my true opinion of invoking Holding here) and not dealing with the original extract, . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I cited JP Holding (whom atheists despise because he\u2019s a Christian apologist: I know the feeling well!) simply because his name came up in a search when I was trying to find something \u2014 anything<\/em> \u2014 about this guy\u00a0Hayyim ben Yehoshua, about whom we seem to be able to find out nothing at all (as Holding noted, which is why I cited him). Here\u2019s the Google search<\/a>: see it for yourself. Hayyim is the source of the \u201canalysis\u201d that Jonathan \u201cprovided\u201d<\/span>: the citation that he produces again (completely missing my point about credentials, it seems).<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a case of \u201cdualing linguistic authorities.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t know Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek (let alone biblical Koine<\/em> Greek), and I suspect that Jonathan doesn\u2019t, either. So if and when we get into disputes about the meaning of biblical texts involving the meanings of words, we must necessarily rely on folks who do<\/em> know those languages (and hopefully, linguistic scholars<\/em>: not just someone pulled out of a hat, with no discernible credentials). Jonathan\u2019s methodology was the latter. He cited\u00a0Hayyim ben Yehoshua (a polemicist, as we know from the work this is drawn from: Refuting Missionaries<\/em>), Wikipedia (very handy and helpful \u2014 I use it all the time \u2014 , but certainly not the height of scholarship), and another article from the polemicist organization, Jews for Judaism (which likes to oppose itself to Jews for Jesus: i.e., Jews who became Christians).<\/span><\/p>\n He merely, using Holding, asserts that he doesn\u2019t know the author of this, <\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, in other words, Jonathan \u201cmerely\u201d cites some guy he found on the Internet, with no known scholarly credentials. That\u2019s supposed to be impressive? I challenged him to present us anything about his credentials. I guess Jonathan couldn\u2019t find<\/em> anything (which is a bit embarrassing).<\/span><\/p>\n and that Gerhard Kittle, <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s Kittel. And he was the editor of the ten-volume<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Theological Dictionary of the New Testament<\/em><\/a>, which is a standard linguistic source. I have the one-volume edition. Agree with its conclusions or no, it is<\/em> a scholarly source on the Greek of the New Testament. Unknown, mysterious Internet polemicist Hayyim ben Yehoshua is not<\/em>. Sorry . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n the author of his theological definition (of course, without biases of his own) is a much better authority. <\/span><\/p>\n Yes, of course he has biases, like everyone does. It doesn\u2019t follow that he and the other editors \/ translators were not scholars<\/em>, or that they couldn\u2019t accurately and authoritatively comment on the present question. For many atheists, many Christian scholars appear to be immediately suspect simply because they are Christian, just as Bertrand Russell, infamously and ridiculously (in his History of Philosophy<\/em>) \u201cargued\u201d that St. Thomas Aquinas couldn\u2019t possibly be a philosopher because he was a Catholic. That\u2019s like saying that Einstein couldn\u2019t possibly have been a trustworthy advocate of the theory of relativity because, after all, he heartily believed<\/em> in it! <\/span><\/p>\n Kittel certainly is<\/em> a much better authority on this question than\u00a0Hayyim ben Yehoshua: a guy who thinks \u201cThere was absolutely no historical evidence that Jesus, Joseph or Mary ever existed\u201d. He<\/em> is supposedly a less<\/em> biased source regarding biblical terms than Gerhard Kittel? He<\/em> has no bias that would severely affect his<\/em> opinions?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A sort of argument from authority rather than dealing with the actual content.<\/span><\/p>\n Again, \u201cauthority\u201d (i.e., scholars trained in language and \u2014 hopefully \u2014 in biblical exegesis to some extent, too) is all we both<\/em> can appeal to in this instance. It\u2019s not the fallacious \u201cappeal to authority\u201d when one simply goes to an expert in the field to get their opinion about a controversial topic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I went to Raymond Brown, the famous Catholic exegete whom I highly rate (all quotes from\u00a0The Birth of the Messiah,\u00a0<\/em>1977, London: Geoffrey Chapman).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now isn\u2019t this interesting! When Jonathan likes a Catholic or otherwise Christian scholar (and no doubt he does because in many areas Fr. Brown was a<\/span> heterodox dissident<\/a>, by Catholic criteria), then it\u2019s a whole different story. Now there are no profound biases in play, you see. Fr. Raymond Brown is gospel truth, while Gerhard Kittel is dismissed for having<\/span> \u201cbiases.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n However, in this instance, I find Brown\u2019s exegesis somewhat interesting\u2026 Brown actually advocates that all the meanings are possibly true. Matthew meant them all \u2013 religious sect member, branch, and person from Nazareth! See Brown p. 208-213.<\/span><\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s his opinion. If I dared produce any scholar who argued in such a way, Jonathan would roundly mock my argument, as proof that my sources were special pleading and rationalizing, by throwing every mere possibility up against the wall and hoping that some of it would stick. But when one of his favorites does it, it\u2019s just<\/span> \u201csomewhat interesting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fr. Brown also wrote in the same book:<\/span><\/p>\n Such highly competent Semitists and exegetes as Albright, Moore, and Schaeder, . . . argue on purely philological grounds that the form\u00a0Naz\u014draios <\/em>is quite defensible as a derivation from Nazareth, if one takes into account dialectical phonology in Galilean Aramaic.\u00a0 . . . <\/span><\/p>\n Matthew may have delighted in the irony that the title that Jesus received from his unlikely home town gave him a similarity to heroes like Samson and Samuel.\u00a0(pp. 210-211)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, I have no problem with a double application<\/em> of prophecies. In fact, I just strenuously argued that very point<\/em> in<\/span> a paper I put up yesterday<\/a>, in response to Jonathan, who expressly denied<\/strong><\/em> that there was such a thing. No Christian who knows his or her Bible has any problem with it whatsoever. It\u2019s a common scriptural motif. The biblical writers and ancient near-eastern Mesopotamian \/ Hebrew culture thought in terms of \u201cboth\/and\u201d; not \u201ceither\/or\u201d: which was more of a Greek thing.<\/span><\/p>\n He also accepts that no mention of Nazareth exists in pre-Christian writings (p. 207) and so it would be odd for a place that seems not to have existed yet to fits coherently into an OT prophecy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Well, this is the thing: prophets know a lot of stuff that other people don\u2019t know. So it\u2019s not difficult at all (for anyone who believes that biblical prophets and prophecy existed, and that the prophecies were accurate and predictive; and it\u2019s our<\/em><\/strong> views that atheist anti-theists attack and critique) to believe that a prophet could mention a very obscure town. It was pretty tiny still in Jesus\u2019 time, too. Our very informative Palestinian guide in Israel in 2014 told us that the town in His time was about as big as the parking lot around the Church of the Annunciation: hardly as large as a football field.<\/span><\/p>\n Again, it doesn\u2019t have<\/em> to be an<\/span><\/span> \u201cOT prophecy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n This also coheres with Rene Salm\u2019s thesis in\u00a0The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus\u00a0<\/em>that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus, according to archaeological analysis, and not until at least 70 CE.<\/span><\/p>\n Really, that would come as big news to the folks described in this article:<\/span> \u201cNew archaeological evidence from Nazareth reveals religious and political environment in era of Jesus\u201d<\/a> (David Keys, Independent<\/em>, 4-17-20). They actually do science<\/em>, rather than sit in armchairs and make historically and archaeologically clueless remarks about towns and people like Jesus not existing or never existing:<\/span><\/p>\n [T]he archaeological investigation revealed that in Nazareth itself, in the middle of the first century AD, anti-Roman rebels created a sizeable network of underground hiding places and tunnels underneath the town \u2013 big enough to shelter at least 100 people. . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The new archaeological investigation \u2013 the largest ever carried out into Roman period Nazareth \u2013 has revealed that Jesus\u2019s hometown is likely to have been considerably bigger than previously thought. It probably had a population of up to 1,000 (rather than just being a small-to-medium sized village of 100-500, as previously thought).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cOur new investigation has transformed archaeological knowledge of Roman Nazareth,\u201d said Dr Dark, who has just published the results of his research in a new book\u00a0Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland<\/em>. . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The newly emerging picture of Roman-period Nazareth as a place of substantial religiosity does, however, resonate not only with the emergence of its most famous son, Jesus, but also with the fact that, in the mid-first or second century, it was chosen as the official residence of one of the high priests of the by-then-destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, when all 24 of those Jewish religious leaders were driven into exile in Galilee.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n See also:<\/span> \u201cDid First-Century Nazareth Exist?\u201d<\/a> (Bryan Windle, Bible Archaeology Report<\/em>, 8-9-18; cf. several related articles from a Google search<\/a>). Did it exist before Jesus\u2019 time? It looks like it did<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n The Franciscan priest<\/span>\u00a0Bellarmino Bagatti<\/a>, \u201cDirector of Christian Archaeology\u201d, carried out extensive excavation of this \u201cVenerated Area\u201d from 1955 to 1965. Fr. Bagatti uncovered pottery dating from the<\/span>\u00a0Middle Bronze Age<\/a>\u00a0(2200 to 1500 BC) and ceramics, silos and grinding mills from the<\/span>\u00a0Iron Age<\/a>\u00a0(1500 to 586 BC) which indicated substantial settlement in the Nazareth basin at that time.<\/span> (Wikipedia,<\/span> \u201cNazareth\u201d<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s science. Sorry to disappoint! Jonathan then goes on to describe several more of the numerous possibly hypotheses of Fr. Raymond Brown. He has many theories; so do many others. Jonathan opines:<\/span><\/p>\n [H]e goes onto say that this doesn\u2019t matter because some influential conservative Christian scholars such as Albright think it derives from Nazareth (p. 209-10).<\/span><\/p>\n Brown is usually very good but here he is weak, in my opinion, deferring to conservative authority and then saying it doesn\u2019t really matter anyway because Matthew meant all three.<\/span><\/p>\n See how when a \u201cconservative\u201d scholar like Albright comes up, he is immediately described in terms \u2014 not of his scholarship \u2014 but as <\/span>\u201cconservative authority<\/em>.\u201d It just gets childish: this sort of polemical silliness.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0I can recognize that Fr. Brown has many good things to add to scholarly discussion (he clearly does in this<\/em> discussion), even though he holds to several heterodox opinions, according to his own Catholic Church. Truth is truth wherever it is found. Jonathan ought to simply accept the dreaded \u201cconservative\u201d scholarship on its merits, too; judge its veracity or lack thereof in individual instances. Fr. Brown himself doesn\u2019t have to run down Albright. He calls him a \u201chighly competent\u201d Semitist and exegete.<\/span><\/p>\n Fr. Brown appears to reference Carey A. Moore. Here are his<\/em> credentials<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n emeritus professor of religion at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, received his Ph.D. in semitics from The Johns Hopkins University.\u00a0He is the author of four volumes in the Doubleday\u00a0Anchor Bible<\/em>\u00a0series, as well as of over fifty articles in the areas of the Hebrew Bible and the Apocrypha.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have no idea whether he is \u201cconservative\u201d or not. But he sure is a highly qualified scholar: of the sort that could figure out the mystery of \u201cHe shall be called a Nazarene\u201d, isn\u2019t he? Why can\u2019t Jonathan respect his scholarly achievements without putting him into the \u201cconservative\u201d box and dismissing him? That<\/em> is the genetic fallacy: if we want to talk about fallacies being committed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fr. Brown also referred to H. Schaeder, who wrote the piece, \u201cNazarenos, Nazoraios\u201d, in [whaddya know<\/em>?!] Kittel,\u00a0Theological Dictionary of the New Testament<\/i>, IV:874 f. I found this information in<\/span>\u00a0Wikipedia,<\/span> \u201cNazareth\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0 The guys involved with those volumes were\u00a0not<\/em> theological conservatives; they are a bunch of German Lutheran liberals, for the most part. Germany has been a hotbed of theological liberalism in both Lutheran and Catholic circles for 200 years. But I think all can usually agree on linguistic matters, where philology and etymology rule more than theology.<\/span><\/p>\n I am arguing as to whether he meant merely (i.e., at least) that\u00a0Naz\u014dra\u00edos\u00a0<\/em>meant someone from Nazareth. Brown does at least deal with arguments both for and against a reading of all three, and in this case Nazareth (as discussed above). This is by no means an easy or closed case.<\/span><\/p>\n Brown does give a very in-depth analysis of all three options but the largest section (p. 2112-213) is devoted to it meaning \u201cbranch\u201d as derived from\u00a0n\u0113ser,<\/em>\u00a0such that it holds a lot of scholarly backing, and this fits in with my conclusion later that the prophecy is best explained by \u201cbranch\u201d. Either way, Matthew\u2019s use must at least mean someone from Nazareth because that is the causal language used.<\/span><\/p>\n I agree with the last sentence. So does the New Testament, it seems clear to me. It can also<\/em> have other meanings as well\u00a0<\/span>(the \u201cdual fulfillment\u201d issue again . . .). It\u2019s pretty tough to botch the interpretation of \u201che went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth\u201d (Mt 2:23). \u201cJesus of Nazareth\u201d ain\u2019t rocket science, either. If someone says \u201cDave of Detroit\u201d (birthplace and childhood home) or \u201cDave of \/ from Tecumseh\u201d [Michigan]: my current residence, no tremendous insight is needed to figure out what those things mean.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s the conclusion from all of this? Since the scholarly conclusions are not QED on either side, it doesn\u2019t matter; the skeptic will find the ones supporting their conclusion (that\u00a0Naz\u014dra\u00edos\u00a0<\/em>does\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0mean someone from Nazareth) of more value and Armstrong and other Christians will confirm their own biases by affording the conclusions that it\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0mean someone from Nazareth more value. It\u2019s how the game works.<\/span><\/p>\n Atheists need not give up anything they believe in affirming that Jesus existed (refusing to commit intellectual suicide by denying that) and was born in Bethlehem and lived in Nazareth, and also Capernaum for a time. These things are common knowledge. Like I said, it\u2019s not rocket science to see that the plain meaning of Nazaren<\/em>e or Jesus of Nazareth<\/em> is \u201csomeone from Nazareth.\u201d If it has other meanings, it does, but this is the central one and it\u2019s not \u201ccontradicted\u201d if there are also secondary meanings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here, though I believe the former, I think I have a better case than the Christian since I am also taking into account the OT prophecy itself<\/span><\/p>\n There is<\/em> no such OT prophecy. That\u2019s the whole point of this debate.<\/span><\/p>\n and since Nazareth didn\u2019t appear to exist at the time, you can bet that the OT prophecy was not referring to the place.<\/span><\/p>\n There is at least some<\/em> evidence of its existence then. But it was very small. So was ancient Jerusalem: the city of David. I walked through Hezekiah\u2019s Tunnel, which runs the whole length of ancient Jerusalem, underground. It only took about 20 minutes. It was a small town. How much smaller, ancient Nazareth!<\/span><\/p>\n If you take into account Salm\u2019s whole thesis (which you don\u2019t have to go that far), it didn\u2019t even exist at the time of Jesus (work that wasn\u2019t available to Brown in his life, and was followed up in 2015 with\u00a0NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus<\/em>).\u00a0 I also genuinely find some of the arguments more forceful (such as quoted from Brown above).<\/span><\/p>\n Take that up with the folks doing the<\/span>\u00a0latest \u201cdigs\u201d going on in Nazareth<\/a> now. I go with current science, not desperate atheist myths, made up on the fly (or any fringe Christian conspiracist myths, either).<\/span><\/p>\n I almost forgot to talk about what Armstrong believes? It turns out, whatever JP Holding tells him to, or whatever source better confirms his position \u2013 in this case, the theological dictionary he uses.<\/span><\/p>\n Right. I happened to run across<\/em> JP Holding critiquing this unknown guru that Jonathan cited as a \u201cscholar\u201d and so \u201cpresto!\u201d: that means I believe whatever he tells me! And then I am gullible enough to cite an abridged version of a ten-volume standard work on biblical linguistics and Jonathan acts like this is some novel, outrageous position to take. It\u2019s exactly what anyone who is seeking the meaning of biblical words ought<\/em> to do: seek out an expert on\u00a0the meaning of biblical words! DUH!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And of course, Jonathan shows no bias whatsoever in citing an (as far as we know) uncredentialed guy with regard to biblical language: a person who thinks Jesus, Joseph, and Mary never existed. No bias there at all! Complete objectivity!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Curious, I<\/span> searched my blog<\/a> to see how many times JP Holding was mentioned. It\u2019s five times out of my 3130 articles posted (including my most recent mention). This means I will cite him in one out of every 626 of my papers! Obviously, he\u2019s my main man, that I constantly rely on. Now let\u2019s search Jonathan\u2019s site for a big cheese in the atheist world like, say Bart Ehrman or Richard Carrier.<\/span> Ehrman came up 44 times<\/a>,\u00a0Carrier <\/span>\u00a0a whopping 115 times<\/a> (though a few of them was the word in its ordinary usage). Oops! I forgot about good ol\u2019 Richard Dawkins. He appears in 134<\/a> of Jonathan\u2019s articles. The late eloquent if massively mistaken Christopher Hitchens also shows up in 64<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n So with this<\/em> sort of rapt admiration and dependence going on, Jonathan can spare me the gut-laughter claim about<\/span> \n\n\n