Don’t bare more burden than is necessary to refute atheism. As explained in this article, often we can lose sight of the big picture and get lost in the particulars that are less significant in the grand scheme of things regarding world and life views. This flirts with the logical fallacy of composition (what’s true of a part…is true of the whole). Enjoy!
Israeli archaeologist Yardena Alexandre inspects Roman 1st-century pottery found from the city of Nazareth.
A while back, I was discussing a recent debate that a friend attended between an atheist musician named Dan Barker and a Christian with a doctorate in New Testament Studies named Justin Bass.
According to my friend’s report, the atheist questioned the existence of Nazareth, and then went on from there to assert that everything we know about Jesus is legendary.
This is what the atheist’s argument sounds like:
- If the New Testament contains reliable history about Jesus, then Nazareth must exist.
- Nazareth does not exist.
- Therefore, the New Testaments does not contain reliable history about Jesus. (M.T. 1,2)
I was able to find a web site where an atheist was making the claim that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus. So this is not completely outside the realm of mainstream atheism. I doubled checked with two more people…
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solidrockapologetics.wordpress.com 
No it didn’t and if you have read the Nazareth Farm report and Bagattti’s work you will know why.
Two examples.
1: The description in Luke where the ”crowd” wished to sling Jesus (to his (likely death) from a cliff is geographically incorrect.
2. Origon lived at Caesarea, less than a day’s travel to the supposed site of Nazareth. He knew of it but never visited.
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Thanks for all that you do. Equipping the Saints for the work of ministry. https://cchurchchurchblog.wordpress.com/
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My question to the title of the post would not be did Nazareth exist, but how you determine, sans scriptural assertion, what ‘time’ in which Jesus was born.
Not even in the nt do we have a date or even a year. The BC/AD demarcation was not established until much later by a Catholic monk who basically guessed when it ‘would have been’ from his own calculations based on his reading of the nt. No history books or even church fathers identify the year, month much less the date Jesus was born.
Doesn’t matter much to me if nazareth existed or not to have been the home of one more Joshua. That’s not really the point. Establishing the historicity of the nt Jesus vs the historical record of the Jewish rabbi of Galilee. That’s the real work.
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It begins with a theological presupposition.
From there, find as many bits and pieces that look likely and before long we have a collection of ‘evidence’that one can then re refer back to the biblical text and assert historicity.
Pfann originally claimed that before the discovery of the house they really had nothing. And they still don’t. All they have is a claim.
Even someone like Alexandre has been very, very careful with her terminology and has tended to couch her terms.
If you doubt the Gospels then immediately you have to cast aspersions on every other claim.
And the gospels are not reliable from a historical POV.
So why should any claim pertaining to a some place called Nazareth that very likely began life as literary creation based upon a misunderstanding of the term Nazarene be taken seriously?
Bagatti turned up nothing of substance to aid the cause and nothing has changed in any significant degree to positively clarify the theological perspective.
If this truly was considered the Christian lodestone you can bet your bottom dollar archaeologists the world over would have come and by now dug every inch of the Nazareth Farm.
You have to wonder why they haven’t.
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It’s like the ‘real Noah’s ark’ that’s been found… Several times now on the mountains of Ararat. It’s a designed only to play to the already convinced to keep them convinced enough to stop asking questions. Apologetics at its zenith.
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Yes; remember when that Chinese team claimed to have found Noah’s Ark. That was a laugh and a half.
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@Petrus
In keeping with your observation to not entertain foolishness gladly, you are taking your own advice and not engaging an argument where there is none. Bravo, and I’m laughing somewhat.
If I was to say to you, ‘have you ever heard of Pitcairn Pennsylvania?’ you would no doubt shake your head ‘no,’ and its obscurity and irrelevance to you would not make the zip code suddenly disappear.
A good man asked ‘can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ and keeping in mind irrelevance……………………..or a small town of no regard……….yeah, we get the point.
Nazareth was! Jericho was! Bethlehem was! Joppa was! Jerusalem was! The word of God is verifiable, reliable, and truthful.
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Would you like to explain the etymology of the word Nazarene then , CS?
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Yet you don’t feel hampered by such constraints, I notice?
Sounds a little ”foolish”. Should you not heed your own advice ?
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