The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (55 page)

Nazara
in Q must refer to some other place.

At this juncture, we must carefully distinguish between the compiler of Q and the evangelist Matthew. It is one thing to affirm that the compiler of Q did not know of Nazareth in Lower Galilee. This, however, does not mean that the Matthean evangelist (or a redactor),
using the words of Q
, did not know Nazareth. In other words, if we consider Q in isolation, then its
Nazara
is certainly unrelated to the settlement of Nazareth in Lower Galilee. However, in the Gospel of Matthew, the word
Nazara
clearly refers to that settlement, for the gospel (at least in its final stage) demonstrates some knowledge of a village of Nazareth located in Galilee.
^[784]
 That knowledge, however, is not extensive. The place is called
Nazara, Nazaret,
and
Nazareth,
betraying the work of three hands and three stages. The first stage, we have seen, was the Q source containing the word
Nazara
. 

 
What we have, then, is a word being taken by Matthew from Q and being assigned a new meaning—in this case, a
geographical
meaning, one referring now to a settlement in Lower Galilee.

Many scholars date the Gospel of Matthew to the generation following  the First Jewish War, and a few even to II CE. Because we have seen that Nazareth came into existence between the two Jewish Revolts—the time that Matthew’s text was being written—it is chronologically feasible that the evangelist (or a redactor) learned of the existence of the new settlement and chose to adopt it as Jesus’ home. Possible reasons for such a maneuver will become clearer as we continue our investigation into the use of Nazareth and its cognates in the gospels.

A moment’s thought shows us that phrases such as ‘Nazaret of Galilee,’ and ‘Nazareth of Galilee,’
must
relate to the settlement in the basin whose archaeology we have been examining in this book. It would be difficult to argue otherwise, for if one or another of the evangelists had some other Nazareth of Galilee in mind, then we have no record of that site—neither in Christian, Jewish, nor pagan sources.
^[785]
  Nor is it tenable to maintain that “Nazareth” in the gospels was a pure invention from beginning to end, because we indeed know of a settlement with a very similar name. Furthermore, we know of that settlement in Galilee, even as the evangelists state.

Matthew clearly locates the settlement he intends in the district of “Galilee,” a region mentioned no less than seventeen times in his gospel. By assigning Jesus to that place, the evangelist has unequivocally embraced the northern tradition. This obtains even though the Matthean birth story contains vestiges of the southern tradition.

The variability of the name
Naz+
is revealing. Variants of the toponym occur not merely between different gospels, but in the same witnesses of the same gospel. Thus,
Codex Vaticanus
, which among the uncials “has a position of undisputed precedence in the Gospels” (K. Aland), possesses three variants within the Gospel of Matthew:
Nazaret, Nazara,
and
Nazareth
(at 2:23; 4:13; and 21:11 respectively)
.

Examination of Matthew’s use of
Nazareth
and its cognates helps us to discriminate several stages in that gospel’s composition, and also the sequence of stages. In that text, the spelling
Nazaret
occurs only at Mt 2:23.
^[786]
  However, in all versions the settlement is spelled with
theta
at Mt 21:11, and it is hardly likely that the same hand rendered the place differently in two passages.
^[787]
 This lends support to the view that the Gospel of Matthew is a composite work and/or an aggregate work developed in stages.

The Matthean parallel to Mk 1:9 is as follows:

Then Jesus came from Galilee [
apo tês Galilaias
] to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.   (Mt 3:13)

If the Marcan parallel had contained the word
Nazaret
, then Matthew surely would have included that word in the above verse. The fact that he does not do so indicates several things: (1) that Mk 1:9 originally lacked the word
Nazaret
(this we have already determined above by other arguments); (2) that the original author of the Gospel of Matthew was as ignorant of Nazareth in Lower Galilee as were both his Marcan source and the Q compiler; and (3) that it was a redactor (subsequent to the original author of the Gospel of Matthew) who added
Nazaret
to Mk 1:9.

This Matthean redactor must also be the one responsible for the single appearance of the word
Nazaret
in the Gospel of Matthew, namely, in the enigmatic verse 2:23: “And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazaret, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazorean.’” As far as we can surmise thus far, the word Nazorean (
Nazôraios
) is a pure invention by the same hand.

The Matthean redactor failed to note the parallel passage Mt 3:13, where
Nazaret
was not added, and he also failed to harmonize Mt 4:13, which contains the archaic form
Nazara
.

Thus, Matthew is a multistage document.  The original author of that text had — like Q and Mark before him — no knowledge of the village Nazareth in Lower Galilee. However, a subsequent redactor did have such knowledge, and this person hurriedly added the word
Nazaret
to both the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark which lay before him. The redactor changed Jesus’ provenance from Capernaum to Nazareth, and in so doing he may well have also removed obvious references to Capernaum as the hometown of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the variant
Nazaret
occurs in the birth story, a portion of the gospel universally considered ahistorical but generally credited to the evangelist.
^[788]
 
 However, we now have reason to suppose that the birth story is from a later hand, on the basis that it contains
Nazaret
, a form of the name lacking in Mt 4:13, which reads
Nazara
. Furthermore, we have learned that the Matthean redactor who wrote
Nazaret
was the first in the canonical tradition to become aware of the settlement in Lower Galilee.

In sum, we can conclude the following: (1) Q knew only an as yet unlocated
Nazara
(see below). (2) Both Q and the Gospel of Mark did not know of Nazareth in Galilee, for they were written before that town came into existence. (3) The Matthean redactor (not the original writer) learned of the new settlement of
Natsareth
(
nun-tsade-resh-tav
) in Lower Galilee. (4) That redactor associated Jesus with
Nazaret
, his Greek approximation of the Semitic name, yet one which preserves the important voiced sibilant [
z
]. That sibilant is an enduring trait of the entire Hellenist Christian tradition (for reasons to be seen later). In contrast, the Semitic traditions (Hebrew, Aramaic, Mandaic, Arabic,
etc
.) uniformly use the unvoiced sibilant as second radical. (5) The redactor was responsible for Mt 2:23 and also for the interpolation of
Nazaret
into Mk 1:9.

The variant
Nazareth
betrays an even later stage. It belongs to the age of the Lucan birth narrative, the only place in the canonical gospels other than Mt 21:11 where the variant occurs.
^[789]
 
 This name, which successfully supplanted all the other variants, fully harmonizes with the Semitic name of the settlement—except, again, for the voiced [
z
] (Greek
zeta
instead of
sigma
), to which the Hellenist tradition was already committed (
pre-70
Q’s
Nazara
, Mark’s
Nazarêne
, the Matthean redactor’s
Nazaret
).

We are now in a position to revisit the Q passage cited above, and in so doing must apply a different interpretation than the one commonly accepted:

(b) Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazara he went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled…   (Mt 4:12–14)

Only the conjunction ‘and’ [
kai
] has been omitted from the beginning of the second sentence, as being without force. The sense of the passage is the same as in (a) previously cited, but I wish to bring out the possibility of a
parallelismus membrorum
, namely, that the beginning of the second sentence duplicates the content at the end of the first. According to this interpretation there are not two consecutive journeys of Jesus, but one—from Judea to the north. This interpretation seems strange to us, unaccustomed as we are to locating Nazara in the south, but the sense is direct and simple: Jesus leaves Nazara
in Judea
, and journeys to Capernaum in Galilee.

The presence of a southern tradition in the texts already cited, and the impossibility that
Nazara
in Q signifies Nazareth in Galilee, force us to adopt the reading in version (b). Here we have only one displacement of Jesus: from the locus of John’s activity to Capernaum. This archaic reading of the Q passage certainly predates the (now universal) reading first effected by the Matthean redactor, namely, the deliberate and artificial association of Jesus’ provenance with the emergent village in Lower Galilee.

We now can understand why Matthew describes Jesus’ destination as “in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.” This makes no sense if the origin of Jesus’ journey were Nazareth in Lower Galilee, for Nazareth is itself in Zebulun.
^[790]
 
 It makes sense, however, when we understand that the compiler of Q was not describing a journey within one province but
between
provinces, namely, between Judea to the south and “the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali” to the north.

Pre–
c
. 70–100 CE — No knowledge of
Nazareth in Galilee

Nazara
(Q)
          
Mt 4:13

                                Lk 4:16

Nazarêne
             Mk 1:24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6

                                (
Nazarêne
deleted from Matthean
Grundschrift
)

Lk 4:34; 24:19     

Post-
c
. 70–100 CE — Knowledge of Nazareth in Galilee

Nazôraios
            Mt 2:23 (
pre-70
LXX [
Alex
.] Jud 13:5
Nazeiraion
); 26:71

Lk 18:37; Acts 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 6:14; 22:8; 24:5; 26:9

Jn 18:5, 7; 19:19

Nazaret
                 Mt:2:23  (first redactor)

                                Mk 1:9 (interpolation)

                                Jn 1:45, 46

Nazareth              
Mt 21:11 (second redactor)             

Lk 1:26; 2:4, 39, 51 (later birth story)

Acts 10:38

Illus
. 6.
1
. 
Nazareth
and its cognates in the New Testament.

Support for a southern location of
Nazara
is found in the other Q passage in which this early form appears, namely, Lk 4:16. Interestingly, this passage is the only mention of “Nazareth” in the Gospel of Luke (outside the birth narrative of chapters 1–2, where we read the late form
Nazareth
four times). The occurrence of
Nazara
does not mean that the entire pericope Lk 4:16–30 belongs to the oldest gospel stratum, one predating the association of Jesus with the town in Lower Galilee.
^[791]
 
 Rather, it has been determined that the incident in the Nazareth synagogue is a thoroughly Lucan composition based on Mk 6:1–6, with typically Lucan vocabulary.
^[792]

After the pericope dealing with the synagogue of
Nazara
and the attempted casting down of Jesus, Luke writes: “And he went down to Capernaum,
a city of Galilee
.” The last phrase, of course, is superfluous (and even inappropriate) were Jesus already in Galilee.
^[793]
 
 This is yet another indication that the Q stage of the tradition located
Nazara
in Judea.

We can now consider a detail of the Lucan pericope which has bedeviled pilgrims and scholars alike for hundreds of years, namely, that Nazareth in Lower Galilee is not on “the brow of a hill” (
ophruos tou orous
, Lk 4:29). The third evangelist has evidently seized upon a topographical element and constructed a whole story around it. It is true, of course, that such topographical aspects of an obviously invented story cannot be pressed for authenticity. Luke’s freedom with much more important elements amply demonstrates this. Indeed, the entire pericope Lk 4:16–30 has it’s
point de départ
in Q (possibly via Mt 4:13), from which only the original name of the place,
Nazara
, survives. Redaction critical work has shown that Luke then constructed an elaborate story with an eye to Mark 6:1–6.
^[794]
 
Chronologically, then, we can locate Lk 4:16–30 after Q and after the Gospel of Mark, and before composition of the Lucan birth narrative.