Not to the best of my knowledge. So, for example, see here.
hmmm… ok
but you still haven’t reported any - facts -.
Not in English. it simply indicates the description of a series of events, regardless whether it is factual or imaginary.
Huh? Not at all. A story can be true or false or historical or mythical or fabricated, but it’s still a story that can be described as narrative.
If I tell my husband a funny story about what happened at work yesterday, that’s a narrative.
I’ve never seen anyone suggest that “narrative” means “fabricated” before.
or rather for someone who knows. . .
TonySinclair says that he doesn’t see why the baptism of Jesus is one of two events which historians (who accept the historical Jesus) agree on as actually happening, the other being the crucifixion, and why it was seen as more likely than him being born in Nazareth.
Are there in fact historians who accept the historical Jesus but reject that? It doesn’t seem likely so I suspect that him being from Nazareth is just taken as a fact rather than an “event.” Does anyone know if this is correct or not?
Reluctant acceptance? 
Sorry, but sometimes in the study of history ‘facts’ are unverifiable and have to be inferred - granted a problematic task. So let me offer a couple of ‘facts’ …
[ol]
[li]The Josephus reference to James is widely considered authentic. It’s import is not what he might have believed to have happened, but his assumption that “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” was fully adequate to disambiguate that reference.[/li][li]Paul was actively proselytizing by the mid-first century CE and, unless you’re willing to claim that the epistles were pure fabrications, was addressing communities of nascent Christians in the Jewish diaspora, a diaspora that had familial, commercial, and religious links to Israel.[/li][li]Paul and Luke narrate Pauls’s struggle for legitimacy and a tense relationship with a Jerusalem sect. We can assume that both sources (and particularly Acts) present a self-serving history. But, even adjusting for this bias, we are left with two possible scenarios:[ul][]The Jerusalem sect was a fact and, given how such sects tend to coalesce around charismatic leaders, having one named Yeshua would not be at all surprising.[]The entire story was pure fabrication which Paul was able to sell in the diaspora.[/ul]I find the former reasonable and the latter tantamount to conspiracy theory and ad hominem.[/li][*]The rise of Christianity was not without opposition. See, for example, the article Anti-Christian Imputations. One thing that seems to be wholly lacking is a mythicist claim - not from the Romans and not from the Jews. Nowhere do we read something like “I have an uncle and three nephews that lived there and they never heard of this sect, much less this Yeshua that you keep talking about.” [/ol]From all the above the simplest explanation - the inference to best explanation - is, for me, the historicity of Yeshua and the Jerusalem cult. I also believe that what we can know about either is minimal.
None that I know of although, as I noted earlier …
I can easily imagine historians finding the Nazareth link too convenient.
For what it’s worth, Ehrman addresses a more general question raised by some mythicists, that being: Did Nazareth Exist.
I should apologize for intruding among obviously knowledgeable scholars in an area where I’m just an interested ignoramus. However a wise man said scholars can hone their own understanding by explaining to a moron; I’m happy and humble enough to play such a moronic role. :o
Did you explain this? I’d heard that Matthew:2 “spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” might connect to the Old Testament Nazarites. (That makes no sense, right? 
) But what’s the connection to the Michah book?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I don’t now how my comment could be both a tautology and a non sequitur. The centrality and consistency of healing stories in the Gospels make Jesus a healer. Was he a charlatan healer? I thnk instead he probably had great talent.
(Vaguely related: in the story that Moses was a magician it’s clear that Pharaoh’s priests were also magicians. Moses was simply the better magician.)
Well, an inference is not a fact… I’m not sure who told you that it was. But, they were wrong.
so?
this proves Josephus heard someone mention jesus/james.
OK, I thought you just made a typo before, but it seems you are actually saying that Matthew has Jesus born in Nazareth, rather than Bethlehem, to align with Micah 5. But Matthew gives no indication that Mary and Joseph had ever heard of Nazareth until after they returned from their Flight to Egypt, and Micah 5 is about Bethlehem. Please clarify.
Thanks for the link, but I have to say I don’t understand a couple of his arguments. He says it would be no big deal if it turned out that Nazareth didn’t exist during Jesus’ time — “then he merely came from somewhere else.” But I think it would be a huge deal, since “Jesus of Nazareth” is referred to in all four Gospels (and Acts), and Nazareth is an important component of the infancy narratives, along with other less significant events. If the writers can’t even get mundane details of time and place right, how can they be trusted in their more incredible claims?
He also refers to a collection of coins found in an excavation, and says that the fact that there were some 15th century coins in the collection is irrelevant, since some Hasmonean coins were also in the collection. That makes no sense – surely a collection can be no older than its youngest coin? I have to think he meant that there was some way to tell that the old coins and younger coins weren’t associated, but he doesn’t say that; he says they were from the same excavation, and he calls them a collection. This is very sloppy writing, especially when his only cite for the older coins is a verbal conversation.
To be fair, it’s a blog, not a scholarly article, but it’s still confusing.
On the off chance that you’re including me, I’m a rank amateur. If I were a scholar, I would have the patience to debate minutiae, instead of just what interests me at the time.
Yeah, I just asked him a similar question.
Because your comment had more than one claim. I was disputing that healing wasn’t a central theme. If I am correctly understanding Jayhawker, he was saying that the fact that there were consistent tales of healing does not imply that the healing was historical. There are consistent tales of levitation in Harry Potter.
You persist in ignoring the fact that it suggests more than this. it suggests that Josephus believes that “brother of Jesus” is sufficient to disambiguate his reference to James.
I think that your point was conceded long ago. No, we cannot give you ironclad proof that Jesus existed; all we can give is plausibility. If you think that ironclad proof is a minimum requirement for something to worship, I don’t think your position is unreasonable, but that’s not the topic.
When it comes to Jesus, I just read the original documentation (the Bible, the works of the early Christian writers like Irenaeus, the Nag Hammadi library, and the Mandaean scripture), I don’t read what other historians think. So I can’t say who believes what, but I’ll comment that the most likely reason for anyone to disagree with a Nazareth birth is because it conflicts with the Bethlehem birth. Any scholar who is very religious and needs Jesus to have been born in Bethlehem, will presumably argue against a Nazareth birth despite all evidence being that the whole census and pilgrimage to Bethlehem story is a fictional tale that was overlaid onto Jesus’ life.
that is an odd detail but if it were the way the - story - was relayed to him it is likely the way he would report it. so what we have is proof that someone mentioned james/jesus, not that the account is actually true.
if Josephus had done a biography of jesus that would be a bit more credible.
I would consider it a great personal favor if you did not link to sites that made you jump through all kinds of hoops, including giving personal information, in order to see an article.
I doubt that I said that, but if I did, it was a mistake. I don’t see why it is more likely than him being from Nazareth, i.e. he grew up there.
I think he was probably born there, too, just because it would have been unusual for people back then to from Judea to Galilee, but AFAIK there is nothing in the Gospels that can be taken as evidence for it.
No. I simply quoted a post that contained the typo. My only point is that gMat 2:23 could well have been written with Micah in mind and therefore, in the minds of some scholars, may not deserve the presumption of historical accuracy. Sorry for the continued confusion.
Two points.
It’s no big deal to Ehrman in the same way that it’s no big deal to me. He is not arguing for the historical accuracy of the gospels but for the historicity of the man. This particular blog was an ‘aside.’
That Nazareth shows up in all four Gospels is not at all surprising for those who ascribe to the Two-Source hypothesis or something comparable. It means no more that that a tradition found in Mark was copied.
Now I’m the one confused. Who is suggesting that the “more incredible claims” of the Gospel writers should be trusted?
I agree.
That too.
But the statement itself can and should be evaluated as evidence rather than being summarily dismissed because of its source. One can learn something about weather threats in Kansas from The Wizard of Oz without embracing the idea of Munchkins.