Questioning the Bible : 6th March

[sphenisc]

"...one such is the account in John 1 of the birth of Christ in the lower Galilean town of Nazareth" (within the 1st minute)

The Amazing Randi has done it again! Since yesterday the Bible has been rewritten to exclude any mention of Jesus' birthplace in John 1, and Christians everywhere are quite happy to admit that he wasn't born in Nazareth. Hallelujah!

[Professor Yaffle]

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/...the-bible.html

[Professor Yaffle]

Originally Posted by sphenisc

"...one such is the account in John 1 of the birth of Christ in the lower Galilean town of Nazareth" (within the 1st minute)

The Amazing Randi has done it again! Since yesterday the Bible has been rewritten to exclude any mention of Jesus' birthplace in John 1, and Christians everywhere are quite happy to admit that he wasn't born in Nazareth. Hallelujah!

Didn't they always think he was born in Bethlehem anyway... And there is no account of the nativity in John...

ETA: I was going to edit this to hide the fact that I was half asleep and didn't realise that was the very point you were making, but I'll let my idiocy stand.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Well of course that is wrong it's the City of Nazareth.

You know the city that consisted of a shepherd's hut and a few graves. The city that does not appear on any First Century map or in any documents from the time.

[Simon39759]

Isn't the whole Bethlehem story tight to the innocent myth and the flight to Egypt and considered discredited anyway?

[athon]

Originally Posted by Simon39759

Isn't the whole Bethlehem story tight to the innocent myth and the flight to Egypt and considered discredited anyway?

The Bethlehem story is relevant to Micah, who says the messiah (interestingly, Micah was of the 'militant messiah' tradition) will come from there.

Athon

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

Well of course that is wrong it's the City of Nazareth.

You know the city that consisted of a shepherd's hut and a few graves. The city that does not appear on any First Century map or in any documents from the time.

You know of any such maps? There aren't any. The Nazareth did not exist claim is totally dead since the 2007/2008 excavations, but yueah it was probably a small place. Most towns were.

cj x

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by cj.23

You know of any such maps? There aren't any. The Nazareth did not exist claim is totally dead since the 2007/2008 excavations, but yueah it was probably a small place. Most towns were.

cj x

No maps. Not on a map. QED.

The Bible says it was a CITY. It may have been a small village but that's it. Dig away all you want, it is not there as described in the NT.

Quote:

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament.
• The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) - in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area - records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.
• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.
• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.
• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

In his histories, Josephus has a lot to say about Galilee (an area of barely 900 square miles). During the first Jewish war, in the 60s AD, Josephus led a military campaign back and forth across the tiny province. Josephus mentions 45 cities and villages of Galilee * yet Nazareth not at all.

Josephus does, however, have something to say about Japha (Yafa, Japhia), a village just one mile to the southwest of Nazareth where he himself lived for a time (Life 52).

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

As far as "the Nazareth did not exist claim is totally dead since the 2007/2008 excavations", I suggest that this may be true but the village was established after the purported Jesus' purported birth and purported death. See:

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/scandalfive

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by Gord_in_Toronto

No maps. Not on a map. QED.

The Bible says it was a CITY. It may have been a small village but that's it. Dig away all you want, it is not there as described in the NT.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

As far as "the Nazareth did not exist claim is totally dead since the 2007/2008 excavations", I suggest that this may be true but the village was established after the purported Jesus' purported birth and purported death. See:

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/scandalfive

Yes the Jesusneverexisted site is bollocks. Skepticwiki should show you that - look at the articles there. And yes, are you aware of the NT Greek here?

cj x

[cj.23]

This really is bizarre. Was it an April Fool's joke? Randi is too clever to fall for this kind of pseudohistory and conspiracy woo surely? Did he not notice the errors already mentioned - Jesus if from Nazareth according to John 1, not born there, as John 1 has no birth narrative? And yes there is an extensive rabbinical literarure - but the two town lists I can think of certainly are not complete - many places known to exist do not feature on them, as well as other Biblical places like Emmaus.

Now the question is why would the Jews be kind enough to build a town to fit a fictitious place mentioned in Christian scholarship? We often see the claim Nazareth did not exist - but it's a nonsense. Nurit Feig and Zvi Yavnor, (eminent Jewish archaeologists) have found grave sites and other goods in Nazareth that date from the mid-First Century. There is considerable archaeological evidence - I shall go through it if anyone is really interested, but it has been mentioned many many times before on this site, and a search should turn it up. Randi appears here to place kookery and pseudohistory from non-historians non-archeologists (Tim O Neill pointed out a paino teacher and a biologist career anti-theist) in preference to the actual evidence of the archaeological realia. By all means critique the Bible James, but check you facts! You have fallen for woo - as a couple of emails to Jewish or non-Christian archaeologists would have quickly demonstrated. Obviously there are silly "tourist" sites - but that is all.

There is nothing controversial about the book - it's nonsense. The Israeli archeologists have no love of Evangelicals or I guess Christian stories - and sure there are commercial interests and loony evangelicals there - but this has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual archaeology. Conspiracy Theory woo does not stop the actual archeology...

Now you can look through the actual records, from Kenyon onwards. You find evidence of Roman habitation. James you have been taken in by woo, plain and simple, preferring pseudohistory to fact. Very very sad that Randi should fall for something like this - has he not consulted the reviews of the book he is so enthusiastically promoting?

I'll ask Tim O Neil who is very much upo to date on this controversy over to comment.

[LarianLeQuella]

Originally Posted by cj.23

Now the question is why would the Jews be kind enough to build a town to fit a fictitious place mentioned in Christian scholarship?

Well, the new testament wasn't written until anywhere from 80 to 150 years AFTER the events, so whoever made-up the bollocks called the new testament included a town founded after the time of jebus, but before the writer wrote the fairytales. DUH!

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by LarianLeQuella

Well, the new testament wasn't written until anywhere from 80 to 150 years AFTER the events, so whoever made-up the bollocks called the new testament included a town founded after the time of jebus, but before the writer wrote the fairytales. DUH!

Who told you that? The Pauline epistles date from within what 25 years, and the Gospels thirty five to seventy years after events according to the consensus of mainstream scholars? You can play around with those dates, but I don't think putting the synoptics in the forty to fifty year bracket is at all controversial. 150 years? WTF? Some of the Pastorals? Revelation? What do you have in mind???

cj x

[LarianLeQuella]

Sorry, should have said "from 80 to 150 ACE" which is relatively subject to start with.

Although, I found something you may have read before:

Quote:

It seems to me that the important thing to latch onto is that the earliest documents which correspond to what we call the NT are the 4th century codices, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These were written down between 330 AD and 400 AD, that is 300 years after the events described. (Neither is, in fact, a complete NT; there are bits missing, or there are things included which are not found in modern Bibles)

These codices are supported by earlier material: manuscript fragments, quotations in other writers etc. Scholars use these bits and pieces (and I think that 'bits and pieces' is, on the whole, a fair description) to attempt to correct the texts of the 4th century codices, that is make them more like the lost originals.

But this earlier material is fragmentary. As I understand it (and if anyone can correct me on this, please do so!) if you were to forget about the 4th century codices and later material, and were to try to construct the NT from material earlier than AD 330, you'd get absolutely nowhere - it's far too fragmentary, and there isn't nearly enough of it. Indeed, there seems to me to be a great big assumption that the 4th century codices are already pretty close to the lost originals, and that there haven't been any major changes, additions or deletions.

Anyway, what we have in modern Bibles has been produced by a process that we word processing users would call cutting and pasting, as well as piecemeal editing. The authors/editors of what we call Matthew's and Luke's gospels used chunks of what we call Mark's gospel - or, so some scholars think, an earlier, now lost, version of Mark. What we call John's gospel is a bit different, though it does contain one chunk which most scholars think ought to be in Luke. As I understand it, opinion is divided on how many other authors had a hand in it.

The key point seems to me to be this. We can be sure that the gospels were produced by a process of 'cutting, pasting and editing', because we have the evidence. It therefore seems very likely that there was more 'cutting, pasting and editing', for which no evidence has survived. So there seems to be no way of being reasonably sure that we can reconstruct anything approaching the original manuscript of any of the gospels. Anything might have been added, tampered with, or removed.

It gets worse! Even if we could reconstruct the originals of the gospels, we'd still not know who were the authors, or what relation they had to the events described. Were they eyewitnesses? Did they talk to eyewitnesses? Were they even trying to write factually accurate accounts? What axes did they have to grind? And so on.

Also, there are huge discrepancies between the various accounts. Just compare the accounts of the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances of Jebus in Matthew and John. Also consider that the earliest manuscripts of Mark (and Mark is generally thought to be the earliest gospel) say absolutely nothing about any post-resurrection appearances.

To sum up. Christians often claim (or, more often, simply assume) that the gospels are a reliable record of events, and that we can treat them as we would treat, say, a report in a (good!) newspaper of events which happened a few days ago. This seems to me to be just plain wishful thinking.

Indeed, there's a long established industry of people trying to get behind the gospels and work out what really happened and what Jebus really taught. Sometimes it's simply sensationalism (e.g. 'The Da Vinci Code') and sometimes it's scholarly (e.g. James Tabor's very interesting recent book 'The Jebus Dynasty'). But, frankly, it seems to me that all these people are, to a greater or lesser extent, shooting in the dark. Given the history of the NT, I can't see how anything can be established with anything approaching certainty.

So you will just claim "faith" and there will be no argument brokered...

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by LarianLeQuella

Sorry, should have said "from 80 to 150 ACE" which is relatively subject to start with.

Although, I found something you may have read before: So you will just claim "faith" and there will be no argument brokered...

Very very misleading that quote though. That is the earliest "complete Bible" codexes - but we have papyri fragments and codices for individual books dating far far earlier, and of course thousands of citations in other texts like the Church Fathers. So really we can have a very high degree of confidence -- here, have a look

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...tament_uncials

Have a look at some scholarship on Biblical Criticism. 80 to 150 is still very late btw - some scholars place MArk pre-Temple destruction, and even John has been placed there by a few mavericks (not oddly enough the Evangelical Conservatives you migft expect).Realistically though 70-110 for the Gospels looks about right I think. www.earlychristianwritings.com is your best resource here, or have a look at Bart Ehrman for accessible introductory stuff, or FF Bruce and Bruce Metzger for something abit more technical.

cj x

[TimONeill2]

Originally Posted by cj.23

This really is bizarre. Was it an April Fool's joke? Randi is too clever to fall for this kind of pseudohistory and conspiracy woo surely?

....

I'll ask Tim ONeil who is very much upo to date on this controversy over to comment.

I'm glad Jerome asked me to comment on this, since we have had this "Nazareth never existed" nonsense come up many times over on the RichardDawkins.net forum. This is a classic example of some weak pseudo scholarship being accepted by people who should be more sceptical simply because it appeals to them. For some fellow atheists to do this is a worry, but not too surprising. But for someone like Randi to accept this silliness and to actively promote it is quite disturbing. He's precisely the kind of person that should have a nose for bogus misinformation being peddled by a crank, not someone actively advertising it.

For those who don't know me from elsewhere, I'm an atheist, secular humanist and sceptic of many years standing. I'm also a keen amateur historian with a degree in history and about 25 years of reading and research in ancient and medieval history under my belt, much of that to do with the origins and early history of Christianity. I learned how to discern "flim flam" (to use Randi's phrase) from real scholarship largely thanks to books and articles by people like Randi and Carl Sagan and am very grateful for the "baloney detection kit" these guys, along with my university lecturers and post-graduate mentors, gave me. That's why it's disturbing to see Randi supporting something that is so clearly hogwash.

Step One in sorting baloney from real scholarship is to begin with the proponent of the idea in question; in this case one Rene Salm. It's useful to look at who they are and, more importantly, what credentials, expertise and training they have. If this critique of the work of archaeologists was being done, for example, by a fellow archaeologist we'd have some justification to feel we were on safe ground. But Rene Salm is not an archaeologist, has no qualifications, training or experience in archaeology and has never so much as got his boots dirty in a dig. In fact, the only information available on Mr Salm is that he is a composer and former piano teacher.

So my Baloney Detection Alarm Bell is already starting to ring. Sceptics are used to seeing this phenomenon: a self-appointed, self-educated amateur with a radical theory here to tell us that he knows better than the experts. We see this with Creationism and various other kinds of crank and lunatic. Of course, just because Mr Salm is a piano teacher and not an archaeologist doesn't in himself make him wrong. So let's see what else we can use to determine if we are dealing with a legitimate piece of research here.

Step Two is to have a look at who is publishing the writer in question. If we see they are published by an academic press with a strong reputation for rigor and a peer review process, we have some assurance (not total, of course) that what we are looking at is mainstream work which, even if it isn’t by a professional scholar or credentialed expert, has at least been carefully scrutinized by people who are these things and given the thumbs up. Rene Salm fails this test as well – his book is published by the American Atheist Press. That’s a bit better than most of the works of this kind, which are usually published by vanity presses or print-on-demand self publishing services, but it’s not exactly the OUP either.

Step Three is to see if the writer in question is presenting an objective contribution to scholarship or has some kind of agenda, ideological stance or other ulterior motive. Yet again, Salm fails this test as well. Salm, it seems, has his own private theories about the origins of Christianity and its supposed links to Buddhism, having written a long online article on "Buddhist and Christian Parallels" back in 2004. He also says that he is now working on a sequel to his book on the non-existence of Nazareth which he describes as "a new account of Christian origins that will investigate suppressed evidence of Gnostic, Judean, and Essene roots of Christianity." The claim that he has uncovered "suppressed evidence" is something else that should set any sceptic's Kook Theorist Alarm jangling.

Step Four is to see how the writer's ideas have been received in the relevant field or fields and see how many relevant scholars they have been able to convince. As you've probably guessed by now, Salm fails this one too. He's managed to convince no archaeologists that the accepted idea that Nazareth was inhabited in the Second Temple Period and no archaeologist holds that opinion to him either. His position has zero acceptance in the field in which he's trying to dabble.

So, by this stage, many of you could be be wondering why the hell Randi is endorsing this guy. Could it be that, despite his complete lack of credentials, training, experience and expertise in archaeology, despite the fact his book has not been peer reviewed, despite his clear ulterior agenda and despite the total non-acceptance of his position by anyone in a position to judge its viability, he still has a solid case?

Well, actually, no.

Salm is a dabbler who started out with his own conclusion - that Nazareth didn't exist - inspired by his personal fringe theories about the common origins of Christianity and Buddhism and who then set out to nitpick the work of real professionals in the field in an attempt to show that they are all wrong and he - the piano teacher - knows better than they do. By nitpicking at the work of the real archaeologists who have done field work on the site, arguing against their dating of structures and finds and redating some of their material Salm has managed to construct a thesis whereby Nazareth was inhabited in the Hellenistic Period, uninhabited in the Roman Period up to the Second Century (ie conveniently jumping the period of Jesus) and was then suddenly inhabited again from the Second Century.

A central plank of his case depends on the dating of Roman Period tombs on the site, which he claims date to later than the experts believe. Unfortunately for Salm the most recent and most comprehensive work on the typology of these types of tombs flatly contradicts his amateurish attempts at dating them - Rachel Hachlili’s Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (2005) is now the standard work on these types of burials and Hachlili's classification identifies several of the Nazareth tombs as being clearly "Type 1" style, ie from the First Century AD.

Salm also tries to pour cold water on the dating of pottery from the site and makes the remarkable claim that "two- and three-inch fragments of pottery vessels are a precarious basis indeed for fixing the type and date of an artefact" (p. 125); an assertion that professional archaeologists would regard with mild amusement.

These two points are key, because Salm's attempt at dating all the material in the tombs to "after the middle of the first century CE" depends on his use of an earlier typology for dating kokhim tombs, which allows him to dismiss most of the evidence that contradicts his thesis at one swipe, since most of it comes from those tomb sites. As he says gleefully "(t)his simple maneuver alone removes 90% of the evidence alleged for the putative town of Nazareth at the turn of the era!" Any finds from these tombs, he argues, which could be dated to the early First Century - and there are juglets and oil lamps that can be - must, according to Salm, be dated to the later end of their range. Except the typology outlined by Hachlili and followed by actual archaeologists contradicts this and Salm's thesis collapses in a heap.

Salm has been banging on about this stuff online for years, peddling it first on various online fora, then on his nazarethmyth.info website and finally, thanks to the American Atheist Press, in this book. Except no archaeologist agrees with him. Naturally he (and, weirdly, Randi) attributes this to some vast Christian conspiracy. Strangely, he never explains clearly how this conspiracy has managed to entangle the Israeli Antiquities Authority or Jewish archaeologists like Nurit Feig and Zvi Yavnor.

Nor can Salm's conspiracy claims explain the recent roasting he received at the hands of Dr Ken Dark of the University of Reading, an archaeologist and specialist in the Early Byzantine Period who has been excavating in Nazareth for the last five years. Dark reviewed Salm's book in the latest edition of the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society (Volume 26, 2008, pp. 140-146) which, despite being couched in the polite terms of British academe, is scathing in its criticism of an amateur trying to second-guess real experts. Dark concludes:

(D)espite initial appearances, this is not a well-informed study and ignores much evidence and important published work of direct relevance. The basic premise is faulty, and Salm’s reasoning is often weak and shaped by his preconceptions. Overall, his central argument is archaeologically unsupportable.
(Dark, p. 145)

So not only is there not an archaeologist on the planet who has come to the same conclusions as Salm, but his work has been reviewed by real archaeologists and found baseless.

Which brings me back to the question: what the hell is Randi doing supporting this amateur crank? We have qualified archaeologists, many of them Jewish and all of them professionals publishing in peer reviewed journals, and Randi expects us to believe a piano teacher over them? Seriously? In the video above he makes a great deal of the silly Christian tourism traps and pilgrimage bait at Nazareth and then makes out that the non-experts associated with them are the only ones who uphold the idea Nazareth was inhabited in Jesus' time; totally ignoring all the Jewish archaeologists who believe the same thing. He scorns the fundie Christians associated with the Nazareth Village Resort circus saying that "none of them (are) archaeologists", ignoring the rather pertinent facts that Salm is not an archaeologist either and that no actual archaeologists agree with him. None.

I never thought I'd see the day that Randi - the smiter of amateur cranks - would be championing a kook like Rene Salm. I guess it shows that what is and isn't "flim flam" all depends on your biases.

[cj.23]

Ah Tim, much becomes clear

Quote:

According to Frank Zindler, the managing editor of American Atheist Press, Nazareth isn't the only geographical fiction in the New Testament. In his article "Where Jesus Never Walked" he showed that such places as Capernaum, Bethany, and Enon are also literary inventions [Winter, 1996-1997].

from http://www.atheists.org/Was_Jesus_Invented

Zindler is about the only other person to believe this woo - because he also spouts it, and publishes it for that reason. At least he makes some money from this crap.

Moral: never believe anything published from a fundie publisher. I am VERY disappointed, and assume the JREF and RAndi will publish a retraction? I have written politely to ask, and suggest anyone else interested in the battle against pseudohistory does so as well.

cj x

[Kuko 4000]

Well, this is interesting. Definitely looking forward to seeing how this develops.

[LarianLeQuella]

Even so, taking a claim that all these stories happened in real places automatically makes the stories true chain of reasoning is equally weak. By that logic, I will insist that the event of Ghostbusters are all real. I have been to the library in NYC, and that specific building was in the movie, therefore it's all real!

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by LarianLeQuella

Even so, taking a claim that all these stories happened in real places automatically makes the stories true chain of reasoning is equally weak. By that logic, I will insist that the event of Ghostbusters are all real. I have been to the library in NYC, and that specific building was in the movie, therefore it's all real!

No I agree completely. The stories and the existence of the places - sure completely independent. However it is hard to logically see why the authors would have invented places which subsequently came in to existence, and even if that was not absurd, the archaeological evidence is clear for Nazareth at least - it almost certainly was inhabited.

cj x

[cj.23]

Er, considering this is still on youtube should it not at least be pulled while the truth is established? It seems criminal that the JREF is actually spreading woo, however inadvertently. I have received no reply to my email yet, but I know GAkuseiDon and others who care about history have written to complain. Is the JREF going to take action??? Time is passing and more and more people are being posed to utter woo and pseudohistory...

cj x

[cj.23]

Extraordianry quote from Randi in this video -- "Of course, the religious faction has reacted furiously to the book. Specifically in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, which devotes some 47 pages to 5 angry rebuttals."

Yes, rebuttals of the nonsense and conspiracist crap you are promoting by actual archaeologists who have dug Nazareth published in a peer reviewed archeology journal! Rebuttals which are angry because the whole thing is a nonsense. Are you surprised? And you will be next to be ridiculed like this, if you don't stop pushing this nonsense and retract. Please, have some sense! The JREF has now clearly placed its name on something promoting woo. I never thought I would see this day. Is anyone going to take any action, or is the JREF going to become a laughing stock? Already it's attracting adverse comment on atheist sites for goodness sakes!

This si NOT a religious reaction. It is a reaction from 5 eminent archeologist's and professionals in the field to utter woo being peddled?

cj x

[cj.23]

Still no word back from my email. Here is the excellent atheist writer and scholar Richard Carrier debunking the "Nazareth did not exist" nonsense on another forum.

I repeat my challenge: in the eyes of any archaeologist, or historian, the JREF is promoting woo. Will we see a retraction? How did this disaster occur in the first place?

cj x

[Mr Clingford]

So, any news?

[cj.23]

Not here. GazukeiDon from Faithfree had an email, asking for more details on the issue, but that was about the time this thread was first posted.

cj x

[Mr Clingford]

Thanks cj.

Update update update!

[cj.23]

Well I was mainly bothered by the YouTube video, because suddenly Tim and i and others who actually bother to fight pseudohistory were bopmbarded with people saying "you are talking **** because James Randi says so". We wou;ld then explain patiently that James Randi holds rather unusual opinions on this matter, quite in contrast to everyone in mainstream archeology, and that while one can happily question much in the Bible (cue links to Bib Crit websites) Nazareth was a non-issue - it existed, though even I was puzzled a bit a couple of years ago by the paucity of evidence. No there is no doubt. Than I did my April Fools joke on the subject on this forum, (guess you saw it? )and we had the whole YouTube JREF fiasco, so I have not been pursuing it. Now the videos are up I can see the latest video, and see what Randi says if anything about this matter. I'll go have a look!

cj x

[costa]

Originally Posted by sphenisc

"...one such is the account in John 1 of the birth of Christ in the lower Galilean town of Nazareth" (within the 1st minute)

The Amazing Randi has done it again! Since yesterday the Bible has been rewritten to exclude any mention of Jesus' birthplace in John 1, and Christians everywhere are quite happy to admit that he wasn't born in Nazareth. Hallelujah!

I am an eastern orthdox christian.our beliefs havent changed .but untill we reach what i hope is god's place we can onlypray what we believe is gospel..if you believe...there cannot be a question,if you dont....there cannot be an answer

[sphenisc]

Originally Posted by costa

Originally Posted by sphenisc

"...one such is the account in John 1 of the birth of Christ in the lower Galilean town of Nazareth" (within the 1st minute)

The Amazing Randi has done it again! Since yesterday the Bible has been rewritten to exclude any mention of Jesus' birthplace in John 1, and Christians everywhere are quite happy to admit that he wasn't born in Nazareth. Hallelujah!

I am an eastern orthdox christian.our beliefs havent changed .but untill we reach what i hope is god's place we can onlypray what we believe is gospel..if you believe...there cannot be a question,if you dont....there cannot be an answer

Thanks for your reply - I think you may have missed the point of my post.

Perhaps you could read the description of Jesus' birth in John chapter 1 and tell me if you believe Jesus was born in Nazareth?

[cj.23]

Originally Posted by sphenisc

Perhaps you could read the description of Jesus' birth in John chapter 1 and tell me if you believe Jesus was born in Nazareth?

When someone does actually show me that fabled account I will be very impressed. Has this ever been removed from the JREF video archive? I have been rather busy recently and not had time to keep up!

cj x