The Historical Jesus
Did Nazareth Even Exist?
I’ve been thinking and talking about the town of Nazareth a lot lately. ‘Tis the season! Last weekend I did my quarterly webinar with Platinum blog members (you should look at the benefits of the Platinum level! Private webinars!) on whether Jesus was actually born in Nazareth (most of the New Testament appears to thing so). And that made me think of an even more radical view that I think is dead wrong. Many of you will know about the vocal group of non-believers called “mythicists,” who think that Jesus never existed at all, but was completely fabricated, a complete myth. No man Jesus. Invented wholesale. I wrote a book years ago trying to explain why that almost certainly just ain’t true. A lot of mythicists were pretty ticked off about my book and I received some rather venomous responses. But hey, what’s life without a little spice? In this case, sliced habeneros straight on the tongue…. In any event, some mythicists argue as evidence for the non-existence of Jesus the non-existence of the town [...]