Richard Carrier and Jesus of Nazareth

Introduction

As part of Richard Carrier's campaign to persuade us that Jesus was mythical, he needs to divest Jesus of all Earthly association.  A Jesus with a mother, brothers and sisters, or a hometown in Galilee is a historical Jesus - not a myth.  As a result, Carrier against those known associations, sometimes offering specious arguments in doing so.  In the case of Jesus' association with Nazareth, he does this by suggesting without basis that Mark's identification of Jesus as being from Nazareth is an interpolation in "Proving History".  To motivate that speculation, he attempts to show that Mark treated Capernaum as Jesus' hometown - exaggerating some evidence, and ignoring the inconsistency his suggestion introduces to Mark in doing so.  In "Proving History", of course, his intention is argue for his method in historical analysis, so he is content to argue that based on Mark (and absent the verse he suggests may be an interpolation), we would consider Capernaum to be Jesus' home town.  Carrier goes further in "On the Historicity of Jesus", arguing on specious linguistic grounds because the early Christians were called Nazorians; which name suggested a fictitious connection to Nazareth when the gospels were composed.

Carrier and Nazareth in "Proving History"

"If Mark 1.9 is discounted as an interpolation  ..., then Mark never actually said Jesus came from Nazareth.  In fact Mark seems to imagine him hailing from Capernaum (cf. Mark 2:1 and 9:33 with 6:3-4), which is also in accord with prophecy (Isaiah 8:21-9:2, verified by Matthew 4:12-16)."
"Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus" Location 2234

Mark 2:1 states that "A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that Jesus had come home (ἐν οἴκῳ ἐστίν)." (NIV).  The final Greek phrase can, however, also be interpreted "... he was in the house." (Jerusalem Bible)  From context, that would then be the house of  "Simon and Andrew" mentioned in Mark 1:29, in which he stayed overnight, and in which he healed many people according to Mark.  That immediately creates two problems for Carrier's interpretation.  First, if Jesus had his own house in Capernaum, distinct from that of Peter and Andrew, then why did he stay in theirs?  And if he successfully healed  "many people who were sick" and "drove out many devils", Capernaum cannot have been the hometown  of Jesus in Mark's estimation, for in Mark 6:5 we are told that he "... could work no miracle there, except that he cured a few sick people by laying hands on them."  That is, Carrier can only motivate his suggestion by proposing an interpolation without textual or other evidence; and then interpreting an ambiguous passage so as to increase the number of contradictions in the text.  Similar comments apply to Mark 9:33.  His proposal is rendered more incoherent by the fact that Mark clearly seems to treat Jesus home town and Capernaum separately, naming the later, but not naming the former except in 1:9

To make things worse, Isaiah 8:21 to 9:2 does not refer to Capernaum, but to the lands of Zebulon and Napthali, territory that includes Nazareth in addition to Capernaum and a number of other villages.  Nor does Isaiah 8:21 - 9:2 indicate that.  While 9:1 does prophecy that the people living in the territory of Zebulon and Napthali will "see a great light", which in context is the "son who has been given" (Isaiah 9: 5-7), it does not indicate either the place of his birth or residence other than to indicate that he will occupy the throne of David (and hence, presumably would reside in Jerusalem).

To sum up, none of the texts given by Carrier demonstrate his case.  At best, some verses could be translated as indicating Jesus came home to Capernaum, but could equally be translated as simply stating he came to a house in Capernaum (from context, that of Peter and Andrew).  At best, therefore, those verses provide no more evidence that Jesus lived in his own home in Capernaum than that he lived in the home of Peter and Andrew.  Similarly, the quotation from Isaiah (if considered to apply to Jesus as Matthew intends) does not favour any particular town in Galilee as the location of Jesus activity, and says nothing about either his home or birth town.  Meanwhile, assuming Capernaum to be Jesus' hometown creates unnecessary difficulties in the story, which is clear evidence the suggestion is inconsistent with Mark.  In the end, therefore, the only substantial "evidence" Carrier provides is the ad hoc suggestion that Mark 1:9 might be an interpolation.

Carrier and Nazareth in "On the Historicity of Jesus"

In "On The Historicity of Jesus:  Why We May Have Reason To Doubt" Carrier introduces new arguments to the effect that Jesus did not come from Nazareth.  He primarily relies on a linguistic argument, which he presents most forcefully in his footnote 34 (on location 23519).  There he writes:
"In addition to everything else I adduce in Carrier, Proving History, pp 142-5, that supports this conclusion, Nazoriaos (Mt. 2.23; Acts 24.5) simply has no grammatical connection to Nazara, Nazaret or Nazareth, and does not in fact form the word 'Nazarene'.  Nazoriaos would instead form in English 'Nazorian'; and if it referred to a town of origin at all (and there is no particular reason to believe it originally did), it would indicate an inhabitant of Nazorai (Nazors) ...  It should be clear that Nazor- and Nazar- are completely different roots; and -eth and -ai are completely different terminations. ..."
"On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt", Location 27230, My emphasis.

When I first read that footnote, the clause in bold immediately struck me. Nazareth and various suggested "titles" not representing a location that have been suggested as alternatives to treating Jesus as coming from Nazareth are all Aramaic or Hebrew words transliterated into Greek (and then into English). And in Aramaic or Hebrew, as in all Semetic languages, word roots consist of clusters of consonants. Irene Thompson (Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at George Washington University) writes:
"The grammatical systems of Semitic languages share many common features. A distinctive feature of the Semitic languages is the triliteral or triconsonantal root, composed of three consonants separated by vowels. The basic meaning of a word is expressed by the consonants, and different shades of this basic meaning are indicated by vowel changes. For instance, the triconsonantal root K-T-B;in Arabic serves the basis for the following words:kitāb, ‘book,’ kutub, ‘books,’ kitaba, ‘writing,’ kātib, ‘writer.’"
http://aboutworldlanguages.com/semitic-branch

Clearly, in the Aramaic original, Nazor- and Nazar- have exactly the same root, ie, N-Z-R.  Carrier has directly contradicted the facts of the matter.  Worse for Carrier, Semetic languages sometimes have gentilics with different vowel vocalizations than the place name from which they are derived. In "The Names 'Nazareth' and 'Nazoraean'",  William F Albright gives the example of the gentilic Madaniyun from the place name, Madanitun in modern Arabic.  You will note that the vowels 'a' and 'i' have swapped their location in the gentilic.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3262342.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

While this fact alone is enough to show Carrier's linguistic argument to be invalid, it does not show what the Aramaic gentilic of 'Nazareth' was.  Indeed, Albright's further argument is that it was not the gentilic of 'Nazareth' with the alternative vocalization, but that the name 'Nazareth' itself is a transcription of the Hebrew name of the village, with the Aramaic name being 'Nazorath', with gentilic 'Nazoraya'.  His argument is cogent, and while the intermediate forms are conjectural, the final form, 'Nazorath' is found in Aramaic Christian literature (Albright, "The Names 'Nazareth' and 'Nazoraean'").

Minor Arguments

In addition to his argument that Capernaum is a more plausible hometown than Nazareth based on Mark, and the linguistic argument, Carrier deploys two other arguments to the effect that Jesus did not come from Nazareth.  Specifically he argues that Jesus was given the title "Nazoraean" because he either belonged to a sect of that name, or as a back formation from the title given to Christians of "Nazoraion" (Acts 25:6); and he further argues that it is improbable that Christians would be called "Nazoraion" based on the hometown of their leader, as that is very unusual.

With regard to the later argument, however, it is not as unusual as Carrier makes out.  In modern times we have the Vienna Circle in philosophy, the Chicago School in economics, and the Anglican denomination - all named based on geographical locations of their primary practitioners.  In ancient times, there was the philosophical school of the Cyrenaics (named after the home town of several of their leading lights), who Carrier himself mentions in a different context.  More importantly, the Carrier ignores who named the early Christians "Nazoraion".  They are only so called in Acts by an opponent of the Christians.  It is certainly plausible that the Christians were called Nazarenes by their opponents to highlight the hometown of their purported Messiah, where such an origin is supposed to argue against he being Messiah.  Notably there is no early instance of Christians calling themselves "Nazarenes".  What evidence we have shows them calling themselves "brothers" or "the Lord's" (Greek: kuriakon = The Lord's), and later, Christians; and their religion, "The Way".

With regard to the former argument, takers of the Nazirite vow would drink no wine; while members of the Nasaraean sect (mentioned by Epiphanius) would neither eat meat nor participate in the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem.  What evidence we have shows the contrary of both Jesus and and the early Christians.

Conclusion

Overall, it can be seen Carrier's argument is, at best, very weak.  His strongest case would have been the linguistic evidence, but as clearly shown, he directly contradicts the actual nature of that evidence.  Properly expounded, that evidence at worst has no bearing on the issue (because the direct linguistic connection between "Nazareth" and "Nazoraya", and hence "Nazoraean" is conjectural.  It is more likely, however, to slightly favour the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth (and is hence historical) rather than the opposite based on the universal interpretation of the term "Nazoraean" as indicating geographical origin in Nazareth in all early sources.  Those sources had far more direct access the the actual linguistic source of the term than we do, and absent their dissent, arguing the opposite on linguistic grounds amounts to an argument from ignorance.

The other evidence taken together argues more strongly for Jesus' geographical origin.  In particular, that Matthew, Luke and John did not simply ignore Mark 1:9 and invent an alternative origin for Jesus in Bethlehem (if Mark 1:9 is a fiction) shows the attribution of Nazareth as Jesus' geographical origin was already widespread at the time Mark wrote.  A single verse could not make the association of Jesus with Nazareth so strong if it had not existed before Mark, and in the very few decades between the writing of Mark and the other Gospels.