Jesus of Gamala (and it's not a hoax). August 9, 2006 – cp 333 [err. 340] – 701
Mittwoch, 09. Aug, 2006 – 08:20:31
.
I promised gigio25 (who won't read it) that I would write a post to document that Jeshu (known to us as Jesus) did not live in Nazareth
(just as he was certainly not born in Bethlehem).
Note from August 9, 2016: I'm no longer sure of this last statement today...
but since this post has already been written by others, namely by David Donnini, today I'll rest and simply get by with copying and pasting what he has already explored in depth
(with very few, almost exclusively graphic, tweaks).
* * *
David Donnini:
Almost no one is aware of the existence of a major historical problem relating to the city of Nazareth, based essentially on two fundamental points:
a – the famous expression “Jesus the Nazarene” (present in the evangelical texts and which we often transform into “Jesus of Nazareth”), derives from the Greek Ihesous ho Nazoraios, that is from the Aramaic Nazorai and from the Hebrew Nozri, and none of these expressions has any relation with a city called Nazareth, but is a religious title or indicates belonging to a sect,
b – the archaeological, historical, literary and geographical analysis of the city of Nazareth even shows serious doubts about its existence at the time of Jesus.
Note how many authoritative voices have expressed themselves on this matter:
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1. “The apostles who were before us called him thus: Jesus of Nazareth Christ…
“Nazara” is the “Truth”.
Therefore “Nazarene” is “the one of truth”…”
Gospel of Philip , paragraph 47
Gnostic text from the 2nd century AD
My note:
It should be noted, however, that “in truth, ‘nazara’ does not mean ‘truth’ in any language”
(The Apocryphal Gospels, edited by Marcello Craveri, p. 520 n. 1).
the author of the Gospel of Philip no longer knew Aramaic and gave imaginary etymologies.
in paragraph 19 the same Gospel writes:
“Nazarene” is the only thing that has been revealed of what is unknown.
and Marcello Craveri p. 514 n. 1 comments:
“Nazarene” may derive from natzar (hidden) or from nezer (branch, offspring) or from nasaya (protected by God), in any case not from Nazareth, which does not appear to have existed even at the time of Jesus.
. . .
he takes up Donini's quote:
2. “Nor is it improbable that the first Christians were called Nazarenes in the sense of Nazireans, rather than in that of originating from the city of Nazareth, an etymology that is truly unlikely and which probably replaced the former only when the ancient origin from the Essenate began to be forgotten”.
Elia Benamozegh, The Essenes and the Kabbalah, Italy,
1823-1900, Jewish philosopher, member of the rabbinical college of Livorno
.
3. “The same tradition has established the domicile of Jesus' family in Nazareth in order to explain the nickname of Nazorean, originally linked to the name of Jesus and which remained the name of Christians in rabbinical literature and in the countries of the East.
Nazorean is certainly a sect name, unrelated to the city of Nazareth…”
Alfred Loisy, La Naissance du Christianisme
France, 1857/1940, Catholic priest, professor of Hebrew and Sacred Scripture at the Catholic Institute of Paris, later removed from office
.
4. – Name? –
– Jeshua – the accused answered quickly
– Do you have a nickname? –
– Hanozri –
- Where are you from? -
– From the city of Gamala – replied the prisoner, indicating with a movement of his head that over there, far away, to his right, towards the north, there existed a city called Gamala.
– What blood are you? –
"I don't know exactly," the prisoner replied promptly. "I don't remember my parents. They told me my father was Syrian..."
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
1891-1940, Russian writer
.
5. “The little town that bears this name [Nazareth]
, where naive pilgrims can visit Joseph's workshop, was identified as the city of Christ only in the Middle Ages…”
Charles Guignebert, Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne du Christianisme
France, 1867/1939, professor of History of Christianity at the Sorbonne University in Paris
.
6. “In reality, as far as Nazareth is concerned, historians have been unable to find traces of a city of that name until the 4th century AD; according to Jewish sources, we must go back as far as the 9th century.
In the Gospels we never find the expression Jesus of Nazareth but only Jesus the Nazarene, sometimes also written Nazorean or Nazarene…
Now, none of these names, no matter how much one has tried to force their etymology, can be traced back to a name like Nazareth…
It is from these terms that the name of the city of Nazareth derives, and not vice versa .
Ambrogio Donini , A Brief History of Religions
academic, specialized in Hebrew and Syriac at Harvard University, USA, he was a university professor in Italy
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7 – “El-Nasirah is a village in Galilee, located at about four hundred meters above sea level, in which Christian tradition recognizes the ancient Nazareth, the homeland of Jesus.
According to various scholars, however, Nazareth – better yet Natzrath or Notzereth – never existed and the title Nazarene that accompanies the name of Jesus in the New Testament writings does not at all indicate his country of origin…”
Marcello Craveri, The Life of Jesus
author of numerous essays on the history of Christianity, translated into many languages and published in Italy and abroad, and editor of a collection of apocryphal writings.
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8 – “The forms Nazoraios, Nazarenos, Nazaraeus, Nazarene, all prove that the ecclesiastical scribes knew the origin of the word and were well aware that it was not derived from Nazareth…
The historical name and geographical location of Christ's birthplace is Gamala…
this is the homeland of the Nazarene…
The mountain of Gamala is the 'mountain' of the evangelist Luke, the 'mountain' of all the Gospels, which speak of it incessantly, without even naming it..."
EB Szekely, The Essene Origins of Christianity
Hungarian theologian who attended studies at the Vatican
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9 – “…Jesus was not from Nazareth.
A wealth of evidence indicates that Nazareth did not exist in biblical times.
It is unlikely that the city arose before the 3rd century.
'Jesus of Nazareth,' as many Bible scholars today would readily confirm, is a poor translation of the original Greek Jesus of Nazareth…”
Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln, The Messianic Legacy
authors of several books on early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the international bestseller
“The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception”.
.
10 – “It was Matthew who first created the misunderstanding that the expression 'Jesus the Nazarene' had some relation to Nazareth, citing the prophecy “he will be called a Nazarene (Nazoraios)” which, at the conclusion of his account of the nativity, he associates with the passage “retiring to Galilee and going to live in a city called Nazareth”.
This cannot be the derivation of the term, since even in Greek the spellings of Nazareth and Nazoreo differ substantially."
RH Eisenman
Professor of Middle Eastern religions and archaeology, and director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University
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11 – “I truly think that Christians cannot affirm that the expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' means 'Jesus citizen of Nazareth', in the same way that the expression 'Leonardo da Vinci' means 'Leonardo citizen of Vinci'.
The Hebrew form for Nazareth is NZRT, which is late and has been indicated as Nazrat or Nazeret, while the Greek form 'Iesous or Nazoraios', I believe, derives from the Aramaic Nazorai… the root NZR (without T) appears in the Aramaic translation of Isaiah 26:2 , in which the word 'emunim' (= faith) derives from the root 'emeth' (= truth), in this way it is clear why in the Gospel of Philip it could be said that 'Nazarene' means 'of the truth'…”
Daniel E. Gershenson, email dated May 12, 1998, to David Donnini
archaeologist, lecturer and researcher at the Department of Classical Studies of Tel Aviv University
* * *
As we have seen, some of the most authoritative academics from around the world fully agree on one fact: the expression “Jesus of Nazareth,” which incorrectly translates the Greek “Ihesous or Nazoraios,” has no relation to a city called Nazareth.
Even an apocryphal Gospel from the 2nd century, which we saw in the second quote, attributes a completely different meaning to that term.
This is certainly a startling observation.
Where is Nazareth located?
The city that millions of pilgrims visit today is located in upper Palestine, in Galilee, about thirty kilometers from Lake Kinnereth, better known in the evangelical tradition as Lake Tiberias, or Lake Gennesaret.
How can we delve deeper into this issue?
And why did the Russian writer Bulgakov come up with the idea that Jesus could be from Gamala, in the Golan Heights?
And why is the same thesis also supported by the theologian EB Szekely?
To get to an answer we must tell the story of the discovery of Gamala.
During the so-called Six-Day War (1967), the state of Israel suddenly moved against some neighboring Arab states and, in addition to occupying the Sinai, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, invaded and occupied a large part of the region called the Golan, which until then had belonged to Syria.
During military operations on the Golan Heights, someone noticed the presence of the ruins of an old human settlement on a hill surrounded by very steep escarpments, located a short distance from the northeastern shore of Lake Kinneret.
Immediately after the end of the state of war, the Israeli authorities sent some archaeologists to investigate the reported area, to clarify the nature of the remains.
The remains of the city of Gamala, after the excavations
The Israeli government felt a strong need, before the eyes of its people and the entire world, to justify the occupation of the Golan Heights as a legitimate act of reappropriation of a territory that belonged to the Jews by natural and historical right.
It was precisely for this reason that, since 1968, the area was examined by a certain Itzhaki Gal, who was the first to suppose that the reported location could be that village called Gamla, or Gamala, of which all traces had been completely lost, which Josephus Flavius described with abundance of details, narrating the story of a tragic defeat suffered by the Jews, at the hands of Vespasian himself, during the war that bloodied Palestine in the years from 66 to 70 AD.
nb Josephus Flavius (romanized form of the name) is Joseph ben Mattias of
my post n. 290
http://bertolauro.blogs.it/2006/07/11/290_jospeh_ben_mattia_e_l_esistenza_di_j~950437
In 1976, under the leadership of archaeologist Shmarya Gutman, systematic excavations began which led to sensational discoveries, the first of which was, undoubtedly, the recognition that those remains hid the very city of Gamla.
Here is how Josephus Flavius, some 19 centuries ago, described the appearance of the village in his work The Jewish War:
“…From a high mountain, in fact, a steep spur juts out, rising in the middle into a hump that slopes down from the summit with the same slope both in front and behind, so much so that it resembles the profile of a camel; from this it takes its name, even if the locals do not respect the exact pronunciation of the name.
On the sides and in front it ends in impassable ravines while it is somewhat accessible behind, where it is as if hanging from the mountain..."
I went to this place in July 1997, in order to verify the hypotheses that I had previously had the opportunity to develop regarding the citadel, and I stayed in Gamla for two days, exploring the village and its surroundings in every detail, and then spent a third day in Qasrim, ten kilometers further north, where there is a small museum that preserves the archaeological material found in Gamla.
It's impossible not to spend a few words describing the beauty of the Golan Heights, and the site of Gamla in particular, where the deserts of the surrounding regions, from the Dead Sea area to Jordan and Syria, give way to hills shining with pink flowers, patches of forest, streams and roaring waterfalls, beneath the spiraling flights of large vultures that dive into the valleys, only to rise again with outspread wings, propelled by thermals.
How can one ever suspect that Gamla, and not Nazareth, is the city where Christ lived, and even was born?
Nazareth, which many Christian pilgrims know well, is located in the valley between some gentle hills of Galilee.
The town, which today has spread like wildfire to reach the top of the hills, was once located low down, on the side of a hill, and was surrounded on all sides by the gentle undulations of the reliefs.
All of Galilee consists of plains or rounded hills, without soaring peaks or steep slopes.
Christian tradition has located the village of Joseph and Mary, and therefore of Jesus Christ, in the lower part of one of these hills, exactly in the position where the so-called Basilica of the Annunciation stands today.
But an incredible number of objections seem to oppose this localization, disturbing that habitual conviction whose serenity, rather than resting on the reliability of historical evidence, rests on the fact that the arguments I present in this study have been almost systematically deserted by Christian culture.
Indeed, when visiting Nazareth, it is striking that there is absolutely nothing that can be considered an original testimony of the town where Jesus grew up.
Everything is later and, unlike many archaeological sites in Israel, where there is at least one building, a wall, an excavation, which has brought to light evidence of times gone by, here the presence of Jesus and his family is told only by the names of the hotels, restaurants, churches, and the words of the Gospel narrative.
Not the synagogue mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, not even a house, a shred of wall, traces of roads, coins, shards of pottery…
in short, of all those normal things that are found near ancient settlements and that could testify to the village of two thousand years ago.
The pilgrims who come frequent modern churches, at most some Byzantine ruins that may date back to the beginning of the fifth century.
“…there are very few Jewish remains dating from the Second Temple period in Nazareth, only a few rock-cut crypts [tomb cavities], although we cannot know what the name of the site was at that time…”
Danny Syon , Israel Antiquities Authority; from an e-mail to David Donnini, January 19, 1998.
But where has the little village of Joseph and Mary gone, with its streets, synagogue, and houses?
Is it possible that time has erased even the slightest sign of such an authoritative presence?
Yet there are remains of other villages where Jesus passed through and performed some of his works: in Capernaum you can clearly see houses, streets, and a synagogue, and then there are also Korazim and Bet Zayda, to the north, on Lake Tiberias; Samaria, in the center of the country; Bethany, Bethlehem, and Jericho, in Judea, just to name a few.
How could every trace of the town of Nazareth have been made to disappear?
What is most surprising is not only the complete archaeological absence of a “Nazareth of Jesus” but, even more, its complete and total absence in the written testimonies of historians.
By this I mean that no historian of the time ever mentioned the village and, outside of the Gospel account, it appears only in Christian writings dating back several centuries.
The two great historical sources that testify to Palestine at the time of Jesus are the writings of Josephus and Philo of Alexandria.
Especially the first, who was commander of the Jewish troops in Galilee, in his great works "The Jewish War" and "Jewish Antiquities", minutely described the entire country, naming every small inhabited center.
But he made no mention of Nazareth, although a few steps away from the village there were other centers, such as Sepphoris and Iotapata, which the historian spoke of and whose remains can be admired today.
In short, the Nazareth of Jesus' time is absolutely absent both in terms of archaeological and literary evidence.
In practice there isn't.
There are two facts: either Nazareth was just a tiny village of two or three houses that deserved to be totally forgotten by Josephus (but this is not what appears in the Gospel description, because the Gospels tell us that in Nazareth there were people and homes, artisan workshops, like that of the carpenter Joseph, and there was at least one synagogue; it could not have been a simple farm lost in the open countryside), or Nazareth, at the time of Jesus, did not even exist and would have been created later, with the development of Christian doctrine.
In truth, the Gospels themselves, when they speak of the city of Jesus, prefer to use deferred expressions such as "his homeland" and mention its name on very few occasions: the Gospel of Mark (the oldest of the four canonical gospels, which was certainly used as a source for the authors of the other texts) mentions it only once, at the beginning, with the words: "...In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John..." (Mark 1:9), after which the name of the city is completely forgotten; the Gospel of John also mentions the city only once, again at the beginning.
The placement and frequency of the term Nazareth within the Gospel texts raises the reasonable suspicion that these are later interpolations.
And we know well how common interpolations are in the Gospel texts, subsequent to the ancient drafts.
Readers should not be fooled by mere appearances: sometimes the name Nazareth appears in the titles of the paragraphs into which the Gospel accounts are divided, but the original texts do not have any paragraph divisions.
And there are no titles that we can read today as if they were an integral part of the book.
The fact is that the Gospels never used the expression Jesus of Nazareth, they speak of Jesus the Nazarene, and for this they use the Greek expression Ihesous or Nazoraios.
Now, we have seen that the adjective Nazorean, as is loudly supported by a host of academics from all over the world, cannot mean Nazarene, that is, an inhabitant of Nazareth.
We cannot help but notice that there is also an ancient evangelical text, which the church defines as apocryphal, which was composed in a Semitic language by a Judeo-Christian sect, contemporary of Jesus, whose name is, precisely, the Gospel of the Nazarenes (or Nazoreans).
It certainly doesn't mean the Gospel of the citizens of Nazareth.
May we have the pleasure of consulting this text?
Unfortunately not.
We know him only through the denigrating quotes made by some Church Fathers, who harshly criticized him and, perhaps, are directly responsible for his disappearance.
From the words of Epiphanius and Theodoret we know only that the Nazarenes possessed the “Gospel according to Matthew, absolutely complete, in Hebrew… as it was originally written,” that they rejected the teachings of St. Paul, that “they are Jews who honor Christ as a righteous man….”
To believe that the Nazarenes were the inhabitants of Nazareth would be exactly like believing that the Dominicans are the inhabitants of a city called Domenica!
In fact, the Nazarenes were members of a religious sect whose original name is Nozrim in Hebrew and Nazorai in Aramaic, perhaps, but not certainly, with a possible reference to the Hebrew expression NZR, indicating a state of purity and holiness, which we find in the Old Testament in relation to the vow of Naziriteship (Nazarites are those who leave their hair uncut and accept certain vows of purity).
Perhaps, if we had been able to consult the Gospel of the Nazarenes, we would not have found any mention of a city called Nazareth.
Moreover, the author of the Gospel of Matthew himself, in order to justify the fact that the family, upon returning from Egyptian exile, had chosen Nazareth as their residence, committed a gross gaffe by declaring "...that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: 'he will be called a Nazarene'".
But there is no biblical prophecy that, with reference to Jesus, claims that he will be called a Nazorean!
While there are others, for example regarding Samson, which say that he will be a Nazarite, that is, that he will be consecrated to the vows of Jewish Nazariteship... certainly not that he will live in Nazareth!
Now, if we connect all the archaeological, historical, and literary observations we have just made with the awareness that the title "Nazarene" does not mean "citizen of Nazareth" at all, but is a religious title, then we realize that we truly have many reasons to believe that the Gospel narrative hides something very interesting.
But that's not all: we are about to discover another surprising, geographical, reason to be convinced that the evangelists hid the true identity of the city of Christ:
“…they drove him out of the city and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, so that they might throw him down the cliff…” (Lk IV, 29-30)
Examining the Gospel narratives, which describe Jesus' movements in relation to his city, we do not obtain precise information on its geographical location, but we often get the impression that Nazareth could not have been located where it is today: 36 kilometers by road west of Lake Kinneret, about 600 meters higher.
To cover that distance and that difference in altitude, at the time when people traveled on foot or on muleback, certainly required more than a day; at least for the return journey, which was uphill.
I have driven that route many times, in both directions, and as I did so I imagined a farmer, a shepherd, or a commoner, enduring that entire climb, along stony paths, under the scorching sun, for a day or two (I'm talking about the return trip only), because they had taken a break from their ordinary activities in order to go and listen to the preacher who usually chose a boat near the lake shore as his pulpit.
Could people allow themselves three days or more of tiring absence, so far from home?
There are passages, especially from the Gospel according to Matthew, in which it would seem that he, having left the region of Gennesaret (which is on the Galilean shore of the lake), makes a crossing and reaches his home (that is, on the other side, in the Golan) and that from there, in the company of his disciples, he retreats in search of a secluded place "in a boat", while the crowd decides to follow him.
Obviously, a city more than 30 kilometers from the lake and with an altitude difference of 600 meters, located in the middle of the Galilee countryside, west of the lake, is not compatible with such a turn of events.
The first multiplication of the loaves and fishes follows, after which he “ordered the disciples to get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd…”, “…when they had completed the crossing, they landed at Gennesaret”
that is, on the western side, making it clear that he had previously been on the eastern side.
But where was his city, then?
This way or that?
The evangelist Mark writes things like this:
“…meanwhile he withdrew to the sea (Lake Kinneret) with his disciples and a large crowd followed him…
Then he went up on the mountain and called to him those he wanted, and they went with him…
He entered the house and a large crowd gathered around him, so that they could not even eat…
Then when his people heard this, they went out to get him…
His mother and brothers arrived, and standing outside, they sent word to him…
again he began to teach beside the Sea (of Galilee).
And a huge crowd gathered around him…”
Of course, with this, we have not gathered definitive proof, but we must admit that, from some details of the Gospel narrative, the city of Christ seems to possess characteristics that do not fit very well with the Nazareth we know:
1 – he seems to be on a mountain (in fact on this “mountain”, which the Gospel mentions with a certain insistence, there were houses, a crowd, his relatives, and therefore it could not simply be a wild place where he went to retreat);
2 – it appears to be located close to the lake (otherwise people would not have been able to travel more than 30 km, and a difference in altitude of 600 m, with such ease);
3 – appears to be located on the eastern bank (Golan) and not on the western bank (Galilee);
Now, we must recognize that these are little more than vague indications; they do not, so far, represent the geographical assumption I mentioned earlier.
This is much more substantial and important and concerns the conformation of the city which, according to the Gospels, and according to Luke in particular, should be located on a mountain close to a precipice.
During the days I spent there I was able to observe, as well as photograph, its general appearance: as we have already said, Nazareth is located among gentle, rounded hills and the part where tradition places the village of Jesus is low down, in the centre of a valley, between gentle slopes.
How could Luke write the following words?
“…He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went, as was his custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.
He was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and when he had unrolled it, he found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
Then he rolled up the volume, handed it to the attendant and sat down.
The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.
Then I began to say:
– Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing – …
When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath, and they rose up and drove him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down the cliff.
But he passed through the midst of them and went his way…”
In Nazareth there is no brow of the mountain, much less any precipice!
Especially in the area considered the oldest which, as they would say today in simple terms, is even… “in the hole”.
What precipice is the evangelist Luke talking about?
And which synagogue if, as we have already said, in Nazareth there are no remains of any synagogue from the time of Jesus?
To tell the truth, there is a town that:
1 – it is located right on the hump of a mountain;
2 – near the Sea of Galilee (8 km);
3 – on the eastern bank (Golan);
4 – has the evident remains of a synagogue from the time of Christ;
5 – it is located five minutes from a terrifying precipice;
It's Gamala!
David Donnini among the remains of the Gamla synagogue.
Lies mehr!
. . .
Unfortunately, the rest of the post, after the separator, has been lost...
the theme of the inauthenticity of Nazareth as the place where Jesus lived, introduced by this post from 10 years ago, has been taken up by me in my blogs on other occasions
And finally here: RR, THE EXISTENCE OF NAZARETH.
https://bortocal.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/rr-lesistenza-di-nazaret/
Today, however, I believe that Yeshu was born in Sepphoris more likely.
. . .
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February 16, 2025, at 9:28 AM Answers
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