He's Alive!

 

James Randi launched into a video where he delved into the town of Nazareth. Beginning by saying the town was not mentioned at all in the Old Testament, or any of extensive rabbinical literature. He does note that there is a water well there, and lets everyone know that it’s called “Mary’s Well.” Mr. Randi leans very heavily on a book titled The Myth of Nazareth by one Rene Salm.  Salm’s theory is that the town wasn’t even settled until after the Jewish War of around 70 CE. There was a rebuttal to the book, which Randi minimizes, and then he goes on to poke fun at the tourist industry that has sprung up in the modern town situated there.

Randi does point out the enthusiasm of Christian Archeologists coming to the area, trying to substantiate the story of Jesus, and obvious amateur mistakes they make. It is a sad fact that when religious sites turn into tourist sites things tend to get a bit confused. Take Jerusalem for instance. Constantine’s mother, Helena, went there some three hundred years after Christ, and got exactly what gringo tourists get in Mexico. For the folks out there who’ve never done that, if you go to Mexico trying to find anything, the population will gladly lead you in circles, and convince you of anything you want to believe. Well, Helena came to Jerusalem with her purse in her hand, and the inhabitants thereof took her on a carnival ride of myth and legend that had absolutely nothing to do with fact. They’d tell her Jesus ate here, Jesus talked there, and she’d squat and pray, and the location became carved in stone, literally. Prime example is the Via Delorosa. While Helena squatted at every junction of the walk Jesus took to the Golgotha, it is generally agreed that the natives simply told her whatever it was she wanted to hear. The current path has little to do with reality, but that doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t take the walk, and the little tour for the faithful on Good Friday is spiritually fulfilling, I’m sure.

Randi makes a point that the Church situated where Mary supposedly met the gynecologist angel, Gabriel, I believe, who confirmed her pregnancy, actually sits right on top of a bunch of tombs, which means that the location had to be outside of town because Jews get really bent about those things. He says these tombs are all post Jesus, and reminds us that poor towns tend to make a little coin promoting religious sites. (This is my surprised face.)

Ok, here’s my spin. Now I’m a writer, right? I can spin a yarn, trust me, I have enough ex-wives to testify to that. If I were to be writing a Gospel, sometime in the first century about a man who tooled around and made a name for himself, I don’t believe I’d make up a town that didn’t exist. I mean, Jerusalem is real, Bethlehem is real, the Sea of Galilee is real, why snatch some fictitious town out of the air? Also, consider this; Nazareth was a stumbling block for the Gospel writers. They had to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, because that’s what the prophets said. So, it only goes to follow, if it were common knowledge that Jesus came out of Nazareth, then that would explain the entire “tax” thing, getting Mary down there to have the baby, and then back to where everyone knew she really lived in order to validate Jesus’ credentials to the Jews.  So, Randi can rattle on, Nazareth existed, and He’s alive!