Ciudad Gótica y Nazaret no están en la misma categoría

By Ryan Leasure

When I was a kid, I considered Batman to be my favorite superhero. Unlike other superheroes who could fly, see through walls, or turn into green giants, Batman fought crime in Gotham City through more conventional means. He was a great fighter, used cool gadgets, had an awesome suit, and drove a cool car. In this way, Batman was more realistic than his fellow superheroes. Now suppose I truly believed that Batman was a real person. After all, I had seen him on the silver screen and at the occasional Halloween party. My friends, however, thought it was ridiculous and tried to erase this idea from my brain. However, no matter what they said, I remained convinced of his existence.

Until one day, my friend suggested that we visit Batman in Gotham City. This sounded like a great plan to me, I wasted no time packing my bags, with all my Batman shirts, and started dreaming of being by my superhero’s side. There was one final step left. I needed to buy tickets to Gotham City, so I grabbed my computer and started searching for the next available flight, except I couldn’t find any! I searched vigorously for hours, but alas, I ended up empty-handed, with no ticket.

My friend, who was more astute than I thought, took this opportunity to explain to me why I couldn’t find a plane ticket: Gotham City doesn’t exist. To prove him wrong, I quickly Googled the city’s location, only to find that it was nowhere to be found. After all these years of thinking that Gotham City was located where New York City was, I felt dejected. This was a bad sign, since if Gotham City isn’t real, then Batman probably isn’t either.

IS NAZARETH A REAL PLACE?

For years, Jesus mythologists have argued that Nazareth, like Gotham City, was fictional. The argument goes, if Nazareth didn’t exist, then Jesus didn’t exist either. After all, the Gospels repeatedly state that Jesus came from Nazareth ( Mk 1:24 ; Jn 1:45 ).

So if you prove that Nazareth didn’t exist, you can prove that Jesus didn’t exist either. Skeptics make this claim based on the fact that the Old Testament, the Jewish historian Josephus , and the Jewish Talmud never mention Nazareth. Surely, the argument goes, all three of these primary sources would have mentioned Nazareth if it were a real place. What are we to make of this claim? Was Nazareth a real place? Yes, and there is evidence.

ARCHEOLOGY

In 1962, archaeologists in Israel discovered a tablet in Aramaic that listed twenty-four different priestly families and their locations. The location of one priestly family was, you guessed it, Nazareth. The traditional dating of this list goes back to 70 AD, indicating that Nazareth was a real place in the first century.

Furthermore, further archaeological discoveries provide additional evidence of Nazareth’s existence. Within the city, archaeologists excavated two houses in 2006 and 2009, which match a typical dwelling in first-century Rome. Inside the houses, they found doors, windows, a shaft and cooking pots.

In addition, archaeologists discovered first-century tombs just outside the city, which fits with Jewish customs that forbade burying corpses inside the city. Likewise, pottery dating back to the first century was discovered inside the tombs. The evidence is so compelling that archaeologist Jack Finegan says, “From the tombs… one can conclude that Nazareth was a heavily Jewish settlement in the Roman period.”

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME OUT OF NAZARETH?

Based on excavations, scholars suggest that ancient Nazareth was a small hillside village of about sixty acres, with a maximum population of 500 people. This fits nicely with Nathanael’s dismissive comment in John 1:46 when he asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You’d think that if you were making up a religious hero, you’d give him a more prominent hometown. The Gospel writers had no motivation to make up this detail about Jesus.

CAESAR’S DECREE

Perhaps the most important discovery from ancient Nazareth is a marble slab measuring 24 by 15 inches. Archaeologists date this piece to the first half of the first century, probably during the reign of Emperor Claudius (AD 41-54).

On this slab is a decree from Caesar himself stating that if anyone steals a body from any of the tombs, they will suffer capital punishment. It is necessary to keep in mind that we are talking about Caesar, the most powerful man in the world, and a small rural village of 500 people thousands of miles away. What would compel Caesar to care about grave robbers in Nazareth? This would be the equivalent of the President of the United States addressing a grave robber in a small rural town in North Dakota.

It seems that Caesar had heard stories of Jesus of Nazareth rising from the dead. He had probably also heard that Jesus’ disciples stole his body from the tomb. No doubt lost in the shuffle were the exact details that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead in Jerusalem.

We know for certain that Claudius was aware of Christianity because he expelled all Christians from Rome in AD 49. Suetonius , a 2nd century Roman historian writes that Claudius “expelled the Jews from Rome constantly making riots at the instigation of Chrestus.” Luke also reports this event in Acts 18:2. Apparently, the Christian preaching that Jesus was the promised Messiah caused quite a stir among the Jewish community.

Think about how this radical claim would have caused dissension. The Jews had maintained a strict monotheistic faith for thousands of years, and now suddenly some of their own were claiming that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord. Perhaps violence was involved. It’s hard to know for sure, but it was significant enough to cause Claudius to drive everyone out of his city.

WHAT DOES THIS PROVE?

Unlike Gotham City, Nazareth was a real city in the Galilee region of first-century Rome. Archaeology confirms its existence several times over, as not only have we found ancient houses, pottery, and tombs, but we also know that Caesar wrote a special decree for the people of Nazareth not to remove bodies from tombs, or else they would die. It is likely that he wrote this proclamation in connection with the story that Jesus rose from the dead.

These archaeological findings do not necessarily prove Jesus’ existence, but they do corroborate the Gospels’ claims that Jesus came from Nazareth. To learn more about how we know Jesus was a real person, you can check out an article I wrote here.

Skeptics continue to cast doubt on the Gospels, and more specifically, on Jesus of Nazareth. However, archaeology continues to confirm the accuracy of the biblical narrative. Based on the archaeological findings discussed above, I believe it is safe to say that the claim that Jesus came from Nazareth is not fake news.

Original Blog: http://bit.ly/2BdyWWw

Translated by Rudy Ordoñez Canelas

Edited by Maria Andreina Cerrada