James Randi Speaks: Questioning the Bible

hello whoever and wherever you may be I'm James Randi or did you guess there are well accepted accounts from the Bible that Christians and others never question events and locations that are part of the story told of Christ and his history one such is the account in John 1 of the birth of Christ in the lower Galilee town of Nazareth this town is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament nor in any of the extensive rabbinical literature and the only established site there is the ancient town water well now referred to no surprise as Mary's well the modern town is covered with churches also no surprise and though archaeology offers no support at all for them the Nazarenes can point out sites such as joseph carpenter's shop and the spot where mary received the Annunciation the message from the angel Gabriel that she was pregnant with Jesus as well as the exact location of Mensa Christi that table where Jesus dined with his apostles after his resurrection and the site of the synagogue where Jesus preached as a lad but Nazareth may be overrated as an historical site that proves the inerrancy of the Bible author Rene psalm has written the myth of nazareth the invented town of jesus a book that effectively demonstrates the controversial archaeology of the town where the Bible has Jesus Christ being born of course the religious faction has reacted furiously to the book specifically in the bulletin of the Anglo Israeli Archaeological Society ba IAS which devotes some 47 pages to five angry rebuttals there is we are told an ambitious commercial enterprise presently under construction in Nazareth to rescue the facts about Jesus hometown it's a resort known as Nazareth village it is designed to eventually contain streets and several dozen stone houses inhabited by actors and storytellers of authentic garb who will illuminate the life and teachings of Jesus a notion perhaps inspired by the phenomenal success of Disneyland where Tinkerbell and Mickey Mouse are seen flipping and strolling about also an authentic garb as of 10 years ago an international consortium of Christian groups called the miracle of Nazareth International Foundation had raised some 60 million dollars for the project with contributors in the u.s. such as former President Jimmy Carter Pat Boone and Reverend Reggie White firmly a Green Bay Packer football star scholars associated with the Nazareth village project Stephen Fong Yehuda Rapuano and Ross Voss none of the marquee ologists now say that evidence has been discovered there for a town that existed at the time of Jesus a settlement before the first Jewish war that took place in 70 CE II this evidence was simply lying on the open surface of the site they say this claim author Psalm shows is bogus and it results from misstating mislabeling misinterpreting and from pure invention these artifacts and facts were somehow missed by the previous crowds of professional archaeologists who have been digging on that site for the last century the Nazareth village resort lies on a 15 acre plot of land called the Nazareth village farm the nvf the scholar is under discussion surveyed the farm dug on it and published a lengthy report in the 2007 issue of the B AIAS Journal there is little difficulty to show that their evidence for our town their 11 small pieces of pottery shards actually dates as late as the 2nd century CE e & Psalms research shows that the rest of the material from the nazareth site dates well after the time of jesus christ there simply is no demonstrable evidence from the Nazareth site that dates to the time of Jesus Christ and two Hellenistic times in fact one awkward fact after the other stands in the way of such a claim for example the Church of the Annunciation at nazareth the largest christian structure in the Middle East is a primary destination of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land of course it is there that the faithful believe Mary received the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel at her home but the existence of a number of tombs directly under the structure firmly established by archaeologists is just impossible since for the faithful tombs have no place under such a structure according to Jewish religious law Jews cannot live in the descent II of tombs which are a prime source of ritual impurity so the ancient commentary on Jewish law mandates the tombs must be located outside of the village proper thus tombs under the house of Mary are denied by the tradition these post Iron Age tombs are also post Jesus middle Roman and later and the wealth of pottery found in them is also later consider continuing pilgrimage to Nazareth which fortifies the convictions of the true believer while supporting the community financially depends on the sanctity and the reputation of the site as author Psalm points out perhaps the entire Jesus story depends on it too he also tells us not to be too surprised if remarkable finds at Nazareth conveniently appear in the next few years finds that substantiate a settlement there at the time of Christ to fit the demands of the Christian tradition the upcoming material will have to be early and non funeral and just recently as if Solomon self had prophetic powers the nvf now reports that a cache of Hellenistic and early Roman coins has recently been found at Mary's well at the northern end of the Nazareth Basin but strangely nothing even remotely similar had ever been found there before in the entire century of professional digging about a cache of Hellenistic and early Roman coins a bonanza for any archaeologist is exactly the sort of evidence which the believers need in order to decide the matter in their favor but the earliest coin found there dates to about 350 C II in fact a 2006 report from the Israeli Antiquities Authority signed by the archaeologists who dug at the Mary's well site mentions no early coins at all when coins found in wells are very frequent discoveries the only dateable coins she found there were from the 14th and 15th centuries after Jesus the facts are that no demonstrable evidence dating either to the time of Jesus or two earlier Hellenistic times has been found at Nazareth it is a late Roman Byzantine village not a mythical settlement at the turn of the era as author psalm says that question has already been answered and answered convincingly here we have a parallel with the situation re evidence for the parapsychological miracles for generations the believers who support the Nazareth myth have been defending their case by demanding prove me wrong but empiricists come up with the required facts they discovered that the facts don't seem to matter to those people they also know that there's no way to disprove the myth solve notes as I have that no one can prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist for example we can go to the North Pole we can dig up there all we want and we can find absolutely no evidence for his gifts manufacturing facility nor for his team of flying reindeer all the believer has to say under those circumstances is well you just didn't look in the right places or he's hiding or even he's invisible ooh measuring chimneys tracing gifts back to the factories in China where they were made and discovering that the serial numbers on watches were stamped there in a little Swiss town those things proved nothing to the true believer the mythology of Jesus is every bit as weird oh one additional fact there are the so called venerated sites at which the various Franciscan pseudo archaeologists have been digging for the last century or so they were situated where they are to make them fit as much as could be done their requirements of the Gospels description for example according to Luke 4 verses 16 to 30 quote he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read he spoke some controversial words and all day in the synagogue when they heard these things were filled with rock and rose up and thrust him out of the city and led him unto the brow of the hill whereupon their City was built that they might cast him down headlong end of quote by the way Jesus escaped by some sort of subterfuge but we don't have to get into that but let's examine these infallible facts shall we according to these holy words said to be written by st. Luke himself there was a synagogue at Nazareth but extensive archaeological excavation over a century remember has only found the city well nothing else not one stone of construction remaining from this temple anywhere in the vicinity also there is no nazareth hill thus no brow of the hill nor cliff exists or existed within the last hundred thousand years there is no such elevation there is there any reasonable place where such a cliff could have existed the bare fact is that no evidence of buildings or cliffs of any kind dating to the turn of the era has ever been found at these venerated sites the tourists are barking up the wrong tree st. Luke and thus the inerrant Bible was plainly demonstrably dead wrong shall we also question the rest of the Holy Bible hmm yes I think so we thank you for watching this latest episode of James Randi speaks for more of James Randi and the educational foundation make sure you visit Randy's org

Channel: JamesRandiFoundation

Views: 881,175

Rating: 4.6810818 out of 5

Keywords: jref

Id: WSzQC1zKesU

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/ReallyFineWhine]

Even if there was scientifically acceptable physical or historical proof that a person named Jesus (or its equivalent) was born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth the son of a carpenter, and was an itinerant preacher, etc. does not prove that this person was divine or worked miracles, etc. There are just some things that cannot be proven; they can only be believed.

[u/Bikewer]

The description of the modern “touristy” location is interesting....

Mark Twain, writing in “The Innocents Abroad”, found it fascinating that all of the famous locations from scripture were conveniently arranged for the benefit of tourists... Even in the 1800s.

[u/Novalis0]

I got downvoted to hell because I pointed out that Randi's source is a piano teacher with no credentials, while all historians and archeologists agree that Nazareth was inhabited in Jesus' time. Does r/skeptic usually promote pseudo-science and downvotes scholarly consensus' ?

Google Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth village farm (1997-2002): Final Report. by Pfann, Vos and Rapuano in which actual archeologists give their summary of what was found after excavations. Page 69: Nazareth was inhabited during Jesus' time.

[u/juventus1]

Editor ruined his initial joke...