[6] It should be remembered that the Gospels do not specify Nazareth, but speak simply of “his own country” (πατρίς). Professor Burkitt, recognizing the mass of difficulties in regard to Nazareth, suggests that that name is a “literary error,” and that the πατρίς of Jesus was Chorazin (Proc. of Brit. Acad. vol. v, 1912, pp. 17–18). [↑]
[7] See above, p. 147, note, as to the theory of Prof. Burkitt, that Jesus was born at Chorazin. On that view, the unbelieving birthplace was denounced. [↑]
[8] Strauss, in pointing to this detail in Jewish Messianism (Das Leben Jesu, Abschn. III, Kap. i, § 112) abstained from stressing it on the score that there are no certain traces of it before the Babylonian Gemara, the compilation of which took place in the Christian era, and the book Sohar, of which the age is doubtful. Principal Drummond (The Jewish Messiah, 1877, p. 357) further agreed, with Gfrörer, that the doctrine of a Messiah Ben-Joseph is extremely unlikely to have been pre-Christian. The obvious answer is that it is overwhelmingly unlikely to have been post-Christian! But that thesis is apparently not now maintained even by orthodox scholars. Bousset, who in his confused way suggests that the notion of a suffering and dying Messiah “would seem to have been suggested by disputations with the Christians” (The Anti-Christ Legend, 1896, p. 103), avows immediately that Wünsche traces “a very distinct application of [Zechariah xii, 10], to the Messiah Ben Joseph” in the Jerusalem Talmud; and goes on to suggest that the notions of the “two witnesses” and the two Messiahs “may rest upon a common source, which, however, is still to be sought further back than Jewish tradition.” [↑]
[9] Against Celsus, vi, 36, end. [↑]
[10] Protevang., ix, 1; Pseud. Matt., x, 1; xxxvii, 1 sq.; Hist. of Joseph the Carpenter; Thomas, 1st. Gr. form, xiii, 1 sq.; 2nd Gr. form, xi, 1 sq.; Lat. xi, 2 sq.; Arabic Gosp. of the Infancy, xxxviii, xxxix. [↑]
[11] Karppe, Essais de critique et d’histoire de philosophie, 1902, pp. 51–52. [↑]
[12] Irenæus, Ag. Heresies, i, 26; Hippolytus, Ref. of all Heresies, vii, 21. See Baur, Das Christenthum, p. 174. (Eng. trans. i, 199.) The fact that Cerinthus is the earliest known Christian Gnostic, being traditionally associated with the Apostle John (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii, 28) goes far to support Dr. Karppe’s view that Gnosticism entered Christianity from the Jewish side. [↑]
[13] Cp. Apoc. of Baruch, xxix, 3; 4 Esdras, vii, 28; xiii, 32; [John, vii, 27]; Justin, Dial. cum Tryph., 8; and Charles’s note on Apoc. of Baruch, as cited, giving these and other references. See also Schodde’s ed. of the Book of Enoch, pp. 47, 57; and the Rev. W. J. Deane’s Pseudepigrapha, 1891, p. 17. [↑]
[14] Les évangiles synoptiques, 1907–8, ii, 697. [↑]
[15] The varying designations, certainly, point to repeated additions to the text. But the question arises whether the Μαρια ἡ Ἰωση or Μαρια Ἰωση of [Mk. xv, 47], may have been meant to specify “Mary the wife of Joseph.” [↑]