Was Jesus Influenced by Pagans?

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Archaeology and Nazareth: Was Jesus Influenced by Pagans?

BY ERIC METAXAS

...What's more, it seems Nazareth was even more Jewish than previously believed. To understand how this is possible, you have to realize that a few hours walk from Nazareth was the city of Sepphoris, the administrative center of Roman Galilee. Sepphoris was rich, cosmopolitan and religiously pluralistic.

Many people, most famously some members of the "Jesus Seminar," have speculated on the impact of Sepphoris on Jesus. They go so far as to suggest that the Greco-Roman culture of Sepphoris shaped his thinking.

But the archaeology tells a very different story. The people of Nazareth, based on what they left behind by way of pottery and other material goods, "chose a strictly Jewish material culture." As the Review put it, "nowhere in the Roman Empire is there such a seemingly clear-cut boundary between people accepting and those rejecting Roman culture."

It's highly unlikely — actually, ridiculous is more like it — that Jesus would avoid pagan pottery yet embrace pagan thinking.

No, the more we learn about Nazareth, the more we realize it was "exactly the sort of place we might expect to find a rural craftsman like Joseph," as he is described in the Gospels.

...

What's being discovered in Nazareth paints a portrait of life in Jesus' time and home very familiar to readers of the Gospels. It's a reminder that our best source of knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth is not the Jesus Seminar, or even worse, spurious writings like "The Gospel of Judas" or the "Jesus' Wife" papyrus fragment, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They not only tell us what we need to know about Jesus, but also where to dig.