There is no truth to it so far as I know. I think that, as the religion spread far and wide, away from its Semitic language roots, etymologies were confused or made up for the sake of the initiated.davidmartin wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:53 amah, for some reason i though 'Nazara' meant 'truth' in Hebrew or some other langaugeNazara, truth probably were called Nazarenes.
on checking i remembered it from the gospel of Philip which says that's what it means
but i don't know if thats 'true' or not!
The other issue is that these names (Simon, James, Jesus, John) were very common at the time (Simon being the single most common Jewish male name). This will naturally produce coincidences or false positives; but it also means that it was super easy to confuse the different people being talked about, potentially producing those cases when personages get mixed up over the course of transmission. Mary Magdalene is separate from the other women named Mary in the canonical gospels, yet later Christians confused them and thought of them as one (and, of course, Mary was one of the two most common female names, the other being Salome).What bothered me about this, is a James was said to lead the church after Jesus, yet this would have them both
crucified at the same time. Unless this 'Jesus' was a previous Father, say John, and James did lead the church
after him with Simon being more of a travelling preacher
Is this just referring to 1 Kings 3.16-28?I'm sure Mary/Ignatius letter which contains clues like it says
" to decide the important question concerning the children of the two women, when it was unknown to whom these respectively belonged"
What two women could this be?
Yes.There's also the curious connections between Simon Magus's life and Jesus
And of course that visit to Tyre happens in the mysterious Bethsaida section of Mark.Why does Simon rescue Helena in Tyre and Jesus make the same journey in an odd passage in Mark?
Honestly, I have perused many, many different treatments of what may be going on with Simon Magus (he is Paul; he is Peter; he is Jesus; he is Simon of Cyrene; he is Simon the son of Judas of the Galilean; the first Christianity was Simonian; Simonian Christianity was a reaction to the first Christianity; and so on), and I really have little to no idea yet what is actually happening there.
Magdalene = "of Magdala" (מגדלא):Was Helena (Queen) captured and sold into slavery and Simon rescued her together with her daughter Mary of Helene (Mary Magda Helene)
Jerusalem Talmud, Erubin 4.3: 3 .... Said R. Hunah, “That is the case if the four cubits [owing to the man] were included [within the original Sabbath limit he enjoyed], just as does the Sabbath limit of Tiberias lie [within four cubits of] the Sabbath limit of Magdala [מגדלא].” ....
מגדל = "tower." There were rather many towns named thus; we are probably talking about Migdal Nunayya (מגדל נוניא) which means "fish tower," which may be the modern al-Majdal.