Was Jesus of Nazareth an Arab?

[Ulan]

Many Palestinians near Nablus are of Samaritan ancestry

Yup. The Samaritans didn't disappear by being eliminated in the Roman-Samaritan wars, but mostly by converting to Islam at some point in history.

As far as I remember, most actual population exchanges in the region were the consequence of different Mongol invasions that depopulated whole areas. I would have to research whether that's also true for the Galilean area.

[JoeWallack]

The proper question is whether inhabitants of Nazareth and that region of Galilee during the first century CE were Itureans by ethnicity. Thus Israeli historian Shlomo Sand--

In 104-103 BCE Judas Aristobulus annexed the Galilee to Judea and forced its Iturean inhabitants, who populated the northern region, to convert to Judaism. ...Judeans probably lived in the Galilee earlier, but it was populated and governed predominantly by the Itureans, the center of whose kingdom was in Chalcis in Lebanon. Their origin is obscure--probably Phoenician and possibly tribal Arab. The territory annexed by Aristobulus stretched from Bet She'an (Scythopolis) in the south to beyond Giscala in the north--that is, most of today's Galilee minus the coast. Masses of Itureans, the original inhabitants of the Galilee, assimilated into the expanding Judean population, and many became devout Jews. One of Herod's associates was Sohemus the Iturean (The Invention of the Jewish People, p. 159).

There are a lot of questions here. My casual research on the Itureans indicates that the limits of their presence in Galilee at the time of Aristobulus is uncertain. The relevant passage from Josephus does not mention Galilee, so I'm not sure where Sand is getting his information--

JW:
The question is why do you think SS (Shlomo Sand) is an authority on the subject of the connection between Israel and Jews? He thinks that when Thanos snapped his fingers it permanently made all DNA testing disappear.

Also, like Godfrey I'm surprised at the DCH conclusion, and specifically why he did not mention that SS also thinks "Palestinians" are a modern invention.

Ireland, Ireland...wasn't that the only country that sent condolences to Germany for Hitler's death?


Joseph

Was Yassir Arafat Gay? I don't know it for a fact but according to Trump a lot of people are saying it.

[Steven Avery]

A 2017 documentary about the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oveido asserts affinity with Druze DNA. And that the two are evidenced to be the same individual. I did not hear that there was anything about chromosome count.

The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA - History Channel - (2017)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5m17zd

[Irish1975]

While I suppose someone could have quibbled about it if he was descended from Itureans, I'm unaware of anyone who questioned his Jewish identity...

The Invention of the Jewish People persuaded me that what needs questioning are the post-19th century nationalist assumptions on which the myths of Zionism are based. What is "Jewish identity"? No one questioned Jesus' Jewish identity because ancient people didn't think about the concept of a people or nation the way that we do. Mark and John were perfectly indifferent to the question of Jesus' ancestry. Matthew and Luke postulated his descent from David in order to substantiate the belief in him as Christ in accordance with OT notions of salvation history. The NT seems not to care at all about the question of Jesus' ethnicity.

No nation possesses an ethnic base naturally, but as social formations are nationalized, the populations included within them, divided up among them or dominated by them, are ethnicized--that is, represented in the past or in the future as if they formed a natural community. Etienne Balibar, "The Nation Form: History and Ideology"

A Nation...is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors. Karl Deutsch, Nationality and Its Alternatives (1969)

[DCHindley]

It actually does not make any difference to me whether one wants to demonize or glorify "Arabs" (there I go scare quoting again). It was more about casually accepting identification of Jesus as somehow of likely Ituraean stock because of the province he resided in, and then casually say "then [he's] probably Arab."

We don't even know for sure where Chalkis (the capitol of the Iturean tetrarchy) is. Any map you see placing it somewhere is guessing, as there is no definitive archaeological evidence for it (yet). Even "Ituraean ware" is a renaming of Golan ware on the basis of a widespread, but uncritical, assumption of who lived there in the Golan. Myers was objecting to fabricating facts that are mere suppositions that confirm our biases.

It's a mess, and many are willingly stepping in it. DCH

[Irish1975]

It actually does not make any difference to me whether one wants to demonize or glorify "Arabs" (there I go scare quoting again). It was more about casually accepting identification of Jesus as somehow of likely Ituraean stock because of the province he resided in, and then casually say "then [he's] probably Arab."

I venture to say, casually, that it makes sense to ask about the people of the region that Jesus of Nazareth was supposedly from. The respectable consensus about the historical man is a short list of general facts: executed under Pontius Pilate, baptized by John, prophet, gathered disciples, AND hailed from Nazareth. That very well known and definitely historical hamlet of Galilee. Okay, then. What do we know about Nazareth and Galilee? Who lived there. What is the history of that region?

Has the historical Jesus cottage industry seriously asked this question? With what results?

These are questions. Maybe I'm stepping in shit, but it's not my shit.

[neilgodfrey]

. . . . What is "Jewish identity"? No one questioned Jesus' Jewish identity because ancient people didn't think about the concept of a people or nation the way that we do. . . . .

Steve Mason's take on the use of the term Jew/Jewish in historical discussions of this period:

One point emerging from the ancient paradigm merits comment because of its potential to generate needless controversy. From this chapter onward I shall translate Greek loudaioi as Judeans rather than Jews. This is not because I have any quarrel with the use ofJews. That is the familiar translation, and I have used it until now. But our aim is to understand ancient ways of thinking, and in my view Judeans better represents what ancients heard in the ethnos-polis-cult paradigm. That is, just as Egypt (Greek Aegyptos) was understood to be the home of Egyptians (Aegyptioi), Syria of Syrians, and Idumaea of ldumaeans, so also Judaea (Ioudaia) was the home of Judaeans (loudaioi) —the only place where their laws and customs were followed. Jerusalem was world-famous as the mother-polis of the Judeans, and Judaea was Jerusalem’s territory. That is why Judeans (like other immigrants) did not enjoy full citizen rights in Alexandria, Antioch, or Ephesus and could face curtailments of privileges or even expul­sion. With other non-natives, and like foreigners in Jerusalem, they lived outside the homeland on sufferance. This was also the case in Caesarea, Gaza, Ascalon, Dora, Ptolemais, Scythopolis, and other poleis (plural) sur­ rounding Judaea. We need to take on board ethnos-polis language not only for the sake of interpreting Josephus, but also to help us re-imagine daily realities in the region and the origins of this war (Chapter 4).

Some scholars accept part of this, but argue that unique conditions in the Judeans’ case - long residence away from Judaea or adoption of Judean law by others - rupture the ethnographic paradigm and recommend that we speak of Judaism as a “religion” and Jews as its adherents.

I disagree. First, Juda-ism was not an available category, and we do not find it in pre-Christian authors with a couple of exceptions. The closest Greek word (Ioudaismos) only became popular as a Christian term indicating the reduction of Judean culture to a mere -ism or belief system in the Christian mould. Second, the classical model accommodated the complexities just mentioned: derivations, reaffiliation with another ethnos (usually considered reprehensible, however), and multiple identities. Ancient writers never changed their language to speak of “religious conversion” or the like. Living abroad for generations was also common enough not to shatter the paradigm. If Egyptians and Syrians remained such after generations in Rome or Alexan­dria, why should we need a new word for Judeans outside their homeland?

In sum, it is not wrong to speak of ancient Jews and Judaism from our perspective. If our goal is to understand ancient discourse, however, I think we lose too much if we assimilate their usage to familiar, Christian-influenced categories. My aim is to try to enter their world, not to domesticate them in ours.

pp. 90-91 -- A History of the Jewish War A.D. 66-74