I haven’t read his argument, so I can’t comment on that. And he’s an established liar who, even when being honest, has a record of usually being wrong (about things like this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this). So I don’t spend any more time reading his arguments.

But insofar as anyone has actually argued Christmas has “nothing” to do with Paganism “at all” (a rather extreme statement), that’s outright bogus (almost no feature of Christmas, from Christmas trees to reindeer to gift-giving, is not in some way derivatively pagan).

But it would be correct to say (as this is a much less ambitious claim) that placing Christmas on December 25th is not an idea that came from paganism. It definitely most likely came from a scriptural and theological numerological argument unique to Christianity. Plus some other things like that (Nativity scenes are totally Christian, for example; well, apart from their idolatry).

It’s particularly silly in the social sciences to have this standard. In the hard sciences, there’s a translation from math to English that by necessity loses granularity. As Noam Chomsky argued once when complaining about postmodernism, he would never expect to understand quantum mechanics beyond an informed layperson, but he knew that if he went to anyone in the field at MIT that they could give me a brief basic understanding and some resources that would get him up to speed to the degree he needed. But in these fields? Basic math is all that’s needed. The only difficulty is in translation of languages. So there’s no excuse for scholars in history and in social sciences not to show their work. Everyone can understand the basics.

This obsession with Nazareth has always confused me. Like you repeatedly say, a town existing doesn’t matter for assessing if a character from it is real. Even if there was a historical Jesus, he may not have been from Nazareth. Those kinds of biological details are famously the kind that cult leaders fudge the details on when making their personal mythology. “I came from the sticks and look at how smart I am” isn’t new now and it wasn’t then.

Um. I am confused. You did read the article, yes? I literally include an entire section answering your question. And I quote:

Pliny continues by describing a number of cities, regional ethnic groups, and administrative units…

Besides those cities, Pliny intersperses mention as well of various tribes of peoples, which he is thus indicating were associated with particular regions of Syria…

Finally, Pliny mentions several “tetrarchies” and one “nation” (gens). A “tetrarchy” is a loan-word from Greek meaning an ethnic governmental administrative unit…Of [which] only two are definitely locatable…

What part of all that did you not understand?

Or do you not understand that “place” is not a synonym of “city” or “town”? Because that would suggest you would fail even a 4th grade reading test. And surely that can’t be the case. So my bet is on: you didn’t read the article, and only pretended to in this comment.

Lesson: actually read an article before commenting on it.

This might be a useful reference: https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Period-Byzantine-Hinterland-Palestine-Exploration/dp/0367408236/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1669959512&sr=8-1

Dark makes the point on p.7 that, unlike previous archaeological work in Nazareth and its environs, this was undertaken as conventional secular archaeology on the 1st millenium AD and sponsored by secular, non-political organisations.

Happy Birthday and you’ll find a small token of appreciation in your PayPal.

“In the end, if you are a sane and rational human being, you’ll come to the same conclusion I did: when Pliny mentions “the Nazerini” he is talking about a tribe, a people and their kingdom, not a town or city,…”

“So I will quote Bostock-Riley, and put in BOLD every actual PLACE Pliny mentions,…”

You then went on to bold Nazerini in the quoted paragraph.

Please clarify.

Anyway, you don’t need me to say this, but keep up the amazing work. I know a lot of us truly appreciate it.