Jesus of Nazareth?

The New Testament frequently says that Jesus was from Nazareth.  Mathew and Luke are the two canonical gospels that contain birth narratives.  Both accounts have Jesus somehow being born in Bethlehem instead and later relocating to Nazareth, although they give two different explanations.  Mark, the earliest and most reliable of the gospels such as it is, starts off with John the baptist foretelling Jesus' coming and an adult Jesus who came from Nazareth.  John, which is considered to be the last to be written and least reliable, refers to Jesus of Nazareth at least four times.

All this is interesting because it seems that there was no Nazareth in the first century C.E.  So René Salm argues here.  It seems that this is a misinterpretation of Yeshua the Nazarene.  Interesting enough the sixth chapter of the book of Numbers describes the duties of Nazarites, who are people who have taken a special vow.  In the book of Judges, Sampson was one such individual.  You can see an account starting in the thirteenth chapter.

Many have pointed out the discrepancies between the birth narratives found in Mathew and Luke, however this shows that there are more radical problems with both stories.  Some have gone as far as to say that there was no Jesus.  I am inclined to think that this goes much too far.  Jesus is a latinization of Yeshua, which is the name of Moses' successor.  Joshua is the latinization that is more common for the Old Testament prophet.  Many Jews of the time were given that name.  This is why when people ask me if I believe that Jesus existed I say that there were many people with that name.

Once a Christian asked me if I believed that Jesus had been crucified.  I responded that this seemed plausible since the Romans crucified many people.  This Christian thought that I had made his point, but there is nothing supernatural about an execution.  As I said, the Romans crucified many people.  There isn't anything miraculous about that.  In this Wikipedia article no one seriously disputes Jesus' crucifixion, except for the Muslims who have no reliable evidence to back up their claim.

In any case, if Yeshua being taking the oath of a Nazarite can be distorted so as to have him coming from Nazareth, then this casts much of the gospel accounts in serious doubt.  Too much so, in my opinion, to rely on them to support the miraculous claims that they make.