The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (12 page)

The task of directing the excavations at the venerated sites was given to the Italian priest and archaeologist Bellarmino Bagatti. He was assigned to carry out thorough excavations on behalf of the Custodia di Terra Santa, the body which oversees Roman Catholic properties in the Holy Land. Born in 1905, Father Bagatti entered the seminary of Saint Francis in Tuscany at the age of seventeen. Ordained into the Franciscan order six years later, in 1931 he matriculated to the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Rome, where after three years he received the degree of Doctor of Christian Archaeology. In the mid-1930s he began teaching Christian Archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Francescanum (SBF) in Jerusalem, an institute devoted to “the research and academic teaching of sacred scripture and of the archaeology of bible lands.”
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In 1951 Bagatti co-founded the Franciscan journal
Liber Annuus
, in which a number of his subsequent articles appeared. He directed the SBF from 1968–78, that is, immediately following his work in Nazareth. In the course of a long and distinguished career in the Holy Land, Bagatti penned over twenty books and several hundred articles, and was a regular contributor to reference works on archaeological topics. He received a number of honors over the years for devotion both to his students and to his work. Fr. Bagatti passed away in 1990.
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To date, Bagatti has been the principal archaeologist at Nazareth. His two-volume work,
Excavations in Nazareth
, appeared in the late 1960s and is the unquestioned primary reference for the archaeology of the site. The Italian also penned a number of articles on Nazareth. Over the years, a number of his claims have been reviewed by other archaeologists and specialists. Those claims have on occasion been corrected and even rejected. Some of Bagatti’s pottery datings have been revised, and some of his theories subjected to strident rebuttal by other scholars.

Bagatti published his first major articles regarding the Nazareth excavations in 1955 and 1960.
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As we shall see in detail later, the Italian denied Kopp’s scenario, particularly the hated thesis that the Franciscan property revealed no signs of Greek or Roman habitations (“settlement”) – a thesis which was the driving force behind Kopp’s reassessment in the first place. More correctly, it is not a thesis but a fact, a fact that Kopp accommodated but which the Church now avoided. Thus, with Bagatti’s work the Catholic Church fundamentally leaves the stage of rationalization and enters the stage of denial as regards the true history of Nazareth. Consequently, the history of Nazareth archaeology in the last fifty years is largely a history of obfuscation. This has been abetted by the facts that the Roman Catholic Church owns the properties on which the major excavations have taken place, and has rigorously controlled both the personnel conducting the excavations and the primary publications issuing from those excavations. It is in this light that we must, in turn, adopt a suspicious posture regarding those publications. We cannot merely accept their conclusions at face value, but must continually and methodically refer back to verifiable evidence from the ground.
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In a sense, we must reconstruct the history of the site from corrupt reports. The ultimate criterion of what is and what is not corrupt, once again, is the verifiable evidence from the ground.

As has been intimated, the work of one archaeologist is not the central issue. So much of the Church’s position as regards Nazareth is problematic that we must ever bear in mind the larger clash between faith and fact. The words “Christian Archaeology” perfectly encapsulate that clash. “Archaeology” is the science of determining what (relative to human history) lies in the ground. “Christian” is the dogma concerning a particular god and His Only-Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Science seeks to determine what is fact, but dogma
already knows
fact – namely, what is important to salvation. The one seeks to discover what it does not know, and the other seeks to prove what it already knows (or claims to know). Between science and dogma resides an unavoidable conflict of presuppositions, and in this conflict one or the other must give way. When discourse is allowed to be free, dogma inevitably yields the field. But free discourse (including that involving the dissemination of these very pages) is a relative rarity in human affairs. When and where discourse is not free, as has been largely the case up until modern times (both in Europe and elsewhere), then fact submits to the dictates of the reigning belief-system, and the unwelcome messenger of reason is—often as not—martyred.

In the Nazareth literature, faith often overrules fact and dogma often trumps science. Even at this preliminary stage in our investigation we have seen that fact plays an essentially secondary role, one that needs to be brought into alignment with faith. This was Kopp’s
modus operandi
, even through his solution was not good enough for the Church and is not heard from again. In his 1963 book
The
Holy Places of the Gospels
, Kopp makes no mention at all of a moving Nazareth.

Demolition of the 1730 Church of the Annunciation began in 1954 and was completed the following year. The Vatican was confident it would find the validation in the ground that it sought, and had decided long before any archaeological results were in to proceed with erection of the new structure. It gave Bagatti very limited time to carry out his work before the foundations of the new edifice were laid. Bagatti writes:

The excavation was carried out with the greatest speed during the months of April–August [1955], with some 150 workers daily, and then the pace slackened. On Jan. 27, 1956, after a report sent to the Dept. of Antiquities, a division of the material found was made with the Director, Dr. Samuel Yeivin.
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Ritrovamenti nella Nazaret Evangelica (1955)

As soon as the first archaeological results were determined, Bagatti penned a lengthy and much-anticipated article on the site, “Discoveries in Sacred Nazareth” (“
Ritrovamenti nella Nazaret Evangelica
”). It appeared in the journal
Liber Annuus
.
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The archaeologist immediately set about allaying the concerns of the Church, and the first page contains the following statements:

The results thus far determined can be reduced to these: (1) the discovery of the extreme southern border of the village, constructed on a rocky incline
already in the Iron Age
and continuing even up to our days. (2) Verification that the traditional site of the “house of the Virgin” was surrounded by remains of habitations
of an agricultural character, with the exploitation of natural grottos to increase the capacity of the house. (3) A succession of ecclesiastical structures erected according to different aesthetic criteria, yet always on the same site…   (p. 5–6)

We shall have cause to return to this citation from time to time, for in a few words it contains several fundamental errors: that the village was located on the hillside; that it existed since the Iron Age; and (related to the first point) that ancient habitations were in the venerated area. Entirely correct, of course, is Bagatti’s affirmation that there has been a series of ecclesiastical edifices in the venerated area: the present Church of the Annunciation is the fifth structure on the site. It remains to be determined, of course,
when
the first Christian edifice was erected there, a not insignificant point that will be considered in Chapter 6.

What interests us at this juncture is the Italian’s assertion that the village existed already in the Iron Age, “continuing even up to our days” (1b). This is the doctrine of continuous habitation, and Bagatti is more explicit at the conclusion of the article:

From this brief summary of the remains that have now come to light, the result without any doubt is the continuity of life on the site uninterruptedly across the eras. The opinion, therefore, which suggests movements of the village in diverse epochs, especially the denial of life here in the Roman
period, is lacking in archaeological foundation.
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Here, for the first time we meet with the word “uninterruptedly,” which will figure in a future discussion (see below p. 90). With his last sentence Bagatti explicitly rejects the two prewar theses we have discussed: Kopp’s moving Nazareth hypothesis, and the Tonneau-Kopp observation that no settlement existed at the venerated sites “in the Roman period.” A footnote to this passage cites: “Kopp, 187–191.” Those referenced pages are precisely the ones we have drawn upon in the foregoing discussion, and which created so much consternation for the Church.

In brief, Bagatti’s 1955 article announced the new Catholic stance as regards Nazareth. The exact findings were still provisional, and Bagatti would continue to dig for a decade, so this article reveals little new evidence. But that is really not its purpose. For the evidence, we must look to the archaeologist’s 1967/69 book,
Excavations in Nazareth
. Yet the main lines of the Church’s position, those that have endured essentially unchanged to this day, are already set forth in Bagatti’s 1955 article.

The article closes with a glowing affirmation of Church doctrine, and with the hope that a new sanctuary, one “truly worthy,” would soon rise on the site:

Conclusions
. – Having terminated this very limited review of the results of the most recent excavation, we can affirm the acquisition of a quite secure understanding of the place, though it is still imperfect in many particulars. It is now assured that the site, which the ultrasecular [
sic
] tradition has known as the House of the Virgin, is in fact situated in an area that was inhabited in the 1
^st
century of our era. We are now able to lay aside any
doubts generated from
[prior]
hypotheses founded on facts that were examined, necessarily, in a superficial way
. The verification offered here guarantees that the new Sanctuary which will succeed the previous, Christianity’s homage to the mystery of the Incarnation, has its reason to exist. We hope that our age will not lag behind those of the past in bringing about something truly worthy.                 (Emphasis added.)

The “doubts generated from [
prior
] hypotheses” are, once again, an allusion to the prewar Kopp-Tonneau thesis. The Church soon fulfilled Bagatti’s hope for a sanctuary of sufficiently stature. Within a year of the article’s publication work began on the immense Shrine of the Annunciation, the largest Christian house of worship in the Middle East.

The Shrine of the Annunciation

The modern Shrine (also called the Church, or Sanctuary) of the Annunciation is 236 ft. long and 102 ft. wide (72×31 m). Its lofty cupola, covered in gleaming copper and surmounted by a lantern, is in the shape of an inverted lily (a symbol associated with Mary), and reaches to an impressive height of 170 ft. (52 m). The Shrine is oriented west to east on the hillside, so that the ground level under the western entrance is about ten meters higher than  under that under the eastern apse (
pre-70
Pt. 5,
Illus
. 3). The edifice was designed by the architects A. Barluzzi (preliminary plan) and G. Muzio (final plan). It is the fifth structure built on the spot, not counting occasional renovations.
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Begun in 1956, the Shrine was essentially completed by 1966, though the formal dedication took place three years later. The decade of construction included the clearing of older structures, floors, and mosaics. During this time, on-site excavations under the supervision of Fr. Bagatti continued.

The Church of the Annunciation (CA) has evoked mixed impressions, ranging from effusive to “ponderous… completely lacking in any grace.”
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Its plan was based on the Crusader church, a three-aisled basilica. The side walls were built on top of the surviving courses of the older walls, and the apses at the east end of the Crusader church were incorporated in the new building. Only at the west end is the modern church shorter than its predecessor. In fact, the Shrine contains two churches. A lower one enshrines the Chapel of the Angel, where in the sixth month (according to the Gospel of Luke) the Archangel Gabriel addressed the Virgin Mary while she was weaving purple and scarlet for the Jerusalem Temple (
Protevangelium of James
). About five meters north of the Chapel of the Angel is a tomb of the kokhim-type (a type prevalent from Hellenistic to early Byzantine times). That tomb has been acknowledged by all, though who was buried there is much debated.
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This is Bagatti’s Tomb 29, and we shall have a good deal to say about it at a later time. Five meters to the west of the Chapel of the Angel is another tomb-complex, also acknowledged by all, containing 4+ burials which have been described by Viaud and Kopp as “kokhim,” and by Bagatti as “Crusader.”
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These tombs will be discussed when we consider evidence for the emerging village of Nazareth.