The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (35 page)

When authors declare that Nazareth came into existence in Hellenistic times, the natural inference is that the settlement continued into Roman times and subsequently until today. Reading the above citation, no one would suppose that Nazareth was abandoned in Roman or later times. We similarly encounter a number of cursory statements in the literature which claim Hellenistic beginnings for the village. They are oblique, yet strong, endorsements of settlement at Nazareth in the time of Christ.

On the same page as the above passage, Crossan and Reed allude to various general categories of evidence:     

[B]eginning in  the late second century BCE, numerous settlements appear across Galilee with coins
from the Jerusalem-based Hasmoneans in their foundations and with a material culture similar to that of Judea.Pottery
forms and types were similar; both Judea and Galilee used stone vessels; villages contained stepped, plastered pools, or ritual baths; the people’s diets avoided pork; and they practiced secondary burial as bones were gathered into ossuaries, or bone boxes.

The people of Nazareth at the time of Jesus
were Jews, very likely the descendants of Hasmonean
colonizers or Jewish settlers who migrated there over a century earlier.

This passage speaks of “Nazareth at the time of Jesus” and mentions several categories of evidence that we have discussed—stone vessels, ritual baths, and ossuaries. No ossuaries were found in the Nazareth basin and, in any case, ossuary use dates only from the turn of the era—too late to validate a village already in the time of Christ. The “ritual baths” were wine collecting vats dating to Middle Roman times and thereafter. The stone vessels were indeed current at the turn of the era, but their use continued into II CE—quite compatible with our scenario of a post-70 beginning for the settlement. The fact that “people’s diets avoided pork” is not a criterion for dating. It cannot even enter into a discussion of the character of the settlement—Jewish or gentile—because from our current knowledge and from the rather poorly-conducted excavations, there is simply no way to determine what the early Nazarenes ate.

Crossan and Reed also write that “Numerous settlements appear across Galilee with coins from the Jerusalem-based Hasmoneans in their foundations.” This fact has no specificity to Nazareth. Hasmonean coins have indeed been found in Galilee, but the earliest coin in the basin is Late Roman (mid-IV CE).
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We have no evidence at all that the Hasmoneans settled Nazareth.

Finally, the statement that “
Pottery
forms and types at Nazareth were similar to those in Judea
” lacks any chronological reference (as do the other points above). In fact, the pottery forms and types found at Nazareth are not Hellenistic-Early Roman, but Middle Roman and later.

Thus, there is no justification at all for Crossan and Reed’s concluding remark: “The people of Nazareth at the time of Jesus were Jews, very likely the descendants of Hasmonean colonizers or Jewish settlers who migrated there over a century earlier.”
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None of the above points offers evidence for settlement at Nazareth at the time of Christ, let alone during Hellenistic times.

C.
Fairly recently, conflicting information has appeared in the scholarly literature regarding stone vessels (above, pp. 181
ff
). J. Reed considers the Nazareth vessels “particularly significant” Early Roman evidence:

The publications of the limited Franciscan excavations at Nazareth cite four stone vessels and a
miqweh
, and the tombs outside the ancient village are
kokhim
style, with many ossuary fragments strewn about… The finds of stone vessels are particularly significant. Since they went out of use in the first century, their fragmentary presence in Middle or Late Roman Period fill indicates their use at the site in earlier periods.
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The logic and data in this passage are faulty. As we have seen, the “four stone vessels” are four fragments of two vessels, a stone jar and a stone goblet. Reed’s categorical statement that stone vessels went out of use in the first century CE is also incorrect. Specialists are unanimous that handmade stone vessels continued in production and use well into the second century CE—at least until the Second Jewish War.

The presence of stone vessels in Middle Roman Period fill does not indicate or even suggest use of the site in earlier periods, as Reed states. On the contrary, it is entirely compatible with the settlement of Nazareth beginning after 70 CE,
i.e
., in Middle Roman times.

Elsewhere, the same author writes:

At Reina, a few kilometers from Nazareth and Sepphoris, a stone-vessel manufacturing site has also been found at a calcite outcropping; based on matches found in first-century contexts at Sepphoris, it certainly dates to the first century B.C.E. or C.E.
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Once again Reed misdates the stone vessel industry. It began toward the turn of the era and continued until the Bar Kokhba revolt. Consistent with the other early evidence, the stone vessel fragments found at Nazareth date between the two Jewish revolts.

D.
In Part Three we discussed an assemblage of approximately 100 shards excavated by Bagatti in 1970 adjacent to the Church of St. Joseph.
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By Bagatti’s own admission, multiple problems attended this excavation. The area was “disturbed,” the shards may have come from outside the area excavated, and no stratigraphy was attempted. In his article, “Scavo presso la chiesa di S. Giuseppe a Nazaret,” the archaeologist claimed that two of the shards were “Hellenistic.”
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Our analysis showed that they have no demonstrable Hellenistic traits. In fact, it is impossible to tell what the shards are, for they are mutilated, very small, and not even in agreement with the diagrams furnished.
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Jack Finegan refers to this excavation but entirely omits mention of the Hellenistic period, referring instead to the turn of the era:

In 1970 Bellarmino Bagatti
excavated along the north wall
of the [
Church of St. Joseph
] and in some of the grottoes under the wall. When the medieval church was excavated in 1892 much debris was piled here, and in the piles of debris Bagatti
found in inverse order (as thrown out in the excavations) pottery
fragments from the Iron Age to the Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader periods; and in the grottoes likewise he found Roman as well as Crusader pottery,
thus the site was certainly inhabited in the first century B.C. and the first century A.D. as well as earlier and later
.
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  (Emphasis added.)

Finegan’s linking of this evidence to the turn of the era is as untenable as was Bagatti’s linking of it to the Hellenistic period. There are two primary reasons: (1) Both conclusions are dependent on a manifestly flawed excavation (the site was disturbed, no stratigraphy attempted, the shards tiny, the documentation incorrect).
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(2) The only movable finds from this excavation between the Iron Age and Middle Roman times (and hence those used by Finegan also for his conclusion) are the two questionable “Hellenistic” shards, mentioned above.
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Finegan’s claim of “pottery fragments from the Iron Age to the Roman” is the doctrine of continuous habitation discredited in Chapter Two. It is based on two tiny shards from St. Joseph, for other than those shards there is
nothing
in the excavation upon which Finegan’s over-arching conclusion could rest.

When one realizes how slight is the actual evidence upon which such grand Nazareth conclusions reside—“continuous habitation,” “the time of Christ,” “the Hellenistic Age,” “Early Roman times,” “from the Iron Age to Roman times,”
etc
.—then one recognizes the absurdity of placing confidence in those conclusions. The two shards that underlie both Bagatti’s and Finegan’s evidence for approximately eight hundred years
could not be more tenuous
.
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E.
Though this entry is not strictly from the “secondary” literature (it was authored by Bagatti), it reviews Richmond’s short 1931 report
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and hence is included here. Regarding the six oil lamps which Richmond incorrectly called “Hellenistic,” Bagatti acknowledges Richmond’s error and correctly redates the lamps to II–III CE. Having removed one problem, however, he then introduces another which is equally inappropriate:

Tomb No 72
(fig. 3 D1). In this place there are several kokhim
tombs, but the plan of one only is given with a description of the objects, by the one time Director of Antiquities in Palestine T. Richmond. It had lamps, which are round and have a concavity; they were in use in 2
^nd
–3
^rd
cent.; a glass
pendant with a lion and according to Richmond
other “Herodian” objects.  (
Exc
. 242)

Bagatti does not mention the word “Hellenistic,” and his dating “2
^nd
–3
^rd
cent.” can only mean “CE” (an interesting omission, for the four centuries between II BCE and III CE are precisely the issue at stake). The archaeologist’s quaint terminology—“lamps, which are round and have a concavity”—is his customary euphemism for a common Roman lamp type. Typical mould-made lamps of Middle-Late Roman times are round and have a concavity or depressed area towards the center of the discus.
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It is not a firm rule. In fact, Bagatti’s description does not pertain to the Richmond lamps, an issue we have already treated.
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We are most interested here in the final phrase: “
according to Richmond
there were other ‘Herodian’ objects” (emphasis added). This is Bagatti’s invention, for Richmond does not use the word “Herodian.” Bagatti is essentially placing words in the other’s mouth. He has, in effect, expunged “Hellenistic” and substituted the equally incorrect “Herodian.” Both terms are highly-charged when associated with the Nazareth evidence. They are particularly prized by the tradition, for both firmly support the orthodox view that the settlement existed in the time of Christ. When it became obvious to Bagatti that the one term (“Hellenistic”) was not defensible, he substituted the other (“Herodian”), which is somewhat easier to defend.

As we have seen, “Herodian” is a misnomer when associated with a good deal of the Nazareth evidence—kokhim tombs and oil lamps. We have dated the incipience of bow-spouted (“Herodian”) lamps at Nazareth to between
c
. 25 CE and
c
. 135 CE. This is too late for the time of Jesus, and it effectively removes these lamps—the earliest datable Roman artefacts—as evidence for a village at the time of Christ.

Other considerations

The site of the “casting down”

Much ink has been spilled regarding where exactly the ancient Nazarenes took Jesus and attempted to cast him to his death (Lk 4:29).
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Some scholars have written of “unsurmountable topographical difficulties.”
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Others have pointed out that not far from the venerated area, about 350 m to the north, is a sheer cliff. It is on the flank of the Nebi Sa‘in and is popularly called the Mensa Christi, a great rock outcropping near the Maronite Church. Perhaps the site is appropriate, though its steep slope is no greater than twenty meters.
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Perhaps, again, the site is not impressive enough, for today the casting down is memorialized at the Jebel Qafza (“Mount of the Leap”), over 2 km south of the Nazareth basin. Perhaps this roundish hill was chosen because it is visible from all directions. All these considerations primarily refer to the scriptural story and not to archaeology. E. Robinson, when he visited Nazareth in 1841, wrote:

The monks have chosen for the scene of this event the Mount of the Precipitation, so called; a precipice overlooking the plain of Esdraelon, nearly two miles South by East of Nazareth. Among all the legends that have been fastened on the Holy Land, I know of no one more clumsy than this; which presupposes that in a popular and momentary tumult, they should have had the patience to lead off their victim to an hour’s distance, in order to do what there was an equal facility for doing near at hand.
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