The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (47 page)

The Pharisees and Rabbis received the monetary contributions formerly given to the temple of Jerusalem.
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 They assumed the former authority of the Sadducees and priests, and “formed now even more exclusively and unrestrictedly than before the rank of the highest authorities among the people.”
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  Their hegemony came just at the time that the “Nazorean” heresy was appearing in Judaism. The Pharisees of Jamnia included an imprecation against such heretics in a prayer to be recited by all Jews thrice daily. Variously called the
Amidah, Shemoneh Esreh
, or simply
Tefillah
(“prayer”), it consisted of eighteen blessings—nineteen when we include the twelfth against the
Notsrim
or
minim
(various wordings are extant), added in the time of Rabbi Gamaliel II (
c
. 100 CE):
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12. To Notsrim let there be no hope, and let all workers of wickedness perish as in a moment; and let all of them speedily be cut off; and humble them speedily in our days. Blessed are You, O Lord, who destroys enemies and humbles tyrants.
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Scribal animosity towards the emerging heresy is amply reciprocated in the New Testament, reflecting a state of affairs that existed not before 70 CE but towards the end of the first century. In the Christian scriptures Jesus often interacts bitingly with haughty scribes and Pharisees in the Galilee, something hardly likely before the war. There is some evidence of early postwar pharisaic activity in the Galilee: Johanan ben Zakkai himself sojourned for some years in Arav (Arab), about 15 km north of Nazareth, where various legal questions were propounded for his decision.”
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  M. Grant writes that “henceforward Galilee, rather than the ancient core of Israel, was destined to become the centre of Jewish population, and it was there in particular that synagogues and schools began to multiply.”
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The Mishna (“Repetition” or “Instruction”) was begun at Jamnia and completed in the Galilee a century later under Rabban Judah the Prince. Other pertinent non-Christian writings of the interwar decades include the
Jewish War
of Josephus Flavius (completed in Rome 75–79 CE) and his
Antiquities
of
the Jews
(
c
. 93–94), written perhaps a decade before the Gospel of Luke.
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In 115 CE, while the emperor Trajan was occupied in the East, multitudes of Jews in Egypt and Cyrene (Libya) rose up and, “as if driven along by the wild spirit of revolution, began to make riots against the non-Jewish inhabitants of the land.”
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  The protracted disturbances— which amounted to a war—were suppressed only by Hadrian upon his accession in 117 CE. This emperor “looked with contempt upon all foreign superstitions” (Schürer). In 130 CE he founded Aelia Capitolina at the site of Jerusalem, now a thoroughly pagan city (Jews had been forbidden to enter the premises of the holy city since 70 CE). Furthermore, Hadrian erected a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish temple. According to Dio Cassius, this last provocation led directly to the Second Jewish Revolt.
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  Spartian adds that a Roman prohibition was enacted which forbade circumcision. This is tantamount to an attempted annihilation of the Jewish faith.
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Nazoreans and Pauline Christians did not participate in the Second Revolt. The former may have been pacifists, while the latter acknowledged Jesus Christ (not Simon bar-Kosiba) as the true messiah. Justin Martyr and Eusebius testify that Jesus-followers were particularly persecuted by the Jews on account of their noncooperation. The Jews managed to liberate Jerusalem before Julius Severus—a distinguished Roman general sent from Britain—quashed the rebellion. The rebels resorted to mountain fastnesses, but they were all eventually exterminated. Dio Cassius writes that fifty fortresses and 985 villages were destroyed, and that 580,000 Jews fell in battle. “All Judea was well-nigh a desert.”
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The Bar Kochba revolt was also very costly for the Romans. So great were his losses that in his letter to the Senate Hadrian omitted the customary introductory formula, “I and the army are well.” However, unlike the situation in 70 CE, Jerusalem was not totally destroyed, for the Romans had plans for the pagan city of Aelia Capitolina. A temple to Jupiter was erected on the temple mount. Several writers tell us that the Jewish population was driven out of the city,
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and, indeed, no Jew was permitted to set foot in it under penalty of death. The forced exodus may have some significance for the settlement of the priestly course of Hapizzez in Nazareth, which occurred sometime after the Second Jewish Revolt (see below).

Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, rescinded the ban on circumcision, but even into the fourth century no Jew was allowed into Jerusalem except on one day out of the year (ninth of Ab, the day of the city’s destruction) for the purpose of mourning.
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The Roman Evidence

In Chapter 4, those artefacts from the Nazareth basin which might date before
c
. 100 CE were reviewed. Special attention was paid to the oil lamps, which are particularly valuable for dating purposes. Together with the fact that kokh tombs appeared in the Galilee only after
c
. 50 CE, it became clear that the settlement of Nazareth did not yet exist at the turn of the era.

Further, we determined that it is not possible to envisage a named settlement of Nazareth before
c
. 100 CE (Chapter 4, p. 206). After the village came into being it grew rapidly, as is attested by the many tombs and a wealth of pottery and oil lamps datable to Middle Roman times. We shall now review the material record of Nazareth in the first centuries of our era.

The structural evidence

The post-Iron Age Nazareth tombs, as shown in Chapter 5,
Illus
.
5.2,
are all of the kokh or later types. There are at least twenty kokh tombs
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 spread widely throughout the basin. Other similar tombs probably existed under the venerated area (Chapter 5, pp. 249–52) as well as on the side of the Nebi Sa‘in. A comprehensive summary of the Nazareth tombs is given in
Appendix 4
. The total number of individual kokh shafts is impressive, amounting to well over one hundred. Were one to include the completely destroyed kokhim, the number of burials would probably double. Each kokh, of course, was used multiple times.
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Kuhnen writes: “Remarkably obvious is the persistence [
Fortleben
] of the kokh type in Galilee…”
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  Nevertheless, two other forms of burial continued side-by-side with this type. (a) The shelf grave (
Bankgrab
) was simply a niche carved lengthwise into a wall of the chamber, forming a shelf on which the body was placed. (b) In a further development, the shelf was dug out to form a sunken pit in which the body was placed. This is called  the trough grave (
Troggrab
). In both the shelf and trough grave, the top of the niche was often rounded or bowed (hence, the German names
Bogenbankgrab
and
Bogentroggrab
) giving these forms of burial a common name:
arcosolium
.

Kuhnen writes that the trough grave became very popular and continued to be hewn as late as the fifth century. However, the kokh tomb was by far the preferred form at Nazareth. Both trough and shelf tombs are hardly represented. K 14 is a trough grave, and from Kopp’s description K 20 appears to have arcosolia.
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In the rubble of the latter two hollowed out niches were identified, one measuring only 80 cm in length. This small grave, perhaps incomplete, may have been designed for an infant or for the placement of an ossuary.

Unfortunately, Bagatti and Kopp do not offer the plan of some of the tombs at Nazareth, and in many cases the damaged state of those recovered does not permit certainty regarding the form of all their chambers. It is clear, however, that the kokh was by far the town’s favored form of burial.

Other than tombs, the structural evidence from Nazareth consists of virtually undatable agricultural installations, as well as masonry remains from the ecclesiastical structures, which date to the fourth century and beyond.
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The many underground passageways which link the agricultural installations under the venerated area (
pre-70
Chapter 5,
Illus
. 5.5) have given rise to the theory that some may have been associated with secret hideaway complexes, known from other places in Palestine.
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  This theory has in turn suggested to a few authors of the secondary literature that the Nazareth complexes are evidence of habitation in the basin during the First Jewish Revolt. However, most of the Judean underground complexes have been dated to the Second Revolt (132–135 CE), as has the first Galilean complex to be published (near H. Ruma).
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  In addition, our review of the material evidence (Chapters 4 and 5) shows that the lowest stratum under the venerated area was funerary. It was only later that the agricultural installations and associated passageways were hewn, which argues against a I CE dating for them. Finally, we note that the Nazareth settlement was only just beginning in late I CE, and it is hardly likely that enough people were present already in 70 CE to hew passageways for defense or any other purpose. Even the first kokh tombs were hardly so early, but appear to date between the two Jewish revolts. In sum, whatever use these passageways served, the weight of material evidence from the basin points to their creation in II CE and thereafter.

The movable finds from Roman-Byzantine Nazareth

These come primarily from four tombs, but there are also many artefacts whose provenance is unknown. Naturally, most of the evidence comes from the venerated area, where systematic excavations have been conducted. Bagatti devotes almost fifty pages of his
Excavations
to objects from that area belonging to “the Hellenistic Roman and Byzantine Periods” (pp. 272–318). We have seen that there are no finds from Hellenistic times (Chapter 3), and have reviewed those which
may
date before 70 CE (Chapter 4). Having determined that no material can with certainty be dated before 100 CE,
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  we shall now continue our review of the Nazareth evidence, focussing on the Middle Roman and Early Byzantine periods.

A substantial body of factual information regarding the material evidence is tabulated in appendices at the end of this book, including
Appendix 4
, “The Nazareth tombs,” which lists the post-Iron Age tombs discovered in the basin, noting those which yielded artefacts, and
Appendix 5
, “Independent datings of Nazareth lamps and pottery,” which offers the opinions of three lamp and pottery specialists: (a) R. Rosenthal and R. Sivan, who date a score of Nazareth oil lamps in their comprehensive catalogue,
Ancient Lamps in the Schloessinger Collection
(1978); (b) F. Fernandez, who dates an equal number of lamps as well as a score of pottery artefacts from Roman times in his monograph
,
Ceramica Comun Romana de la Galilea
(1983).

A note of caution is in order regarding Fernandez’ work, which offers a number of early and unsubstantiated datings contradicted sometimes by Bagatti, sometimes by Rosenthal and Sivan, and sometimes internally by Fernandez himself.
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The Spaniard often dates material found in Nazareth kokh tombs as early as BCE times, which is not possible as the kokh did not arrive in the Galilee until
c
. 50 CE. Florentino Fernandez is a protégé of Father Stanislao Loffreda, whose work at Capernaum and elsewhere (which also backdates a good deal of evidence) has come under growing criticism. In the prologue to his book, Fernandez writes (p. 7): “We owe our initiation into the understanding of Roman pottery to professor S. Loffreda, of the Institute of the Flagellation (Jerusalem).” The work of Fernandez is presented here simply because he itemizes a goodly number of Nazareth artefacts. In
Appendix 5 (B)
,  in each case where Fernandez offers an anomalous early dating, a footnote attests to the fact. It may be noted here that the Spaniard also itemizes a great deal of “unpublished” (
inedito
)
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  Nazareth material not used in these pages. This material ostensibly was available to him while he was in residence at the Franciscan monastery in Nazareth researching his book. Unfortunately, Fernandez does not offer museum number, catalogue information, or any way to locate these “new” objects, which would permit independent verification of their existence and characteristics. Thus, what he writes does not constitute publication as regards these unpublished artefacts, but what amounts to unverifiable claims in their regard. This is particularly germane to our discussion, for Fernandez claims extraordinarily early dates for some of these unpublished objects, implausibly stretching the period of their use well back into the first century BCE (in contradiction to the views of other specialists). Even were every one of Fernandez’ early chronological claims honored, however, the main thesis of this book would not be in jeopardy, for his early timespans invariably extend to include part of the period of kokh tomb use,
i.e
., post-50 CE. What this means is that one could honor all of Fernandez’ improbable claims and quite adequately defend the thesis that people resettled the basin after the First Jewish War. To proceed along these lines, however, would give the Spaniard more than his due, for he is using material which cannot be admitted as evidence, and is drawing extraordinary conclusions therefrom.