The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (50 page)

All this must leave the unbiased reader in great puzzlement, for whenever a claim is made regarding either Hellenistic times or the turn of the era,
it is unsubstantiated. Nota bene
that Bagatti demonstrates coins from the third, fourth, and fifth centuries of our era—but none from Hellenistic times nor from the turn of the era. Again, Alexandre opines that some stone walls date to "Hellenistic" times, yet she offers no reason at all for such a remarkable and critical dating. Finally, Pfann
et al
only uncover a VI CE coin in their excavations, but allege that Alexandre (digging at the other end of the Nazareth basin) uncovered coins from Hellenistic and Early Roman times—though Alexandre herself seems to know nothing of such coins. In sum, we have finger-pointing by one archaeologist to another, apparently false imputation of evidence, and unsubstantiated claims that would vitally affect our view of the emergence of Nazareth. This is all akin to archaeological smoke and mirrors, where the object claimed is indeed a prize for the tradition:
Hellenistic and Early Roman evidence.

Non-diagnostic artefacts

As mentioned above, the pottery at the Nazareth Village Farm was dated by Yehudah Rapuano. Those artefacts fall into two categories: non-diagnostic and diagnostic (see Appendix 6a). The difference between categories depends on the presence or absence of a cited parallel. Though a picture, detailed diagram, and scientific description (composition, form, findspot,
etc
.) all help the reader grasp the nature and date of the artefact, only one or more cited parallels to similar objects in the published literature implicitly establish its identity, date, and nature. A parallel allows the reader to verify what would otherwise be the archaeologist's unsubstantiated opinion.

Rapuano itemizes about 75 artefacts, mostly small pottery shards. Of these, only 15 artefacts (20% of itemized finds) are furnished with a typological parallel, invariably to an artefact in the work of Adan-Bayewitz,
Common Pottery in Roman Galilee
(1993, 3 vols., Bar Ilan), which is certainly an acceptable benchmark for dating purposes.

The remaining 60 shards itemized by Rapuano are not accompanied by parallels and hence are non-diagnostic (their characteristics and dating amount to the unverifiable opinion of the archaeologist himself). Even so, most of these unverifiable datings are quite compatible with an appearance ofNazareth after c. 70 CE and pose no problem for the thesis of this book.

At issue is a relatively small number of artefacts, namely, eleven cases where Rapuano
requires
a pre-70 CE dating. These artefacts represent the totality of the NVFR evidence for a pre-70 CE Nazareth. It is revealing that in every one of these cases
no typological parallels
are given. All the artefacts in question are non-diagnostic. Put bluntly, the NVFR evidence for Nazareth in the time of Jesus rests on Y. Rapuano's opinion. He can offer no parallels in the published literature for those pre-70 CE claims. As we have noted, lacking standard parallels, such anomalous claims must be rejected as without substantiation, and hence arbitrary. They are anomalous because these early datings conflict with the panoply of evidence from the rest of the Nazareth basin.

Finally, we should mention that, in eight of the eleven cases under scrutiny, Mr. Rapuano betrays uncertainty when suggesting these early datings. He himself does not seem certain of these venturesome allegations. The archaeologist's equivocation is signaled in Appendix 6a by italicizing the apposite words ("may," "possibly," "could"
etc
.), by the inclusion of a question mark, and by the word "Uncertain."

Diagnostic artefacts

We can repose more confidence in Rapuano's conclusions in those fifteen cases where the archaeologist offers a typological reference to the work of Adan-Bayewitz ("AB") cited above. It can be declared at the outset:
AB
s
dating range of all these "diagnostic" artefacts is commensurate with a post-70 CE beginning/or Nazareth.
In other words, the standard view regarding these controversial artefacts from the NVFR is 'consistent with a post-70 CE beginning for Nazareth. There is absolutely no conflict between the NVFR—properly examined, with its parallels given due consideration—and the emergence of the settlement after the First Jewish War. Similarly, there is absolutely no demonstrable evidence in the NVFR attesting to such a settlement before 70 CE.

AB dates two shards (37:3, 4) to "mid-I BCE to mid-II CE." Perhaps unsatisfied with this broad dating range, Rapuano writes
"evidently
both of the earlier type." Now, this additional and critical step is
non-diagnostic.
It is entirely Rapuano's opinion, quite consistent with his early datings of the eleven non-diagnostic shards discussed above. We must demur and conclude that in every case where Rapuano suggests a pre-70 CE dating, there is no substantiation. We are entirely justified, in these cases, in concluding a post-70 CE dating. We can make this conclusion with confidence due to two facts: (1) the evidence from the rest of the basin dates from mid-I CE onwards (
cf
the kokh tombs and their contents; the oil lamps; the lack of visible evidence from the turn of the era); (2) the dating ranges given by Adan-Bayewitz are entirely commensurate with a post-70 CE dating for all these artefacts.

Rapuano's report on the NVF pottery must be considered tendentious. There is no substantiation for the early datings found therein. Finally, the substantiation which he offers (Adan-Bayewitz) is fully compatible with a Middle Roman emergence of Nazareth.

The Hapizzez and the Caesarea Inscription

In 1962, in the ruins of the ancient synagogue of Caesarea Maritima, three fragments of a gray marble plaque were found dating to the third or fourth centuries of our era.
^[714]
 
 The fragments contain Hebrew letters and form part of a much larger inscription whose nature can be identified from finds elsewhere. The inscription lists the locations to which each of the twenty-four courses (
mishmarot
) of Jewish priests
^[715]
 
were sent sometime after Hadrian’s banishment of all Jews from Jerusalem.

One of the fragments contains the letters
nun-tsade-resh-tav
, “Natsareth.” The recovered pieces allow us to reconstruct the locations of the seventeenth to twentieth courses:

The 17th course Hezir MAMLIAH

The 18th course Hapitses NATSARETH

The 19th course Pethahiah AKHLAH Arab

The 20th course Ezekiel MIGDAL Nunaiya

This is the oldest non-Christian epigraphic evidence for the settlement of Nazareth, and the only mention so far known of the place from a synagogue inscription.
^[716]
  Nazareth has the revealing spelling nun-tsade-resh-tav.
^[717]

The inscription may date as early as
c
. 300 CE, when the Caesarea synagogue was built.
^[718]
  On the other hand it could have been created much later, for such inscriptions from Palestinian synagogues were made as late as the eighth century CE.
^[719]
   

After its discovery the secondary literature quickly began using the inscription as evidence of a first-century CE Nazareth, on the theory that the Hapizzez (also spelled
Hapitses
,
Hapises
) removed to the settlement after the First Jewish Revolt. More recent reports in mainline and conservative publications continue to promote this thesis, such as the following:

Testimony to a town at Nazareth in the first century A.D. comes from fragments of an inscription containing the name Nazareth in Hebrew, found in the Hebrew University excavation in Caesarea in 1962…. This transfer of course to Galilee must have occurred after A.D. 70.
^[720]
 

However, no northward exodus is known after the First Jewish Revolt. In fact, despite the general destruction of the war and the razing of the temple, the priests still hoped for a revival of the holy city:

The overthrow of [
Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt
] led also to the suppression of the sacrificial worship, and therewith the gradual recession of the priesthood from public life. This was only carried out by degrees. It could not for a long time be believed that the disastrous circumstances in which the people were placed were to continue. It seemed to be only a question of the time when the priests should be able again to resume their services. Naturally, all dues were exacted after as well as before the catastrophe… 
^[721]

After the Second Jewish Revolt, on the other hand, “the defeated Jews were expelled from the territory of Jerusalem, renamed Aelia Capitolina by the emperor Hadrian” (Crossan).
^[722]
 
 Jews were not permitted to return to the city for many generations, probably until after the Arab conquests of VII CE. Schürer remarks:

In order to make permanent the purely heathen character of [
Jerusalem
], the Jews still residing there were driven out, and heathen colonists settled in their stead. No Jew was allowed thereafter to enter the territory of the city; if any one should be discovered there he was put to death… At the south gate of the city the figure of a swine is said to have been engraved. The chief religious worship of the city was that of the Capitoline Jupiter, to whom a temple was erected on the site of the former Jewish temple.
^[723]
 

The Hapizzez could have gone up to Nazareth several generations after the revolt:

The priestly division of Hapizzez is listed as located at Nazareth in the Late Roman inscription found at Caesarea. As pointed out above, assuming there is historical reliability in this tradition, the date of resettlement may well be well into the second (or even the third)
century.  (Horsley:110)

Nevertheless, the general exodus from Jerusalem and from Judea immediately after the Bar Cochba revolt must take precedence in our estimation for the transfer of the Hapizzez to Nazareth. The Caesarea inscription offers no support for first-century CE habitation at Nazareth.

The inscription also reveals that in Middle Roman times Nazareth was strictly Jewish, for a priestly course would not have settled in a small mixed town of both Jews and gentiles. Similarly, it is hardly likely that the Hapizzez would have settled in a place that was a center of
minim
. In other words, this inscription is powerful evidence against the Catholic doctrine that Jewish Christians had a presence in Nazareth from the time of Christ.
^[724]
Indeed, it shows us that the settlement had nothing to do with the subsequent growth of Christianity.

Count Joseph of Tiberias

The narrative of Epiphanius

After Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, he rewarded an influential Jew who converted to Christianity with the rank of “Count” (
comes
), and authorized him to build churches in Galilee. One of the towns in which the Count may have built a church was Nazareth.

Our information regarding the wealthy Count Joseph of Tiberias comes exclusively from an extended and rambling narrative embedded in chapter 30 (on the Ebionites) of Epiphanius’
Panarion
, written about the year 375. Epiphanius was a younger contemporary of Count Joseph, and met him about 358 CE
^[725]
 at the latter’s sumptuous home in Scythopolis (Beth Shan). At that time bitter factionalism was raging in the Church between the Nicene (orthodox) and Arian factions. Arianism was on the ascendant, and at the Council of Milan in 355 it was reinstated by Emperor Constantius II as the official state religion. As a major protagonist of the Nicene faction, Epiphanius was in Scythopolis with a few others of similar persuasion in order to receive direction from Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli, a Nicene activist from Italy who was now in jail there. Bishop Eusebius was himself at the heart of the Arian controversy. While in Italy he had been asked by the bishop of Rome (the pope) to petition emperor Constantius for a decision on the Arian question. The emperor duly convened the Council of Milan but—to the chagrin of Eusebius and the pope—its verdict went against the Nicene (though ultimately victorious) faction. Bishops throughout Christendom were forthwith required to condemn Nicene doctrine. Upon his refusal, Bishop Eusebius was exiled to Scythopolis. This was a very Arian town. According to Epiphanius, only two Nicene Christians were to be found in the whole city: Bishop Eusebius and Joseph of Tiberias. To further rub salt in the wound, Eusebius’ jailer was himself an Arian bishop named Patrophilus. Bishop Eusebius refused to accept food from Arians, and (so Epiphanius tells us) he recounted with pride that he almost starved to death on more than one occasion.

The great issue at stake was the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he essentially separate from the Creator of the Universe (and thus by nature fundamentally related to the rest of us)? This was the Arian view though, unlike the Gnostics, Arius did not maintain that Jesus was thoroughly human—a perfected man. Rather, Arius considered Jesus a demigod, “neither fully God nor fully man” in the words of Paul Tillich.
^[726]
  On the other hand, Bishop Athanasius and the Nicene faction considered Christ wholly other in nature, sharing none of the mortality and imperfection of this world. Jesus was God’s inimitable and unique intervention in history,
the
only-begotten Son of God, come down to save those who believe in this very proposition. Eventually, expediency recommended a fusion of the two views: Jesus Christ was mysteriously both man and God: “Jesus” reflected the human aspect, “Christ” the divine aspect. This became the new doctrine of the Great Church. Those who endorsed it were saved. All others were damned.