The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (51 page)

Count Joseph was already an old man of seventy
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 when he hosted Epiphanius and his co-religionists. Bishop Eusebius of Vercelli was also in attendance that day. Twenty years would pass before Epiphanius wrote down his memories of the meeting, and this is only one reason to suspect the particulars of the extended narrative. Anyone familiar with Epiphanius’ writings knows how prone to exaggeration, suspect, or plain wrong the church father is on a multitude of points. In this case, it does not add to our confidence that Epiphanius himself admits he is not sure of details, and may well have confused certain things due to passage of time.
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The same problem that affected the amanuensis had also affected his narrator, for in 358 CE the Count himself was retelling events that occurred decades before—“in the latter days of Constantine,” that is, prior to 337 CE.
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  Faulty recollections are, however, but one consideration when evaluating whether and where Joseph built churches. In relating the Count’s sometimes fantastic, lurid, and ever boastful stories, we may wonder how much creativity entered into Epiphanius’ narrative due, on the one hand, to Joseph’s simply impressing upon his guests what they wanted to hear and, on the other hand, to the church father’s customary indulgence in an overheated imagination.

The main elements of the Count’s story are as follows. He was raised in the Jewish religion and held the prestigious post of
shaliach
, priestly envoy of the Sanhedrin based in Tiberias. Among other official duties, Joseph was responsible “for traveling to the various communities to collect monies for the patriarchate.”
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  In this capacity he traveled as far as Cilicia, 350 miles to the north. His duties also included personally waiting upon the patriarch, for Joseph was one of a few men who stood next in rank. When the patriarch was on his deathbed he arranged to be secretly baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, by a Christian who came to him in disguise. Joseph secretly witnessed the baptism through the keyhole of the door. Deeply concerned, he wondered for a long time at what he had seen, but divulged the knowledge to no one. After the patriarch died, Joseph secretly entered the
gazophylacium
, which Epiphanius describes as the patriarchate’s treasury. Joseph expected to find money, but instead came upon only old scrolls and books. To his great astonishment, Christian scriptures were among these writings, including the Gospels of Matthew and John.
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  Joseph read them and was deeply affected. But he was still not entirely convinced. “My heart was hardened,” Joseph explained apologetically.

As it happened, before the patriarch died he had entrusted his son to the care of Joseph and of another elder. The boy, by the name of Ellel, was to inherit the patriarchate when he came of age. However, Joseph was greatly concerned for the child, who was of an unruly nature. The Count explained to his distinguished guests that when Ellel reached the age of full vigor he fell in with the wrong sort and learned some bad habits, including black magic, “unholy sexual unions,” and the art of seducing women in cemeteries.
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Bishops Epiphanius, Eusebius, and Count Joseph’s other astonished guests learned, however, that Ellel met his match at the Gadara hot springs. There the young man’s eyes fell upon a particularly beautiful girl and, as usual, Ellel wished to do unmentionable things with her body. However, he had not the least success, for—the Count solemnly explained—she was a Christian. Thereupon the boy immediately ceased going with his friends, convinced that their magic was worthless.

Joseph had several dreams in which Christ appeared to him. But he continued to resist conversion, and even became seriously ill over this. When he was thought to be dying, a revered Jewish elder came to him and whispered in his ear: “Believe in Jesus, crucified under Pontius Pilate the governor, Son of God first yet later born of Mary; the Christ of God and risen from the dead. And believe that he will come to judge and quick and the dead.”
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In a dream, Jesus spoke to Joseph: “Lo, I heal you; only rise up and believe!” Miraculously, Joseph recovered from his illness. But his heart was so hardened that he still remained obstinate. At this point the Lord made known to Joseph that, in order to prove the Christian faith, he would be permitted to work one miracle. Joseph thereupon searched the streets of Tiberias and seized a naked madman, brought him to his house, sprinkled him with holy water, and sternly intoned: “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified, begone from him, demon, and let him be made whole!”
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 The madman fell down, drooled, retched, rubbed his forehead, and came to his senses.

At this point Saint Epiphanius, writing twenty or more years after the fact, may have been overcome by emotion at the spectacle of the retching and drooling madman suddenly made well. Perhaps to calm his nerves the Church Father got up and had a glass of wine or two, for he forgot that the boy’s name was Ellel and throughout the remainder of the story calls him Judas.
 
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 In any case, when Judas reached full maturity he was deemed fit to assume the full duties of the patriarchate.
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To repay Joseph for raising him, Judas sent the older man to Cilicia with official authorization to collect the first fruits and tithes from the Jews of that distant province, a task the eager Joseph proceeded to carry out without delay. It appears that while in Cilicia

Joseph demoted a number of rabbis, sacked others and, in Epiphanius’ opinion, generally did “what would make for the establishment of good order.”
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 To Joseph’s surprise, animosity grew against him in Cilicia. The Count carefully explained to the assembled bishops the real reason behind the hatred of the Cilician Jews: they had seen him reading in the Christian scriptures. He explained how they bound him, dragged him into the synagogue, whipped him, and finally threw him into the river. Through an unspecified miracle, however, Joseph escaped.

Ostracized from his inherited faith, Joseph finally accepted Christian baptism.
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Without delay he hastened to Constantinople, presented himself to Emperor Constantine, and explained that he “was a Jew of the highest rank, and how divine visions kept appearing to him, since the Lord was summoning him to His holy calling and to the salvation of His faith and knowledge.”
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 Greatly moved, the emperor not only rewarded Joseph with the rank of Count, but also urged him to ask a boon.

Count Joseph humbly asked for official sanction to carry forward the Christian cause in the Holy Land, by liberating “those Jewish towns and villages where no one had ever been able to found churches, since there are no Greeks, Samaritans or Christians among the population.”
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 The emperor immediately had an official letter drawn up, authorized a draft on the imperial treasury, and placed Joseph on a salary.
 
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The one who had left as a
Shaliach
returned to his hometown as an Imperial Christian emissary, Count Joseph of Tiberias. He saw to it forthwith that part of a pagan temple was made available for Christian use. The Count insisted to his guests that he also completed buildings in Sepphoris and “certain other towns.”
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 He finally settled in Scythopolis, a city of mixed Jewish and gentile populations, a very wealthy man.
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 And with that we come to the end of Count Joseph of Tiberias’ story.

The count was eventually canonized. That signal religious honor is certainly consistent with his being the first to build churches in places previously hostile to the faith, as well as with his ardent championing of Nicene Christianity. The Church celebrates the life of St. Joseph of Tiberias on July 22, a nameday he shares with Saint Mary Magdalene.

Did Count Joseph build a church in Nazareth?

It is of course difficult to place confidence in Epiphanius’ narrative of Count Joseph, which does not even preserve the names of the principal characters throughout. In all, the engineering accomplishments of the Count rest on two tenuous statements: that Joseph “finished a small church” in Tiberias and “completed buildings in Diocaesarea and certain other towns.”
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The claim regarding Diocaesarea is immediately suspect, for “no external literary or archaeological evidence for any fourth century church” in Diocaesarea has yet come to light, despite many years of excavating.
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The single mention of Nazareth in Epiphanius’ narrative (30.12.9) does not relate directly to the building activities of Joseph, but to the unmixed character of its Jewish population. The statement tells us that no gentiles were in “Tiberias, Diocaesarea, Sepphoris, Nazareth and Capernaum.” This list is too long by at least one name, for Diocaesarea
was
Sepphoris. With the exception of Nazareth, all the places named were known to have mixed populations. In rabbinic times Capernaum even had a reputation as a seat of
minim
.
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In short, Epiphanius’ statements are of virtually no value for establishing the certainty of Joseph’s activity in Nazareth, nor even for establishing probability. We can (charitably) speak only in terms of “possibility.” Nevertheless, the possibility is real. The contemporary building program of Constantine and Helena, and the apparent involvement of the Count in that program, suggest that Joseph of Tiberias may well have been responsible for the first Christian shrine in Nazareth.

If  Count Joseph was indeed active in Nazareth then, given the thoroughly Jewish nature of the village, it is entirely likely that he had to virtually force his way into the town, and could only have effected a Christian edifice there with official sanction.
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 This probably underlies Epiphanius’ account of Joseph presenting himself to the emperor and receiving a commission. It is unlikely that the commission was purely Joseph’s idea, one due entirely to his piety. Both Constantine and his mother were zealous church-builders. The emperor instigated the building of a great basilica at the site of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, built the original Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the first Church of St. Peter in Rome, and lesser churches in other towns.
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 He was no doubt looking for those who would carry out this Christian building policy in other parts of the empire.

The empress mother Helena was similarly engaged. During her visit to the Holy Land in 326 she founded basilicas on the Mount of Olives and at Bethlehem. She was also very interested in gaining converts to the newly-sanctioned religion. Possibly meeting with Helena on her trip, the young Joseph may have been inspired to convert, and also to make himself a useful proxy of the imperial church-building program in the region.

There is tenuous archaeological confirmation in Nazareth of a simple church which may go back to Joseph of Tiberias. From her careful study of the area under the Church of the Annunciation, Joan Taylor suspects that the place of the altar mentioned by Egeria (
c
. 383 CE) is detectable in the east-facing apse of the later Byzantine church. She writes:

It would appear that this was where the altar was placed in the earliest period of the cave’s Christian use. This coheres with Egeria’s remarks that an altar was placed in a cave…

The site of the Shrine of the Annunciation, once part of a wine-pressing complex, was converted to Christian use, probably to encourage pilgrimage,
c
. 335…

…Joseph of Tiberias, who, though a Jew who converted to Christianity, was not a sectarian Jewish-Christian, but almost an envoy of Constantine. He wished to encourage Christian belief in the Jewish heartland, and appears to have convinced the Jews of Nazareth and Capernaum that it would be prudent to allow Christians to visit.

In the case of Nazareth, the so-called Jewish-Christian synagogue-church seems to be the structure built by Joseph (
c
. 335), and nothing would suggest that the area was venerated prior to this time.
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Though we are far from certain, it is very possible that Count Joseph built the first Christian shrine in Nazareth.
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Who was buried where?

We recall that an enigmatic grave lies under the Church of the Annunciation, one known in these pages as Tomb 29. The earliest archaeologists (Vlaminck, Viaud—Chapter 5) considered the possibility that a member of the Holy Family was buried there, but noted the impossibility of this due to the Jewish prohibition against dwelling in the vicinity of tombs. Nevertheless, the grave required explanation, and its proximity to the Chapel of the Angel indicated a very special interment. Kopp suggested that “a saint was venerated here.”
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 The legendary martyr Conan, of the family of the Lord, was suggested.
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 Count Joseph of Tiberias was also suggested.