The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (13 page)

The upper church of the CA is decorated with the work of artists from many different countries, centering on the Marian theme. Behind the altar a huge mosaic shows Christ in glory, with Peter and Mary beside him. Between the upper and lower churches is a large octagonal opening, called the “oculus,” from which those above can meditate upon the Chapel of the Angel below, and those below can gaze up into the grand inverted lily-cupola rising heavenwards.

The
Dictionnaire de la Bible (1960)

Five years after writing the 1955 article, Bagatti penned a substantial piece on Nazareth for the
Dictionnaire de la Bible
.
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Unlike the journal
Liber Annuus
, which has a modest circulation principally among Franciscans, the
Dictionnaire
was in its time the pre-eminent Christian reference work in the French language, intended for a broad readership. In Bagatti’s
Dictionnaire
article, the archaeologist does not state his position as boldly as in his 1955 writing. The article begins with a one-sentence summation of the Church’s position:

The ancient village
. On the slope of the hill, between the Church of St. Joseph
and that of the Annunciation, abundant and characteristic remains have been found which permit the localization of the ancient village, already existing in Iron II.
^[151]

It is a complex, calculated, and curious sentence. It is also incorrect. The remains are not “characteristic” of  a village, by which Bagatti surely means habitations. The remains are agricultural and funerary, but not domestic. The emphasis upon habitations specifically localized at the venerated sites is a false thesis that will be continually stressed by Bagatti, no doubt in order to substantiate the traditional sites of Joseph’s and Mary’s dwellings.
^[152]
Those remains do not permit “the localization of the ancient village” on the slope of the Nebi Sa‘in, but rather the localization only of its agricultural area and necropolis.

In fact, we do not have “characteristic remains” for Nazareth. Such remains of a village include foundations of houses, hearths, perhaps a city wall, temple, coins, weapons and ornaments, possibly an epigraphic inscription or two. But Bagatti cannot mean these, for none have been claimed at Nazareth prior to Byzantine times. What we have in the published reports is indirect evidence of the pre-Byzantine village culled from the periphery of that village, from tombs and agricultural installations. All the ancient pottery, movable objects, and structures that have been found, as far as we can tell, are funereal and agricultural. In other words, it is not possible to speak of “characteristic remains” of the ancient village, for to date no archaeologist has excavated the inhabited part of ancient Nazareth.

Bagatti’s statement that the village was “already existing in Iron II” is a mild insinuation of the doctrine of continuous habitation. This, in contrast to the
Liber Annuus
article, where we read explicit statements of a village “already in the Iron Age and continuing even up to our days”; “on the site uninterruptedly across the eras”; and (for good measure) “inhabited in the first century of our era.” As we have seen, archaeologists have not offered evidence from the Babylonian and Persian eras. The “abundant” remains mentioned by Bagatti in the above citation are grossly misdated, even if only by implication. They do not follow the Iron Age, but belong to much later times – in fact, to eras beginning with the Middle Roman.

We must now parse more exactly what Bagatti writes. The operative word in the final phrase is “already” (
déjà
). The phrase would be correct without it, for a village was indeed existing in Iron II. Thus the word is incorrect, as might be an erroneous insertion. When a single word is at issue, it can be claimed that we are dealing merely with poor word choice, or perhaps with imperfect translation from the Italian. But this insinuation – that habitation continued uninterruptedly through the centuries – cannot be inadvertent, for it also occurs later in the article. After a discussion of the Iron Age silos, the archaeologist writes:

“But if, as seems evident, this agricultural character continued until the time of the Lord…” (col. 325).
^[153]

Here, the operative word is “continued.” Once again, it implies the doctrine of continuous habitation, suggested merely as a possibility. If it indeed existed, such continuity of agricultural character would have left evidence dating to the six centuries before Christ. Such evidence clearly exists, for example, in the Iron Age silos discussed in Chapter 1.
^[154]
But that evidence equally clearly comes to an end in the Iron Age. So, without evidence, we must repudiate Bagatti’s statement. It does
not
seem evident that the “agricultural character” continued until the time of the Lord.

Because the average reader cannot be expected to examine the evidence contained in the primary reports, both scholar and layperson will naturally take passages such as the above at face value. Reading the above citation, one will suppose that the village of Nazareth came into existence either in the Bronze or the Iron Period and continued until the time of Christ. One supposes this even though Bagatti does not speak of a village, but of its “agricultural character.” The inference is clear, however: agriculture requires people. This is precisely what the Church wishes the reader to believe. It is the doctrine of continuous habitation, now coyly insinuated.

The remainder of Bagatti’s 1960 article (selectively) reviews evidence from the Church of the Annunciation, references to Nazareth in the Church Fathers, and the history of pilgrim accounts. It also offers a short section on “other traditions,” in which the author considers “delicate” points such as precisely where Jesus was raised. We shall have cause to return to this article from time to time in our discussion of the Hellenistic and later periods.

A remark is in order regarding the gross chronological error evident in the above discussion. Though only by implication, Bagatti is looking at Roman-Byzantine agricultural installations and suggesting they followed the Iron Period. The error involves over five hundred years. So it is, that the greatest errors are sometimes made in a most casual, almost imperceptible manner. Later, we shall see that Bagatti transposes Roman tombs to Crusader times,
^[155]
and fourth-century CE graffiti to first-century CE.
^[156]
We have already encountered similar chronological confusion in the writings of C. Kopp, who was capable of transposing Middle Roman agricultural installations back two millennia into Middle Bronze times.
^[157]
Such incredible misdating is persistent and rampant in the Roman Catholic literature on Nazareth. It is capable of producing sufficient error that even the Great Hiatus can be covered up – all eight hundred years. Grossly misdated evidence, together with vague generalities (which abound in the literature) can also produce a village in the time of Jesus. Of course, such methodology is unworthy of true scholarship, yet it is unfortunately shared by a number of those who have published on Nazareth. As we have seen, the error is sometimes made obliquely rather than directly, by generality, by implication, by conclusion. No specificity is required, nor desired. In a sense this is safer than the overt misdating of an artefact for, being vague, it is harder to detect. Sometimes Bagatti is capable of vagueness to the point of almost total obscurity. He writes of “agricultural character” and “abundant and characteristic remains.” Without specific evidence, however, what do those words mean?

There are a few exceptional cases where Bagatti and others venture to attribute specific evidence to the “lost centuries” of the Great Hiatus. To anticipate the next chapter for a moment, some cases involve the Hellenistic period. Those few attributions – repeatedly stressed in the literature – are all misdatings. In addition, we shall see that several writers attribute a great deal of evidence to the first century CE, a period laden with meaning for the Church. But we shall find that such evidence is in each case—and without exception—later Roman or Byzantine. This ubiquitous chronological confusion, compounded with error and a penchant for generality, produces a thick, opaque curtain masking the truth of Nazareth.

The antidotes are specificity, precision, systematic analysis, and continual recourse to the finds in the ground, that is, to the primary evidence. With these tools one can address the grotesquely contorted view of Nazareth currently held by tradition, a view based on innumerable imprecise and actually false claims made in the scholarly literature. The purpose of those claims is clear. It is,
in the absence of evidence
, to establish a settlement at Nazareth in the time of Christ. The only way to do this is through invention.

The last several cited statements of Bagatti, taken together, make up the classic formulation of the doctrine of continuous habitation: settlement has existed at and around the Franciscan property in Nazareth from the Bronze Age to the present. In fact, the claim is groundless. But because it is stated by the principle archaeologist at the site, it has been propagated in the secondary literature and assumes a number of forms (see below).

The silos and cisterns

In Palestine, cisterns first appeared in the Early Bronze Age and were usually lined by plaster or stone. They were used for the storage of wine and oil, and for the collection of rainwater in places where there is little naturally-occurring fresh water.
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They were useful when settling areas that had few springs or that were at some distance from water.
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Communal cisterns were sometimes large and complex, as those found at Megiddo and some other cities. No communal water system has been found in the Nazareth basin.

It is a pity that careful stratigraphical methods were not employed in the Nazareth excavations for, in their absence, cavities in the ground are difficult to date. An exception is if the archaeologist is lucky enough to find datable pottery and other items inside them (as in Silos 22 and 57, which date those cavities to the Iron Age).

As mentioned previously, a plethora of silos and cisterns exists in the venerated area. The sheer number of these storage hollows (68 under the Franciscan convent alone) has been used as evidence for the doctrine of continuous habitation. Presumably, their great number indicated to Bagatti that people have lived continuously in the area for thousands of years. There is the shade of this suggestion in Bagatti’s last-mentioned citation, now expanded:

La présence de ces nombreux silos
ne peut cependant pas nous obliger à accepter l’idée que les parents de Jésus fussent des agriculteurs (Eusèbe, Hist. eccl., III, c. xx), ni à partager l’impression qu’en ressentit l’Anonyme de Plaisance en 570:
Provincia similis paradiso, in tritico et in frugis similis Aegipto, modica quidem, sed praecellit Aegyptum in vino et oleo et poma. Melium extra natura altum nimis, super statum hominis talea grossa
(Geyer, Itinera, 161; Baldi,
Enchiridion locorum sanctorum
, 2
^e
éd., Jérusalem, 1955, n.5). Mais si, comme il semble évident, ce caractère agricole s’était maintenu jusqu’au temps du Seigneur, il pouvait avoir influé sur le jugement peu bienveillant qu’on portait alors sur les habitants du village (Joa,. I, 46).

The “negative judgment” reflected in the Gospel of John (1:46) can hardly be explained by the simple fact that the Nazarenes were peasant farmers. Something stonger lay behind Nathanael’s comment, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” We get an indication of it in Luke’s account (4:16–30), where the inhabitants of Nazareth attempt to throw Jesus to his death. For now, we shall defer this interesting topic and focus on the archaeological point, namely, that from the mere presence of silos in the venerated area Bagatti sees cause to discuss whether the family of Jesus was involved in agriculture. His logic has taken him far beyond the evidence. Of course, it remains to be proved whether those silos even existed in Jesus’ time, whether he grew up in the vicinity, and so on. Thus, the archaeologist bypasses all sorts of evidentiary hurdles on the basis of a preconception, one based on the gospel accounts. If we remove that preconception, then the ridiculousness of his enormous leap of faith becomes apparent: he sees storage pits in the ground and considers whether the family of Jesus was involved in agriculture.

Bagatti similarly rejects this conclusion on literary grounds. He sees that it contradicts the tradition that Joseph was a carpenter (again based on the gospel record—Mt 13:55). It is clear in all this that the Italian is not functioning as an archaeologist, but as a stalwart defender of tradition.

Bagatti’s reference to Eusebius is also far afield. In the Church Father’s curious story the emperor Domitian (late I CE) summons the poor relatives of Jesus (to Rome?) for questioning and haughtily dismisses them. The church father is writing in the fourth century CE and reporting on an incident over two centuries earlier. What is to prevent this story from being pure fable? According to Eusebius, the relatives told the emperor that they were farmers, thus providing the link (in Bagatti’s mind) to the venerated area of Nazareth. But the home village of the relatives is not even mentioned in Eusebius’ account. If we take the story at face value, those alleged relatives could come from anywhere at all.