The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (23 page)

An echo of the above citation begins the section in
Excavations
entitled, “Pottery of the Hellenistic [
sic
!] Roman and Byzantine Periods”:

In dealing with the excavations around the venerated Grotto we have treated also many shards because they served to suggest a date. As we have said, some shards belong to the Hellenistic period, others to the Roman and many to the Byzantine.
^[285]

Direct paraphrases are found in NIDBA and in Jack Finegan’s
The
Archaeology of the New Testament
.
^[286]
Of course, we have systematically seen that the “Hellenistic” shards Bagatti claims invariably belong either to the Iron Age or to Roman times.

• E
. Related to the preceding is the following overall summary by Bagatti:

We have met with only few traces of the Hellenistic period, but there are many elements of the Roman period.

The location in the concluding remarks of
Excavations in Nazareth
assure that this sentence has been widely read. Also in the same vein is a 1977 assessment by Bagatti (
EAEHL
, “Nazareth,” p. 921):

Potsherds from the Israelite, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods and the Middle Ages were also found.

The above statement would correspond to the evidence in the ground if the word “Hellenistic” were removed.

• F.
  “Hellenistic” occurs in passing in the opening sentence of “The Necropolis of Nazareth,” also from Bagatti’s
Excavations
(p. 237):

The
necropolis of the Bronze Period was found, at least in part, in the zone of our excavations and also during the construction of shops near the Tiberias road. That of the Iron Period, as those of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, are all outside the Franciscan area.

Coherent with the evidence found in them, the kokh tombs at Nazareth (discussed above) must themselves be dated to Roman times. In short, there was no Hellenistic necropolis at Nazareth.

• G.
Finally, mention can be made of two Hellenistic claims published in short reports authored by Yardenna Alexandre. During May 1998 a small excavation was conducted
c
. 100 m NW of the Church of St. Joseph. A brief report (unsigned) was published in
Hadashot Arkheologiyot.
^[287]
The pertinent sentence reads: “Sherds from the Iron Age,
Hellenistic
, Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk and Ottoman periods were found on the bedrock” (emphasis added). No description, itemization, or diagram is furnished and the number and nature of these shards is not known. In a personal communication to this author the archaeologist wrote that the finds were minimal and that she has nothing to add beyond the published report. Given the lack of even rudimentary information on the shards, we must consider this an unsubstantiated Hellenistic claim.

Ms. Alexandre conducted another excavation in 1997–98 in the Fountain Square and adjacent St. Gabriel’s Square of Nazareth (next to Mary’s Well). This excavation was under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Government Tourist Ministry, in the context of the Nazareth 2000 development program (an ambitious initiative designed to stimulate tourism). According to personnal correspondence with the archaeologist, a short report on this excavation is scheduled for publication in
Hadashot Arkheologiyot
. Ms. Alexandre graciously shared an advance copy of the report with me. Unfortunately, it again lacks specificity as regards description, itemization, or illustrations of discrete finds, which constitute the requirements of verification, so important in this context. Ms. Yardenna writes:

The main excavations were carried out under the modern 1960s concrete Fountain House, which was demolished with the aim of reconstructing the ruined Ottoman stone Fountain House. The archaeological remains exposed dated from the Roman, the Crusader, the Mamluk and the Ottoman periods.  From the Roman period part of a covered dressed stone channel was exposed, as well as some wall stubs and Middle Roman pottery.

As we shall see in subsequent chapters, these results accord perfectly with the settlement of Nazareth in Middle Roman times. However, in the final sentence of the report, Ms. Alexandre adds:

Some fragmentary stone walls and floors were cut by the vaulted reservoir, thus indicationg that there was some occupation here in the Hellenistic, Crusader and Mamluk periods.

It is a mystery how the archaeologist can date “fragmentary stone walls” to Hellenistic times, particularly since the associated pottery was later Roman at the earliest (see above). A request to the archaeologist for specifics (number, description, and diagram of Hellenistic artefacts) produced no reply and thus, once again, this Hellenistic claim must be reckoned as unsubstantiated. It is clear that with the contentious issue of Nazareth archaeology, evidence should only be admitted which is verifiable, for numerous claims have been made which cannot be substantiated.

The popular literature (newpaper articles and the Internet) has mooted the existence of a “Roman bath-house” dating to the time of Christ, one connected with the Fountain House near Mary’s Well in Nazareth. The suggestion has even been made that a Roman resort existed at Nazareth, one rivalling nearby Sepphoris. We need not consider such opinions seriously, for Ms. Alexandre dates the extensive underground waterworks to very late times:

The excavations revealed a complete vaulted reservoir with four well openings in a row, overlain by a stone-paved courtyard. This vaulted reservoir or cistern was in use in the 18
^th
–early 19
^th
centuries. Two large stone channels were exposed here, the ancient of which seems to have been part of the Crusader channel that originally transported the water from the source, under and past the
St. Gabriel’s church and down to the water house. . .

It is clear that the waterworks Ms. Alexandre describes are very late—eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, with a stone channel which goes back to Crusader times. There is nothing here at all to suggest the time of Christ, much less the Hellenistic Period.

Summary

The preceding pages show that the actual physical evidence at Nazareth attributed to the centuries before Jesus amounts to no more than a group of mislabeled oil lamps and a few equally mislabeled fragments of pottery. In all, these oil lamps and pottery shards total fourteen artefacts. Ten of these artefacts are clearly not Hellenistic (nine are Roman or Byzantine, and one is from the Iron Period). Thus the entire case for Hellenistic Nazareth rests on four pottery fragments that can easily fit in the palms of two hands.
^[288]
Two of these fragments are fully compatible (by their diagrams) with Roman times and do not fit the description offered, the third fragment is “greatly mutilated,” and the fourth is not sufficiently characterized to even permit an opinion. There is not the least reason to suppose that any one of these shards is Hellenistic.
Illus. 3.6
lists the fourteen artefacts found in the excavations that constitute the sum total of alleged Hellenistic evidence at Nazareth.

Armed with such non-evidence as presented in the foregoing pages, Bagatti peppers his writings on Nazareth with the word “Hellenistic.” The average reader will certainly be misled. Thus, the caption to Fig. 233 of
Excavations
reads: “Lamps of the Hellenistic and Roman period in various places.” The caption to Fig. 235 reads: “Pottery of the Bronze, Hellenistic and Roman periods found in various places.” On p. 309, in the concluding section of the book, we read the following bold statement: “[F]rom the Hellenistic to the medieval period one can follow the continuous development, with several examples from each century.” Of course, this is categorically untrue, not only as regards the Hellenistic Period but also regarding the Early Roman Period which followed. There was no “continuous development,” and we can now affirm that there are no “examples” at Nazareth from III BCE, II BCE, or I BCE.
^[289]

Briefly stated, there was no pre-Christian Nazareth.

Description
                                
Archaeologist                    Page                                      Era claimed                        Actual era

 6 oil lamps                                      Richmond,     
 
                                 105–9
 
                    Hellenistic                          Middle-Late

                                                                Kopp                                                                                                                  Roman

1 nozzle of                                          Bagatti                             111–20                     Hellenistic                         Early-Middle

bow-spouted                                                                                                                                                                    Roman

    oil lamp

•  2   3˝ fgmts.                                     Bagatti                            120–26                     Hellenistic                         Middle-Late

    (St. Jsph.)                                                                                                                                                                  Roman, or Iron

•   1 fgmt.                                            Bagatti                             122                            Hellenistic                         Unverifiable

  (St. Jsph.)                                                                                                                                                                    (“greatly

                                                                                                                                                                                         mutilated”)

1   3˝ triangular                                  Bagatti                             127–8                       Hellenistic-                        Roman

       fgmt.                                                                                        Section A                  Roman

 1   3˝ fgmt.                                           Bagatti                            128–9                         Hellenistic                       Iron Age

 of “big vase”                                                                                Section B

• 1 “concave                                        Bagatti                            129                              Hellenistic                       Unverifiable

      collar”                                                                                      Section B                                                               (insufficient                                                                                                                                                                                                                         data)

1 neck of                                              Bagatti                            129–30                       Hellenistic-                     Roman

cooking pot                                                                                  Section C                    Roman

(•) See footnote 109.

General Hellenistic Claims

The preceding pages form the core of this study, in that they systematically demonstrate that no material evidence from the Nazareth basin dates to Hellenistic times. The foregoing review of evidence has not been based merely on finds from the venerated area, as might be supposed, but has also encompassed the results from numerous other loci in the basin, most particularly twenty-seven ancient tombs that have thus far been excavated in many other parts of the basin.
^[290]
The reason none of those many tombs has been mentioned in the preceding pages is that none contained any Hellenistic evidence. We can now affirm with confidence that the settlement of Nazareth did not come into existence during the Hellenistic Period, and that the basin was entirely devoid of human habitation during that era. This unambiguous conclusion is here enunciated for the first time.

This is, of course, not the view one reads in the published literature. Despite the archaeological record, the virtually unanimous view among both Catholic and Protestant scholars is, understandably, to the contrary. After one century of excavations, this state of affairs is sufficient proof that those writings have responded to the exigencies of doctrine rather than to those of fact.

We shall now consider the mere assertions of a Hellenistic settlement at Nazareth. On the basis of the foregoing pages we can affirm,
a priori,
that all such claims are empty. They tend to be brazen, vague, superficial, and often quite remarkable. They assert in one form or another that the settlement of Nazareth preceded the time of Jesus. The most egregious proposal of this nature asserts nothing less than a refounding of the village in Hellenistic times and the existence of a thriving settlement in the second century BCE. I call this the “Hellenistic renaissance myth.”