The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (28 page)

The view of Father Milik is neither tenable nor universally held. We now know that the kokh type of burial endured in Northern Palestine through Roman and into Byzantine times. Kokhim have been found in Sepphoris dating to III CE,
^[362]
in the catacombs of Beth Shearim dating to III–IV CE,
^[363]
and in a burial cave at Kafr Kanna (7 km NE of Nazareth) dating to IV CE.
^[364]
In the hill country of Manasseh, a particularly late example was excavated with ten kokhim in a “IV–VI CE” context.
^[365]
Knowledge of kokhim use through Roman times has been known for a long time. Thus Goodenough writes, in 1953:

In the centuries which followed the fall of Jerusalem, however, the dominant Jewish convention of burial was that of the chamber tomb with kokim. This is the form stipulated in the
Mishna, and the type most commonly found.
^[366]

An early end to kokhim use, espoused by some Catholics, tends to backdate Middle and Late Roman evidence into Early Roman times. As has been mentioned, this is a recurring problem in the Nazareth literature.

We are now able to construct a chronology of kokh tomb use in Palestine (
Illus
.
4.1
).

Illus. 4.1.
Chronology of kokh tomb use in Palestine

 It can be seen from the above chart that there was a particularly early period of kokh tomb use—already in Hellenistic and Hasmonean times—exemplified by the tombs at Marisa in the south of the land.
^[367]
The type came to Jerusalem in II BCE and endured there for many centuries. Finally, in the middle of I CE kokhim use arrived in the northern part of the country. Like Kopp, who linked kokhim use at Nazareth with tombs at Marisa, other writers seem oblivious to the slow and gradual spread of the kokh tomb northwards. Thus, Finegan again:

Eighteen of the tombs [at Nazareth] are of the kokim type, which was known in Palestine from about 200 B.C., and became virtually the standard type of Jewish tomb.
^[368]

This is, of course, literally true, though the number of known kokh tombs in the basin has now risen to at least twenty-one. But Finegan’s statement has no relevance to Nazareth, for the tombs there do not date to “200 B.C.” In other words, the implication is entirely false. Yet Finegan’s influential assessment has been emphasized in subsequent scholarly literature. In the section on Nazareth from his 1991 book,
The
Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
, J. D. Crossan writes:

The use of such multishafted burial chambers is quite significant because, as Jack Finegan observed, “from about 200 B.C. [they] became virtually the standard type of Jewish tomb,” so that it may fairly be said that this type of tomb virtually became the canonical form of the Jewish family grave.
^[369]

Once again, this ignores the 250-year delay in arrival of the kokh tomb to Galilee. Thus, the Nazareth literature routinely backdates 20-odd tombs by a substantial period of time. To the unwary and non-specialist reader, the result is that much post-Jesus evidence is effectively transformed into pre-Jesus evidence. A false chronology results. This is exacerbated by emphasis on the
first appearance
in Palestine of tombs, oil lamps, etc. That emphasis is misleading, for the first appearance of a type at some remote location has little or no necessary relation to when a tomb, oil lamp,
etc
., was actually hewn or used elsewhere. The presence of kokhim at Nazareth does not mean they were contemporary with the first such tombs in Palestine, any more than readers of printed books today are contemporaries of Johann Gutenberg.

Terminology also plays a role in the false chronology that has governed Nazareth for several generations. We see from
Illus
.
4.1
that it is clearly misleading to call the kokhim tombs “Herodian.” The Herodian dynastic period was but a small part of the eight centuries between 300 BCE and 500 CE, “the era of the kokhim tomb.”
^[370]
In addition, the kokh tomb came to the Galilee long after the reign of Herod the Great and towards the end of the Herodian dynasty, with the result that this term has virtually no applicability to the Nazareth tombs.

We have seen that Strange designates kokh tombs “Herodian.” In a 1997 article, he explicitly connects the “Herodian” tomb with the Early Roman period:

Nazareth exhibits archaeological remains from the Middle Bronze II, Iron II, and late Hellenistic periods, but its heyday was in the Early Roman period. Judging from the locations of its Early Roman (Herodian) tombs (which must have been located outside the village according to Jewish law), its size then must have been about 900 m from the southwest to the northeast and 200 m southeast-northwest.
^[371]

Thus an attempt has been made, in a two-step process, to identify kokh tombs (which had a lifespan of many centuries) exclusively with the Early Roman period. This is not true anywhere in Palestine, much less in the Galilee where the kokh tomb arrived in mid-I CE.

Bagatti also implicitly (but not explicitly) associated the kokh-type tomb with Early Roman times—
e.g
., by contrasting the “period of the kokhim tombs” with II–III CE, later Roman times,
etc
.:

We, therefore, have three glass vases well-known at the period of the kokhim tombs, then a jug of the Late Roman period (No. 5); 18 lamps of which 7 with enlarged nozzles are “Herodian”; 7 round ones with flat bodies of the 2
^nd
–3
^rd
centuries; 3 with saucers, not later than this time, and one heart-shaped with reliefs, not prior to the 7
^th
century, 2 pots usually found in kokhim tombs and a pan and a juglet evidently later.  (
Exc
. 240)

The juglet Bagatti mentions in the last sentence is typical Roman ware, which Fernandez dates
c
. 100–
c
. 275 CE.
^[372]
Yet, for Bagatti it is “evidently later” than material “usually found in kokhim tombs.” Evidently, Bagatti supposes that kokhim use ended
c
. 100 CE—a grave error that undermines his entire chronology. In fact, kokhim use was only then
beginning
in the Galilee. From this we see how artificial are the Italian’s chronological assumptions. He is so inured to this way of thinking that he often uses “the period of the kokhim tombs” as a substitute for “I CE.” In fact,
all
the material from Tomb 70 (and, indeed, from Nazareth) arguably falls into Bagatti’s “later” category, and much of it—
e.g
., the items mentioned in the above citation—was found in kokh tombs. The principal question, as we shall now see, is whether
any
of this material predates 100 CE.            

The earliest Nazareth evidence

More than two dozen tombs have been discovered in the Nazareth basin dating to the Roman period. Their exact number is debatable, because it will be shown (Chapter Five) that one or more exist under the venerated area, and that several tombs (such as those under the Sisters of Nazareth convent) may in fact be a single tomb with subsidiary chambers. These tombs are all of the kokh type, which we have seen postdate
c
. 50 CE. The kokh-type tomb gave way in Roman times to other forms of burial—such as the arcosolium and trough grave. All these types of burial are represented in the Nazareth basin. Four of the roughly twenty kokh tombs yielded movable finds
in situ
, such as pottery, oil lamps, glass perfume bottles,
etc
. They are tomb numbers 70, 71, 72, and one excavated in 1995 in El Batris Street, about 525 m NW of the Church of the Annunciation—a tomb not known to Bagatti.

Thus, the following affirmation is now possible:
all of the funereal finds from Roman Nazareth date after the time of Christ
. They do so because they all come from kokh tombs.

If the tombs did not predate 50 CE, is it possible that the village of Nazareth did?

We shall review all the known Roman evidence from Nazareth in the remaining chapters. Here it may be mentioned in advance that the greatest quantities of movable evidence date to the third and fourth centuries CE, and then again to medieval times. Moving back in time, we can say without doubt that a number of oil lamps and pieces of pottery also date to the second century of our era. However,
not a single artefact can be dated with certainty prior to 100 CE.
That astonishing statement will become clear in the following pages.

Archaeologists are rarely granted certainty. They are very pleased to find eminently datable artefacts, such as coins or inscriptions with a name or date. Nazareth, surprisingly, has divulged no coins of the Roman period. Oil lamps constitute the most datable find in the basin. Palestinian oil lamps have been well studied and can sometimes be dated to within a quarter of a century. We shall make much use of them in our investigation, for many oil lamps have been discovered in the Nazareth basin. Jars, jugs, cooking pots, pans, plates, glass bottles, and small items (beads, metal pins), complete the catalogue of movable finds, which we shall consider later.

The ancient oil lamp

“The oil lamp,” writes Varda Sussman, “provided movable, protected and controllable light to the world for thousands of years, really until the advent of electricity and the electric light bulb.”
^[373]
The typical oil lamp was a hand-held clay vessel small enough to be carried in the palm of the hand. The earliest lamps that have been discovered date to the third or perhaps the fourth millennium BCE. They are simply bowls or saucers with telltale burn marks on the rim. Towards the end of the third millennium, the rim of the bowl was pinched to form a spout, thus producing the first dedicated oil lamp. About 1300 BCE, the rim began to be turned outwards rather than inwards (
Illus.4.2:1
). This basic type was very long-lived, continuing with minor changes for about a millennium, until the end of the Persian period.