The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (7 page)

Our word
Armageddon
may contains echoes of that prolonged and decisive conflict. The Egyptian army was so large that it took a full seven hours to defile onto the Plain of Jezreel at the foot of Megiddo. The initial engagement entirely favored the Egyptians, and the Canaanites broke ranks and bolted towards the city gate. But instead of pursuing their advantage the Egyptians fell to looting and allowed the Canaanites to reënter the city. A seven-month siege ensued. Thutmose, recognizing that within the city walls were kings of all the northern principalities, reminded his troops that in conquering Megiddo they conquered a thousand cities. During the long siege the Egyptians extensively looted the area and conducted secondary military campaigns in several directions.
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It is entirely possible—indeed likely—that the small Nazareth valley, so close to the plain of battle, was also despoiled.

We shall see (below, p. 36) that the settlement we have been calling “Nazareth” was, in all likelihood, the substantial Bronze-Iron Age town of Japhia. If this was the case, there is hardly any doubt that it was also devastated at this time, and that it was one of the 119 Caananite and Syrian towns that opposed Egypt, with its leader besieged in Megiddo.

Indeed, the evidence from the Nazareth basin suggests that after the mid-millennium the population did not recover to the level of former times. Only Tomb 1 continues into the Late Bronze Age, and with the passing centuries the number of its artefacts also diminishes. This corresponds with the results of wider archaeological surveys of Palestine: “Where some 270 Middle Bronze sites were counted, only about 100 Late Bronze Age sites were found, a decrease of more than 60 percent.”
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After the Egyptian reconquest, the hill country of Galilee was virtually empty.

We are thus able to arrive at three general conclusions regarding the Bronze Age in the Nazareth basin: (1) tomb use, and hence human presence in the vicinity, begins in the Intermediate Period; (2) the high point in settlement is reached in the early second millennium; and (3) human habitation continues through the Late Bronze Age, but on a reduced scale.
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The Iron Age

(1200–587
BCE
)

Iron Age Chronology
^a

1200–1000   Iron IA–B              Judges

1000–900     Iron II A                 United monarchy (David, Solomon)

900–800
^b
      Iron IIB                  Divided monarchy

800–587
^c
      Iron III
                            
Early prophets; Assyrian conquest; rise of Babylonia

^a
Follows M. Avi-Yonah and M. Stern,
EAEHL
(1976). Alternate chronologies are found in
OEANE
, “Palestine,” vol. 3, p. 218.

^b
Bagatti conformed to Amiran’s datings after the latter’s book (
APHL
) appeared in 1969 (see
Scavo
:18–19). Finegan (p. xix), writing in 1969, uses the dates “900–539 BCE” for Iron II.

^c
Sometimes called Iron IIC (
APHL
12; 191). Based purely on material considerations, the Iron Age in Palestine extends to the late sixth century (
Arch.
305).

      Towards the close of the thirteenth century Egyptian power waned, and during the early Iron Age Egypt withdrew from Canaan. New peoples entered Palestine, including the Philistines, one of several Sea Peoples who had been marauding along the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Philistines were probably of Grecian origin and settled the coastal area of southern Palestine (now Gaza) already in the Late Bronze Age. They made attempts to subdue the interior, but were successfully challenged by another group of recent arrivals who ostensibly entered Canaan from the east—the Israelites. There is, in fact, no archaeological evidence that the Israelites were outsiders, despite the well-known literary accounts and traditions to this effect in the Bible. Today, the provenance and genesis of the Israelites are hotly debated issues. A. Mazar suggests that they evolved from indigenous tribal, seminomadic and pastoral elements (see below).
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At the beginning of the Iron Age Megiddo was probably the most important Egyptian administrative center in northern Canaan. However, by the close of the twelfth century (Stratum VI B) Megiddo’s stature had declined along with waning Egyptian influence in the land. By the year 1000 Palestine moved from being an Egyptian province to an independent Israelite state.
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Precisely how this transition occurred is debated. Several models have been proposed, of which I will note three: (1) the older “conquest” model (W. F. Albright); (2) the “peaceful infiltration” model (Alt, Noth); and (3) the “peasants’ revolt” model (Mendenhall, Gottwald).

If the process was violent, then we can speak of a ‘takeover’ of the country by the Israelites. If peaceful, then we can conceive of the land “becoming” Israelite. Certainly, a takeover by landless tribes would have been facilitated by the many political divisions in the land and the constant feuding between city states. Already during the Amarna period (fourteenth century) Lower Galilee was disputed between the kings of Megiddo and Shechem, while Upper Galilee was disputed between the kings of Tyre and Hazor. The countryside was occupied principally by a people known as the Habiru. This resourceful and opportunistic people was apparently under the control of no city and seems to have played the role of spoiler, using interurban rivalries to engineer its own success.
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R. Gonen writes:

The El-Amarna tablets also mention a group termed ’Apiru, or Habiru, which existed on the periphery of Canaanite society. The ’Apiru lack a clear ethnic identity. They were a motley crowd of social outcasts who coalesced, perhaps in several small, unrelated groups. According to the sources, the ’Apiru had no permanent settlements, social privileges, or property. They played an important role in the rivalries between the city-states, transferring their allegiance from one side to another, according to their own interests.
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A “motley crowd of social outcasts” is an admittedly irreverent view of the people that later coalesced into the Israelite tribes during the period of the Judges. However, as early as the thirteenth century the Habiru had gained sufficient power to overthrow many towns, including Hazor, whose violent destruction is credited by the excavators to the Israelites (Joshua 11). They were a power to be reckoned with, and for the first time “Israel” is mentioned in foreign records—it occurs in the Merneptah stele (
c
. 1210 BCE), commemorating the defeat of several of the pharaoh’s enemies.

Between 1974 and 1984 Zvi Gal directed a survey of Southern Galilee and identified fifteen settlements dating to the Iron I period.  “In the Iron Age,” he writes, “the Galilee was settled by a network of rural villages, many of which have been found in the surveys.”
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Nazareth is among those sites.
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Most of these settlements lasted for only a short time and were located near springs. Gal suggests that “the concentration of Iron I sites in southern Lower Galilee represents the nuclear territory of Zebulun.” We have seen in
Illus. 5
that little evidence survives at Nazareth from the end of the Bronze Age (LB IIB). If some Israelites from the tribe of Zebulun indeed moved into the basin, they probably would have found it deserted or almost deserted.

At the end of Stratum VIIA at Megiddo (
c
. 1130 BCE) there was a total destruction of that city, which could have been at the hands of the Israelites. The next stratum (VIB) is quite unlike the preceding. Y. Yadin maintains that a “new and different group of people occupied the site.”
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At Nazareth, too, we note a major change in the evidence. Use of the Bronze Age tombs comes to an end, while novel Iron Age material appears, and at different loci. The considerable number of Iron Age finds suggests that an influx of people moved into the valley after 1200 BCE. This is consistent with a major cultural break throughout the whole region.

However, the evidence does not permit certainty. The model of a major cultural break
c
. 1200 BCE with Israelites entering the basin must be balanced against another model suggesting continuity in settlement. Much depends on how we define “Israelite.” J. Dessel writes: “it has not been satisfactorily shown that there are any good archaeological data that support the appearance of a completely new ethnicity or people such as the Israelites in the late thirteenth century BCE.” He adds: “the Lower Galilee was an area marked by overall sociocultural continuity from the Late Bronze Age into the Iron Age.”
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This continuity agrees with Mazar’s view, stated above, that the Israelite people evolved from indigenous tribal, seminomadic and pastoral elements, and with Gal’s view that extra-urban tribes in the vicinity finally took over the urban centers.

Yet another view is that it was Canaanites who entered the Nazareth basin
c
. 1200, and in the course of time they adopted the God Yahweh and aligned themselves culturally, militarily, and ethnically (through intermarriage) with the Israelites, thus becoming Israelites. In this case, what appears in hindsight as radical displacement may be akin to an assimilation.

Nevertheless, a modest Israelite (re-)settlement in the Nazareth valley in the early Iron Age coheres well with what we know of settlement patterns in the Lower Galilee. According to Gal, a number of small villages and hamlets were founded in the Nazareth hills in the Iron I period.
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Some nearby sites of this era have been explored in recent years.
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Y. Alexandre excavated one burial cave 4.2 km NE of the Church of the Annunciation. It dates to the late eleventh/early tenth century. The excavator concludes that in all probability the tomb “should be associated with Israelite tribal settlement.”
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Farther to the south, “Surveys in the hill country of Ephraim…” writes A. Mazar, “have identified more than one hundred sites of the Iron Age I, indicating a wave of Israelite settlement. Most of the sites, situated in remote hilly areas, are small, ranging from isolated structures to villages of 5–6 dunams.”
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Whether Israelites of the tribe of Zebulun entered the Nazareth basin, or an indigenous Canaanite/Amorite group ‘became’ Israelite—the early Iron Age in the Nazareth basin has bequeathed us a greatly expanded number of artefacts and a change in their character. Vitto has been able to pinpoint the dates of nineteen pieces, including Loffreda’s material, to the eleventh century.
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It was in the first part of that century that the Canaanites-Philistines suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Israelite general Barak (Judg 4:14; 5:19) in the nearby Battle of Mt. Tabor. Regarding this event, I. Singer writes: “As far as we know, this was the last serious attempt on the part of the Canaanites to gather their forces in order to block the spread of the Israelite tribes into the northern valleys.”
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It would be natural if, after this victory, Israelites spread out over the Jezreel Valley and surrounding regions. In this case, the indigenous populations either withdrew or converted.

In the second half of the eleventh century the Philistines mounted counter-campaigns into the interior farther to the south, and realized several victories. They captured the Ark of the Covenant at Eben-Ezer, destroyed the temple at Shiloh (the capital) and routed the Israelites at the Battle of Mount Gilboa, in which Saul and his sons lost their lives (1Sam 31). However, after the turn of the millennium King David was successful in removing the Philistines from the hill country of Palestine and set about systematically abolishing all remaining Canaanite enclaves.
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We can surmise that by the end of the united monarchy (928 BCE) those who lived in the Nazareth basin identified themselves as Israelites. It is probable that only they would have chosen to remain.

The twelfth and eleventh centuries in Palestine were a period of transition from a sheep and cattle raising economy to the sedentary occupations of vine and olive growing, with a proliferation of small settlements.
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For the first time we can date structures besides tombs at Nazareth. Two silos used for grain storage contained Iron Age material, and these are our first firm evidence of on-site habitation in the basin.
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