Evidence for first-century Nazareth?

[steve43]

"More interesting is the possibility of the time after Bar-Khokba and not c. 70 as the period of resettlement memorialized by the inscription (assuming it memorializes a settlement, an assumption that has been challenged). I'm looking more into that now."

Josephus reports that Sepphoris sided very early with the Romans. Nazareth, only a couple miles away, almost certainly followed suit and would have suffered only minimally in the revolt of A.D. 66.

[ficino]

@ Steve, OK, but again, what you say presumes that there was a Naz. in 66 - the point under discussion. Should I infer from your point about Sepphoris that the camouflaged hideaway reported by Yardenna Alexandre at Nazareth is likely to come from the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt and not from c. 66-68 CE?

[ficino]

Update: Yuval Shahar, "The Underground Hideouts in Galilee and Their Historical Meaning," in Peter Schafer, ed., The Bar Kokhba War Reconsidered (Tubingen 2003), 217-40 concludes that the hideouts should be assigned to the Bar-Kokhba revolt. He bases this conclusion on the geographical distribution of the hideouts: about half of them are found away from fortifications known to have been used by the Jews in the first revolt but close to lowland or valley communities. E.g. no sign of hideouts in Jotapata, a central fortress during the first revolt, but a good number of hideouts near Sepphoris, which remained loyal to Rome (as you say, Steve) during the first revolt. Shahar points out (p. 227) that the Bar-K revolt was planned and prepared in secret before it broke out, whereas the revolt of 66 broke out openly and snowballed. So there was time to prepare the hideouts before the second revolt broke out, and their geogr. distribution points to that time as well. He argues (227-8) that although Dio-Xiphilinus uses the term υπόνομος to refer to camouflaged hideouts, that term in Josephus does not designate such, but rather, already-dug underground structures or sappers' tunnels in sieges, and Josephus as well says nothing about underground preparations in Galilee. He adds, "Our historical sources for the Ben-Kosba War are few and poor, but Dio plainly describes the secret underground preparations of the Jews. The hideout method was developed for this revolt, and hundreds of these complexes were dug all over Judea and Galilee" (228).

If Shahar is right, it looks as though the camouflaged hideout that Yardenna Alexandre discovered near Nazareth should also be connected to the revolt against Hadrian, not to the revolt in 66-70. That knocks out a piece of evidence for a first-century Nazareth. When I note also the strength of the arguments for the Bar-Kokhba revolt as the terminus post quem for resettlement of priestly courses to Galilee, I conclude that the evidential basis for a first-century Nazareth is weaker than I had thought.

[steve43]

I would agree with ficino. If there was a camouflaged hide-out in Nazareth of any substance, Josephus would have noted it.

While Josephus doesn't mention Nazareth, he does mention Cana. A quick google finds this:

"Josephus, a Jewish historian, also wrote of Cana of Galilee (The Life of Josephus; Sections 16, 71). Cana is believed, by modern archaeologists, to be either Kafr Kanna (approximately four miles northeast of Nazareth) or Kenet-el-Jalil (approximately ten miles northeast of Nazareth)."

From Josephus' Life:
[394] Now, when the people of Sepphoris had, in so surprising a manner, escaped their first danger, they sent to Cestius Gallus, and desired him to come to them immediately, and take possession of their city, or else to send forces sufficient to repress all their enemies' incursions upon them; and at the last they did prevail with Gallus to send them a considerable army, both of horse and foot, which came in the night time, and which they admitted into the city. But when the country round about it was harassed by the Roman army, I took those soldiers that were about me, and came to Garisme, where I cast up a bank, a good way off the city Sepphoris; and when I was at twenty furlongs distance, I came upon it by night, and made an assault upon its walls with my forces; and when I had ordered a considerable number of my soldiers to scale them with ladders, I became master of the greatest part of the city. But soon after, our unacquaintedness with the places forced us to retire, after we had killed twelve of the Roman footmen, and two horsemen, and a few of the people of Sepphoris, with the loss of only a single man of our own. And when it afterwards came to a battle in the plain against the horsemen, and we had undergone the dangers of it courageously for a long time, we were beaten; for upon the Romans encompassing me about, my soldiers were afraid, and fell back. There fell in that battle one of those that had been intrusted to guard my body; his name was Justus, who at this time had the same post with the king. At the same time also there came forces, both horsemen and footmen, from the king, and Sylla their commander, who was the captain of his guard: this Sylla pitched his camp at five furlongs' distance from Julias, and set a guard upon the roads, both that which led to Cana, and that which led to the fortress Gamala, that he might hinder their inhabitants from getting provisions out of Galilee.

Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.


I guess my point is that with water sources proven, you would have to prove a negative to be convincing- i.e. dig up the entire city looking for unequivocal first century artifacts-arguing that Nazareth was a post-first century creation.

I would bet that the Neanderthals probably had a settlement there 30,000 years ago!


BTW Jotapata (yodafat) is an incredible place to visit in Northern Israel. Re-read Josephus on the siege of Jotapata before you go.

[ficino]

I forgot to add Shahar's review of archeological research about camouflaged hideouts. He concludes that the archeology isn't clear either way on the time period of the hideouts; that's why he uses topographical criteria. Here are the notes I took on his review of the archeology: 224 at the time of his writing, the only site in Galilee w/ such dugouts that had been the subject of a full archeological report was Har Hazon. It had two Herodian pottery lamps terminus ad quem mid 2nd cent., two lamps of 2nd-3rd, two roof tiles, one stamped Legio VI Ferrata. D. Bahat concluded from the uniformity of the pottery that the hideout was used for a short time or the pottery deposited over a short time. Shahar puts it betw 127 CE, earliest possible arrival of the legion, and mid century (based on the lamps). 225 in Sepphoris stone doors for blocking are dated second cent from a lamp, nearby another hideout w/ coin struck in Akko-Ptolemais betw 98-117. A few other coins in other hideouts from emperors in first cent. 226 so the evidence from digging isn’t enough to locate the hideouts in the first revolt or the Bar-K.

[ficino]

I guess my point is that with water sources proven, you would have to prove a negative to be convincing- i.e. dig up the entire city looking for unequivocal first century artifacts-arguing that Nazareth was a post-first century creation.

I would bet that the Neanderthals probably had a settlement there 30,000 years ago!


BTW Jotapata (yodafat) is an incredible place to visit in Northern Israel. Re-read Josephus on the siege of Jotapata before you go.

Hope I can get to n. Israel again some day! What I have read (don't have many refs right here) indicates that there were periods when a given site was not inhabited. Pfann et al say in their report on the Nazareth Village Farm excavation that the site seems to have been unhabited through much of the later bronze age up to c. 2nd cent. BCE (pp. 68-69). That is not proof of course that people weren't living near the Nazareth spring/s elsewhere. I am less confident that you about extending "if there's a spring, they will come" to all periods. My researches so far at least make me less ready than I was to accept broad claims that there was first century pottery in some dig in or nr. Nazareth, when the claimant does not give specific pottery IDs and adduce models.

[andrewcriddle]

One problem with linking a camouflaged hideout in Nazareth to Bar Kokhba rather than the 66-70 CE war is that we know that Galilee was heavily involved in the 66-70 CE war and we have no solid evidence that Galilee took part in Bar Kokhba.

Andrew Criddle

[ficino]

hello Andrew, to add to what I reported from Shahar's article: Josephus says nothing about underground preparations in Galilee, although he was in charge of preparations there against Roman invasion and spent 7 mos. there.

So did the Jews dig camouflaged underground hideouts in Galilee in the first revolt? Shahar's point is, no evidence that they did, a smidgin of archeological evidence favoring the second revolt, location of many hideouts away from known sites of resistance in the first revolt in Galilee, and time to create these hideouts in expectation of their need in the 130s.

I don't know published studies that contradict Shahar and prob. can't expend time to hunt them down now; do you know of any that came out after 2003, when his paper was published?

[DCHindley]

Given that archaeologists have not, at least as of yet, identified for certain any village of Nazareth (shoot-town from Netzer, branch, shoot) from the 1st century, it seem premature to say that this or that site MUST be Nazareth because there is a spring or caves. Also, I am not sure why the presence of inhabited caves makes someplace Nazareth or absolutely prevents it from being Nazareth.

Josephus recounts how Herod made an expedition against a band of "robbers" he calls "troglodytes" (cave dwellers), who were living in mountain caves near Arbela [believed to be inland a bit from Taricheae/Magadan, which was itself on the Western edge of the Sea of Galilee].

The shorter version is in Jewish War 1:

307 But Herod followed them [the supporters of Antigonus], and slew them as he followed them, and killed a great number of them, till those who remained were scattered beyond the river [Jordan]; and Galilee was freed from the terrors they had been under, excepting from those who remained and lay concealed in caves, which required a longer time ere they could be conquered.
...
310 Now these caves were in the precipices of craggy mountains, and could not be come at from any side, since they had only some winding pathways, very narrow, by which they got up to them; but the rock that lay on their front had beneath it valleys of a vast depth, and a sheep drop into the ravines below; insomuch that the king was doubtful for a long time what to do, by reason of a kind of impossibility there was of attacking the place. Yet did he at length make use of a contrivance that was subject to the utmost hazard;
311 for he let down the most hardy of his men in chests, and set them at the mouths of the dens. Now these men slew the robbers and their families, and when they made resistance, they sent in fire upon them, [and burnt them]; and as Herod was desirous of saving some of them, he had proclamation made, that they should come and deliver themselves up to him; but not one of them came willingly to him; and of those who were compelled to come, many preferred death to captivity.
...
314 By this means Herod subdued these caves, and the robbers that were in them. [see also Ant 14:411-430]

There is this article from Haaretz:

A fifth mikveh has been found in the caves on the Galilee's Cliffs of Arbel ... The caves in which the purification baths were found were "caves of refuge," where Jews who lived in the area sought shelter under Roman rule, particularly during the Jewish revolt that ended with the destruction of the Second Temple. ... [Yinon] Shivtiel [a lecturer at the Zefat Academic College and Ohalo College] and Vladimir Boslov of the Hebrew University's cave research unit have already discovered 500 caves of refuge during the comprehensive survey they've been conducting under the auspices of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. To reach this particular cave, the two researchers had to scale a cliff "with our fingernails," as Shivtiel put it. ... Three of the mikvehs on the cliffs were documented by archaeologist Ronny Reich of Hebrew University, but Shivtiel and Boslov discovered two more. Other findings that they and others have uncovered in the Arbel region show that these cave dwellers lived at subsistance level and in crowded conditions. They had water, food and light, as evidenced by the water-storage pits, niches for candles, and remnants of cooking pots and pitchers, but no more than that. ...
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/is ... m-1.426773

They are a little dodgy on this. Despite having said the "Jews who lived in the area sought shelter under Roman rule, particularly during the Jewish revolt that ended with the destruction of the Second Temple," they researchers, after consulting with Rabbis regarding the significance of mikvehs in such a remote area, are convinced that these cave-dwellers must be priests, and point to "[p]revious research [which] has shown that when the priests found refuge in the Galilee after the destruction of the Second Temple, at least one group moved to Arbel." This latter is apparently in refertence to the inscriptions discovered by Avi-Yonah, which mention priests of the House of Jeshua (one of the 24 "courses," i.e., priestly divisions) being settled at Arbel. This would suggest that at least these caves with mikvehs were settled after the Jewish revolt which had resulted in the destruction of the temple and its sacrifices.

However, there is no mention whatsoever of the fact that Josephus says that Herod subdued "robbers" in exactly this area, and even set up defenses himself in this same region according to his account of his actions during the Jewish revolt found in Life 188:

I also fortified, in the Lower Galilee, the cities Taricheae, Tiberias, Sepphoris, and the villages, the cave of Arbela, Bersobe, Selamin, Jotapata, Capharecho, and Sigo, and Japha, and Mount Tabor. {n} I also laid up a great quantity of grain in these places, and arms withal, that might be for their security afterward.

What about Pharisees? Weren't they making use of mikvehs as part of their attempt to live lives of ritual purity as if they were priests? I believe that mikvehs have been found at sites that precede the destruction of the temple, including places like Jerusalem and even in Herod's palace at Masada.

The 19th century traveler J L Porter describes a cave city in Endor (a little south of Mt Tabor, on the opposite side of the river valley running W to E towards the Sea of Galilee):

[183] Endor is a poor, dirty hamlet of some twenty houses, or rather huts, most of them apparently falling to ruin. It stands on the rocky slope of Moreh, a few hundred yards from the plain. Just above the houses are singular excavations in the rock, the object of which it is difficult to determine. The rock is a soft cretaceous limestone, with many natural caves; but the ancient inhabitants would seem to have been to some extent troglodytes, like so many of the people of Northern Gilead, and of Southern Judaea, on the borders of Philistia. Cave-dwellings are preferred — indeed, to some extent they [184] are necessary — on the borders of a plain which is exposed to the raids of nomad tribes. In one of the caves of Endor, which seems to be natural, and is larger than most of the others, there is a small spring of pure water, said to be unfailing; and it may have given the ancient village its name, Endor, “The Fountain of Dor.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=oLNDAA ... ve&f=false

Check about and one will find that inhabited caves are noted around Jericho, around the Dead Sea, Samaria, Arabia (think Petra), everywhere. In short, there were a vast number of caves used for dwellings, storage, fortifications, etc, all throughout lower Galilee as well as the region in general. A number had water supplied by springs, natural water seepage (which is how caves get formed in the first place), or by artificial mechanisms to capture rainwater runoff. With regards to rainwater runoff, the Jerusalem Talmud (Pe'ah 7:4, 20a) indicates that this area was known for its fertility, so there must have been frequent rains to capture some of it in cisterns.

Are we not just arguing in circles to think that caves, even "fortified" ones, must define what must be anything?

DCH

[ficino]

@DC: my understanding is that the camouflaged underground hideouts, perhaps such as the one found nr. Nazareth by Yardenna Alexandre, and certainly the ones enumerated by Shahar in the first part of his article (cf. citation above) are not caves but man-made. Use of caves during the first revolt doesn't provide basis for dating these hideouts. I can't comment on the cave in the cliffs of Arbel except to say that it seems irrelevant to Shahar's case about camouflaged underground hideouts. This point also applies to the case of the caves you cite from Josephus.

I also note that it's not established that the Caesarea Maritima inscription published by Avi-Yonah refers to resettlement of priestly courses shortly after 70. Avi-Yonah himself argued for the period after the Bar-Khokba revolt as the more likely time of such resettlement. This is discussed earlier in this thread.