Evidence for first-century Nazareth?

[steve43]

The caves of Arbel are readily accessible and can even be seen from the road around the Gennesareth today. Visit them.

Here is some background on the area in general, to add support to the GOSPELS THEMSELVES that Nazareth did, in fact, exist.

(The Galileans) have been always very numerous; nor hath the country been ever destitute of men of courage, or wanted a numerous set of them; for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants. (Wars III 3:2)


Just a little south would be Samaria which Josephus also describes- to give you a verdant picture of the times.


Now as to the country of Samaria, it lies between Judea and Galilee; it begins at a village that is in the great plain called Ginea, and ends at the Acrabbene toparchy, and is entirely of the same nature with Judea; for both countries are made up of hills and valleys, and are moist enough for agriculture, and are very fruitful. They have abundance of trees, and are full of autumnal fruit, both that which grows wild, and that which is the effect of cultivation. They are not naturally watered by many rivers, but derive their chief moisture from rain-water, of which they have no want; and for those rivers which they have, all their waters are exceeding sweet: by reason also of the excellent grass they have, their cattle yield more milk than do those in other places; and, what is the greatest sign of excellency and of abundance, they each of them are very full of people. (Wars III 3:4)

[DCHindley]

FWIW,

I have to admit to not having read very deeply into the article cited early in this thread when I originally replied. I just had trouble following the logic.

Since then I have pulled up the article by Shahar, "The Underground Hideouts in Galilee" (well, at least the first part of it as the free look-see in GoogleBooks cuts out several pages in the midst of the second example and again before the article ends) and also the article by R A Stewart Macalister, "Rock Cuttings at Tell Zakariya" (actually in Judea) and his book with F. J. Bliss, Excavations in Palestine during the years 1898-1900 which covers a more extensive set of excavations of "rock cuttings" in Judea, as these, Shahar says, show the first inklings of how to distinguish artificially cut caves made under duress from those that are made for everyday purposes. Shahar believes he can, himself, easily detect which are which.

Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time on some REALLY crappy partial PDFs that are placed online as bait by a company fishing for credit card numbers (for "verification" purposes, of course) and the unsearchable Google Book image only PDFs. It turns out, as usual, that these articles and book by Macalister are available in searchable PDFs at Internet Archive or elsewhere* but it took a while to figure out the correct names to search for. Once I go through these a little more thoroughly, as well as any other articles I have the energy to look up in The Hiding Complexes in the Judaean Shephelah by A. Kloner & Y. Tepper, I'll respond specifically.

DCH

*Excavations in Palestine during the years 1898-1900
http://brittlebooks.library.illinois.ed ... excpal.pdf
Palestinian Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, for 1899
https://ia700404.us.archive.org/14/item ... 31pale.pdf
Palestinian Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, for 1900
https://ia700407.us.archive.org/4/items ... 32pale.pdf

[ficino]

Yes, I'm not sure whether I can justify devoting much more time to 1st cent. Nazareth, but I've done enough research by now that I don't want just to ditch the inquiry altogether. I had to go to a library for the Shahar article because, as you discovered, Google books leaves out important pages. The collection of essays in which it's contained has other interesting stuff, including a discussion of Roman law against, and persecution of, various religious cults that sought to detach people from worshiping the gods of the state.

[DCHindley]

Just going over the first two pages I see someone claiming that Nazareth was built over a tomb. In his table of Galilean caves Shahar has explored, only Dabbarita seems to have been built over a burial cave. I am aware that Tiberias was partly built over an ancient graveyard and the Tetrarch Antipas had to entice elites to move there (or did it to keep Pharisees away). I am aware also that a large number of caves, especially in Judea but also in Galilee, have what are described as columbaria, which are walls covered with triangular depressions which some think were used as dove cots and others as niches for cremated remains. While they have been used for these purposes in various periods (mainly the Muslim and Christian occupants of the sites, and perhaps the Canaanites or other cultures before Jewish occupation), there was one that was buried almost new by an earthquake that contained neither ashes or dove droppings, so in reality we are not sure what they were actually used for.

Also, that some of the dug pits were "camouflaged." According to the final report of the dig at Kabul (not the one in Afghanistan, just so someone doesn't start a weird tangential thread) by Omar Zidan and Yardenna Alexandre (Dec 31, 2012), by "camouflaged" they meant that the pits were built under a building that served as a kitchen for the community. There are, right now, in the nation of Israel, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of houses with basements that partly connect with such "pits" as well as natural caves. It's simply an architectural feature. Isn't it easier to utilize a granary storage pit or water storage cistern that is right under your house or communal kitchen?

More to come ...

DCH

[DCHindley]

With regard to "year round" springs and the likelihood of settlement in such a place, I suppose the existence of large number of water cisterns throughout the region, including many that had been "perforated" by tunnels, thus rendering some of them less effective or useless as water holding facilities, suggests that collected rainwater was the dominant source of drinking water, and that there was plenty of it.

My maternal Grandmother in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA, had a cistern (we were instructed to only flush the toilet for "#2"), and so did an old house I grew up in Euclid, Ohio, USA (although it had long before hooked into city water, as well as the natural gas utility, so we had a former coal bunker for a basement and a buried oil tank somewhere underneath the house as well ... and then there was that feeding trough in the "garage" ...). As better and/or more reliable sources of water (even new cisterns or perhaps a well) become available, the old gets replaced by new. A spring alone proves nothing.

DCH

The fact that several springs are in the area should close the book. The site of Nazareth was probably occupied by settlements going back six thousand years- similar to Jerusalem.

Are there "several" year-round springs? According to Jacob Walker in Kunigunde's link, there is only one. Various things I've read - Pfann's study, I think, was one - say that this or that site in the area was unoccupied during certain ranges of time. The evidence for relatively high rates of settlement in the first century, though, is certainly on the "yes" side of the balance, and I agree that one year-round spring counts as a plus as well.

[DCHindley]

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.

Well, if the priests were burned up in the fire set to the temple in the first rebellion, and the Romans shipped their remains far away so as not to serve as relics for those hoping against hope for a reestablishment of the temple ritual, there would at least be a reason for all those cinerary niches in the columbaria in the caves ...

DCH

[DCHindley]

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.

There is meat here to chew on, thank you.

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.

Well, he says that the source was Cassius Dio (as preserved in Dio-Xiphilinus) and it shows that Shahar is using loaded language, which necessarily colors the evidence by assuming what needs to be proved. I already mentioned the story of the cave dwelling "robbers" (read, "rebels" or "freedom fighters") of Arbela who harassed Galilee and Josephus' own expansion of existing caves there and elsewhere in the First Jewish War.

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).

Shahar is playing with semantics to wipe away what Josephus clearly says existed (pre-dug caves used for war like purposes), so it doesn't look like a "preparation" for war like he wants to believe only happened in the era of Bar-Kokhba.

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.

I already noted the issue of "camouflaged" pits being, well, silly. Pits exist where pits are used. The only artificial caves ("pits") that might be built in preparation for, or as the result of, war are those connected to fortifications. Another thing to consider, is that villages of tenant farmers may want to hide some of the produce to avoid having to hand it over to the landlord as rent, or even if they were 100% honest peasants they have to retain at least 20% of the crop as seed, and that seed needs to be stored somewhere, hence the pits discovered in the middle of fields.

Resettlement of priestly courses would make more sense after the destruction of the temple (obviating any need for priestly courses) because there was the possibility that the Romans might allow the re-establishment of a temple and cultus.

If current research is correct (cited by Shahar in footnote 59) and Aelia was established before the start of Bar Kokhba's revolt, pretty much nixing any need for priestly courses, why relocate them? There had never been a requirement that they live near Jerusalem, as they only served 2 weeks each year, so they lived anywhere Judeans did, and occupied themselves most of the year as artisans and occasionally as tenant farmers.

To a certain degree, this insistence on placing the bulk of such artificial pit building into the Bar Kokhba period is driven by Israeli politics and national myths.

DCH

[DCHindley]

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.

That is true. IMHO, it is more like wishful thinking by Israeli scholars, having the advantage of justifying the modern nation of Israel's tendency to "prepare" for war at any time (and by implication their tactic of making preemptive attacks rather than react to attacks on them).

Anyhow, in footnote 7 of Shahar's article under discussion, he attributes the first attempts to distinguish between utilization of natural and/or artificial caves from artificial caves dug in "emergency" conditions to the work of Frederick Jones Bliss & R A Stewart Macalister, Excavations in Palestine during the years 1898-1900 (1902) and Macalister's two articles on "rock cuttings" at Tell Zakariya in the 1899 & 1900 "Quarterly Statements" of the Palestine Exploration Fund (I've posted links to searchable PDFs of these volumes in an earlier post). FWIW, Tell Zakariya is in Judea.

However, reading through these sources, it is clear that Macalister has made some fairly naïve assumptions about the historicity of biblical accounts of Saul and David, and describes caves and "rock cuttings" in Judea that he readily admits predate even those two semi-mythical kings of Judah/Israel. He thinks that many of these caves were excavated by cave dwelling peoples (troglodytes) who preceded Saul and David and maybe even the occupation of Canaan by Joshua, and the numerous columbaria are the crematory niches for incinerated remains of these peoples (and who may even have influenced the Romans, who also cremated human remains and interred them).

He cites the fact that despite the large amount of material that must have been displaced to create the cave expansions there is not a trace of it outside the cave entrances found in Judea. This is contrasted to the large amount of debris in front of the caves at Arbela. He proposes that they must have been dug long long ago to allow time for rain and weather to so thoroughly wash away the debris. The caves have been utilized all the way through modern periods, especially the middle ages, by Jews, Muslims and Christians.

He summarized things thus:

In conclusion therefore the whole subject may thus be summed up :—
(1) The district round Beit Jibrin, within a radius of about fifteen miles, contains an innumerable number of artificial caves, consisting of chambers and systems of chambers, with from one to sixty chambers in each system.
(2) The date of a few of these caves is demonstrably later than the Seleucidan period ; a few others are demonstrably earlier than the end of the Jewish monarchy ; and there is Scriptural evidence that similar caves existed at an earlier date still.
(3) Certain chambers are prepared for special purposes, as cisterns, store-chambers, etc. These being required at all periods, might be of any date, and as there is no reason why a plan once settled and found convenient should have been altered, there is no means of dating such chambers.
(4) Other purposes, as places for religious rites, filters, traps for wild beasts, prisons, quarries, etc., may be inferred with greater or less probability from the character of the chambers or from Scriptural references to them.
(5) Caves were prepared and used as places of refuge.
(6) There is reason to believe that other caves contained a troglodyte population, not improbably distinct from the inhabitants of the towns and villages on the surface, and possibly aboriginal.
(7) There is archaeological evidence from which it is possible to infer that cremation was practised by these troglodytes, and perhaps by them taught (with the use of columbaria) to the inhabitants of the surface. This revolutionary inference, if accepted, will transfer the credit of the invention of columbaria from the Romans to an obscure cave-dwelling tribe in Palestine.

There you go, Shahar goes from the two bolded statements (one of which actually argues against being able to distinguish when one type of chamber was constructed as opposed to others) to his belief that he can tell which are constructed under emergency conditions and which are not. I think too that #5 above should be interpreted as "[Some] Caves were prepared and used as places of refuge." Outside of wanting to hide granaries and stores from marauders, I don't see how "cisterns, store-chambers, etc ... being required at all periods" should be necessitated by a need for refuge alone.

Enough said ...

DCH

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

Ficino, interesting post. you cover a few issues here.

I've seen a lot of argument on websites and blogs over whether Nazareth, Jesus' purported home town, existed in the first century CE. I've tried to look at some scholarly publications but haven't yet been able to get a clear picture. Does anyone know about the "state of the question" among professional archeologists and ancient historians?

One major problem is that two totally different issues get conflated and mish-a-moshed.

1) historicity of Nazareth in the 1st century
2) location of Nazareth in the 1st century

(1) should be an obvious yes, unless you have a drama-myth idea of the whole New Testament. Even the René Salm types come up with convoluted ideas that Nazareth existed before and after, but not during, the early-mid 1st century. I may have a little correspondence or forum discussion with René on that topic.

(2) for a Bible believer, it should be crystal-clear that the Nazareth identification of Helena is wrong. And as for the alternative, Nazareth fits in all respects as being closer to the Sea of Galilee, in the Jesus corridor. Specifically, the Nitai or Arbel, both of which fit the description. (At Nitai, none of the ruins have been excavated.)

I gather one problem arises from the 3rd- or 4th-century inscription found at Caesarea Maritima and first published by M. Avi-Yonah, which connects places in Galilee with different courses of Jewish priests, one place being Nazareth. Many Christian apologists say that these courses of priests migrated to Galilee in the first century, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple, while others (e.g. the Wikipedia article) say they did so after the Bar-Kokhba revolt against Hadrian.

I could check my notes, from my studies the 70 AD date seems to fit far better. (I can look at the WIkipedia article.) An interesting question is whether Nazareth had suffered destruction during the Jewish wars, prior to the priestly settlement from Jerusalem.

It's not clear to me whether the inscription says they had gone to these places in Galilee or only records their attachment to these places at the time the inscription was carved. there is dispute among websites even about this find itself (e.g. here:
http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2013/07/ ... -god-pt-5/)
I gather another problem concerns the interpretation of remains of cisterns, floors, etc. - who built them, and when?

Good questions.

I will be grateful for any pointers to scholarly discussions of the physical remains (not Christian or atheist websites or blogs!).

And I would suggest that you look at all sources, only discarding them if you find them nonsensical or irrelevant.

Your emphasis on "physical remains" I believe is secondary to the location issues.

Why do I want to know? I must admit, it's because lack of physical evidence for Nazareth in the first century seems to be another pebble on the "not historical" pan of the balance scale.

When my friend Kevin Kleutz studied and found the two sites, one of which is likely the real Nazareth, there was no interest in the skeptic stuff. Which mostly came later, as a public brouhaha. There was a concern that Luke, the precision historian, had written very specifically:

Luke 4:16
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up:
and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day,
and stood up for to read.

Luke 4:28-29
And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,
And rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built,
that they might cast him down headlong.

And there was simply no way to reconcile this with the 4th century Helena identity of Nazareth.

I note that Matthew's and Luke's use of the word πόλις to designate Jesus' home town is hard to square with attempts of Christian apologists to account for the paucity of evidence by saying that Nazareth was "just a bump on the road."

The word πόλις (polis), is used by Luke for Bethlehem, Capernum, Nain, Gadara, Bethsaida, Nazareth, Jerusalem and Arimethea, in Acts Damascus, Joppa, Lystra and Derbe, Philippi, Thyatira, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Tyre, Tarsus and Lasea.

κώμη kōmē is used by Luke for Bethany (10:38) and Emmaus.

"Josephus uses πόλις and κώμη almost interchangeably"
http://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/T/town.html

Considering the wide range of size of πόλις, and its dominance in specifying specific locales, I do not see any difficulty. The unusual situation is to refer to a specific town as κώμη.

Steven Avery

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

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.

Arbel and Nitai are the two cliffs in Galilee, across the valley from one another, that are actually able to fit well the Lukan account. Arbel having an excavated synagogue on top and Nitai with ruins not excavated. As mentioned, the House of Jeshua, or Yehoshua, is connected with the synagogue at Arbel and the priestly courses. So if the Caesarea Maritima inscription has both Arbel and Nazareth, then it is Nitai that would fit as Nazareth. An interesting point to study would be what is known about the geographical regions of the cities in the Maritima inscription, how many are recognizable, and do they extend to any areas like up north to Rosh Pinna and Yavne, or south to Poriyya or west toward what is today called the Nazareth region, Helena-Nazareth.

(btw, the point that Origen should have known the location of Helena-Nazareth in the nearby lowlands is sensible, the same could be said of Eusebius -- ... correction 10/21 Eusebius does give a locale in Onomasitcon -- if the city had had an uninterrupted history as Nazareth. Origen knew a bit about the Gergesene and Gadarene regions, so his silence about even our cliff Nazareth (Nitai or Arbel) near Migdal might indicate that the name was simply not in use at that time. This fits with the idea that the Caesarea Maritima inscirption shows the names at the 70 AD time, from an historical document, but does not tell you of the names when the mosaic was made.)

As to the names, one of many possible scenarios: If any Christian presence related to the New Testament was largely driven out during the Jewish Wars destruction, it would not be surprising for a Jewish priestly city to have a name-changing competition. So as not to be named as the New Testament city of the Messiah rejected.

In addition, these cliffs at Arbel have an ongoing reputation from the Assyrians through Herod through the Jewish wars of being used as an execution spot. (Something you will not find with the rolling hills of the Nazareth Village area .. which are more perilous for Easter eggs than humans, no paganism intended .. or even the modest cliffs some miles away, which clearly do not match the Lukan account.)

Mount Arbel, A Galilee Landmark
http://www.wordofgodtoday.com/mount-arb ... -landmark/
"From this early reference we realize that Arbel had a rather bloody history. Apparently the Assyrians had mercilessly killed many Israelites by forcing them off the face of this mountain. Later, the historian, Josephus, mentions that the Seleucid general, Bacchides, captured the mountain and executed many people there (Josephus Ant. XII, 11). Also in 39 BC, as Herod the Great rose to power, he too killed many of those Jews who opposed him by slaughtering them on this same mountain. As they hid in caves on its sheer north side, Herod let his men down in baskets and fished them from the caves, forcing them off the cliff to their destruction below."

The other day, I wrote about a lot of this on a Facebook forum called PureBible, after Julie reported back from her Arbel visit. The Kevin Kleutz website from a decade and more ago was called The Real Nazareth, it is still up in reocities, although lots of information could be added today. And is discussed on the PureBible forum. Kevin had done an extensive search through the Galilee region, topographical maps included, in order to determine what sites could be the New Testament Nazareth.

Steven Avery