The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus Read Online Free PDF

horn is a pattern of deception and invention in the literature, one which we have begun to reveal in these pages. That pattern includes global errors such as wholesale misdatings of evidence, as well as subtler errors such as cunningly-placed (and misplaced) words like “already,” “earliest,” and “uninterruptedly” at strategic places in the literature. All these strategems serve a simplistic, unrealistic, and even ludicrous position: Nazareth has continually existed for the past four thousand years.
    There was no continuous habitation at Nazareth. The valley was empty of human settlement beginning with the Assyrian conquest in the late eighth century BCE, and it remained empty for many centuries thereafter. On fundamental issues of archaeology, Bagatti and the Church have planted themselves squarely and stridently on the wrong side of the fence. Understandably, they have done so for deeply-held doctrinal reasons. But a bull does not turn aside for doctrine, and nor should a reasoning reader. We have a right to know the facts about Nazareth, and the Great Hiatus is one of those facts.

Chapter Three
     

The Hellenistic Renaissance Myth
     
    The Great Hiatus: Part II (332–63 BCE)
     
     
     

Claims of Specific Hellenistic Finds
     
    Ultimately, an accurate history of Nazareth can be determined only on the basis of datable material excavated on site. Is there, then, specific material in the Nazareth basin that substantiates human presence there in the pre-Christian centuries?
    To answer this question, we shall begin with an examination of the two most referenced “Hellenistic” claims in the literature. They involve a group of six oil lamps on the one hand, and part of a single oil lamp on the other. These claims lie at the heart of pre-Christian Nazareth. The amazing and almost inexplicable sagas that accompany these finds are an eye-opener to the researcher, and reveal that the very heart of Nazareth archaeology is terribly flawed.
     
    The Richmond report
    In 1930, while laying the foundations for a private house in Nazareth, a tomb was discovered approximately 320 m southwest of the Church of the Annunciation. [205] As is customary in the Holy Land, work was immediately suspended and the Department of Antiquities was notified. An inspector came to the site, and subsequent excavation uncovered a rectangular underground chamber with nine shafts ( kokhim ) radiating outwards from three sides. The tomb is Bagatti’s number 72 ( Illus.2 ). [206] It contained human bones and some artefacts, including six oil lamps, a juglet, beads, and small glass vessels. These finds were summarized in a brief report published in the 1931 issue of a new journal, The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine . [207] The report, entitled “A Rock-cut Tomb at Nazareth,” consists of a mere half-page of prose, followed by three pages of diagrams and photographs. It is signed “E.T.R.”
    Born in 1874, Ernest Tatham Richmond joined the Royal Asiatic Society in 1910 and served as a functionary of the Ministry of Public Works in Cairo when Egypt was a British Protectorate (1914–22). He authored a number of articles on Egypt. and was subsequently appointed Director of Antiquities in Palestine. His signed 1931 report on this Nazareth tomb may have been authored by Richmond himself after a personal visit to the site, or it may be based on information received from his inspector, Naim Effendi Makhouli.
    The report itself is unremarkable except for one word in the final sentence:              
 
Tomb No. 10 . Two glass vessels (Pl XXXIII.5, third and fourth from left), six Hellenistic lamps (Pl. XXXIV.2), and iron, glass, and pottery fragments.     
                                                                              E.T.R.
 
 
    This is the first mention in the Nazareth literature of specific Hellenistic evidence. If