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

Richmond were correct, and if six Hellenistic oil lamps were indeed found only a few hundred meters from the venerated area, then the case for Nazareth existing in the time of Jesus would be virtually assured. Such is the awesome importance of the single word “Hellenistic” in this brief and obscure report.
    However, a glance at the photo ( Illus. 3.1 ) shows to even an amateur that none of the lamps signaled by Richmond is Hellenistic. The two in the upper row have been specifically dated by Israeli specialists to between “the second half of the first century A.D.” and the third century, [208] that is, Middle-Late Roman times. Two of the lamps (lower left and lower right) are of the bow-spouted type, which will be studied in Chapter Four. They are dated in Galilee from c . 25 CE to c . 135 CE. [209] The remaining two lamps are Late Roman (see below). In other words, all six oil lamps date to the common era.
    A more precise dating for several of the lamps in the Richmond report can be ascertained from an invaluable 1978 publication, Ancient Lamps in the Schloessinger Collection . It itemizes over five hundred Hellenistic and Roman oil lamps from Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. Authored by Renate Rosenthal and Renee Sivan, this compendious work contains a description and photo of each lamp, together with a note on provenance, condition, dating, type, ornamentation, and a comparison with similar specimens found elsewhere. Rosenthal and Sivan are aware of Mr. Richmond’s report and specifically date two of his six lamps (upper left and upper right) to between 50/70 CE and 200 CE. [210] They date the lamp at the lower right to c . 100 CE, [211] which corresponds to the Middle Roman period. The remaining three lamps consist of an undecorated bow-spouted lamp (lower left) dating to the latter half of I CE, and in the lower middle, two rather unusual lamps with stubby nozzles. Parallels to these latter have been variously dated III–VI CE. [212] Since we are using 70 CE as the beginning of Middle Roman times, all six oil lamps in Illus. 3.1 are Middle Roman, Late Roman, or Early Byzantine.
     

    Illus. 3.1 . Six oil lamps of the Roman period found in Tomb 72.
    (Photo from QDAP 1931, Pl. XXXIV.2)
     
     
     
     
     
    One can only speculate how the word “Hellenistic” entered Richmond’s report. The discrepancy in dating is huge, amounting to between three and five centuries. No expert would be capable of such a mistake. [213] Nor would he treat these six lamps as a group, for they represent strikingly different types. It is remarkable that this egregious error survived the scrutiny of the Department of Antiquities of Palestine, in whose Quarterly the report was published. But then, Richmond was himself Director of the Department.
    These six Richmond oil lamps underwent a second stage of misrepresentation a few years after the publication of Richmond’s report. Fr. Clemens Kopp, whom we have previously met, [214] penned his first installment of “ Beiträge zur Geschichte Nazareths ” in 1938. He commented on Richmond’s “Hellenistic” assessment as follows:
    R[ichmond] classifies 6 lamps by date very generally as “Hellenistic,” according to the accompanying photographs of the finds they must surely go back at least to 200 BCE. [215]
    This statement goes considerably beyond Richmond’s error of the single word “Hellenistic,” which denotes a period continuing into the first century BCE. Fr. Kopp supplies a much earlier date: “at least… 200 BCE,” i.e ., the third century BCE. This magnifies the previous mistake, and we can only wonder what made the German choose a date that has not the remotest relevance to the lamps in question. Even an amateur collector would not be so misled, much less an antiquities dealer, not to mention a writer on archaeological matters such as Fr. Kopp. To date this group of Roman-Byzantine oil lamps before 200 BCE is a monstrosity—it errs in some cases by over five hundred