Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Magdlyn · 11-15-2007, 05:15 PM

Ah, it's the always polite Antipope! Hello. I am not familiar with your biologist or piano teacher.

I was just looking on wiki and saw a reference to a Roman hypocaust found in Nazareth in the 1990s.

Quote:

In the mid-1990s, shopkeeper Elias Shama discovered tunnels under his shop near Mary’s Well in Nazareth. The tunnels were eventually recognized as a hypocaust (a space below the floor into which warm air was pumped) for a bathhouse. The surrounding site was excavated in 1997-98 by Y. Alexandre, and the archaeological remains exposed were ascertained to date from the Roman, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. [21][22][23

The article did not say how early in the Roman period they were determined to be. Nor did it mention other "first century sites."

This is the kind of information we were looking for! Please tone down the "caustic"ness, it is not necessary. Save it for the next rugby match, if you don't mind.

Toto · 11-15-2007, 05:27 PM

Frank Zindler wrote Where Jesus Never Walked. He is a staff member of American Atheists.

René Salm wrote The Myth of Nazareth I don't know what ax he has to grind - he appears to be sympathetic to Buddhism and religion in general. If I thought this was an important issue, I would work through his book and evaluate it.

Quote:

The Myth of Nazareth meticulously reviews the archaeology of the Nazareth basin from the Stone Age to the present, and shows that the settlement of Nazareth came into existence in the early second century C.E., well after the time of Christ. In this study René Salm reviews all the structural and movable evidence from the first excavations in the late 19th century to the most recent reports. This review also encompasses the extensive secondary literature, found in books and reference articles in dictionaries and encyclopedias. Salm shows that traditional conclusions found in all these works regarding the settlement of Nazareth are radically inconsistent with the itemized evidence in the ground.

. . .

The Myth of Nazareth reveals an embarrassing history of unscientific fieldwork, tendentious publication, and suppressed evidence reaching back many generations. It is a searing indictment of one school of biblical archaeology.

I don't think that there is anyone without some sort of ax to grind in this. Jews might not need Nazareth to exist, but tourist dollars are not inconsiderable, if you need a motive to question anyone's work.

Antipope Innocent II · 11-15-2007, 06:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

Ah, it's the always polite Antipope! Hello. I am not familiar with your biologist or piano teacher.

Whether you're familiar with them or not, once you trace the stuff floating around on the net about how "Nazareth never existed/Nazareth didn't exist in Jesus time" you usually find yourself back at Zindler and Salm.

Quote:

I was just looking on wiki and saw a reference to a Roman hypocaust found in Nazareth in the 1990s.[snip]

The article did not say how early in the Roman period they were determined to be. Nor did it mention other "first century sites."

What do you expect from a source like Wiki? Until a couple of months ago that entry had been butchered by someone who used it as soapbox to proclaim the idea that Nazareth didn't exist in Jesus' time (using all Zindler's outdated and flawed arguments). Someone has restored it to sanity, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

Excavations of that hypocaust are ongoing and Richard A. Freund is carrying them out under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Since the dig is still under way he hasn't formally published his findings yet, but in a personal e-mail to me earlier this year he made it very clear that artefacts and other evidence he had found placed it in the early First Century.

Add this to other digs and finds by Ross Voss, Fanny Vitto and Nurit Feig and you don't have to rely on the early work by Baggatti (work Zindler and Salm base their armchair nitpicks on) to agree with Zvi Gal's assessment that Nazareth was continuously occupied throughout the Roman Iron Age.

Quote:

This is the kind of information we were looking for!

You might want to try looking a bit further afield than Wiki then.

Quote:

Please tone down the "caustic"ness, it is not necessary. Save it for the next rugby match, if you don't mind.

This kind of sloppy argument based on already debunked amateur sources is typical of the way many JMers proceed. Then they wonder why academia doesn't take them seriously and invoke conspiracy theories to explain this. I'll stay suitably dismissive of this kind of amateurish fumbling thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I don't know what ax he has to grind - he appears to be sympathetic to Buddhism and religion in general. If I thought this was an important issue, I would work through his book and evaluate it.

He's not a JMer, but he has some kind of private theory about who Jesus was that requires him to be from somewhere other than Nazareth. He hasn't vanity-published his follow-up book yet, but I suspect his theory needs Jesus to come from India or Tibet or something. The usual New Age twaddle, in other words.

Magdlyn · 11-15-2007, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

Archaeologists in Israel, many of them Jewish, ... have excavated First Century sites in Nazareth and ... are currently excavating a First Century bath-house there, ...
Zvi Gal, in his survey of sites in Galilee Lower Galilee During the Iron Age (or via: amazon.co.uk),

$45 for a 118 pg paperback, published in 1992! Why are Zindler and Salm outdated, if all you're presenting is a book from '92 and a supposed email?

Quote:

Dr Richard A. Freund, who is currently excavating a First Century site in Nazareth, and other archaeologists such as Fanny Vitto and Nurit Feig have all done research to make it quite clear that Nazareth was not fictional.

And their work has not been published or reviewed? What is the explicit data of Gal's "site survey" which shows beyond a doubt the early dating you are promoting?

Was Galilee a village or a full sized "city" with heated bathtubs in "Jesus'" time?
What about the graves found in the town which would be against Jewish law?

[/QUOTE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

What do you expect from a source like Wiki? Until a couple of months ago that entry had been butchered by someone who used it as soapbox to proclaim the idea that Nazareth didn't exist in Jesus' time (using all Zindler's outdated and flawed arguments). Someone has restored it to sanity, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

Oh, I see. Please excuse my skepticism. It seems to be highly controversial.

Quote:

Excavations of that hypocaust are ongoing and Richard A. Freund is carrying them out under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Since the dig is still under way he hasn't formally published his findings yet, but in a personal e-mail to me earlier this year he made it very clear that artefacts and other evidence he had found placed it in the early First Century.

Care to post the text of that email?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I don't know what ax he has to grind - he appears to be sympathetic to Buddhism and religion in general. If I thought this was an important issue, I would work through his book and evaluate it.

Toto · 11-15-2007, 08:03 PM

There are a variety of past threads on Nazareth. The evidence for Nazareth is thin, the linguistic indications are that Nazareth was added on to the gospel narrative late, possibly to mask a charge that Jesus was a member of a revolutionary sect.

But if Nazareth existed, that doesn't prove that Jesus existed. And, conversely, if Nazareth didn't exist, this only indicates that the gospel details are unreliable, not that there was no historic person at the originas of Christianity.

I would split this off as a new thread if I thought that anyone had anything new to say.

Antipope Innocent II · 11-15-2007, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

Archaeologists in Israel, many of them Jewish, ... have excavated First Century sites in Nazareth and ... are currently excavating a First Century bath-house there, ...
Zvi Gal, in his survey of sites in Galilee Lower Galilee During the Iron Age (or via: amazon.co.uk),

$45 for a 118 pg paperback!

Perhaps you don't buy many works by academic publishers. That sort of price is quite common.

Quote:

And their work has not been published or reviewed?

Where on earth did you get that idea? They are professional archaeologists, so of course their work has been reviewed and published, for example:

Fanny VITTO, "An iron age burial cave in Nazareth" Aqiot (Journal of the Israel Antiquities Institute), 42, 2001, p. 159-69.

Quote:

What is the explicit data of Gal's "site survey" which shows beyond a doubt the early dating you are promoting?

In the book I referenced above and the studies he cites. This is the standard field guide used by professional archaeologists working on sites in Galilee - you think he's just making things up?!

Quote:

Was Galilee a village or a full sized "city" with heated bathtubs in "Jesus'" time?

Given that there's a rather large modern town sitting on the site now, it's hard to say. Before that bath was found, the indications were that it was a very small place. The bath itself isn't large, but it could indicate a larger village than was previously thought.

Quote:

What about the graves found in the town which would be against Jewish law?

A piece of crap perpetuated by Zindler. Jewish law generally says a body has to be buried or entombed about 30m from any habitation. There's plenty of room at the Nazareth site for there to be a quite large settlement within 30m of those tombs. And the tombs themselves show that there was a settlement there, since it was customary to bury the dead near where they lived.

Quote:

Oh, I see. Please excuse my skepticism. It seems to be highly controversial.

Why does it seem controversial? To who? To armchair nobodies like Zindler with his big blunt JMer axe and zero archaeological training? Big deal. It's not remotely controversial to those archaeologists who have actually dug at the site. Can you find me an archaeologist who thinks it's "controversial"? Not a biased biologist with an agenda. Not a former piano teacher Buddhist with his kooky New Age theory. An archaeologist with knowledge of the site or the material. No, you can't.

So no, I won't excuse your scepticism at all. It's baseless scepticism fueled purely by what you'd like to be true. That's the way crackpot theorists think.

Quote:

Care to post the text of that email?

Without his permission? No. But the relevant sentences are:

"There was a Nazareth (or a city in its location-we can only conjecture the name) from the Middle Bronze period. I have First Century shards from our excavations in the cisterns dug for the bathhouse in front of me as I write."
(July 28th, 2007)

Of course, Toto would have us think this respected Jewish-American archaeologist from the University of Hartford is simply lying and is risking his career for the sake of tourism to Nazareth.

And then you guys wonder why people don't take you seriously ... :huh:

PhilosopherJay · 11-15-2007, 08:36 PM

Hi Antipope Innocent,

This seems relevant.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk/message/6536

In this post, we find this quote from Nurit Feig:

Quote:

"From these facts and from the findings it is possible to relate the use of these caves to a period of time between the middle of the first century CE (Cave M) to the third century CE (Cave D)."

In others words, it seems that one of the archaeologists you cited as proving the existence of Nazareth in the time of Jesus, actually found the opposite, that the evidence that Baggatti had touted as proving the habitation of Nazareth (or an area he called Nazareth) in the time of Jesus really was evidence of habitation from after the alleged time of the gospel Jesus character.

"No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant."
Friedrich Nietzsche

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

Ah, it's the always polite Antipope! Hello. I am not familiar with your biologist or piano teacher.

Whether you're familiar with them or not, once you trace the stuff floating around on the net about how "Nazareth never existed/Nazareth didn't exist in Jesus time" you usually find yourself back at Zindler and Salm.

What do you expect from a source like Wiki? Until a couple of months ago that entry had been butchered by someone who used it as soapbox to proclaim the idea that Nazareth didn't exist in Jesus' time (using all Zindler's outdated and flawed arguments). Someone has restored it to sanity, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.

Excavations of that hypocaust are ongoing and Richard A. Freund is carrying them out under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Since the dig is still under way he hasn't formally published his findings yet, but in a personal e-mail to me earlier this year he made it very clear that artefacts and other evidence he had found placed it in the early First Century.

Add this to other digs and finds by Ross Voss, Fanny Vitto and Nurit Feig and you don't have to rely on the early work by Baggatti (work Zindler and Salm base their armchair nitpicks on) to agree with Zvi Gal's assessment that Nazareth was continuously occupied throughout the Roman Iron Age.

You might want to try looking a bit further afield than Wiki then.

This kind of sloppy argument based on already debunked amateur sources is typical of the way many JMers proceed. Then they wonder why academia doesn't take them seriously and invoke conspiracy theories to explain this. I'll stay suitably dismissive of this kind of amateurish fumbling thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I don't know what ax he has to grind - he appears to be sympathetic to Buddhism and religion in general. If I thought this was an important issue, I would work through his book and evaluate it.

He's not a JMer, but he has some kind of private theory about who Jesus was that requires him to be from somewhere other than Nazareth. He hasn't vanity-published his follow-up book yet, but I suspect his theory needs Jesus to come from India or Tibet or something. The usual New Age twaddle, in other words.

Toto · 11-15-2007, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

...

Excavations of that hypocaust are ongoing and Richard A. Freund is carrying them out under the auspices of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Since the dig is still under way he hasn't formally published his findings yet, but in a personal e-mail to me earlier this year he made it very clear that artefacts and other evidence he had found placed it in the early First Century.

....

Freund is a co-director of Bethsaida Excavations Project

2003 find - is this where Jesus bathed

Quote:

Professor Richard Freund, an academic behind important Holy Land digs at the ancient city of Bethsaida, near Tiberias, and Qumran in the Jordan Valley, says the significance of the find cannot be overstated. Over the summer he put aside other excavation projects to concentrate on the Nazareth site. "I am sure that what we have here is a bathhouse from the time of Jesus," he says, "and the consequences of that for archaeology, and for our knowledge of the life of Jesus, are enormous."

But of course, experts disagree

Experts rebut claim of biblical bathhouse

Quote:

JERUSALEM –– An ancient bathhouse unearthed beneath a Nazareth souvenir shop dates back to Crusader times and is not, as the shop owner believes, a Roman bath which may have been used by Jesus, archaeologists and Bible scholars said Tuesday.

. . .

Shama is convinced not only that the edifice is classical Roman, but that Jesus himself may have relaxed in its steam. "I believe that Jesus was here," he said. "I feel it."

Archaeologist Tzvi Shacham, of the Tel Aviv Antiquities Museum, says all the evidence indicates the bath, like the neighboring Greek Orthodox Church of St. Gabriel, was built during the Crusader period, at least a millennium after Christ. He based his conclusion on an examination of the site and said finds above and below it date from the Crusader period.

Stephen Pfann, president of the Jerusalem-based University of the Holy Land, said the Roman part of Nazareth covered a small area where the modern Basilica of the Annunciation now stands, and it never extended as far as the well and Shama´s shop.

Old thread on this subject

I haven't heard anything lately about this bathhouse.

Toto · 11-15-2007, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antipope Innocent II

...
Of course, Toto would have us think this respected Jewish-American archaeologist from the University of Hartford is simply lying and is risking his career for the sake of tourism to Nazareth.

And then you guys wonder why people don't take you seriously ... :huh:

Cut the hyperbole, please. I did not and do not accuse anyone of lying.

Antipope Innocent II · 11-15-2007, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

But of course, experts disagree

Experts rebut claim of biblical bathhouse

The experts disagreed back in 2002, when the first evidence of the bath was found and nothing other than an initial survey of those early finds had been done. They don't disagree now that several seasons of excavations have been carried out and finds (like the pot sherds from the cistern that Freund mentioned in my e-mail) have dated it conclusively to the First Century. The date on the story you cite was Dec 17th 2002. Freund's excavations didn't start until 2004 and they are continuing.

Quote:

I haven't heard anything lately about this bathhouse.

Yes, Toto, you have - in my post above.

Quote:

I did not and do not accuse anyone of lying.

Okay, so can you explain what you mean by this cryptic observation then?:

"Jews might not need Nazareth to exist, but tourist dollars are not inconsiderable, if you need a motive to question anyone's work."

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

This seems relevant.

Gosh - a post from the piano teacher, Rene Salm. Golly, I wonder what he'll say ...

Quote:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk/message/6536

In this post, we find this quote from Nurit Feig:

Quote:
"From these facts and from the findings it is possible to relate the use of these caves to a period of time between the middle of the first century CE (Cave M) to the third century CE (Cave D)."

In this post we find a quote from an earlier paper by Feig - "Burial Caves at Nazareth" (Atiqot, 10, 1990, 67-79). Last time I looked 2001 was 11 years after 1990.

Quote:

In others words, it seems that one of the archaeologists you cited as proving the existence of Nazareth in the time of Jesus, actually found the opposite, that the evidence that Baggatti had touted as proving the habitation of Nazareth (or an area he called Nazareth) in the time of Jesus really was evidence of habitation from after the alleged time of the gospel Jesus character.

Er, in that earlier excavation certainly. Selective evidence much Jay?

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11-15-2007, 08:03 PM	#35
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	There are a variety of past threads on Nazareth. The evidence for Nazareth is thin, the linguistic indications are that Nazareth was added on to the gospel narrative late, possibly to mask a charge that Jesus was a member of a revolutionary sect. But if Nazareth existed, that doesn't prove that Jesus existed. And, conversely, if Nazareth didn't exist, this only indicates that the gospel details are unreliable, not that there was no historic person at the originas of Christianity. I would split this off as a new thread if I thought that anyone had anything new to say.

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