Antipope Innocent II

Why would someone check out an amateur book by a piano teacher who describes himself as "a spiritual seeker" and not simply see what actual archaeologists have to say about the matter?

You'd think that if the piano-teaching non-archaeologist had a decent case, there would be at least some notes of doubt and caution in the archaeological literature regarding Nazareth being inhabited in the First Century. After all, much of the archaeology done in Israel is done by Jews from Jewish institutions, and they wouldn't have a problem with at least noting some doubt about Nazareth's First Century status. But in all of the scholarly material I've been able to find on the subject there is not so much of a whisper of doubt about this: all archaeologists are agreed that Nazareth was inhabited in the First Century.

Leaving aside Bagatti (who was a Franciscan archaeologist, not a Jesuit BTW) there are a number of Israeli and Jewish archaeologists who have no problems with the idea that Nazareth was inhabited throughout the First Century. They include:

Gal, Z. Lower Galilee During the Iron Age (American Schools of Oriental Research, Eisenbrauns, 1992)

Yavor, Z. 1998 “Nazareth,” ESI 18. Pp. 32 (English), 48 (Hebrew)

Feig, N. 1990 “Burial Caves at Nazareth,” ‘Atiqot 10 (Hebrew series). Pp. 67-79 (Hebrew).

Dr Richard Freund, director of the Maurice Greenberg Centre for Judaic Studies, is currently undertaking a dig of a First Century site in Nazareth sponsored by the Israeli Antiquities Authority. During a debate with a "Nazareth Sceptic" Jesus Myther last year I took the liberty of e-mailing Dr Freund to ask him if he'd ever heard of any scepticism from actual archeologists about Nazareth being inhabited in the First Century. He replied that he hadn't and that the whole idea was "absolutely absurd".

So the consensus amongst the (non-Christian) professional archaeologists is quite clear: Nazareth existed in the First Century. Where did the idea that it wasn't come from? From a biologist (Frank Zindler) and a piano teacher (Rene Salm); neither of whom have any archaeological training or qualifications.

So who am I going to be inclined to believe: all of the archaeologists who have actually surveyed the literature or dug on the site or these two complete amateurs? I'll go with the scholars thanks.

Especially when the amateurs have ideological biases that immediately make their nitpicking around the edges of real archaeologists' work highly suspect: Zindler is a Jesus Myther and Salm has his own kooky theory about Jesus coming from India. When kooky Creationists poach out of field and try to critique research by professionals in disciplines like paleontology and biology, motivated by their own ideological biases, we rightly deride them. Yet here we have two totally unqualified dabblers doing the same thing in the field of archaeology and we're somehow meant to take them seriously?

Give me a break.

Toto

Since this was the only substantive post on that thread, I thought I would give it its own thread.