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Old 03-21-2010, 01:00 PM   #1
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Default Short Review of Archaeologist Ken Dark's Review of Rene Salm's Research on Nazareth

Salm, who the user Antipope Innocent II so kindly pointed out to me, is an amateur researcher who has books and publications on Nazareth (some of which appear in peer reviews journals). He is far from the idiot that Antipope Innocent II mischaracterized him to be. In fact, he seems to have put his violin down and dedicated his life to researching archaeology at Nazareth through academic journals and archaeological reports and associated publications. At any rate, he published a book basically accusing archaeologists at Nazareth of fraud. And now the archaeologist Ken Dark (Dr. Dark - sounds so eeeeevil!) has addressed him twice in a peer reviewed publication (Pfann has also addressed him similarly in an academic journal). Only the first address by Dark will be posted and commented on here. Only Dark's five central bullets of rebuttal will be posted. This leaves out only his introduction.
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Old 03-21-2010, 01:00 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
The core of René Salm’s position is that there is no archaeological evidence for significant occupation at Nazareth in the Galilee before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. This argument is based on a reinterpretation of published secondary sources for tombs, structures, coins, lamps and pottery from Nazareth, all of which he dates either to before the Hellenistic period or after the ‘Second Temple period’, as Israeli archaeologists often term it. Salm then argues that this, in turn, discredits the New Testament account of the childhood of Jesus Christ, an argument that must have made the book attractive to its publishers, the ‘American Atheist Press’.

So let us see what merit there is in the argument that Salm presents, seen solely as a piece of archaeological reasoning and working only from material evidence, standard archaeological techniques and scientific logic. It is a long and wide-ranging book, apparently full of detail, so I shall take five themes as indicative of the whole: the basic archaeological research question underlying the study, the representation of the natural environment, the Roman period tombs, the Church of the Annunciation site, and the use of pottery as evidence.

(1) The initial question must be whether the stated aims of the book are archaeologically achievable. It would, hypothetically, be archaeologically possible to show that there was no Second Temple period settlement evidence on any of the sites so far excavated in Nazareth. But it is not possible to show archaeologically on the basis of available data that Nazareth did not exist in the Second Temple period (or at any other period), because the focus of activity at any period may be outside the – still few – excavated and surveyed areas. Hypothetically, it is possible that Late Roman pilgrims and church-builders were incorrect when they took the present site of Nazareth as its New Testament counterpart, and that New Testament period Nazareth was elsewhere. The latter is not a new hypothesis, nor is it one that I support, but it is theoretically possible. It is logical, therefore, that even if Salm could refute the existence of Second Temple period settlement on all of the excavated sites (and he does not discuss them all in sufficient detail to achieve this objective), then he would still not be able to refute the existence of a Second Temple period village at Nazareth. The underlying premise of the book – that by reinterpreting archaeological data one could show that Nazareth as described in the New Testament did not exist – is, therefore, flawed, and its central research question is scientifically invalid
So so.

On the one hand the suggestion that Biblical archaeologists may be looking in the wrong place is fair enough. But on the other hand, agreeing that Biblical archaeologists have been, for the past 100 years, digging blind at Nazareth and do not possess the necessary faculties to determine whether or not they're pointed in the right direction is damning. Nobody knows how Helena determined the present site as Nazareth. Presumably she would have asked the locals. Therefore, then, should it be shown by archaeology that this site was uninhabited in the early beginning of the first century, it would render it virtually impossible to argue convincingly that anybody in ancient Galilee, including the locals, had been aware of such a place nominally as the New Testament counterpart to Nazareth and or had any clue where this "Biblical Nazareth" was.

Wherefore, the statement - "Hypothetically, it is possible that Late Roman pilgrims and church-builders were incorrect when they took the present site of Nazareth as its New Testament counterpart, and that New Testament period Nazareth was elsewhere" - reflects the very confirmation bias that is inherent in Biblical archaeology and has plagued the field of study since its inception with conjured up popular images of Biblical archaeologists gripping a Holy Bible in one hand and a spaded shovel in the other. Textual critique in scholarship has shown decades ago that "Nazara" "Nazorean", and "Nazarene" not only predated the city of "Nazareth" in the Gospel tradition, but that it is also likely that "Nazareth" found its way into the Gospel tradition as a later conflation and is thereby not necessarily attested to in any literature source as a historical village existing in the early stages of the first century.

In light of this perspective, the central research question of the existence of a New Testament counterpart to Nazareth can and should be considered well within the powers of archaeology to address. There is nothing erroneous on Salm's part by consulting the extensive archaeological literature on Nazareth.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
(2) Salm’s depiction of the hydrology and topography (pp. 21–22, 193, 215–19) is hard to reconcile with what is known about the area of the present city of Nazareth in the relevant periods. He seems to believe that the only significant natural water source is St. Mary’s Well (p. 21) and has apparently not seen any of the evidence – the relevant publications are absent from the discussion and the bibliography – showing this to be incorrect. In fact, at least three natural springs are known in Nazareth. Another plentiful water source in the centre of the Byzantine settlement (i.e. near the Church of the Annunciation) could be surmised from Adomnán of Iona’s De Locis Sanctis, supported by archaeological evidence published in 2006, so probably too late for inclusion in Salm’s book. Others, no longer active, may have existed in the pre-medieval period.

Salm is also mistaken in saying that hill-slope locations preclude Roman period Jewish settlement (pp.193, 217–219). Structures on terraces and rock-cut hill-slope structures – recently discussed as a type of construction by Richardson – have been published from excavated Roman period Jewish settlements elsewhere in the Galilee, including Khirbet Kana immediately north of Sepphoris (Zippori). Richardson’s book is not in the bibliography, although it might also have appeared too late for inclusion (Richardson, 2004: 77 and 103, plate 12).

Incomprehensibly, there is no mention of the well-documented wadi – known from written, artistic and archaeological evidence – that ran through the centre of Nazareth, although this must have been one of the striking features of the locality until its nineteenth-century infilling. Although the sides of this wadi may have been steeply sloping enough to throw someone from, the stone at the Mensa Christichurch is far frombeing a ‘sheer cliff’ and ‘great rock outcropping near theMaronite church’ (p.202).2
These things are not important. So I won't comment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
(3) Salm – like most previous writers on the archaeology of Nazareth – realizes that the only way to locate the Roman period settlement is to plot and date the distribution of archaeological material. Previous scholars highlighted the importance of the many Roman period tombs and Salm also emphasizes these (pp. 109–111, 158–164, 243–261). Appendix 4 provides a list of most of those from the Nazareth area that have been published (p. 323). The chronology of kokhim tombs is central to his thesis, but his dating of these would be more credible if he employed the dated typology in the now-standard work on Second Temple burial, Rachel Hachlili’s excellent 2005 book Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period. This renders his chronology for tomb construction invalid, as it is based on interim, popular or outdated works, and leads him to ignore typological evidence for Hachlili’s Type 1 Second Temple period tombs in Nazareth.

Salm does not take into account that while domestic occupation on a cemetery is, of course, unthinkable in Jewish religious law, the placing of tombs in a disused area of domestic activity is not. The distribution of Roman period tombs is, therefore, not of assistance to Salm’s case that no Second Temple period settlement existed at Nazareth, because even if he could date all the known tombs to later centuries (and this is not possible), there could have been earlier occupation.4
This is a stunning error on Dark's part. And since the tombs are so central to the dating of the present site, I will comment here briefly.

In her work, Rachel Hachili's core and central assumption is that the material at Jericho offers a template, or interpretative tool that can be extrapolated to include all of Jerusalem. This primary and underlying assumption is unsupported by any argument any place in Hachili's work, and it is falsehood to allege that her book is now "the standard" or even that her work is widely accepted among academics. There have been publications on ancient Jewish funerary customs that have been published after January of 2005 and I know not of a single relevant research article that mentions Hachili. Many of Hachili's arguments are untenable even in her main focal point of Jerusalem (nevermind southern Galilee, where Dark is attempting to extrapolate her arguments to); wooden coffins placed in kokhim for primary burial might be evidence in Jericho, for example, but in Jerusalem where the kokh were implemented for secondary burial (and can often be dated to the first century B.C. or earlier), there is no evidence of their existence.

A cursory 2005 literature search turned up a November research paper by Andrea Berlin where she states - "No cemeteries, not even single stray tombs, that date before 70 C.E. have yet been identified from Jewish settlements in Galilee or Gaulanitis" - then goes on to say - "First, cemeteries and tombs do exist around Jewish villages in the lower Galilee. All are comprised of rock-cut burial caves whose interior plans and finds conform precisely to those from Jerusalem and Judea, even to the use of ossuaries. These include burial caves at Dabburiyya, Gush Halav, I’billin, Kafr Kanna, Kafr Reina, and Nazareth. The earliest that any of these tombs can be dated is the late first century C.E., i.e., after the destruction of Jerusalem."

The dating of the tombs to 70 C.E. is consistent with my own assessment of the archaeological evidence. This review is posted elsewhere, and has lead me to thereby conclude the earliest evident settlement date for Nazareth to be 70 C.E. In light of Dark's mistake regarding Hachili's work, I'm now inclined to believe authentic the alleged testimony of leading archaeologists found quoted on Salm's website pertaining to the matter of the dating of the tombs found at Nazareth.

This of course is not to say that there were not burial sites at Galilee before the Jewish revolt in 66 C.E. Merely it must be remembered that Galilee was not as densely populated with Jews prior to the first Jewish revolt. After their defeat, Jews migrating north to Galilee introduced many new settlement sites to the area. It is not at all unthinkable or untenable in light of the evidence that Nazareth may have been one of these newer settlements.

I'm not sure what to make of Dark's suggestion that there may have been an earlier settlement irregardless of the dates of the tombs. Presumably the local necropolis is where the inhabitants of Nazareth were buried. If we say that the inhabitants migrated there around the year 70 C.E. subsequent to their defeat during the first Jewish revolt, then we can expect both deaths and births to have commenced immediately upon arrival, or within the first few years of settlement. If these inhabitants were there at this site earlier than the year 70 C.E., perhaps even throughout the turn of the millennium, then why we haven't found their tombs? Why is there no further evidence of burials at the site? Why are there no tombs at all representing this allegedly stable population of early inhabitants at Nazareth? Nobody at the village of Nazareth died during the time interval between 100 B.C and 70 A.D?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
(4) The suggestion that there were Roman period tombs (illustration 5.4 on p. 240 and pp. 243–259) on the site of the present Church of the Annunciation is interesting, but the evidence is inconclusive. Most archaeologists would hesitate to postulate an otherwise unattested tomb from ‘an elbow twist to the west’ in an underground hollow of unknown function, let alone because a feature is ‘roughly the size of’ a kokhim tomb (p. 247). If there were tombs at the site, Salm gives no convincing argument as to why they must be earlier than all of the agricultural features previously identified – as he recognizes – by Bagatti and Taylor. The presence of a small basin and evidence for drainage is not convincing evidence that Tomb 29 (pp. 251–258) was a wine-collecting vat (p. 253). Dating by absolute depth, ‘showing that this is the oldest stratum of the site’ (on p.259 in relation to ‘Graves o/p’), has been recognized for over half a century as a stratigraphical fallacy. While Salm says, ‘[t]he implication is that the tombs preceded the agricultural installations, which are sometimes intrusive’ (p.259), no convincing evidence of an agricultural feature cutting a Roman period tomb is described and none is shown on Salm’s plan of the site (illustration 5.4 on p. 240).

To put it another way, no credible evidence is produced by Salm that would show that burial – if it took place – preceded all of the agricultural activity on the site of the Church of the Annunciation. In fact he notes that what he considers to be ‘arguably the earliest oil lamp found at Nazareth’ was, in his opinion, associated with ‘an extensive agricultural installation’. It is not archaeologically ‘evident that the cistern was not made by the very first settlers’ (p. 247), as one could construct various hypotheses (for example, that Nazareth functioned as a ‘local centre’ – to use Hingley’s well-known term for Roman period villages or ‘small-towns’– processing oil and/or wine for surrounding rural communities) wherein large-scale processing facilities were a component of the settlement from the outset.

In discussing burial at the Church of the Annunciation, it is also worth noting that neither Byzantine nor Crusader period Christians are likely to have been prevented from burial by believing that it was too holy a spot (p. 250), nor are tombs ‘the last thing pilgrims would expect to find’ at major foci of pilgrimage in these periods (p. 252). Burial on or near ‘holy places’ is widely attested both archaeologically and historically in the Christian world from the Late Roman Period onward, and pilgrim accounts describing the Holy Land (not least De Locis Sanctis) mention tombs.
A few comments of clarification.

It is true that Crusader era Christians would not likely have had reservations about burials at these holy sites. It is also true, however, that if the tombs themselves are kokh then that would make it quite challenging to argue that they were likely Crusader era as opposed to Roman era. Nevertheless, the potentially explosive implications of Roman era tombs located beneath the Church has deservedly caused a lengthy address by Dark since otherwise these tombs alone would prove Nazareth had not been a functioning town during the first century. Here Dark remains unconvinced by any reports labeling these tombs as kokh or by any reports describing the intrusion of agricultural artifacts into these tombs (which would necessitate that the tombs predated said agricultural activity). He chooses instead to go with Bagatti's original assessment of Crusader era burials beneath the Church.

The 'local centers' Dark speaks of were production and agricultural hamlets arranged around nearby major cities such as Sepphoris. Large urban focal points like Sepphoris were dependent upon these orbiting hamlets, such as Nazareth, for agricultural sustainability. The interesting thing about these hamlets is that they were many times uninhabited; owned by non-local rich landlords who permitted the land to be used by day laborers for agricultural and production purposes. On the opposite hand, much of the time these hamlets were inhabited by local peasants who paid their taxes and rent by working these production farms.

Either one of these scenarios may be applied to satisfy the material data at Nazareth. Perhaps Nazareth had always been a production farm that ended up close to a cemetery? Or perhaps Nazareth was a production farm during the early part of the first century, then became an inhabited village during the later period after the Jewish revolt? Perhaps Nazareth was one of the many settlements established by the Jews migrating north after the first Jewish Revolt? Cake hogging scenarios wherein Nazareth was a Jewish farming village that was continuously inhabited throughout the turn of the millennium do not seem to account for the fact that funerary remains at the site indicating burial of potential inhabitants only surface around 70 C.E.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
(5) Salm rightly places much importance on pottery as a means of dating and is duly sceptical of material, such as that from the excavations at the Franciscan church of St. Joseph (p. 126), found disassociated from its stratification and with no documentation as to its find-spot. However, the fact that most pottery from Nazareth (as at the vast majority of excavated sites anywhere in the Roman world) consists of small sherds is presented by Salm as if this devalues their chronological significance. Few twenty-first-century archaeologists would credit Salm’s assertion that: ‘two- and three-inch fragments of pottery vessels are a precarious basis indeed for fixing the type and date of an artefact’ (p. 125).

Salm points to what he considers a lack of certain Late Hellenistic pottery from Nazareth (pp. 111–18, 120, 122–3,127–9, 133–4). Before one can establish its absence from the record (and that is not, of course, the same as absence from the settlement) then one must set out what would, identifiably, constitute the presence of Late Hellenistic ceramics there. Adan-Bayewitz, Aviam, Frankel and others have shown that at least some Late Hellenistic and Roman period Jewish communities chose not to use ceramics made by non-Jews. These communities, therefore, eschewed the very wares, for example Eastern Terra Sigillata (‘ETS’), that may be most precisely dated or are most widely distributed elsewhere, such as Galilean Coarse Ware. Moreover, if Bagatti excavated an area used for agricultural storage and/or processing at the Church of the Annunciation, the lack of whole Late Hellenistic or Early Roman lamps at that site is unsurprising. The rise in numbers of complete lamps, if one followed Salm’s chronology, could then be explained by the re-use of the area for tombs, suggested by Salm (Adan-Bayewitz, 1993: 231–232, 237; Aviam, 2004a: 49; Aviam, 2004b: 8, Fig. 2.2 on 9, 18–19; Frankel et al., 2001: 108).

To support his reinterpretation of the pottery, Salm provides a list of ‘Independent Datings of Nazareth Lamps and Pottery’ (Appendix 5, pp. 325–327) and ‘Pottery and Movable Artefacts from Nazareth’ (Appendix 6, pp. 328–329). Despite its title, Appendix 6 is in fact a very partial list of evidence available in 2006 derived from a selection of the published works. Appendix 5 compares dates for pottery in works ranging from 1969 to 1982 – that is, before the present standard published ceramic chronology of the area during the Roman period was formulated. The bibliography omits several important works on pottery dating including Adan-Bayewitz’s fundamental 1993 work on Galilean pottery in the Roman period, Magness’ 1993 book on Roman and Byzantine pottery in Jerusalem, and Frankel et al’s 2001 monograph on survey in the Upper Galilee. These are not obscure works, nor are they journal articles that would be hard for an amateur to obtain, and their absence illustrates the basic flaw in Salm’s use of the available source material and points of archaeological reference (see works cited in Note 7 and Magness, 1993).
Just a few brief comments here as well.

Although artefactual dates very often impart the impression of hard fact and precision, the in reality subjective and flexible nature of published dates is something every archaeological researcher is aware of, which is principally why it has become so common to see archaeologists quickly and easily dismiss any published dates that they do not agree with. This is particularly ironic in the case of pottery since, as Dark rightly points out, pottery is recognized as so centrally important to the dating of sites; yet sometimes these artifacts, typically coming in the form of small sherds, are the subject of some of the researcher's most subjective evaluations.

Archaeology at Nazareth provides an excellent example here; the Roman era pottery recovered at Nazareth can hardly be dated precisely to within decades, yet every other week you have an archaeologist, holding a potsherd that can be reasonably assigned a dated range of approximately 100 years or so, get in front of a news camera and claim to have found something associated with Jesus.

The wide dating ranges typically placed on artifacts reflects the incredible difficulty inherent in dating artifacts. But determining the function of an artifact, on the other hand, is not nearly as subjective or challenging. As such, the case against Nazareth being a functioning town in the first century has much less to do with the subjective dating of artifacts such as pottery sherds, and much more to do with the fact that nearly 100% of the artifacts discovered over the last 100 years of excavating at Nazareth, including essentially all pottery, has consisted of funerary remains, funerary ware and associated funerary artifacts. In light of this there is little need to challenge published dates, particularly in the area of pottery. It was not until Pfann's relatively recent excavation of a nearby farm, approximately 500 meters away from Nazareth, that any new and different types of pottery and artifacts were discovered (such as wine presses). Unfortunately, however, Pfann's work is chronologically useless to us (as Dark himself admits in a subsequent journal article addressing Salm's criticisms of Pfann's archaeological report of the farm excavations); there are no dates, for example, on said wine presses.

Dark does not seem to be challenging, but rather apologizing for the fact that there are no late Hellenistic or early Roman finds at Nazareth. Dark offers a potential explanation centering around Nazareth perhaps being partial to Jewish wares, but he does not go on further to explain also the absence of evidence for early first century Jewish pottery.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Dark
On all five themes Salm’s arguments, while sometimes noting interesting points, are seriously flawed in logic and data. Although he says that it is ‘possible that one or two brief reports may have eluded my gaze’ (p. xv), the supporting bibliography (pp. 341–355) omits many relevant works, including some published reports on archaeological data from Nazareth and other sites in the vicinity.

To conclude: despite initial appearances, this is not a well-informed study and ignores much evidence and important published work of direct relevance. The basic premise is faulty, and Salm’s reasoning is often weak and shaped by his preconceptions. Overall, his central argument is archaeologically unsupportable.
One final comment.

The central complaint I would have about Dark's review of Salm's work is that he never once addressed Salm's central contention that there is no evidence for actual habitation during the early Roman era at ancient Nazareth.
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Old 03-21-2010, 01:01 PM   #3
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Essentially what this all boils down to is that much of the evidence is ambiguous rather than definitive. Dark's review I thought was OK. In some cases it was insightful. In other cases, a little disingenuous. But nevertheless, hardly authoritative.
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Old 04-27-2011, 10:35 PM   #4
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Other reviews of Salm's work:

Robert M Price

Quote:
Salm examines every bit of known evidence from the Nazareth Plateau. What a disparity between his results (none of them methodologically dubious, none controversial except in result) and the blithe generalizations of certain well-known Bible encyclopedias and Bible archaeology handbooks. Their authors write as if there were enough evidence not only to establish a Jesus-era Nazareth but even to characterize it in various ways. A great deal of the confusion inherited by these “experts” stems from the schizophrenic researches of Roman Catholic diggers and taggers charged by Rome to find out what they could about Nazareth. To them it seemed that Church tradition and Gospel narrative deserved to be considered evidence equal in importance to the yield of the ground. Their procedure was exactly like that of B.B. Warfield and his fellow inerrantists who insisted on giving equal weight to both the “claims” and the “phenomena” of scripture. The result is inevitably and even intentionally skewed.
Neil Godfrey reviews Dark's review
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