David Deas

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.

David Deas

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.

These things are not important. So I won't comment.

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?

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.

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.

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.

David Deas

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.

Toto

Other reviews of Salm's work:

Robert M Price

Neil Godfrey reviews Dark's review