Free The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus by Rene Salm Page B

above). A request to the archaeologist for specifics (number, description, and diagram of Hellenistic artefacts) produced no reply and thus, once again, this Hellenistic claim must be reckoned as unsubstantiated. It is clear that with the contentious issue of Nazareth archaeology, evidence should only be admitted which is verifiable, for numerous claims have been made which cannot be substantiated.
    The popular literature (newpaper articles and the Internet) has mooted the existence of a “Roman bath-house” dating to the time of Christ, one connected with the Fountain House near Mary’s Well in Nazareth. The suggestion has even been made that a Roman resort existed at Nazareth, one rivalling nearby Sepphoris. We need not consider such opinions seriously, for Ms. Alexandre dates the extensive underground waterworks to very late times:
 
The excavations revealed a complete vaulted reservoir with four well openings in a row, overlain by a stone-paved courtyard. This vaulted reservoir or cistern was in use in the 18 th –early 19 th centuries. Two large stone channels were exposed here, the ancient of which seems to have been part of the Crusader channel that originally transported the water from the source, under and past the St. Gabriel’s church and down to the water house. . .
 
    It is clear that the waterworks Ms. Alexandre describes are very late—eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, with a stone channel which goes back to Crusader times. There is nothing here at all to suggest the time of Christ, much less the Hellenistic Period.
     
    Summary
    The preceding pages show that the actual physical evidence at Nazareth attributed to the centuries before Jesus amounts to no more than a group of mislabeled oil lamps and a few equally mislabeled fragments of pottery. In all, these oil lamps and pottery shards total fourteen artefacts. Ten of these artefacts are clearly not Hellenistic (nine are Roman or Byzantine, and one is from the Iron Period). Thus the entire case for Hellenistic Nazareth rests on four pottery fragments that can easily fit in the palms of two hands. [288] Two of these fragments are fully compatible (by their diagrams) with Roman times and do not fit the description offered, the third fragment is “greatly mutilated,” and the fourth is not sufficiently characterized to even permit an opinion. There is not the least reason to suppose that any one of these shards is Hellenistic. Illus. 3.6 lists the fourteen artefacts found in the excavations that constitute the sum total of alleged Hellenistic evidence at Nazareth.
    Armed with such non-evidence as presented in the foregoing pages, Bagatti peppers his writings on Nazareth with the word “Hellenistic.” The average reader will certainly be misled. Thus, the caption to Fig. 233 of Excavations reads: “Lamps of the Hellenistic and Roman period in various places.” The caption to Fig. 235 reads: “Pottery of the Bronze, Hellenistic and Roman periods found in various places.” On p. 309, in the concluding section of the book, we read the following bold statement: “[F]rom the Hellenistic to the medieval period one can follow the continuous development, with several examples from each century.” Of course, this is categorically untrue, not only as regards the Hellenistic Period but also regarding the Early Roman Period which followed. There was no “continuous development,” and we can now affirm that there are no “examples” at Nazareth from III BCE, II BCE, or I BCE. [289]
    Briefly stated, there was no pre-Christian Nazareth.
     
     
     
     
    Description                                  Archaeologist                    Page                                      Era claimed                        Actual era
                                                        
     6 oil lamps