Nazareth

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This is about the Middle East city of Nazareth. For other uses, see Nazareth (disambiguation).

Nazareth (Arabic الناصرة an-Nāṣirah; Hebrew נָצְרַת, Standard Hebrew Náẓərat, Tiberian Hebrew Nāṣəraṯ) is an ancient town in the North District in Israel. Most Christians believe it to have been the hometown of Jesus.

Modern Nazareth

Nazareth is nestled in a hollow plateau some 1,200 feet (350m) above sea level that is located between 1,600 foot high hills that form the most southerly points of the Lebanon mountain range. It is about 25 km from the Sea of Galilee and about 9 km west from Mount Tabor. The modern city lies lower down upon the hill than the ancient one. The main road for traffic between Egypt and the interior of Asia passed by Nazareth near the foot of Tabor, and thence northward to Damascus. It has an estimated population of 60,000.

The majority of Nazarenes are Israeli Arabs, about 35-40% of whom are Christians and the rest Muslims.

Controversy over plans to build a large mosque beside the Basilica of the Annunciation have subsided. A public square was constructed instead, though the official opening was delayed for fear of reigniting tensions. The temporary walls surrounding the square were torn down by protesters the night that Haim Habibi, an Israeli Jew, and his Christian wife and daughter conducted an attack on the Church of the Nativity while worshippers were gathered in prayer for the coming Easter holidays.

Nazareth in history and archaeology

Archaeological digs conducted in Nazareth and surrounding areas have confirmed human habitation from roughly 8000 years ago in what is known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B era.

Most notable of these are the discovery not 2 miles from the center of present-day Nazareth of the remains of some 65 individuals, buried under huge horizontal headstone structures, some of which were made with up of some 3 tons of locally-produced white plaster. Decorated human skulls have led archaeologists to believe that Nazareth was a major pre-Christian cult center.

Jerome in the 5th century says it was a viculus or mere village, and modern estimates of its size in the first century are in the low hundreds. Orthodox archaeological thought until recently, thought it to be a satellite village of Sepphoris, a Hellenistic Roman city 6.5 km (4 miles) away.

In 2000, a large underground structure discovered at the end of tunnels leading out from a local shop in 1993, was recognized to be a hypocaust for a bathhouse. Situated beneath what is today marked as the site of Mary's Well, these baths are thought to date from at least the time of Jesus, and even earlier. Such an extensive underground complex indicates that Nazareth might have been more important to the Roman empire than was previously considered. ^*

Nazareth is not mentioned in Jewish ancient texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, nor in Josephus. References to Jewish or Judaean settlement in the area do not occur until three hundred years after Christ's crucifixion. In 1962 a Hebrew inscription found in Caesarea, dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century, mentions Nazareth as one of the places in which the priestly divisions were residing after the Great Jewish Revolt. From the three fragments that have been found, it is possible to show that the inscription was a complete list of the twenty-four priestly courses (cf. 1 Chronicles 24:7-19; Nehemiah 24:1-21), with each course (or family) assigned its proper order and the name of each town or village in Galilee where it settled.

A tablet currently at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and dates back to 50 AD, was discovered in Nazareth in 1878. It contains an inscription known as the "Ordinance of Caesar" that outlines the penalty of death for those who violate tombs or graves.

Julius Africanus (around 200), cited by Eusebius (Church History 1.7.14), speaks of Nazareth as a village "of Judea", and in the same passage tells of desposunoi, or relatives of Jesus, who came from Nazareth and nearby Cochaba and kept the records of their descent with great care. Also, an alleged martyr named Conon, who died in Pamphylia under Decius (249-251), declared at his trial: "I belong to the city of Nazareth in Galilee, and am a relative of Christ whom I serve, as my forefathers have done" (Clemens Kopp, Die heiligen Stätten der Evangelien Holy Places of the Gospels, Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, 1959: page 90). Regarding the historicity of Conon, Joan Taylor has written: "The legendary Conon is attested in tenth-century sources..." ("Christians and the Holy Places", Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993: page 243).

Epiphanius, who died in 402, says (Panarion i. 136), based on a conversation with a Joseph who built churches in Sepphoris and other towns, that until the time of Constantine (4th century), Nazareth was inhabited only by Jews. This may imply that in Epiphanius's own day some non-Jewish Christians lived there (and does not exclude Jewish believers in Christ living there previously); whether Joseph built any church at Nazareth or Capernaum is uncertain. In the 6th century, legends about Mary began to spark interest in the site among pilgrims, who founded the Church of the Annunciation at the site of a freshwater spring, today known as Mary's Well. In 570, the Anonymous of Piacenza reports travelling from Sepphoris to Nazareth and refers to the beauty of the Hebrew women there, who say that St. Mary was a relative of theirs, and records: "The house of St. Mary is a basilica" (P. Geyer, Itinera Hierosolymitana saeculi, Lipsiae: G. Freytag, 1898: page 161).

Jack Finegan writes about the archaeology of Nazareth:

The oldest known human life in the region of Nazareth is attested by the skull found in 1934 by R. Neuville in a cave about one and one-half miles southeast of the city, a skull which may be older than that of Neandertal man. In Nazareth itself a complex of burial caves was found in the upper city in 1963, in which there was pottery of the first part of the Middle Bronze Age (Revue Biblique 70 p. 563; 72 Benedict Vlaminck in 1892, by Prosper Viaud in 1889 and 1907-1909 and by Bellarimo Bagatti in 1955 and thereafter when the previously standing eighteenth-century (1730) church was demolished to make way for the new and larger Basilica of the Annunciation (No. 49). The area under and around the church, as well as at the Church of St. Joseph not far away, was plainly that of an agricultural village. There were numerous grottoes, silos for grain, cisterns for water and oil; presses for raisins and olives, and millstones. While the silos are of a type found at Tell Abu Matar as early as the Chacolithic Age (Israel Exploration Journal 5 ^*," target="_blank" >p. 23) the earliest pottery found in them here at Nazareth is of Iron II (900-600 B.C.). Vardaman calls attention to the characteristic large jar with a small "funnel" beside the mouth; this appendage, though designed like a funnel, is simply attached to the shoulder, and does not actually pierce the wall of the jar (for an illustration of this jar, see Bagatti in DB Supplément VI, col. 323, Fig. 601). Other pottery of the site comprises a little of the Hellenistic period, more of the Roman, and most of all of the Byzantine period. Of the numerous grottoes at least several had served for domestic use and had even been modified architecturally for this purpose. One of these, where walls were built against a grotto to make a habitation, under the convent adjoining the Church of the Annunciation. Twenty-three tombs have also been found, most of them at a distance of something like 250 to 750 yards from Church of the Annunciation to the north, the west, and the south. Since these must have been outside of the village proper, their placement gives some idea of the limits of the settlement. Eighteen of the tombs are of the kokim type, which was known in Palestine from about 200 B.C., and became virtually the standard type of Jewish tomb. Two of the tombs, one (PEFQS 1923, p. 90) only 60 yards from the other (QDAP 1 [1932, pp. 53-55) 450 yards southwest of the Church of the Annunciation, still contained objects such as pottery lamps and vases and glass vessels, and these date probably from the first to the third or fourth centuries of the Christian era. Four of the tombs were sealed with rolling stones, a type of closure typical of the late Jewish period up to A.D. 70. From the tombs, therefore, it can be concluded that Nazareth was a strongly Jewish settlement in the Roman period. (The Archaeology of the New Testament, Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1992: pages 44-46)

Richard Carrier further comments: "See: 'Nazareth,' Avraham Negev & Shimon Gibson, eds., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, new ed. (2001); and B. Bagatti, Excavations in Nazareth, vol. 1 (1969), esp. pp. 233-34, which discusses four calcite column bases, which were reused in a later structure, but are themselves dated before the War by their stylistic similarity to synagogues and Roman structures throughout 1st century Judaea, and by the fact that they contain Nabataean lettering (which suggests construction before Jewish priests migrated to Nazareth after the war), as well as their cheap material (cancite instead of marble); pp. 170-71 discusses Aramaic-inscribed marble fragments paleographically dated around the end of the 1st century or early 2nd century, demonstrating that Nazareth had marble structures near the time the Gospels were written (even if not before)."^*

Thus there is some evidence that Nazareth was a Jewish settlement both before and after the First Jewish Revolt in AD 70.

Nazareth in the New Testament

It is evident from John 1:46 that Nazareth was an obscure place; it was assumed in Judaea that 'nothing good' could possibly come out of this provincial town of Galilee. According to the New Testament, Nazareth was the home of Joseph and Mary and the site of the Annunciation, according to the New Testament, when Mary was told that she would have Jesus by the Angel Gabriel. Nazareth is also assumed to be where Jesus grew up from his infancy to manhood. However, some historians have called this into question, suggesting instead that what was originally a title was corrupted (Nazarene) into the name of his hometown (alternately, Nazara or Nazaret or Nazareth). Alfred Loisy, for example, in The Birth of Christianity argues that Iesous Nazarene meant not "from Nazareth", but rather that his title was "Nazarene."

Luke 4:16 implies that Nazareth was large enough to have a synagogue.

The etymology of Nazareth from as early as Eusebius up until the 20th century has been said to derive from netser, a "shoot" or "sprout", while the apocryphal Gospel of Phillip derives the name from Nazara meaning "truth". "Nazarene," meaning "of the village of Nazareth," should not be confused with "Nazirite," meaning a "separated" Jew.

Zindler's view

Frank Zindler, managing editor of the American Atheist Press, asserts that Nazareth did not exist in the first century. His arguments include the following:

Nazareth is not mentioned in any historical records or biblical texts of the time and receives no mention by any contemporary historian.
Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, nor in the Apocrypha and it does not appear in any early rabbinic literature.
Nazareth was not included in the list of settlements of the tribes of Zebulon (Joshua 19:10-16) which mentions twelve towns and six villages
Nazareth is not included among the 45 cities of Galilee that were mentioned by Josephus (37AD-100AD).
Nazareth is also missing from the 63 towns of Galilee mentioned in the Talmud.

1948

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War Nazareth capitulated July 16, after little more than token resistance, during Operation Dekel. The surrender was formalized in a written agreement, where the town leaders accepted to cease hostilities in return for promises from the Israeli officers, including the leader of the operation, brigade commander Ben Dunkelman, that no harm would come to the civilians of the town. A few hours later Chaim Laskov gave order to Dunkelman to evacuate the civilian population of Nazareth. Dunkelman refused to obey these orders. In sharp contrast to the surrounding towns, the Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were therefore never forced to evacuate.

References

Dunkelman, Ben. Dual allegiance: an autobiography, Goodread Biography, 1984, ISBN 0887801277
Kidron, Peretz in Blaming the Victims Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds.) 1988, p.85-97 ISBN 0-86091-175-6

External links

The History of the Ancient Near East
Nazareth City Website
Jewish Encyclopedia
www.jesusneverexisted.com "Nazareth: the town that theology built": A highly critical view of archaeology at Nazareth.
Easton's Bible Dictionary 1897
W.R.F. Browning, Oxford Dictionary of the Bible
Nazareth Village: A Recreation of First Century Life in Nazareth
Excavation and Research at the Nazareth Village Farm
The New Official site of Nazareth City