Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did not even exist.

“Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

If there is anything most people would say they know about Jesus it is the fact he came from Nazareth. After all, after “Jesus Christ” he is most commonly referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth” and his home town of Nazareth features in popular narratives about him: for example, in the well known Christmas stories. Nazareth also features as his place of origin in all four of the canonical gospels and appears in a significant story of his return to his home town in the three Synoptics.

So why do many Jesus Mythicists argue that Nazareth is an addition to the Jesus stories or even that no such place existed? This is because the Nazareth element is awkward for the gospel writers in ways that strongly indicate it was a historical element that they had to include, despite that awkwardness. For Mythicists, elements which seem to indicate historicity cannot be allowed to stand, so they have to find ways to make this one go away. Their attempts to do so are, as ever, convoluted, contrived, based on carefully selected snippets of scholarship and a lot of suppositions and – in the most extreme cases – crackpot pseudo archaeology and crazed conspiracy theories.

The gospel depictions of Jesus’ origin in Nazareth contain a number of oddities. The opening chapter of the last and latest gospel – gJohn – depicts Philip telling Nathanael “‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth'” (John 1:45), to which Nathanael replies dismissively “‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?'”, with the strong implication the answer should be “No”. The same gospel has another expression of scepticism at the idea of a Galilean Messiah from Nazareth:

When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Messiah.” But some asked, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So there was a division in the crowd because of him.

(John 7: 40-43)

gJohn does not present a defence of Jesus’ messiahship in the face of this objection – possibly because it writer did not consider Jesus’ town of origin significant, or because he assumed his readers were already aware of the traditions that did have Jesus born in Bethlehem.

We can see those traditions in the earlier gospels of gMatt and gLuke, though here the oddities multiply. Both stories have Jesus being born in Bethlehem. And both have him growing up and living in Nazareth before the beginning of his preaching career. But the way they achieve this differs and the stories they tell to do so are contradictory, full of historical problems and are mutually exclusive.

The “scripture” referred to in John 7:42 is Micah 5:2:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

Bethlehem was the home town of Jesse and his son David and it was where David was anointed king by Samuel (1Samuel 16:1-13), so it seems some came to see this text as a prophecy about the town from which the Messiah would come. This is why gMatt depicts Jesus’ parents as living in Bethlehem and Jesus being born there (Matt 2:1). This gospel then has Herod threaten to kill the newborn Jesus and his family escape to Egypt until Herod’s death, eventually returning and settling, not in Bethlehem in Judea, but in Nazareth in Galilee (Matt 2:19-23).

But there are elements in this story which make it historically dubious. The clear parallels between Jesus and Moses (a tyrant trying to kill a child, the child escaping, a return from Egypt) make those elements likely to be symbolic, presenting Jesus as a second Moses. The excuse given for settling in Nazareth after Herod’s death – the fact that his son Archelaus was ruling Judea – makes little sense given that another of his sons, Antipas, was also ruling Galilee. And the claim that they settled in Nazareth “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.'” (Matt 2:23) is problematic because no such prophecy can be found in any scriptures of the time and the writer of gMatt, unusually, does not actually specify which “prophets” (plural) supposedly said this.

The problems multiply when we turn to the gLuke account of Jesus’ birth and find a very different story. Here Jesus’ family live in Nazareth to begin with. They then journey to Bethlehem to take part in the census of Quirinius because Joseph is a descendant of King David (Luke 2:1-7) and then return to Nazareth where Jesus grows up. There are historical problems with this story also. Despite the best efforts of Christian apologists, there is no way to reconcile some kind of decree “from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Luke 2:1) with anything historical. It certainly cannot be reconciled with “the first registration …. taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2), given this was a census of Judea only, done when the Romans deposed Archelaus and took administrative control of the region directly. Finally, the Romans had no interest in where your distant ancestors lived one thousand years earlier, so the idea that Joseph would be required to take part in this census because of some ancient ancestral connection to Bethlehem is highly dubious.

Most importantly, however, these two stories not only contain internal problems but also (again, despite the strenuous and ingenious efforts of apologists) cannot be made to reconcile with each other. As mentioned, the census in gLuke is specified to be that of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius which was “the first” because Quirinius was taking control of Judea for the first time on the deposition of the tetrarch Archelaus in 6 AD (see Josephus, Ant., XVIII.1). But the gMatt narrative has Herod the Great as a key character and Herod died in 4 BC. So the two gospel narratives not only tell two different stories, but they also set them a whole decade apart.

Again, Christian apologists strive mightily to resolve that contradiction using what Geza Vermes describes wryly as “exegetical acrobatics”, but most critical scholars accept that neither story is historical in its details and both are trying to achieve two similar things in different ways. Firstly, both are emphasising Jesus’ remarkable status as the Messiah in various ways, not least of which is the depiction of his birth in Bethlehem in accordance with Micah 5:2. Secondly, both stories “explain” how this Messiah could be born in the (appropriate) Judean town of Bethlehem despite growing up in the (inappropriate) Galilean village of Nazareth.

So both stories are working hard to counter the objection we find reflected in John 7:42 – “he may have come from Nazareth” they are saying, “but he was born in Bethlehem as a true Messiah”. This makes sense if, in fact, Jesus was from Nazareth and was well known to be so. That would mean that Nazareth would be an awkward and inconvenient fact, giving a strong incentive for “explanations” to arise in the early Jesus traditions to get around the John 7:42 objection.

So while this makes sense if there was a historical Jesus who was from Nazareth, it poses a problem for Mythicists. If he was not historical, why is the Nazareth element in the story at all? It serves no theological or exegetical purpose: on the contrary, it gets in the way of the claim he was born as the Messiah because he is from the “wrong” place. So why do the traditions not simply have him as “Jesus of Bethlehem” and avoid the whole issue? Why is “Nazareth” in there at all?

This question forced no less a New Atheist luminary than Christopher Hitchens to reluctantly accept that “there may have been a figure of some kind of deluded rabbi” as the kernel of the Jesus stories. Hitchens noted “the fakery of the story” in the accounts of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and concluded “the fakery itself proves something”, asking “why not have him born in Bethlehem right there, and leave out the Nazarene business?” (see this video, with his comments beginning around the 2.47 mins mark). Hitchens garbles some of the details, but nails the essence of the argument.

“Is this not the Carpenter?”

And we do not find “the Nazarene business” only in the infancy narratives of gMatt and gLuke. In Luke 4:16-30 we find a strange story where Jesus comes “to Nazareth, where he had been brought up” and preaches in the synagogue there, expounding on a version of Isaiah 61:1-3. He declares “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (v. 21) The assembled residents are amazed at this announcement, asking each other “Is this not Joseph’s son?” (v. 22). Then Jesus notes that “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (v. 24) and effectively refuses to perform any miracles there like the ones he had performed earlier in Capernaum (v. 23). So the people there become angry and lead him to “the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff ” (v. 29), but we are told he “passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” (v. 30)

This is an expansion and embellishment of the briefer story found in gMark:

He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

(Mark 6:1-5)

We also find an even shorter version of this story in Matthew 13:54-58, which follows the general outline of its Marcan source above, though rather than saying “he could do no deed of power there” the Matthean version says “he did not do many deeds of power there” (v. 58), making this sound more like a choice than an inability.

What do we make of these stories of Jesus being rejected in his own πατρίδα (hometown, country, fatherland)? The first thing to notice is that the later Matthean and Lucan versions work to soften the effect of the “unbelief” of the Nazarenes. In gMark he “could do no deed of power there” except some minor healings, whereas in gMatt he does not do “many” major miracles, which implies he chose to do some. While in gLuke we get a dialogue where Jesus tells the people there that they may have heard of him doing miracles in Capernaum but that he would do none in Nazareth, saying:

“[T]here were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

(Luke 4:25-27)

So here it is not that Jesus cannot perform great miracles (gMark) or simply chooses not to (gMatt), he overtly refuses to do so and tells the Nazarenes why in terms that emphasises his self-proclaimed status as a prophet and the fulfilment of prophecy. This is what angers the people there and leads them to not just reject him but attack him – an element not found in the other two versions.

This means we go from a story in gMark where Jesus goes to his “home country”, is met with “unbelief”, and could not perform major miracles there to one in gLuke where he makes a virtue of their scepticism and, in refusing to perform any miracles at all, emphasises his prophet status.

Again, there is a possible historical kernel in the early Marcan story – a memory of an actual incident where Jesus meets with some acclaim in Capernaum and so goes back to Nazareth where his reception from those who know him and his family is far more sceptical. The later versions work to soften this slightly awkward story, with gLuke turning his sceptical rejection into something triumphant.

That Jesus came from Nazareth is not only found in all four canonical gospels, it is reflected in later traditions as well. Acts 24:5 depicts Paul being described to the Roman procurator Antonius Felix as “a leader of the Nazarenes”. Writing in the early fourth century Eusebius notes in his catalogue of Biblical place names:

Nazareth: – From which the Christ is called the Nazarene and we, who are now called Christians, were of old called Nazarenes.

(Onomasticon, 13824-140.2)

Similarly Tertullian emphasises Jesus’ origin in Nazareth and says “for this reason the Jews call us ‘Nazarenes'” (Ad. Mar. IV.8) and we find similar comments on the origin of this name for Christians in Origen and Jerome. It may have seemed to these Greek and Latin speakers that it was “the Jews” who gave Christians this name, but evidence suggests that while forms of the Greek name Χριστιανοί (Christians) dominated in the western world, among Semitic speakers the name for the sect was derived from Nazareth. So we find Syriac Christians referring to themselves as Nasraye, Thomasine Christians in India calling themselves Nasrani and the Arabic form Naṣara. Both the Greek-derived “Christians” and the Semitic forms of “Nazarenes” seem to be terms originally given to Christians by others and later adopted by the adherents of the sect themselves.

Finally, we have some fragmentary indicators that the association between Jesus and his home town continued to be remembered long after his death. Eusebius quotes a lost work from the late second century Christian writer Sextus Julius Africanus, who records that Jesus’ family still lived in the area much later. Writing about the genealogy of Jesus, Africanus says:

“A few of the careful, however, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble extraction. Among these are those already mentioned, called Desposyni, on account of their connection with the family of the Saviour. Coming from Nazara and Cochaba, villages of Judea, into other parts of the world, they drew the aforesaid genealogy from memory and from the book of daily records as faithfully as possible.”

(Quoted in Ecc.Hist. IV.7.14)

So to most people Jesus’ origin in Nazareth would seem to be firmly established, as far as we can establish anything about such a figure given the nature of our sources. The early traditions emphasise his origin there and preserve memories of his family coming from there. Others use the name of Jesus’ place of origin as an early designation for his sect. And the gospels preserve stories about his origin these that are in several ways awkward for them and have to be moderated or corrected to fit their claims about him. So how can Mythicists claim the whole Nazareth element is a later accretion and not a historical element at all?

Jesus of … Capernaum?

The main way Mythicists get rid of Nazareth as a likely historical element is by arguing that its use as a gentilic for Jesus – i.e. a part of his name indicating where he came from – was a later development that evolved out of an earlier title that had nothing to do with a placename. So Mythicism apologist Dr Richard Carrier PhD claims:

[T]he accumulated evidence suggests ‘Nazareth’ as the town Jesus originated from was a late eponymous inference from what was originally the completely unrelated title of ‘Nazorian’, having something to do with what Jesus was, not where he was from.

(On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt, p. 400)

Here Carrier cites himself, pointing to a longer analysis of the issue in his earlier work Proving History (pp. 145-48). There he notes a range of possible alternative origins of the title “Nazarene” suggested by a few scholars. These include Eric Laupont, who argues that the title was originally a name for the Christian movement derived from Isaiah 11:1 (“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch (Hebrew – neser) shall grow out of his roots”). This name for the sect was then, somehow, retroactively turned into Jesus’ home town – see Laupont, “Tacitus’ Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans,” Vigiliae Christianae 54, no. 3, (2000): 233–47). But Carrier also cites J.S. Kennard who presents another suggestion; that the name is derived from the “Nazarites” – the “separated” or “consecrated ones” described in Numbers 6 who take a vow dedicating themselves to God. So Kennard argues that John the Baptist’s followers called themselves something like “the consecrated” from the Hebrew verb nazar (to consecrate) and Jesus had this title because he was a follower of John. The writer of gMark, Kennard argues, had to therefore find a way to distance Jesus from the Baptist’s “Nazorean” followers and find another meaning for Jesus’ title and settled on the idea that Jesus was from Nazareth – see J. S. Kennard, “Was Capernaum the Home of Jesus?”, Journal of Biblical Literature, 65, no. 2 (June 1946): 131–41.

Not fully content with these two alternatives, Carrier adds a third, this time from amateur writer René Salm (more on him below), who cites the very late (probably third century) Gnostic text The Gospel of Philip to argue the title originally meant “Truth”. Carrier declares that “I do not agree with all the theories of either Salm, Kennard, or Laupot”, which makes sense, given they are all mutually exclusive. But he decides, despite this, that “their arguments on this point are correct”. So apparently it does not matter which of these very different ideas is correct in detail, because it seems the fact that these and other “possibilities” merely exist is enough to convince Carrier that the word was originally a title and not a place name. It seems none of them has to actually be fully convincing for Carrier – the fact that the three of them all indicate the conclusion he likes (in totally contradictory ways) is somehow enough. Carrier’s work is full of breezy but incoherent arguments like this.

Nazareth is made easier to remove from the many gospel references to it if, as Kennard and others have argued, you decide it is all derived from gMark. If the writer of that text came up with the whole idea that this “Nazarene” title meant “from Nazareth” and the other gospels simply repeated and expanded this idea, we have a single point of origin for the whole concept. Some go further than Kennard and argue that not even gMark depicted Jesus as coming from Nazareth and that the only passage that says this – Mark 1:9 (“[i]n those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee”) is somehow an interpolation. Elsewhere gMark only refers to Jesus using a title – e.g. “Nazarene” in Mark 1:24 – which, according to this line of reasoning, is not a reference to this town at all, as per the various arguments above. The episode where he visits his “home town/home country” in Mark 6:1-5 does not actually name the town in the original Marcan version. Furthermore, as Kennard and a few earlier scholars argue, the Marcan narrative seems to depict Jesus’ home as being Capernaum, not Nazareth at all.

Of course, Kennard was no Mythicist, makes several arguments in his works that assumes a historical Jesus much as the gospels describe him and in his paper on Capernaum as Jesus’ home town even makes a wry aside about “the Christ-myth school” (p. 132), but Mythicism is substantially cobbled together out of arguments by scholars who fully accept a historical Jesus. So Mythicists press into service some of Kennard’s arguments that Jesus actually came from Capernaum. He notes Capernaum is referred to as “his own city” (Matt 9:1) and claims Matt 17:24 means Jesus paid a poll tax there. He notes that “the house” in Mark 2:1 and 9:33 is in Capernaum and says that there is evidence the sermon he preached in his “home town” was actually in Capernaum, not Nazareth. Mythicists who use these arguments place great emphasis on Mark 2:1:

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home.

(my emphasis)

So, it is argued, originally there was no association of Jesus with Nazareth, this was invented out of an earlier title that had nothing to do with his home town and his home town was originally depicted as being Capernaum, with Nazareth as a later accretion. But there are many, many problems with this tangled line of reasoning.

To begin with, the claim that the whole idea that Jesus came from Nazareth derives from gMark – or, more specifically, from the single explicit reference to Jesus coming “from Nazareth of Galilee” in Mark 1:9 – depends on none of the references to Jesus being from Nazareth in the other three gospels being independent of gMark. Pretty much all critical scholars acknowledge that the three synoptic gospels are interdependent, with most accepting gMark as the earliest of the three and the one the other two used as their major source. But most scholars accept the “Two Source Hypothesis” which notes material independent of gMark in the other two synoptics (the Q, L and M material). Then there is the whole of gJohn, which could be very lightly influenced by gMark, written by someone who perhaps knew gMark (or one or more synoptic gospels) or was perhaps wholly independent of it. Mythicists, of course, tend to think all of the other three gospels are wholly derived from gMark, but there are many reasons not to think so. If there are independent elements in the other three gospels that contain references to Jesus being from Nazareth and which are not derived from gMark – and most scholars believe there are, in gJohn at least – then the idea this concept is wholly derived from one reference in gMark founders.

The hypothesis that the reference to Jesus coming from Nazareth in Mark 1:9 is actually based on an interpolated verse has problems as well. There are no manuscript variants which do not contain this verse or which contain some other version of it that does not mention Jesus coming from Nazareth. This means the idea that Mark 1:9 is a later interpolation to bring gMark into line with the other synoptics depicting Jesus as being from Nazareth has no textual basis and so is tenuous to begin with. Many of those who argue for the interpolation of Mark 1:9 fall back on noting the “anarthrous use” of the name “Jesus” (Ἰησοῦς) in this text: i.e it is used without an article. This makes it highly distinctive in gMark, given that in the 82 uses of the name “Jesus” in that gospel, only eight are anarthrous and there are grammatical or textual reasons for the other seven instances. However, there are alternatives to the idea that this distinctive form of the name indicates a later interpolation. It is not just the name “Jesus” that is anarthrous in Mark 1:9 but also that of “John” (Ἰωάννου), and many commentators (e.g. E.P. Gould, C.E.B. Cranfield, R.T. France, Joel Marcus) note that this text is notably Semitic in its syntax. Given that Hebrew names do not take an article, the anarthrous usages could indicate a Semitic precursor to this part of gMark. Robert A. Guelich’s recent commentary concludes this passage “stems from pre-Marcan tradition” and notes:

The anarthrous use of “Jesus” and “John”, the absolute use of “the Spirit” and the reference to “the Jordan” stand in contrast to similar uses in 1:4-8 and suggest that this traditional unit existed separately from that behind 1:4-8. …. The evidence indicates that the evangelist brought this unit into conjunction with 1:2b-8 to form his prologue under the heading of 1:1-3.

(Guelich, Mark 1-8:26, Volume 34A , 2018)

So a much better interpretation of the anarthrous use of “Jesus” here is not that it represents a later interpolation, but rather the integration of a much earlier stratum of tradition. Which anchors the reference to Jesus’ origin in Nazareth even more firmly.

The claim that, minus the 1:9 reference, the Marcan Jesus is depicted as being from Capernaum rather than Nazareth is even weaker. Kennard sees remnants of this in Matt 9:1’s reference to Capernaum as Jesus’ “own city” ( ἰδίαν πόλιν), but this only refers to the fact that Jesus is depicted as living there for a while, not that it was his original town of origin. Even more tenuous is Kennard’s argument that the fact the temple tax collectors come to Peter in Capernaum and ask “does not your teacher pay the temple tax?” ( Matt 17:24 ) somehow means (i) he paid it in Capernaum and so (ii) he was from that town originally, neither of which follow at all.

Mark 2:1 and 9:33 refer to Jesus being (in many translations) “at home” in Capernaum. But the key phrases here simply means “in the house” (ἐν οἴκῳ/ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ), not that it is his house, let alone that this means Capernaum is his town of origin. And the context makes it clear that this is not his house at all – it is that of Peter. Mark 1:21 has Jesus, the sons of Zebedee and Peter arrive in Capernaum and then Jesus preaches in the synagogue (v. 21-22), where he exorcises a demoniac (v. 23-28). They then go to a house that is specified as being “the house of Simon (Peter) and Andrew” (v. 29) where he heals Peter’s mother in law (v. 30-32) and many others who “gathered around the door” (v. 33). The next morning he gets up and goes to a “deserted place” to pray (v. 34) and then travels with Peter and the others around Galilee, before returning to Capernaum (2:1). It is at this point he is described as being found to be “at home” or rather “in the house”. Whose house? Given that he had clearly stayed at Peter’s house between v. 34 and v. 35 it would be very odd for it to be his own house, especially in a tiny town like Capernaum. So “the house” of Mark 2:1 and 9:33 is most obviously Peter’s. The idea that it is somehow the house of Jesus ignores all this context – gMark’s Jesus is a guest in Capernaum, not a permanent resident.

Nazareth, Nazarites, Nazir, Netzer etc.

Thus Mythicists try to dispose of the explicit Marcan reference to Jesus’ origin in Nazareth at Mark 1:9, often claiming that he was originally depicted as coming from Capernaum, with Nazareth a later accretion in the other three gospels and so not something historical. But what about all the other Marcan references to “Jesus of Nazareth” (e.g. Mark 1:24; 10:47; 14:67 or 16:6)? These, they claim, are not gentilics (i.e. references to his town of origin) but originally titles that refer to other things, not to his home town.

gMark uses forms of the word Ναζαρηνός (Nazarénos) in the examples above, and we also find this form in gLuke (see Luke 4:34 and 24:19). gMatt uses forms of Ναζωραῖος (Nazóraios), but both are generally translated as “the Nazarene” or simply as “of Nazareth” since they are interpreted as gentilics – much like Μαγδαληνή (Magdalene, of Magdala) or Κυρηναῖος (of Cyrene).

But Mythicists use various arguments to claim that these cannot be gentilics and so have to be titles that do not refer to his town of origin at all. They claim there are insurmountable etymological problems with deriving these words from Ναζαρέθ (Nazareth) and so they must originally be derived from something else. This argument was first used by non-Mythicists like Kennard, who refers to it in the beginning of his “Capernaum” article cited above:

The tradition that Jesus lived at one time in Nazareth rests upon a misinterpretation of the term ‘Nazorean’ which, as is commonly recognized today, is not derived from “Nazareth”. The city name would have yielded something like ‘Nazarethenos’, ‘Nazarethanos’ or ‘Nazarethaios’

Kennard, p. 131

But Kennard was corrected on this point in the same journal a few months later when W.F. Albright took issue with his blithe assurance that this “is commonly recognised today” noting:

The ordinary reader of [Kennard’s] paper will certainly take for granted that “Nazorean” (Ναζωραῖος) is, “as commonly recognized today, . . not derived from ‘Nazareth'”. This statement is, however, misleading, since the overwhelming majority of the scholars who have expressed themselves on the subject take just the opposite point of view.

Albright, “The Names ‘Nazareth’ and ‘Nazorean'” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 1946), pp. 397-401

Albright goes on to present several pages of linguistic analysis drawing on Aramaic and Arabic examples that show that not only can “Nazorean” be derived from “Nazareth”, but this is actually highly plausible. In his reply (“Nazorean and Nazareth”, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Mar., 1947), pp. 79-81), Kennard has to concede that he overstated the case and that “Nazorean” can indeed be derived from “Nazareth”, though he disagrees that this is the most plausible derivation. He then falls back on other, non-linguistic arguments to make that case.

One of these is an argument that has been taken up by Mythicists – “[r]eligious movements do not, as a rule, take their names from the birthplace of their founder” (Kennard, p. 79). The problem here is that religious movements take their names (or are given names by others) from all kinds of things, including their founder’s name (“Manicheanism” from its founding prophet Mani), a name or title of its focus (“Rastafarianism” from a title of its Messiah Haile Selassie or, for that matter, “Christianity”), an attribute of the practitioners (the “Quakers”) or placenames (the “Albigensians” from the town of Albi or the “Taborites” from their centre in the Czech town of Tábor). So there is no “rule” when it comes to how these names are derived. That aside, it actually does make perfect sense that the Jesus sect came to be named after the element of his name which was most distinctive. “Yeshua” (Jesus) was, after all, the sixth most common Jewish men’s name in the first century AD. This is why a gentilic (“of Nazareth”) would have been useful to differentiate him from all the many other Galilean men called Jesus and why that gentilic was the distinctive element in his name that attached itself to his sect. So the sect is not actually named after his hometown – at least not directly. It is named after the founder by reference to his gentilic.

Many Mythicists also make much of the fact that the words Ναζαρηνός (Nazarénos, as per gMark and gLuke) and Ναζωραῖος (Nazóraios, used in gMatt) both contain the Greek letter zeta (ζ), whereas the Hebrew or Aramaic place we call “Nazareth” would have contained the Hebrew letter tsade (צ) which should be transliterated by the Greek letter sigma (σ). So, they argue, these words must derive from something other than the name “Nazareth”. Most who make this argument plump for some form of the Hebrew word nazir meaning “separated” or “consecrated” and referring to a “holy one”. Others prefer some derivation of the Hebrew nêtser meaning “a branch or shoot” as a reference to Isaiah 11:1 and the Messiah as the descendant or “shoot” of the house of Jesse and David. Either way, they argue that the zeta in these words shows they are titles of some kind and not derived from “Nazareth” at all.

The problem here is there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how Semitic words and place-names were transliterated into Greek. It is certainly true that a tsade would usually be written as a sigma, but we have sufficient examples of it being transliterated as a zeta to make any argument based on some rigid rule here too weak to hold any weight. In Judges 8 the name of the Midianite king Zalmunna has his name transliterated with a sigma in the Septuagint, but with a zeta in Josephus. Ditto for the place-name Zoar in Genesis 13:10 and the cliff called Bozez in 1Samuel 14:4. Just to further illustrate the lack of total consistency on this point: in Genesis 22.21 we have Uz and Buz – the Septuagint uses a zeta and Josephus uses both a zeta in the first word and a sigma in the second. So the words Ναζαρηνός and Ναζωραῖος could be written with a zeta because there simply was no consistency.

Or it could reflect a regional peculiarity in Galilean pronunciation. After all, when the gospels do refer to the town we have no less than three versions of its name, each with a slightly different ending: Ναζαρέθ (Nazareth – in Matt 21:11; Luke 1:26; Luke 2:4; Luke 2:39; Luke 2:51 and Acts 10:38), Ναζαρά (Nazara – in Matt 4:13 and Luke 4:16) and Ναζαρέτ (Nazaret – in Mark 1:9; Matt 2:23; John 1:45 and John 1:46); one with the more voiced ending, one without it and one with a harder stop. The English place-name “Launceston” can be pronounced “LAWN-ceston”, or “LON-ceston” or even “LONS’ton” depending on who is saying it. How would a Chinese speaker transliterate this name? And would their version be completely consistent with other, similar names with similar spelling but differing regional pronunciations? Probably not. Again, the arguments used by the Mythicists are not robust enough to sustain their conclusions.

Another line of argument says that we can detect that the term Ναζαρηνός in gMark is not a gentilic by reference to its use in the first miracle story, where the word seems to be powerfully talismanic title or word of power which is recognised by the demon cast out by Jesus in Mark 1:21-28. This was argued by the French (non-Mythicist) scholar Charles Guignebert (1867-1939) in his 1933 work Jésus, where he notes that the demoniac in the Mark 1 story asks:

“What have you to do with us, Jesus the Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

( Mark 1:24 )

Guignebert points to the parallel between this and the cry of another possessed man in Mark 5:

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.”

(Mark 5:7)

Guignebert argues from this parallel:

If we compare [these passages] …. we shall notice: first, that the expression, “Son of the most high God,” stands in the same place in the second passage as “the Nazarene” does in the first, and seems to be equivalent to it;
second, that “the Holy One of God” and “the Son of God” express similar conceptions, which shows that the former is simply an expansion of “the Nazarene”.

Guignebert, p. 83

Guignebert makes some similar arguments about other uses of the word “Nazarene”, such as in John 18:4-5 where the guards are asked by Jesus who they are looking for and reply “Jesus the Nazarene” and then fall to the ground when Jesus says “I am [he]”. So Guignebert claims these examples show that there must have been much more to this word than the designation of his original home town.

But, again, this argument is far too tenuous to carry sufficient weight. The parallel formulations in Mark 1:24 and 5:7 have the demons effectively saying “What do you want with us? Leave us alone!” – the same reaction from similar beings to the same situation. It is a stretch to argue that “Nazarene” in the first passage is somehow the “equivalent” to “Son of the most high God”, given that the demons in the first example go on to say “I know who you are, the Holy One of God”. This indicates that “Nazarene” did not have this meaning at all, otherwise this second statement would be fairly redundant. The John 18 example is similarly weak, since it is the fact that Jesus replies with the divine assertion “I am” (Ἐγώ εἰμι) – a repeated element in gJohn – that elicits their stunned reaction, not the fact that he said he was Jesus the Nazarene.

The overarching problem with all of these attempts at making the references to Nazareth go away and the variants of the term “Nazarene” mean something else is that none of them are sufficiently compelling to unseat the generally accepted readings. As ever, Mythicists have roamed the well-ploughed field of New Testament Studies and found some bits and pieces of ideas that can be cobbled together to fit their agenda, but there are solid reasons none of these fringe ideas and obscure speculations have been accepted. In the final analysis, even the most sceptical critical scholars find this idea that the Nazareth element is a later accretion or some kind of misreading of something else uncompelling. Yet again, the only reason Mythicists find them convincing is because they need to prop up their contrived theory with whatever then can find.

A few, however, go much further than the fringe ideas above. They do not just argue Jesus’ origin in Nazareth is a later addition to the story and so not a historical element. They argue that it cannot be historical because Nazareth itself, like Jesus, never existed. And to do this they make some brave and radical forays into archaeology.

The Piano Man

While there has been some previous questioning about the existence of Nazareth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the embrace of this idea by many of the current crop of Mythicists is largely due to the work of one writer: a composer and retired piano teacher and tuner from Eugene, Oregon, named René Salm.

According to his own account, Salm is a remarkable figure. Not only is he a published composer of classical piano pieces and a concert-quality pianist, but he is also apparently a “mental health professional” and “a linguist who commands many ancient and modern languages” who somehow manages to live “without need of car or television”. What Salm is not, however, is an archaeologist. Despite his manifold talents, he has no training in archaeology, has no qualification or academic publications in that field and has never excavated anywhere. But, with all the confidence of the autodidact, he has certainly not let this deter him.

He recounts that he began his delving into the archaeology of Nazareth as a result of his interests in religious history and the study of Christian origins. He was motivated by an online discussion to seek out the archaeological evidence that Jesus’ home town existed, expecting to find this easily. But, he says, he was startled to find the evidence was thin and, to him, unconvincing. This began what he reports as a 16 year process of researching and writing his book The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (American Atheist Press, 2008). For those who are not invested enough in this topic to buy and read Salm’s book (375 pages, with extensive footnotes, an eight page bibliography and no less than seven appendices), Salm gives an accessible summary of his arguments in this 2016 YouTube interview:

His book was very well-received by a certain kind of audience. Former American Atheists president Frank Zindler was extremely impressed, declaring dramatically that Christian apologists would be out of work “unless they can disprove this book – or find a way to suppress it”. Then again, given that Zindler was Salm’s editor and publisher, he was hardly going to talk it down. Equally impressed was fellow Jesus Mythicist and maverick New Testament scholar Robert Price, who gushed to Salm that “I …. can’t wait to see the pathetic attempts to reply!”.

Zindler and Price did not have to wait too long to see replies, though they were not by newly unemployed Christian apologists, but by archaeologists. In 2007 the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society had published “Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth Village Farm (1997–2002): Final Report” by S. Pfann, R. Voss, Y. Rapuano ( vol. 25 (2007) pp. 19-79 ). Salm’s book had already gone to press at this stage, but he wrote a detailed response disputing their findings, so the Bulletin published this in the next volume of the journal (early 2008), along with a reply to Salm by Pfann and Rapuano. Given that by this stage Salm’s book had been released, the editors of the Bulletin also asked British archaeologist Ken Dark, who had excavated at Nazareth and knew the sites there well, to read and review what the journal’s editorial called “Salm’s controversial book”. Dark was not impressed with the piano tuner’s work. After five pages of detailed criticisms, Dark’s review concludes:

[D]espite 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.

“Review: Salm, R The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (K. Dark) ” Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, vol. 26 (2008) pp. 140-145)

Pfann and Rapuano were similarly unimpressed with both Salm’s criticisms of their work and with his book:

Salm’s personal evaluation of the pottery, which he rehearses from his book The Nazareth Myth, reveals his lack of expertise in the area as well as his lack of serious research in the sources. By ignoring or dismissing solid ceramic, numismatic and literary evidence for Nazareth’s existence during the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman period, it would appear that the analysis which René Salm includes in his review, and his recent book must, in itself, be relegated to the realm of ‘myth’. By upholding the idea of a myth, Salm has created a myth himself.

 “On the Nazareth Village Farm Report: A Reply to Salm”, pp. 105-108

Despite Salm’s claims that archaeologists have somehow avoided his work or ignored him, specialists in the very archaeology he focuses on assessed his book as soon as it was published and found it flawed, tendentious and unconvincing. Like all such amateur enthusiasts, Salm has rejected the experts’ opinion and even concocted increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories to explain why these foolish archaeologists will not acknowledge the obvious correctness and manifest brilliance of his ideas. But it does not take much critical analysis to see why their rejection of his thesis is completely justified.

As already noted, Salm has no archaeological training at all. He has never excavated anywhere and has certainly never excavated at Nazareth – a site which, as far as can be made out, he seems to have only ever visited as a tourist. His “methodology” consists entirely of an armchair critique of the work of actual archaeologists, by which he claims to sustain the following thesis: that ancient Nazareth was inhabited prior to the Assyrian Conquest, but the valley was then abandoned for centuries and only settled “towards the end of the first century of our era, following the momentous cataclysm of the First Jewish War” (Salm, The Myth of Nazareth, p. 207). This means there could not have been any “Jesus of Nazareth” because Nazareth did not exist until several decades after the time in which Jesus was supposed to have lived.

Actual archaeologists, however, say that Nazareth was not only consistently inhabited but was also very much inhabited in the Hellenic, Hasmonean and Early Roman Periods – in other words, the first two centuries BC and the first half of the first century AD. So Salm goes to great lengths to “show” how these archaeologists are all wrong. Indeed, not just wrong but also foolish, incompetent and, perhaps, deceitful or even outright liars and frauds. And he does this all from the comfort of an armchair in Eugene, Oregon.

For example, Salm makes a great deal of the fact that several lamps discovered in Nazareth have been claimed to be “Hellenic” or “Herodian” in date but are actually “Middle Roman” (i.e. post-70 AD) at the earliest. Therefore, he argues, these lamps cannot be evidence Nazareth was inhabited in the early first century; the time of Jesus. The so-called “Herodian lamps” or “bow-spouted lamps” are noted by archaeologists to be clear indications that the valley was inhabited in precisely the period Salm’s theory needs to avoid. No less than fourteen of these lamps have been found. Two of them were found in one tomb about 320 meters south-west of the Church of the Annunciation, and they can be seen in the photo below:

But Salm insists that these lamps are not as early most archaeologists claim. Back in the 1960s archaeologists considered this distinctively Jewish style of artefact to begin appearing as early as 75 BC. More recent work has brought that forward and Salm quotes Varda Sussman dating their first appearance to “the reign of King Herod” (i.e. 37-4 BC) and then in a later article two years afterwards revising this, saying “Recent archaeological evidence suggests that their first appearance was somewhat later, after the reign of Herod” (Sussman, “Lighting the Way Through History”, Biblical Archaeology Review, Mar/Apr 1985).

The only problem here is that this estimate of this kind of lamp’s inception, which is the latest Salm can find in the literature, still does not help him, because it actually places this kind of lamp right in the middle of the very period he desperately needs to avoid – the early First Century AD. But Salm is nothing if not resourceful:

Thus, we can now date the first appearance of the bow-spouted lamp in Jerusalem to c. 1-25 CE. Because a few years must be allowed for the spread of the type to rural villages of the north, c. 15-c. 40 CE is the earliest probable time for the appearance of this type in Southern Galilee. Accordingly, we shall adopt 25 CE as the terminus post quem for the bow-spouted oil lamp at Nazareth.

(Salm, 2008, pp 168-69)

By this bit of fancy footwork, Salm manages to take Sussman’s “somewhat later, after the reign of Herod”, tack on a whole quarter of a century to get these lamps a mere 150 kilometres north to southern Galilee and thus at least edge the terminus post quem for these artefacts a bit further away from the time of Jesus. Exactly how he came up with the figure of 25 years or why it would take 25 years for a style of lamp which became common precisely because it was so easy to make to spread a couple of days walk northwards he never bothers to explain. It is by this kind of sleight of hand that Salm shapes the evidence to fit his assumed conclusion throughout his work.

[Edit: I have removed some discussion I originally made about Salm’s use of the work of archaeologist Hans-Peter Kuhnen on the dating of the kokhim tombs on the Nazareth site, because I was wrong that this depended on his interpretation of one line in one of Kuhnen’s works. That said, Salm’s argument that these tombs date to the later first century do not actually help him, since high status tombs of this kind do not suddenly spring into being out of nowhere. They require an earlier settlement.}

The Great Nazareth Conspiracy!

Of course, any argument based on an absence of evidence runs into a problem any time new evidence appears. After a reported 16 years labouring on The Myth of Nazareth, Salm must have been startled to read, around the time his opus went to press, the previously mentioned 61 page report of new finds from the “Nazareth Farm” area by Pfann, Voss and Rapuano. Not surprisingly, Salm was stirred to find ways to counter this evidence that punctured his thesis – thus his nine page critique in the next edition of the Bulletin (Salm, “A Response to ‘Surveys and Excavations at the Nazareth Village Farm (1997-2002): Final Report'”, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society , vol. 26 (2008) pp. 95-103 ). The “Final Report” article had detailed numerous finds of ceramic shards in an extensive appendix by Jewish archaeologist and ancient ceramics expert Yehuda Rapuano, including finds from the Hellenic and Early Roman Eras. Ten pages of the 61 page archaeological report detail the finds from a number of sites, giving diagrammatic drawings of many and assessments of the nature of the (usually) fragmentary items and estimates of their date provenance. This is all standard stuff as any archaeologist would expect to find in any peer-reviewed journal report of this kind.

Rapuano notes that the finds ranged from a single potsherd from an Early Bronze Age III Period platter (an intrusive incidental find, since there is no other indication of settlement on the site in that period) up to an entirely intact “Black Gaza Ware” bowl from the Ottoman Period. Rapuano summarised the finds saying:

The earliest occupation seems to have occurred in the late Hellenistic period of the first and second centuries BC. Examples dating to this period were primarily the jar and jug sherds discovered in Area B-1. A single jug base of this period was also found in Area A-2 (Fig. 38.5). The horizontal handle of the krater (Fig. 38:6) may derive from this period as well. A small amount of material dated to the Early Roman period of the first century BC to first century AD was found in Areas A-1, A-2 and C-1. The best represented pottery at the site was dated from the Late Roman to the early Byzantine period of the third to fourth or fifth centuries AD. The only area in which pottery from this period was not found was Area B-1.

(Rapuano, p. 69)

Again, this is all standard stuff with appropriately cautious language in places (“may derive from this period as well”) and a clear indication of the relative volumes and general distributions of the finds. The problem for Salm is the detailing of Hellenistic and Early Roman period finds in areas B-1, A-1, A-2 and C-1 of the dig, which according to his armchair theory should not be there. Rapuano then goes on over the following pages to detail the finds from each location on the site. For example:

Fig. 38:3 is the folded, everted rim and short, cylindrical neck of a storage jar that may date to the Herodian period, and Fig. 38:4 is the rim of a storage jar of the Late Hellenistic period. The base of a jug, Fig. 38:5, could date either to the late Hellenistic or Early Roman period.

(Rapuano, p. 71)

Again, Rapuano expresses himself with the usual caution required of a professional archaeologist, while at the same time giving his trained assessment of their dating provenance. Even excluding finds where Rapuano’s date range estimates cover the early first century AD but extend into later periods, there are no less than 20 finds in his report that he judged to be from the period in which the piano teacher Salm claims there was no settlement there.

So how does Salm deal with all this? Badly. Given that he has no training in the discipline and so has never analysed an artefact in his life, he can hardly dispute Rapuano’s assessment. And he has never even seen the finds in question and only seems to have visited Nazareth once as a tourist. So he is reduced to nitpicking. He leaps on what he claims is evidence of incompetence, saying the report’s authors give two different dates for the same artefact. Actually, as Pfann and Rapuano were later able to confirm, the mistake was made by the article’s editors – they simply mislabelled a diagram drawing of the find.

Apart from this Salm has pretty much got nothing. Faced with multiple finds at several locations on the site, all from the very periods he claims Nazareth was uninhabited, he simply declares the archaeologists wrong on the weird grounds that only 15 of the finds in the report are noted with a typological parallel. Rapuano refers to examples in Adan-Bayewitz’s Common Pottery in Roman Galilee (1993) in several places, but Salm declares that because he does not do this for all the finds (which is in no way standard in any archaeological report), his estimates can be rejected:

“Put bluntly, the NVF evidence for Nazareth in the time of Jesus rests on no more than Y. Rapuano’s opinion.”

(Salm, Scandal 5: The Nazareth Village Farm

Put bluntly, this is ludicrous. The appendix is by a qualified archaeologist who is an acknowledged expert in identifying and dating ceramics from this period and which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal of archaeology which is used by other qualified experts. It is absolutely standard in the way it reports the finds and that supposedly mere “opinion” is exactly the opinion that counts – one by an expert who has excavated many sites and reported many, many other such finds in precisely this way. To dismiss the “opinion” of a qualified expert is breathtaking. Whose opinions are we meant to rely on then? It seems the armchair pontificating from a piano player from Oregon is the only opinion that matters, according to Salm. The blithe arrogance here is as astounding as it is ridiculous.

But still more evidence was to emerge. In his response to Pfann, Voss and Rapuano’s “Final Report” article, Salm expressed great scepticism about their reference to how 165 coins found by Israeli archaeologist Yardena Alexandre at a site at Mary’s Well in Nazareth had included “a few Hellenistic, Hasmonaean [and] Early Roman … coins”. Salm responded:

The above statement is remarkable to me, because in 2006 Ms. Alexandre graciously shared with me a pre-publication copy of her official [Israeli Antiquities Authority] report on the excavation at Mary’s Well. As I write these lines that short report is before me, and it contains no mention of ‘165 coins’ nor of coins from Hellenistic or Hasmonaean times. …. Certainly, it is difficult to believe that such significant evidence as coins from the Hellenistic, Hasmonaean, and Early Roman periods (incidentally, not otherwise attested in the Nazareth basin) was subsequently divulged to the authors of the [Nazareth Village Farm Report], but escaped the official IAA report.

(Salm, “A Response”, 100)

Salm’s comment here ignores the fact that the brief summary Alexandre was kind enough to share with him via email in 2006 was just that: a summary. He also neglects to notice that her summary actually did refer to some “worn coins”, which were the very coins he claims she neglected to mention. In their response in the 2008 Bulletin, Pfann and Rapuano replied that the “remarkable statement” that Salm found so “difficult to believe” was actually provided to them by Alexandre herself – archaeologists tend to co-operate much more closely with each other than with random piano tuners.

But Salm could not imagine that what Alexandre had shared with a stranger in response to an unsolicited email request may not have been the full story. So he descended into conspiracy theory. On his website he declared himself “flabbergasted” at Pfann and Rapuano’s reference to her finding coins from the Hellenistic, Hasmonean, and Early Roman periods and at their revelation that Alexandre herself had given them the very paragraph he objected to. Why would she have not told him about these coins? Why, if they were using her words, did they not use quotation marks? Why were they referring to coins from another site in Nazareth at all? His conclusion? The whole thing is a fraud cooked up by Pfann, Rapuano and Alexandre, exposed by the intrepid René Salm – the Hercule Poirot of Nazareth archaeology!

Except Salm was completely wrong. At the end of his web article in which he uncovered this wicked plot Salm concluded:

Alexandre herself has been reported to claim that her original IAA notice was not definitive and omitted critical Jesus-era evidence—yet she refuses to set the record straight via publication.

“Refuses”! Unfortunately for Salm and other lovers of the dramatic, the truth was simply that the wheels of editing and publication in archaeology turn slowly and, in 2012 Alexandre published the full report on the site (Alexandre, Mary’s Well, Nazareth. The Late Hellenistic to the Ottoman Periods, Jerusalem, IAA Reports 49), complete with a whole chapter on the coins found there by numismatist Ariel Berman. Salm had been tripped up by reality again.

But cranks like Salm are indefatigable. He now produced a second book, with the luridly tabloid title NazarethGate: Quack Archaeology, Holy Hoaxes and the Invented Town of Jesus (American Atheist Press, 2015), that purported to expose a vast conspiracy involving the Israeli Antiquities Authority, Pfann, Rapuano, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, Alexandre and a cast of dozens of other fraudsters. Now that his attempts at depicting the coins as non-existent had totally failed, Salm had to find a way to dismiss their dating to the periods that did not fit his theory. So he contacted the Israeli Antiquities Authority requesting “photos of all of the ‘Hellenistic’ coins” (NazarethGate, p.297). Given that they did not have photos of all the coins in question and would have to have them made, Salm entered into “a considerable amount of negociation [sic]” to badger them into producing photos of four of the coins. And then decided, on receiving them, that “the coins are far too worn and pitted to ascertain even the crudest design feature. These bronze coins could be from any era” (NazarethGate, p. 298).

Of course, this is an amateur with no training in numismatics working purely from some photos of a few of the coins and, from the comfort of his armchair, second-guessing the expert opinion of a well-known expert in the coins of this period who had not only examined these artefacts with a trained eye, but (unlike Salm) did so with the actual coins in his hands, taking into account weight, size and fine features that would not be discernible via a photo alone. So we are meant to conclude that (a) Berman is a total incompetent, (b) Berman is another fraud and part of the vast “NazarethGate” conspiracy or (c) Salm is just biased, unreliable, inexpert and wrong. That is not a difficult choice to make.

But Salm soon had yet more problems. In 2009 press reports emerged about the discovery of a house in Nazareth which seemed to date from the early first century (see, for example, “Nazareth dwelling discovery may shed light on boyhood of Jesus”, Guardian, Dec 22, 2009). Yet again archaeologists had found something that did not fit Salm’s theory and it was Salm’s new nemesis Alexandre who featured in the news reports. Salm’s armchair investigations swung into action again and it was not long before he was able to confidently dismiss the dating of the structure and also decide that it was a “winemaking installation” and not a house at all (see NazarethGate, pp.178-245). The archaeologists were all wrong, yet again, and the omnicompetent Salm had exposed their wicked deceptions once more. Or so he insisted.

In an interesting sequel to Salm’s confident armchair critiques, an American Christian with an interest in archaeology named Jim Joyner became aware of Salm’s books. He had visited Israel several times and got to know Dr Mordechai (“Motti”) Aviam – the leading expert in the archaeology of Roman Era Galilee. He introduced Aviam to Salm’s claims about Nazareth and eventually co-ordinated an email correspondence between Aviam, Salm and Salm’s publisher, American Atheists’ Frank Zindler. In a comment on Bart Ehrman’s blog, Joyner relates what happened next:

Motti tried to address Salm’s criticisms of archaeological knowledge about 1st century Nazareth, especially the Nazareth residence discovered in 2009. …. Motti offered to Salm to go to the site, meet with the IAA excavator, review the finds and report back. Motti did what he promised, noted the fragments of Hellenistic and ER pottery, including fragments of small stone vessels. He came back and said there was no doubt about the early date of the residence. They questioned Motti’s comments with some strained arguments, and Motti responded (paraphrase): your conclusion is influenced by your atheistic beliefs … we don’t do science that way! This is where the discussion ended.

(I should note here that I contacted Joyner directly to confirm this is what happened and I then contacted Dr. Aviam, who also confirmed these events.)

This is quite remarkable. Here is the leading authority on Roman Galilee actually going to the site in question and confirming that it is, in fact, an Early Roman Era house and what do Salm and Zindler do? The piano tuner and the biology teacher tell the expert archaeologist that HE is wrong. These people are total fanatics.

As ever with these obsessive cranks, it would take two books longer than both of Salm’s to debunk everything he says and point out all the leaps of logic or loaded assumptions and other sleight of hand tricks that pad out his armchair critiques. When he was merely nitpicking at the evidence in his first book he was simply being the standard kind of amateur crackpot. But as more and more evidence overtook that approach, Salm has tipped over into full blown conspiracy theorist.

It is not too remarkable that someone like Salm exists or even that he can get his stuff into print – there will always be an audience for this crank material. What is remarkable is the eagerness with which some people who claim to be rationalists lap up his kooky stuff. Prominent sceptic and debunker of frauds, James “the Amazing” Randi, has enthusiastically endorsed Salm, uncritically parroting his arguments and dismissing the (mostly Jewish) archaeologists as Christian apologists. But not all of the usual suspects find Salm convincing. To his credit, notorious Mythicist Richard Carrier is not convinced by Salm’s work – which is remarkable, given that he usually boosts and justifies any argument that helps his Mythicist apologism. If even Carrier considers this thesis to be dubious nonsense, it really is a stinker.

The fact is that all the evidence indicates that Nazareth did exist in the early first century, the gospels did depict Jesus as being from Nazareth and this fact was awkward for the gospel writers in several ways. Jesus’ origin in Nazareth therefore appears to be highly likely to be a historical element in his story and not something added to it later on. The only parsimonious conclusion that can be drawn is that the historical Jesus was most likely from the small town of Nazareth.

Edit 19/04/20

In February 2020 the British Archaeologist Ken Dark released a new book on the archaeology of Nazareth – Roman-Period and Byzantine Nazareth and its Hinterland (Routledge, 2020). In his introduction Dark makes some comments on Salm’s silly theory and, given that the book has a hefty price tag, I will reproduce them here. After noting the relative lack of scholarly literature on the archaeology of sites in Nazareth he says:

In the absence of scholarly studies there have also been more speculative discussions of the archaeology of Nazareth. The superficially most detailed of these non-academic accounts is that by René Salm, who has produced two books claiming to disprove the existence of early first century Nazareth (Salm with Zindler 2015; Salm 2008). Published by the American Atheist Press, Salm’s books are written from the viewpoint that early first-century Nazareth was an imaginary place, invented to provide a context for the Gospel stories (Salm with Zindler 2015, 47). In order to try to show that Nazareth only came into existence after the Second Temple period (that is, after c. 70), Salm aims to prove that there is no archaeological evidence for Late Hellenistic or Early Roman occupation on the site of modern Nazareth. However, Salm himself admits that he has no archaeological training or qualifications (Salm with Zindler 2015, 19, 130), and his books exhibit a misunderstanding of even the basics of the archaeological process, from stratigraphy, through artefact dating, to conventional publication procedures and the critical use of analogy.

Any attempt to use archaeology to disprove the existence of the biblical place called Nazareth is inevitably flawed because one would need to conclusively identify the place called Nazareth in the Gospels, and then show beyond archaeological doubt that it was unoccupied in the early first century. Whether the Nazareth of the Gospels is beneath modern Nazareth is a matter of interpretation rather than certainty. If it could be proved that there was no early first-century occupation anywhere in modern Nazareth, which is theoretically impossible in a built-up modern city, it might just mean that the place called Nazareth in the Gospels may be somewhere other than modern Nazareth, a suggestion which goes back to at least the tenth century (Chapter 3).

Alternatively, settlement might have shifted within the zone occupied by the present city of Nazareth, as occurred elsewhere. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Anglo Saxon London (Biddle 2014). Until the 1980s, no archaeological evidence seemed to support the eighth-century historian Bede’s observation that seventh-century London was a thriving mercantile town. Some archaeologists even thought that seventh-century London was a mere invention on Bede’s part. The negative evidence seemed convincing: the City of London was much more extensively excavated by 1980 than Nazareth is today. Then, two archaeologists independently re-analysed previously discovered material, showing that there was, in fact,  plenty of evidence for a large seventh-century trading settlement (Biddle 1984; Vince 1984), but that it lay just to the west of where other scholars had been expecting the Anglo-Saxon town. No serious archaeologist working on London today doubts that the seventh-century town was, as Bede said, a thriving port. At Tours also, the urban centre shifted in Late Antiquity from inside its Roman walls to around the tomb of St Martin (Galinié 1978, 2007). One might bear such examples in mind when thinking about Nazareth.

(Dark, 2020, pp. 6-7)

In response to this, I am sure we can expect another explosion of towering pomposity and sneering bile from the Oregon piano man shortly.

Edit 23/07/20

The problems with Salm’s crackpot thesis continue to accumulate. Israeli archaeologist Yardenna Alexandre has published a new article on her excavations in Nazareth in the Israel Antiquities Authority journal ‘Atiqot – “The Settlement History of Nazareth in the Iron Age and Early Roman Period”, ‘Atiqot, 98, 2020, pp. 25-92. The article synopsis reads:

A small-scale excavation carried out next to the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation compound in Nazareth exposed the remains of three building strata: Stratum III, from Iron IIA–B (tenth–early eighth centuries BCE); Stratum II, from the late Hellenistic to the Early Roman period (late second century BCE–first third of the second century CE); and Stratum I, from the Crusader to Mamluk periods (twelfth–fifteenth centuries CE). The late Hellenistic to Early Roman-period dwelling incorporated a three-level complex of subterranean pits or silos. Within the pits, many potsherds were discarded, perhaps attesting to the Jewish practice of ritual defilement of ceramic vessels that were rendered impure. Similar findings were documented at other Jewish villages of the Early Roman period in Galilee.

This means the finds span precisely the period in which Salm claims Nazareth was not inhabited. Additionally, the same issue of the journal includes an article by Nimrod Marom on animal bone finds in Nazareth that span this period as well – “Faunal Remains from Nazareth”, ‘Atiqot, 98, 2020, pp. 93-102. Both articles are available for download from the “Atiqot website. So Salm has yet more rearguard ad hoc scrambling to do. I wonder if he and his equally deluded supporters will ever realise that he is simply … wrong.

Edit 30/06/23

With the release of his new book Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth (OUP, 2023) Ken Dark, now Professor of Archaeology and History at the University of Reading, took the time to discuss the archaeology of Roman Era Nazareth in an interview with me and to explain, very politely, why Salm’s theory is crackpot nonsense.