The Historicity of Nazareth (2026)
Richard Carrier
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/40659
But in case you didn’t know, René Salm is an amateur who has advanced often contradictory and overreaching critiques of Nazareth archaeology, up to and including outright conspiracy theories. For example, to “get rid” of the Caesarea inscription he promotes the conspiracy theory of Enrico Tuccinardi
Just a couple years ago, secular archaeologist Ken Dark published Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth (Oxford University Press 2023), a summary of his own archaeological survey of Nazareth, going over all the previous archaeology there (even admitting its flaws and biases), and updating it with a...
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(yes, that Tuccinardi)
A couple of weird peer reviewed studies recently came out arguing from statistical stylometry that (1) Galen (the famed second century Greco-Roman medical scientist) did not write most of the works attributed to him (which would be a major thing because we have some sixty books from Galen, far...
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accusing Jerry Vardaman of forging it. This kind of desperate and bizarre apologetics is alone discrediting of Salm’s reliability (and Tuccinardi’s). Vardaman could not have forged this—he was working with an entire team in the field on its discovery, and there is no evidence anything about the original find is fake. Moreover, Vardaman was conspicuously not a forger. When he worked on this dig he had not yet gone insane—that occurred decades later, and even then his madness resulted in him seeing things on coins and inscriptions that weren’t there, not forging inscriptions on them (I thoroughly cover the Vardaman madness in
Hitler Homer Bible Christ).
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We also already knew Nazareth was in Jewish legend one of the places priests were settled from a
7th century poem
en.wikipedia.org
that the Caesarea inscription only confirms (and indeed
that poem
he.wikipedia.org
says this happened
when the temple was destroyed,
הפיוט כמו מצרף ומזכך את מרכיבי התרבות העברית: שפה, מוסיקה, מיסטיקה, היסטוריה, מדרש, מחשבה, תפילה, רגש אישי, משפחתי ולאומי - לידי מכלול אחד. הפיוט המושר מאפשר לחוות את המכלול הזה באופן שלם.
web.archive.org
not seventy years later, again confirming when these relocations happened and why). And that fact is itself confirmed by
another inscription
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJE_23
(and yet others, as described by Grey
en.wikipedia.org
, pp. 317–26) that only lost the part mentioning Nazareth but verify the poem and Caesarea inscription. So trying to insist the Caesarea inscription is fake is too crank to credit.
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Hi Richard,
Interesting discussion.
While I have used the Caesarea Maritima Nazareth inscription, I thought Tuccinardi raised some interesting points and put those arguments aside.. Now I will have to review again!
More importantly, for those of us who are Bible believers, you can never get this square peg into a round hole.
Luke 4:29 (AV)
"And rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built,
that they might cast him down headlong.
Michael Wolter, quoted by others,astutely says "pure fiction".
“The place to which Jesus is led and from which he is to be thrown down is not topographically verifiable and ancient Nazareth was not located on a mountain but in a high valley. The details regarding this are pure fiction.”
The Gospel According to Luke: Volume I
Except the far better locale for New Testament Nazareth is Har Nitai, (across from Arbel), from which you can actually see "down to Capernaum". These 900' cliffs were used for execution. (Josephus describes this for Mount Arbel)
There are many reasons this is an excellent fit.
The first studies that pin-pointed this location afawk were done by Kevin Kluetz, using his Army Ranger skills throughout Galilee and Golan after Desert Storm.
Blessings and grace,
Steven Avery
researcher
Dutchess County, NY USA
