The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus (Paperback)

by Rene Salm (Author), Frank R. Zindler (Editor) "Nazareth lies in the hills of Lower Galilee, approximately equidistant from the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee..." (more)
Key Phrases: kokh tombs, kokhim tombs, venerated area, Iron Age, Church of the Annunciation, Lower Galilee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
I am amazed by your work and can't wait to see the pathetic attempts to reply! -- Robert M. Price, PhD, ThD, Author, The Pre-Nicene New Testament, Deconstructing Jesus, Jesus Is Dead, etc. Christianity cannot survive unless this book can be refuted. By proving scientifically that Nazareth was uninhabited at the time Jesus of Nazareth and his family were supposed to be living there, Salm strikes the Achilles' heel of a very popular god. We KNOW the Wizard of Oz is not real, since we know there never was a Land of Oz. Because of this exhaustive archaeological investigation, we now know that Jesus of Nazareth also is a literary fiction. Apologists and all other professional Christians are going to be out of work unless they can disprove this book -- or find a way to suppress it. -- Frank R. Zindler, Author, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew --Back cover

Product Description
The Myth Of Nazareth presents convincing archaeological evidence that the town of Nazareth was not settled until after the First Jewish War, around 70 CE. Exhaustive reconsideration of ALL artifacts from present-day Nazareth shows that the site was not inhabited at the time Jesus of Nazareth and his family are supposed to have been living there. In this book researcher René Salm proves that a core element of the Jesus story was an invention of the evangelists who wrote their gospels towards the end of the first century CE -- as it turns out, at the same time the village of Nazareth was coming into being. Requiring eight years of painstaking research, The Myth Of Nazareth surveys the archaeological record of the Nazareth basin from the Stone Age until modern times. It guides the reader through a stunning odyssey of discovery -- one which exposes not only the true history of the site but also a scandalous history of evidentiary suppression reaching back into Early Christian Times. The here-established fact that Nazareth is a literary invention puts Jesus of Nazareth in the same class as the Wizard of Oz and implies that Jesus too is a literary invention. Coming shortly after the claim of Israeli archaeologist Aviram Oshri that Bethlehem in Judea also was uninhabited at the time Jesus is supposed to have been born there, Salm's research seems to be delivering a one-two knockout punch to the character known as The Historical Jesus.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: American Atheist Press (March 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578840031
• ISBN-13: 978-1578840038
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,484 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable, Excellent, Scholarly and Important, May 29, 2008

By	P. Lindsay falvey (Melb, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I don't care if Jesus came from Nazareth, Bodhgaya or Timbukto, but I do care for good books, and this is an excellent book on a difficult subject. How could archaeology of little oil lamps be interesting? - ask Rene Salm, for has made it so in this highly readable and objective account of the area where Nazareth was meant to exist about Year 0.

Without preciousness, without the emotion of some recent anti-religion books and without fear, the book incidentally shows that belief is anathema to the spiritual dimensions of religion, yet is the very essence of the religion of the ignorant. I suspect that these latter forces will crucify the work with the usual dogma-based arguments that we too often leave unchallenged. Nevertheless I predict that the work will persist on the shelves of those who strive to understand their spirits - for those in the Christian tradition, this means those who strive to know Jesus, for they know it matters little whether he was a Jew or blond or was born in Nazareth. But it matters if their church is pushing an invented (not an inherited tribal story) myth as fact.

This is a scholarly work in a field dominated by scholars employed by church-related bodies. For this reason it is unique as its scholarship is of a higher order than that of those it criticizes. And potential readers should be aware that Salm's the criticism is kind - regardless of the obnoxious comments of another reviewer whom I suspect has not read the book at all. The reader is led into gentle questions such as `why would the church chose to present the data that way?' and `how could an archaeologist make such a simple mistake?' Of course we learn more with time in all such fields but the book allows for this and softly leads us to consider the remaining questions. We decide - it is not a belief-based study; it is a special and important contribution to a failing religion of a people searching for truth. It should be in every good university library, and will no doubt be on the shelves of the private libraries of the balance and thinking elite.

Lindsay Falvey

4 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Atheism needs to try harder, March 20, 2009

By	P. Bentley (New Malden, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you would like to know what a professional archaeologist who has worked at Nazareth for several years thinks of this book, get hold of Dr. Ken Dark's 7-page review in the 2008 issue of the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society. I quote his final paragraph - "To conclude: despite 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."

Sorry, Salm - it looks very much as though there WAS a Nazareth in the time of Jesus of Nazareth.

(Incidentally the latest research suggests that the four evangelists did not write their gospels "towards the end of the first century CE" but in the 50s and 60s.)