Customer Reviews

The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus

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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

Excellent! A detailled and complete review of the archaeological evidence for the existence or non-existence of Nazareth during the siecles before and after year 1.
Clear, nice explanations of the various wars and invasions at this time. Objective criticisms of the ideological biases from the previous archeologists. Well referenced.

Rene Salm certainly has done a lot of homework on the archaeological work at Nazareth. He is a devoted researcher. He has an excellent summary of the history of the Galilee. He points out many errors and exposes the deep bias of Christian archeologists who have published their archaeological "findings."

Like his editor, Frank R. Zindler, the author is a devoted atheist. His work attacks, over and over and over, the flaws he identifies in the published works of Christian archaeologists. He casts doubt on the integrity of all archaeologists who believe Nazareth existed before the middle of the 1st century of the Common Era.

His archaeological discussion is brimming with quotes from and references to Galilean archaeologists Dr. Zvi Gal and Mordechai "Motti" Aviam. These two archaeologists receive rare respect from Salm. Ironically, Dr. Aviam completely disagrees with Salm's conclusion about the dating of Nazareth. In private communications, Dr. Aviam ("a secular Jew" by his own words) has disclosed that his personal examinations of earlier and recent artifacts and the newly discovered (early) 1st century residence persuade him that the traditional site of Nazareth is correctly identified and dated. Aviam believes Nazareth was settled in the 1st century BCE, probably when Judeans settled much of the Galilee, especially the Lower Galilee, during the years shortly before and after 100 BCE. Dr. Aviam's pointed comment to Salm and his editor was (paraphrased): I reject your conclusion of "case closed"; we don't do science that way.

It would be naive to think that Dr. Aviam's summary-comments redeem the many flaws in earlier archaeological work done in Nazareth; most of Salm's criticisms are deserved and I would expect Dr. Aviam to concur with some of the mistakes Salm criticizes. Salm also has a reasonable point to offer when he insists that no one can reasonably rely on unpublished information to support the existence of Nazareth in the 1st century BCE. However, genuine scholarship does not permit Salm to make the rules. In a world of limited time and money, archaeologists cannot pursue every question about every site. Galilean archaeologists are further hampered by the reality of the dense occupation of Nazareth. So far, archaeologists have not prioritized the excavation of Nazareth to clarify its settlement in the 1st century BCE (Professor Uzi Leibner of Hebrew University suggests the possibility of two waves of settlement in the 1st century BCE), even though several are now aware of Salm's claims and have received copies of his book. Salm may be forced now to "diss" the archaeologist upon whom he relied as a biased scientist because the Galilean expert is not persuaded that Salm's arguments warrant his conclusion(s). The esteemed Dr. Aviam recognizes the atheists' agenda is not to gain genuine knowledge, and finds it no more credible than the biased archaeologists Salm so thoroughly condemns.

Salm's book gives mixed messages about his views on Nazareth's date. At one point he says persuasive evidence could clarify the situation, like the remains of an early 1st century residence, but then he goes on to more or less say his mind is made up forever. In 2009, the remains of a 1st century residence were discovered and Salm's web site, [reference removed by amazon], quotes unnamed archaeologists disparaging the dating of the ancient residence. Salm even quotes Seymour Gittin of the Albright Institute, but does not disclose that Gittin is an expert of the Bronze Age and not an expert on Hellenistic, Hasmonaean, Herodian, or Roman period archaeology. It is obvious that Salm is shopping for opinions rather than weighing all credible archaeological evidence.

In his private communications with Salm, Dr. Aviam offered to visit the Nazareth site and see what was there to indicate the dating, recognizing that all observations are tentative at this early stage in the excavation and evaluation of the finds. Dr. Aviam's conclusion: archaeologist Yardena Alexandre's assessment that the newly discovered residence is early 1st century is based on solid evidence.

So what does an atheist do when his "hero" disagrees with his conclusions? Salm's conclusion is not truly a scholarly conclusion, it is a conclusion guided by his atheistic worldview. In other words, Salm is not going to revise his conclusions regardless of any newly discovered evidence, because such a correction would not be consistent with his a priori belief that Nazareth (in the 1st century BCE) and Jesus of Nazareth were myths. This is not to suggest to any reader that Salm is un-intelligent or uninformed or unable to present a strong case; quite the opposite is true. Anyone who underestimates the intellectual power of Salm's arguments is being naive. However, a careful and complete examination of his proposal indicates that he is guided by his beliefs and cannot accommodate objective science.

This book is well suited for atheists who desire powerful apologetics for their anti-beliefs about Jesus and Nazareth.

My main point to anyone studying this topic: this book is not an objective source of information. A much better source for learning about the archaeology of 1st century Galilee (including Nazareth) is "Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus" by Professor Jonathan L. Reed, a genuine expert.

The review by J.F. Joyner below is riddled with falsehood. No first century CE residence has ever been discovered at Nazareth. Period. In 2009, Yardenna Alexandre completed an excavation in which see recovered the foundation of a Mamluk period building, during the course of which she identified two lateral cuts into the bedrock beneath the building. She found no stratified or otherwise contextualized artifacts that would date these cuts, nor did she recover any other indications of a first century CE edifice. She made no mention of any first century structures in her closing report on the excavation, and she has never published so much as a single sherd that would be diagnostic for that period. She did, however, participate in a series of press conferences and releases in December 2009, primarily on behalf of the Israeli Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Tourism, in which she announced she had recovered a first century CE residence in Nazareth in spite of not having recovered any artifacts indicating such (the "solid evidence" underlying her dating is her problematic identification of a nearby depression as the remains of a refuge pit, as well as her claim that she discovered sherds that may date to the second century CE that she is illegally withholding from the IAA and from publication). This was nothing more than a canard offered to bolster the Israeli tourist trade, formulated (not coincidentally) at the start of the Christmas season's tourist rush (the fact that Alexandre's dig was actually sponsored by the Marian Center, and was slated to produce content for a Jesus-related exhibit there even before the first spade-full of earth was turned, is also highly revealing).

As a former professional archaeologist, I find Joyner's review to be thoroughly suffused with the palpable indicia of ignorance. Joyner reveals that he has little to no disciplinary training in archaeology, and does not possess even a rudimentary understanding of the processes attendant to our field. He refers to Jonathon Reed as a "genuine expert," in spite of the fact that Reed embarrasses himself in his text by his lack of archaeological awareness and critical faculties. He impugns Salm's objectivity, yet the strongest feature of Salm's text is his dispassionate approach and his objective treatment of data. The greatest value of Salm's work lies in his collection, indexing, and seriatim arrangement of raw data, and his principled reliance on the characterization of artifacts by the world's top authorities on the specific typologies of the artifacts involved. Any objective observer should find that the facts Salm adduces would well justify his being much stronger and more direct in his rebuke of the confessionally inspired pseudo-scholarship he addresses than he actually is.

If you wish to treat yourself to endless BS and clouded thinking, you could take Mr. Joyner's comments to heart and posture yourself against the big, bad, belief challenging bogeyman of objective scholarship. If you wish to inform yourself, however, and give yourself the benefit of perhaps the best and most extensively researched critique of Nazareth pseudo-archaeology to date, I would suggest that you purchase Rene Salm's book instead.

I am an archaeologist whose speciality is the Syro-Palestinian region only a little earlier (Iron Age). I stumbled onto this book recently and asked the question--"Who the hell is this guy?" It turns out that he is a self-employed composer from Eugene, Oregon. His Linked-in profile lists his education as a B.A. in music from the University of Oregon. No one in the archaeological community seems to know him. He seems unaware of certain data like the content of the display cases in the Museum of the Basilica of the Annuciation. He also mangles the identification of one early Galilean Herodian-style lamp in a photo on his web site. I can find no record of him ever digging in the region.

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."

What's more, in December 2009, Yardenna Alexandre, leader of a team from the Israel Antiquities Authority, announced that they had unearthed a house dating from the time of Jesus. They found two rooms, a courtyard and a cistern for rainwater, plus some local pottery and remains of chalk lamps.

Poor old Salm. Tell you what - next he could try proving Bethlehem didn't exist in the time of Jesus of Nazareth...

(Incidentally the latest research, e.g. "The Jesus Papyrus" by Thiede and d'Ancona, suggests that the four evangelists did not write their gospels "towards the end of the first century CE" but in the 50s and 60s.)