Nazareth in the Time of Jesus: the Archaeological Record
I have been talking about the question (which I bet never occurred to you before!) of whether there actually ever *was* a Nazareth in the days of Jesus. Many “mythicists” who deny that Jesus existed use as part of their argument that Nazareth itself was made up. I’ve discussed this view over two posts to show how the arguments are highly problematic, in particular those mounted by Reneé Salm based on what he claims are archaeological facts. Here I continue by showing what the archaeologists themselves have had to say about it. This too is taken from my 2012 book Did Jesus Exist: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. ****************************** There is an even bigger problem however with Salms’s view, however. There are numerous compelling pieces of archaeological evidence that in fact Nazareth did exist in Jesus’ day, and that like other villages and towns in that part of Galilee, it was built on the hillside, near where the later rock-cut kokh tombs were built. For one thing, archaeologists have excavated a [...]