As mentioned in the preceding post, Dark’s Nazareth work over the years focusses on the Sisters of Nazareth (SoN) convent site, which is the location of Roman-era tombs located about 100 m west of the fabled Church of the Annunciation (also the location of tombs – see “The Tombs Under the House of Mary,” NG Ch. 13). The SoN site presents two kokhim-type tomb chambers, a southern Tomb 1 (with its well-known rolling stone) and a northern Tomb 2 (Illus. 1). In antiquity the two chambers were doubtless connected by a short underground passageway. The SoN tomb site has been much disturbed over the centuries, primarily by intrusive agricultural and communal installations (cisterns, silos, filtration basins…) which in Byzantine and Medieval times resulted in the destruction of Tomb 2’s roof and also considerable damage to Tomb 1. Nevertheless, the tomb entryway with rolling stone and a number of clearly-identifiable burial niches (kokhim) survive (Illus. 2).

Dark proposes that a dwelling ‘from the time of Jesus’ once stood directly above Tomb 1 (2021:Ch.9) – but not at the same time. He is aware that (for reasons of ritual purity) Jews would not live above tombs, and so he proposes that the dwelling was abandoned shortly before the tombs were hewn in mid-I CE. Thus, in Dark’s view, a dwelling stood at the SoN site ‘in the time of Jesus’ but was abandoned not long afterwards and just before the tombs were hewn (2012:7,12,15; 2021:108).

Dark terms the dwelling ‘Structure 1’ (there is no ‘Structure 2’) and the chronological time of its habitation ‘Phase 1.’ The subsequent period of tomb use he initially termed ‘Phase 2,’ but (perhaps due to difficulties that I raised in my 2015 book, NazarethGate) he has recently introduced a short period of ‘quarrying activity’ in the middle of I CE. He now calls the quarrying ‘Phase 2a’ and the subsequent use of the tombs ‘Phase 2b’ (2021:108,113).

Dark’s super-crowded chronology and shifting phases

Thus, in his three recent Nazareth books Dark proposes a busy sequence of activities all taking place in the first century CE:

• habitation of a dwelling ‘in the time of Jesus’
• abandonment of that dwelling towards mid-I CE
• a short quarrying phase around mid-I CE
• hewing of the tombs around mid-I CE
• abandonment of the tombs before ca. 100 CE

This amount of activity – all in the first century CE – is astonishing and, to my knowledge, has never been proposed for any other site in ancient Palestine. Dark’s scenario also contains at least one impossibility: that the tombs under the SoN site were abandoned within a half-century of being hewn! In one passage he even writes: “the tomb was presumably never used for burial” (2021:221). This is all simply absurd. Besides representing a colossal waste of energy, the archaeologist has apparently forgotten that earlier investigators discovered skeletons and bones in situ (2021:12,21,76,123,129,210).

In upcoming posts we will see that Dark proposes a complex (and quite unbelievable) scenario to demonstrate that the alleged dwelling dated to the turn of the era. His scenario requires a ca. 100 CE terminus ante quem for tomb use, a physical ‘cutting’ of the tomb into the dwelling (to show that the dwelling was first), and a locus where that cutting took place. In my 2015 book I showed that such a critical locus does not exist. Apparently as a result, Dark has recently pivoted in several creative ways, including his proposition that the cutting was into ‘rubble’ (hence a short interim period of quarrying activity) and that the cutting occurred from another direction – namely, from a hypothetical ‘Tomb 3’ that he claims lies in unexcavated terrain west of the SoN cite.

That is not all. I showed in NazarethGate that many features Dark assigns to Structure 1 simply do not exist in the physical remains (NG 107 ff). As for the features that do exist, I pointed out that many are rough-hewn from solid rock and are hardly compatible with the “model courtyard house” that Dark proposes for the dwelling. Perhaps in response, Dark now proposes that the ‘courtyard house’ may have been no more than a modest ‘quarryworker’s hut’ (2021:114).

The agenda behind the interpretation

The foregoing shows that, in many ways, Dark’s conception is at odds with the physical evidence at the SoN site. Beginning with his proposal that a dwelling once stood over a tomb site, to his hyperactive I CE chronology, to his proposing a hypothetical Tomb 3, to his proposals that the SoN tombs were unused or abandoned within half a century of being hewn, to his modifying the nature of the alleged dwelling from a ‘model courtyard house’ to a ‘quarryworker’s hut’ – all these curiosities suggest a contrived interpretation of the site rather than one based on the physical evidence.

An agenda appears once again in play, an agenda as old as Nazareth archaeology itself: to find a house ‘from the time of Jesus.’ The devout Sisters of Nazareth have long cherished the notion that a saint – at minimum – was buried under their premises. They also supposed that a Roman-era dwelling once stood there (2021:24 & Ch. 6). The fundamental conflict between burial and dwelling did not occur to them, for until the mid-20th century it was not widely appreciated in Christian circles that Jews do not live in the vicinity of tombs. In fact, this aspect has greatly aided my researches, for older Nazareth accounts (and plans such as Illus. 1 above) identified many burials under Christian holy sites (including under the Church of the Annunciation!) that have been assiduously ignored in recent generations (MoN 254). After the Second World War, however, when Jewish purity regulations became better appreciated, a tomb’s presence suddenly meant that no dwelling existed nearby. This understanding has posed a ghastly threat to the traditional siting of Nazareth and to the streams of pilgrims who visit the ‘Venerated Area’ every year – for my work has shown that area was in the middle of a Roman cemetery! (MoN 219 ff.)

In the next post we will look more closely at Dark’s contradictory conceptions of the ‘house from the time of Jesus.’