Welcome to the landing page for my multi‑part critique of Ken Dark’s recent work on Nazareth archaeology. This series updates my critique of Dark’s Nazareth work found in NazarethGate, Chapter 6, published in 2015. Over the last decade Dark has published three major books on the subject (2020, 2021, 2023), all claiming that the Sisters of Nazareth site preserves a dwelling “from the time of Jesus.” In this series I demonstrate that claim to be thoroughly untenable.

⭐ Series Contents
→ Read Pt. 1
• This is a short introduction to the series giving pertinent context.

→ Read Pt. 2
• Dark’s super-crowded chronology and shifting phases. Explains the archaeologist’s unusually busy scenario for the first century CE, including the impossible proposition that the tombs under the SoN site were both hewn and abandoned within a half century (or were not even used at all).
• The agenda behind the interpretation. I argue that Dark’s conception for the SoN site is forced and the product of a familiar agenda: to find a dwelling in the Nazareth basin “from the time of Jesus.”

→ Read Pt. 3
• Was a “courtyard house” at the Sisters of Nazareth site? I show that (a) the structural features at the SoN site do not reflect a dwelling of any kind; and (b) Dark’s conception of the alleged dwelling has changed over the years, from a “model courtyard house” to a possible “quarryworker’s hut” located in a cave. Both conceptions are untenable.