Reconstruction of Vardaman’s activity during the 1962 Caesarea excavation season [This is a July 2014 update of the original post which was uploaded in Sept. 2013. Included here is new information on Vardaman’s field notes published in BASOR 371 (May 2014) in an article authored by O. Storvick and M. Govaars. Older entries from Vardaman’s notebook can be found at Govaars 2009:185-86. Suspicious facts are in red.] Note: For much more extensive information on the Caesarea Inscription, see my 2015 book NazarethGate, Chapter 12, “The Forgery of the ‘Caresarea Inscription.’” (pp. 314-76). Select bibliography is at the bottom of this post.         On July 15, 1962, the excavation season began in Area A of Caesarea—an area north of the Crusader walls … Continue reading →

It seems that every week brings a new development in this deepening intercontinental collaboration researching the “Caesarea inscription”—the ancient Hebrew inscription (which is not ancient at all) mentioning Nazareth which scholars routinely consider “proof” that the hometown of Jesus existed in Roman times. This series of posts on Mythicist Papers is now in its third month (the first post to this website regarding this inscription was back on June 10). Mr. Enrico Tuccinardi in Italy, an anonymous colleague in Israel, and myself in the U.S. have assiduously followed up numerous leads with the result that an entirely unsuspected background has come to light regarding the “Caesarea inscription” (in quotes because readers of this blog now know that the inscription never … Continue reading →

Jerry Vardaman’s career Ephraim Jeremiah Vardaman (1927-2000) was a native of Dallas, Texas. His career spans much of the South. “Jerry” Vardaman received a Th.D in 1957 from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary of Fort Worth, Texas. (His dissertation was entitled Hermeticism and the Fourth Gospel.) He then taught New Testament archaeology for fifteen years (1958-72) at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (hereafter SBTS) in Louisville, Kentucky. Vardaman was thus teaching at SBTS in Louisville when he participated in the Caesarea Maritima excavations of 1962, along with a number of his students. Vardaman subsequently taught at Mississippi State University (1973-81) where he founded the Cobb Institute of Archeology. He obtained a second doctorate in 1974 from Baylor University (Waco, Texas) … Continue reading →

The step-by-step researches of Mr. Tuccinardi and myself this summer into the so-called “Ceasarea inscription” have already yielded considerable fruit: (1) we now can say that there was no single plaque which can go by that name—there were, in fact, three different and mutually distinguishable plaques, each possibly constituting a small part of the list of twenty-four priestly courses; (2) no synagogue existed in the vicinity of any of their findspots. This second point presents a triple mystery, for how could even a single plaque of the priestly courses occur in an area where a synagogue never existed, much less three different plaques? The answer is clear: all three fragments of the so-called “Caesarea inscription” came from outside the area. … Continue reading →